The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

  “A clever thought, Mr. Summersby,” said the woman.

  “Not particularly. At any rate, I’m going to stand by the crack and try to get enough air to stay awake; then when I think the coast’s clear, I’ll shove the door open and scout around. If I find a way out, I’ll come back and drag you into the nursery and wake you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” asked Villa suspiciously. “No, Mr. Big Man, I don’t like you going out alone. I think you wouldn’t come back. You don’t like us.”

  Watkins, evidently on edge from his mauling by the children, whirled on the Mexican. “Oh, shut your yap! The guy’s doing you a favor.” Then he said to Summersby, “I’ll come along.”

  Summersby grinned wryly.

  “I’m not saying you’d run out on us, man.” Watkins made the motions of going through his pockets for a cigarette, which some of them still did occasionally out of hopeful habit. “I know locks and I might be able to help if you ran into trouble.”

  “Come on along, then.” He put an eye to the thin slit. “Here comes one of them. It’s the head scientist.” He grinned. “Or the kid who owns us, who lives in this house and invites his little pals in every day to play with his toys and his pets.”

  The monster disappeared. Presently Watkins said, “It’s in. I’m sleepy.”

  Summersby stretched as tall as he could and put his mouth to the crack, trying to breathe only what air came through from the nursery. He saw the enormous child pass on its way to the door, and shortly the sound of its heavy feet stopped. He felt drowsy, his eyelids flickered. He beat his hands together, sucking in air from the opening. Villa started to snore.

  Watkins said, “I’m about done, Summersby.” He was kneeling at the crack below Summersby, and his voice was sluggish. In a few seconds he rolled over on the straw.

  When did the adults come in to clean up? Summersby didn’t dare wait much longer. He was fighting sleep with all his vigor. Possibly they wouldn’t come till morning.

  He had to chance it. He forced his fingers into the gap and heaved. The wall didn’t move. Holding his breath, he propped one foot against the adjoining wall, dug his hands as far into the breach as possible, and hurled himself backward. The big door jolted an inch, hung, then slid back a couple of feet. He swung around and jammed himself through the aperture and the wall moved silently back into place; this time the dowel was not there, and when the wall stopped, there was no crack at the corner. Summersby must have kicked the dowel aside when he slid through. Watkins was inside, asleep.

  He breathed deeply, and the effects of the sleep gas died, so that he was wide awake and felt very excited and eager. To analyze the reasons for his eagerness would have killed it, and besides he was in a hurry. He ran to the great door of the playroom, whose lintel towered twenty feet from the floor. Hastily he tossed apparatus, boxes, toy blocks, until he had made a pile five feet high.

  Scrambling up this, the things sliding under his feet, he waved an arm above his head in the place where he believed the electric eye beam to be. Then the pile collapsed, and he fell into it, giving one knee a terrific crack and skinning his knuckles. The door glided open.

  The next room was deserted, and the soft bluish light was dimmer here than in the nursery. This place was far less cluttered, containing no more than a big yellow machine, a gigantic table, and two six-legged chairs. There was a picture on the wall, the size of a barn’s side, which he did not stop to look at.

  The opposite door was open. The third room was a dining hall, with two tables and a number of chairs, these of metal with eight legs each. Luckily, there was no one in it.

  In the next room—all four were in a straight line, and he thought, Either it’s a long narrow house, or else it’s as big as Rockefeller Center—there were a number of gadgets, colorful and complex like the children’s toys, but of different construction. He glanced at them but did not pause until he came to the next door.

  It was closed. He presumed its opener beam would be in the same place as that of the playroom, and looked around for something to stand on.

  There seemed to be nothing small enough to move. He shoved at a couple of things, but they wouldn’t budge. The only slim possibility was a big square brown box, set twelve feet off the floor on one of their mammoth tables. It was of a size to accommodate half a dozen cows, but looked as though it might be of flimsy enough materials, plastic probably, to push off the edge, from which it would fall exactly where he needed it.

