Collected Fiction, page 75
“No. The sets are all built, and it took a month to put them up. We’ve got to finish shooting back at camp. But those animals—there must be thousands of them. We can’t shoot ’em one by one as they appear. I wouldn’t ask the crew to work out in the open under such conditions.”
Ailyn Van same up hastily, her platinum eyes wide. She caught sight of the Bouncer, who was peering dispiritedly at his furry stomach.
“Nice and warm,” he said miserably.
Ailyn gasped and made a dive for Bill. She fumbled in his coat and brought up an object that suddenly turned a shell-pink to match her hands. It was Picasso, who had been a stowaway on the Bouncer since he had left camp.
“You naughty, naughty little Picasso,” Ailyn crooned tenderly. “I thought I’d lost you. Why, you might have been killed.” She turned to Quade. “Tony, you saved his life!”
BEFORE Quade could answer Wolfe put in hurriedly, “I’ll say he did! One of the claws was dragging Picasso right into a jaw when Tony killed it. Risked his own life doing it, too.”
Ailyn turned glowing platinum eyes on Quade.
“I can’t thank you enough. Tony—” She came closer, looking somewhat ashamed of herself. “I’ve been pretty nasty, haven’t I?”
“Darn right you have,” Kathleen said, but Quade shushed her with a warning gesture. “Yeah,” he said. “But after all you’re an artist. I guess I haven’t been easy to get along with.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that. It was me. I’m sorry, Tony. I—it’ll be different from now on.”
And she meant it, Quade knew. He sighed with relief. However, there still remained Jigsaw—and the Inferno! In the stress of events he had almost forgotten about filming the cavern of the energy-storms.
“Wolfe,” Quade said, “I think I’ve figured out our friend Jigsaw. He broadcasts thought-commands to his various organs—and he does it by way of radioactivity, that’s pretty sure. A thick coat of lead should stop that, eh?”
The lanky blond stared for a moment, and then grinned widely.
“You got it, Tony! That’ll keep him from jumping the synapse. Same as lead will shut off radium rays. Even the powerful gamma rays . . . but how’ll we do it? Electrolysis? We’d have to pump a lead nitrate solution into the pool first.”
“Electroplating’s too slow,” Quade said. “Molten lead will do the trick. We’ll use the metal spray guns.”
This was done. The giant guns, useful in constructing sets, took thick feed wires of lead into their mechanisms, melted the metal by acetylene blasts, and sprayed the molten stuff under powerful pressure from their muzzles.
A platform was rigged underneath the camera-ship, and the spray guns were lowered by long poles, easily manipulated by the men above. White-hot lead showered on Jigsaw. As it hardened a thick coat was formed, and presently the spherical brain was capsized by the weight. Immediately the crew began to spray the surface now exposed to view.
“Jigsaw’s in solitary confinement,” Quade said, peering down through the transparent hull. “His thought-impulses can’t get through the lead shield and reach his organs—the claws, eyes, and the rest. They haven’t any brains, you know. Just receiving nerve tissue.”
Something was certainly happening to Jigsaw’s mobile organs. They were gradually ceasing to move, while the bellows of the sound organs grew fainter and stopped entirely. In half an hour Quade recalled the men, convinced that Jigsaw was so thoroughly coated with lead that he was now harmless.
“Everything’s ship-shape,” he told Kathleen. “Maybe the lead will wear off Jigsaw in time, but we’ll be through The Star Parade by then—” Quade paused, frowning.
The girl nodded sympathetically. “You mean the Inferno?”
Wolfe came up, the Bouncer hopping at his heels. “It simply can’t be filmed, Tony. You’d better tell Von Zorn to fake it. The armor’s no good. Nothing can live in the Inferno.” Quade looked at the Bouncer, and his eyes slowly widened. Bill blinked uneasily and took shelter behind Kathleen’s ankles. “For Pete’s sake!” Quade said at last, his voice unsteady. “What a sap I am! It’ll work—sure it’ll work! And I had the answer right in my lap all along!”
“WHAT?” Wolfe’s tone was skeptical.
Quade turned to the girl.
