THE THING

 

THE THING


"They haven't seen those three red eyes, and that blue hair like crawling worms. Crawling - damn, it's crawling there in the ice right now!"

"Three mad, hate-filled eyes blazed up with a living fire, bright as fresh-spilled blood, from a face ringed with writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow -"

"But it did not seem of importance, of no more importance than the labored, slow motion of the tentacular things that sprouted from the base of the scrawny, slowly pulsing neck."

"The red eyes clouded over in a stiffening, jerking travesty of a face. Armlike, leglike members quivered and jerked. The dogs leapt forward, and Barclay yanked back his weapon. The thing on the snow did not move as gleaming teeth ripped it open."

"If it had reached the Antarctic Sea, it would have become a seal, maybe two seals. They might have attacked a killer whale, and become either killers, or a herd of seals. Or maybe it would have caught an albatross, or a skua gull, and flown to South America."

"If it didn't, it would become a dog - and be a dog and nothing more. It has to be an imitation dog."
 

"It tests negatively. Which means either they were cows then, or that, being perfect imitations, they gave perfectly good milk."

"Kinner's arms had developed a queer scaly fur, and flesh had twisted. The fingers had shortened, the hand rounded, the fingernails become three-inch long things of dull red horn, keened to steel-hard razor-sharp talons."

"The Thing screamed in feral hate, a lashing tentacle wiping at blinded eyes. For a moment it crawled on the floor, savage tentacles lashing out, the body twitching."
John W. Campbell, Who Goes There?

 Read Scott's blog-post about this story here.