  He dragged a chair over, climbed up on its seat and then onto the table. He saw at once that the box would be immovable. There was an affair that might be a dynamotor attached to one side, various objects sticking out of the other, and four stacks of thick coils on top. He was turning away, hoping to find another door in one of the first rooms, when his eye was attracted to a square plate among the things on the right side of the box. The plate was glass, for its surface shone under the blue light, and he thought he saw the pin-point twinkling of stars in it.

  On a hunch, he walked over to it. He knew quite a lot of astronomy and if this happened to be a telescope, he might be able to determine their location.

  The field of the plate was full of stars, but in patterns he had never seen. He could not understand it. It was not a painting, for the stars twinkled. Where the blazes was the thing focused?

  A huge dial beside the plate had a pointer and scores of notches, each labeled with a couple of squiggly characters. He turned the pointer experimentally. The screen blurred, showed a planet with rings: Saturn.

  “Neat,” he said to himself, and turned the pointer another notch. He got a view of a landscape, trees of olive green and crimson, seen from above. He tried other notches.

  Finally, just as he had reminded himself that he had to hurry, he saw a familiar globe swim onto the glass. It was Earth, with the two Americas clearly defined.

  What in hell...?

  He pushed the pointer on, and was given another landscape, this time of prosaic hue, a meadow with a cow in it. He clicked the thing another notch and got a constellation pattern again. He pushed it back to the cow.

  He felt his heart thudding fast, too fast; and he hoped with all his faculties that he wouldn’t conk out before he had solved this riddle. There were other dials, other pointers, a little behind the first. He turned one slowly.

  The cow grew larger until it almost filled the screen. Only when he could see nothing but its broad placid back did he realize that he was looking at this scene, as at the others, from above.

  He tried a third pointer. The land whipped by beneath his gaze. He came to a city, the buildings reaching up to him in a wonderful illusion of depth.

  Then it dawned on him what the machine was, and he gasped.

  There was no use in looking for the outer door. He had found the answer to their last problem, and he had to get back to the box with that answer and thrash it out with all of them. There might be a salvation for them and there might not.

  Leaving the screen showing the city, he jumped down off the table, raced back through the room and into the next, the dining hall. Still there were no signs of any of the giants. He had crossed the threshold of the third room when he heard a door open on his right. There was no time to gape around; he covered thirty feet in five strides, dodged under the hanging shelf of the strange yellow machine, like a low desk covered with cogwheels, and ran along beneath it till he came to the extreme end of the contrivance.

  A pair of feet, either of which would have outweighed a draft horse, went past him; he dared not lean forward to see the rest of the brute, but it was undoubtedly an adult. It went into the playroom.

  After twenty or twenty-five minutes, during which Summersby thought over the problem and agreed with himself that he couldn’t find the solution alone, the giant came out of the playroom, crossed near his hiding place, and went out through a door beside the huge picture. It was not in a hurry, so he decided it had not noticed his absence from the box.

  He dragged a
n easy chair over to the nursery door. It was just four times the size of Summersby’s Morris chair at home, and about eight times as heavy. As he was crawling up the leg to the seat, he recalled that he had a bad heart. If he hadn’t been clinging to the plastic with both arms, he would have shrugged.

  He intercepted the beam and opened the door. Having no more than half a minute to get through before it shut, he had to leave the chair where it was. He hoped none of the adults would realize that its position had changed.

  The playroom was clean and neat. Likely it would remain unvisited through the night. He went to the box and only then remembered it was shut tight. What did the kids do when they opened it during the day? He had seen them at it twice. They laid their hands on top of the box, there on the left.

  Hauling over enough junk to make a pair of steps, he got onto the roof of the box. There was a bar, set into the coaming. He pressed it, leaned over, and saw the wall slide back. A second push returned it to its shut position. He opened it again, swung his legs over the edge, pressed the bar once more and dropped. Snatching up a green dowel from the floor, he jumped into the box as the door was closing. He had just time to lay the rod across the threshold, as Adam had done, before the wall reached it and was held.