“Kate, remember when we first saw a Teapot? On the rim of the Inferno? When one of Jigsaw’s eyes and claws chased it down into the energy currents?”
“Yes. But—”
“The Teapot died—its brain was burned out. But the claw wasn’t hurt, or the eye. Of course not! Neither of them had a brain. Just conducting nerve-tissue. Wolfe, maybe that’s the explanation of Jigsaw’s metallic body and his radioactivity.”
“You mean—oh! Adaptation!”
“That’s it,” Quade said. “Living right near the Inferno, Jigsaw slowly adapted himself to the radiations.
Built up resistance against it. A radio-controlled robot would go haywire in the crater, but not a creature controlled by thoughts—telepathy. I’ll bet Jigsaw’s mobile organs can go anywhere in the Inferno without being hurt.”
“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” Wolfe said slowly. “The rays are more powerful the deeper you get.”
“Yeah . . . but rays that would burn out a brain mightn’t act on less specialized nerve-tissue. We’ve got to take the chance.”
“All we have to do is send down a claw with a camera strapped to it,” Kathleen said wryly. “A fat chance.”
“That’s right,” Wolfe seconded her. “We can’t control the mobile organs the way Jigsaw did. Our radio robot-controls won’t work on living creatures.”
“That,” Quade said with satisfaction, “is where Bill comes in. The Bouncer has a highly developed telepathic function in his brain. He can broadcast thoughts as well as receive them. We found that out when he ate some of Stover’s benzedrine. He controlled Picasso with his mind, and Picasso has a brain—more or less. Jigsaw’s organs have just got specially adapted receptive nerve tissue, so that ought to be even easier for Bill.”
CHAPTER V
Fade-Out: The Big Scene
AN hour later the space ship lay grounded near the crater of the Inferno, while Bill was the center of a small group near the rim. He kept looking around in a worried manner, occasionally scratching his stomach. He was full of benzedrine.
“It’s a very powerful stimulant,” Quade had explained. “It was known a long time ago—benzedrine sulphate—but lately it’s been improved considerably, so that it steps up the brain to a tremendous extent. It ought to pep up Bill’s telepathic function a lot.”
It did. The largest tentacle had been carried along, and an automatic, spring-powered camera was attached to it. Several of Jigsaw’s eyes lay near by. Quade squatted before Bill, who looked up at Kathleen inquiringly.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “Tony won’t hurt you. If he does I’ll wring his neck.”
“Look,” Quade said. “You’re pretty intelligent, Bill. We know that. So try to understand.” He knew that his words were meaningless to the Bouncer, but the creature was receiving his thoughts and comprehending them. He explained to Bill what was wanted.
The Bouncer looked stupid. Quade went over the whole matter again, with no result. Eventually Bill murmured, “Candy?”
“I thought so,” Kathleen said. “He understands you all right, Tony. The little crook is holding out on us.” She fumbled in a pocket, brought out a piece of chocolate. The Bouncer ate it appreciatively and said “Candy?” in a hopeful way.
“Not now,” the girl told him. “You’ll get lots of candy after you do what Tony wants.”
Bill hesitated and then turned toward the remnants of Jigsaw. He stood perfectly still for a moment—and one of Jigsaw’s eyes moved.
It stood up on its tiny legs, wavered a minute, and fell over. But it got up again, and the other eyes, too, joined it.
“Now the tentacle,” Kathleen prompted.
The Bouncer obeyed. The snakelike object squirmed slowly, and writhed toward the lip of the crater. Quade sprang after it.
“Hold on a minute!” he called, and pressed the switch that started the camera, strapped tightly to the tentacle, unreeling its spool of film.
He straightened, frowning.
“This isn’t going to be easy. Bill can control the tentacle and the eyes, and he can read my mind. He’ll be a relay station, forwarding my thought-commands to the organs. He can probably see through Jigsaw’s eyes, the same as Jigsaw could—but I can’t. Unless Bill helps a lot, I’ll be working blind. Anyway—here goes!”
Quade turned to the Bouncer, trying to marshal his thoughts into coherent orders. The tentacle writhed over the lip of the crater and started down, the eyes scampering after it.
No one spoke. All were watching Quade and the Bouncer. As long as the tentacle was visible the task wasn’t too difficult, but presently not even binoculars could penetrate the depths in which the camera-laden messenger had vanished.
Quade’s face was damp with perspiration. He was rapidly acquiring a severe headache. Bill’s round eyes, now slightly glazed, were intent on the man.
“Keep going,” Quade was thinking. “Down. Till you reach the Inferno. Keep going . . .”
IT seemed years later when Quade had a queer, inexplicable conviction that the tentacle had found its goal. He stared at the Bouncer, who jiggled slightly. Had Bill projected the thought into his mind? Quade wondered.
“Keep moving around,” he commanded mentally. “All around. As many angles as possible . . .”
At last Wolfe touched Quade’s arm. He pointed to his watch. The can of film was nearly finished.
“Come back, now,” Quade said, unconscious that he was speaking along. “Make it quick. Hurry—”
The headache had increased to a blinding, agonizing throb within his skull. He fought against it, desperately trying to keep his thoughts coherent. He lost all comprehension of time, and when the tentacle writhed over the edge of the crater Quade stared at it for a while without realizing what this meant. Slowly understanding came to him.
The Inferno had been filmed—for the first time! If—and the thought chilled him—if the pictures developed okay. Quade swayed dizzily, felt the mouth of a flask thrust against his teeth. He gulped, felt the revivifying sting of brandy on his palate.
Wolfe was carefully removing the camera from the tentacle. He said absently, “The eyes didn’t come back. The radiations probably did for ’em. There’s considerable brain tissue in the retina, anyway—”
The Bouncer hugged Kathleen’s leg. “Candy?” he questioned greedily. “Candy?”
THAT night, on the space ship, the developed shots of the Inferno were run off. They were amazingly clear. The specially treated film, and the filter-lenses of the camera, had taken care of that.
Everything was there—the descent down the crater into the cavern of the energy-storms, astounding shots of the long-ruined Martian city, ablaze with the thundering, flaming currents that roared up from the depths below, and the final ascent back to the surface. Quade was grinning happily as he sat in the projection room, Kathleen beside him.
“Those scenes would make a smash hit out of the corniest flicker ever made,” he observed. “They’ll dub in sound on the Moon, and get the actors in with double-exposure shots. Von Zorn will go crazy over this stuff.”
“That cleans up everything,” Kathleen said. “Especially as you won’t have any more trouble with Clint and Edith.”
“Eh?”
“The gal fainted when Jigsaw attacked the ship. I laid her out in my stateroom and fixed it up with the doctor to tell Clint she’d been bitten by a claw and was plenty sick. He nearly went crazy. And when she woke up and saw how he felt—all was forgiven. It’ll be a month before they start fighting again.”
Quade drew a deep breath of relief. The Star Parade would be completed on schedule.
Jigsaw, completely plated with lead, remained in his pool, doing his best to send out nerve-impulses and wondering why he wasn’t receiving any.
Clint Padrick and Edith Rudeen were in each other’s arms in Floyd Stover’s cabin, listening to the latter’s interpretation of Macbeth.
Wolfe was grinning from ear to ear as he worked on his beloved cameras.
Quade was contemplating kissing Kathleen, and she was wondering why he didn’t hurry up about it.
Ailyn Van was looking for Picasso.
And the Bouncer was trying to figure out whether or not Picasso was clinging to some portion of his anatomy.
Bill had been given an antidote that destroyed the effects of the benzedrine, so he couldn’t control the little creature with his thoughts. Exploringly he examined his rotund middle.
Apparently no stowaway.
Bill’s furry shoulders lifted in a deep breath of relief—and then sagged in utter misery as he found himself murmuring,
“Nice and warm. Nice and . . . warm.”
1939
THE INVADERS
When Furies of Hell from Another Age are Loosed Upon Earth by Michael Hayward, They Teach Him a Nobler Wisdom!
“It may turn out after all that the weavers of fantasy are the veritable realists.”
—Machen.
“OH—it’s you,” said Hayward. “You got my wire?”
The light from the doorway of the cottage outlined his tall, lean figure, making his shadow a long, black blotch on the narrow bar of radiance that shone across the sand to where green-black rollers were surging.
A sea-bird gave a shrill, eerie cry from the darkness, and I saw Hayward’s silhouette give a curious little jerk.
“Come in,” he said quickly, stepping back.
Mason and I followed him into the cottage.
Michael Hayward was a writer—a unique one. Very few writers could create the strange atmosphere of eldritch horror that Hayward put into his fantastic tales of mystery. He had imitators—all great writers have—but none attained the stark and dreadful illusion of reality with which he invested his oftentime shocking fantasies. He went far beyond the bounds of human experience and familiar superstition, delving into uncanny fields of unearthliness. Blackwood’s vampiric elementals, M.R. James’ loathsome liches—even the black horror of de Maupassant’s Horla and Bierce’s Damned Thing—paled by comparison.
It wasn’t the abnormal beings Hayward wrote about so much as the masterly impression of reality he managed to create in the reader’s mind—the ghastly idea that he wasn’t writing fiction, but was simply transcribing on paper the stark, hellish truth. It was no wonder that the jaded public avidly welcomed each new story he wrote.
Bill Mason had telephoned me that afternoon at the Journal, where I worked, and had read me an urgent telegram from Hayward asking—in fact, begging us—to come at once to his isolated cottage on the beach north of Santa Barbara. Now, beholding him, I wondered at the urgency.
He didn’t seem ill, although his thin face was more gaunt than usual, and his eyes unnaturally bright. There was a nervous tension in his manner, and I got the odd impression that he was intently listening, alert for some sound from outside the cottage. As he took our coats and motioned us to chairs, Mason gave me a worried glance.
Something was wrong. Mason sensed it, I sensed it. Hayward filled his pipe and lit it, the smoke wreathing about his stiff black hair. There were bluish shadows in his temples.
“What’s up, old man?” I hazarded. “We couldn’t make head nor tail of your wire.”
He flushed. “I guess I was a little flurried when I wrote it. You see, Gene—oh, what’s the use—something is wrong, very wrong. At first I thought it might be my nerves, but—it isn’t.”
FROM outside the cottage came the shrill cry of a gull, and Hayward turned his face to the window. His eyes were staring, and I saw him repress a shudder. Then he seemed to pull himself together. He faced us, his lips compressed.
“Tell me, Gene—and you, Bill—did you notice anything—odd—on your way up?”
“Why, no,” I said.
“Nothing? Are you sure? It might have seemed unimportant—any sounds, I mean.”
“There were the seagulls,” Mason said, frowning. “You remember, I mentioned them to you, Gene.”
Hayward caught him up sharply. “Seagulls?”
“Yes,” I said. “That is, birds of some kind—they didn’t sound quite like seagulls. We couldn’t see them, but they kept following the car, calling to each other. We could hear them. But aside from the birds—”
I hesitated, astonished at the look on Hayward’s face—an expression almost of despair. He said, “No—that’s it, Gene. But they weren’t birds. They’re something—you won’t believe,” he whispered, and there was fright in his eyes. “Not till you see them—and then it’ll be too late.”
“Mike,” I said. “You’ve been overworking. You’ve—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I’m not losing my grip. Those weird stories of mine—they haven’t driven me mad, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m as sane as you are. The truth is,” he said very slowly, choosing his words with care, “I am being attacked.”
I groaned inwardly. Delusions of persecution—a symptom of insanity. Was Hayward’s mind really crumbling? Why, I wondered, were his eyes so unnaturally bright, and his thin face so flushed? And why did he keep shooting quick, furtive glances at the window?
I turned to the window. I started to say something and stopped.
I was looking at a vine. That is, it resembled a thick, fleshy vine more than anything else, but I had never seen any plant quite similar to the rope-like thing that lay along the window-ledge. I opened the window to get a better look at it.
IT WAS as thick as my forearm, and very pale—yellowish ivory. It possessed a curious glossy texture that made it seem semi-transparent, and it ended in a raw-looking stump that was overgrown with stiff, hairlike cilia. The tip somehow made me think of the extremity of an elephant’s trunk, although there was no real similarity. The other end dangled from the window-ledge and disappeared in the darkness toward the front of the house. And, somehow, I didn’t like the look of the thing.