  Trying not to breathe, Summersby picked up Watkins and slung him over his shoulder. He forced his fingers into the crack and heaved. Again he threw his weight against the wall.

  Then he was buckling at the knees, trying desperately to bring his mouth next to the opening, but not quite making it.

  * * * *

  “Describe it again,” said Watkins. “Give me all the details you can think of.”

  As Summersby went over what he remembered of the brown machine, Watkins tried to envisage it. A tough job, and he might not be able to handle it. To reverse a thing like that—when there’d be at least one or two principles he’d never heard of—well, that would be the job of a lifetime.

  “How do you know that it’s the instrument that brought us here?” he asked.

  “It must be.” Summersby looked intent, almost eager. “It has those dials that focus it almost pin-point on any planet they want; at least, I saw quite a few planets, from a distance and close up. I saw a cow and a city on Earth. Then there’s the big brown box. It’s hollow—the door was half open. If they bring things, living things, from other planets, they need a receiving station large enough to take ‘em. The box. It’s logical.”

  “It sure is.” Adam whistled. “So we’re on another planet. That was plain, if we’d thought about it seriously. No place on Earth could hide a race like this. Not with all the factories they must have to produce the toys and what you saw out there.”

  “Why couldn’t we be inside the Earth?” asked Mrs. Full stridently.

  Watkins said, “He looked down on Earth. That argues another planet.”

  “But how did they get us here? In two days?”

  Watkins scratched his bristled chin and thought aloud. “It must have been instantaneous. Remember, we went through a quarantine and were healed of just about everything that was wrong with us. That must have taken a while.”

  “The octopus was still wet,” said Adam, “and the grubs and locusts were still kicking. They must focus that rig on Earth and push a button and here it is, like that. Instant transmission of matter.” He smiled weakly, as though he were proud of the phrase. He looked very frightened, thought Watkins, and unhappy.

  Tom Watkins was scared, too, but not especially unhappy. For the first time in almost twenty years, he was free of worry about the bulls, the law. He only wished he knew what had happened to his loot.

  “The planet,” said Cal, “whatever its name is, must have the same gravity and atmosphere as Earth. Same water, too.”

  “That’s right. So it’s produced a race of critters with plenty of human characteristics,” said Watkins.

  “Have they done this before?” asked Mrs. Full. “I mean do you think we’re the first to be snatched up?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Watkins, surprised that she was talking directly to him. “People disappear all the time. Look at the famous ones: Judge Crater, Ambrose Bierce—”

  “Somebody mention the Marie Celeste,” growled Summersby.

  * * * *

  The wall began to open.

  “Here’s the plan, quick,” said Watkins. “I’ve got to get out and find the machine, and see if I can gimmick it so it’ll work backward, send us home. The rest of you create a diversion, keep the kids’ minds off me.”

  “What kind of a diversion?” asked Villa. His abstracted face showed plainly that he was thinking of his chili stand and what he would say to the idiot relief man about conditions he would doubtless find therein.

  “If you were a kid with pets, intelligent ones, what would you watch them do for hours? Something unordinary—something you’d never imagine they’d do.” He looked at his chronograph. “It’s just ten. I never saw the gadget I couldn’t figure out in two hours; if I’m not back by noon, you’d better come out, Summersby.”

  “What if it’s four-dimensional?” asked Adam.

  “It’s possible I can cook up a way to reverse its action anyway. There are some principles of electricity and mechanics that must be universal.”

  “Shall we run the machines for them?” asked Mrs. Full. “To distract the children?”

  “They’re used to that,” said Watkins. “They bore easy. Suppose you’re a kid with a normal regard for pets. You’ve had cats and dogs and rabbits and now you have monkeys. The monkeys are a lot smarter and more versatile, but they have their limits too. You get jaded with ‘em. But one day they—” he snapped his fingers—“they start playing soldiers! They drill, stage mock battles, die and come to life, scrimmage—hell, you go nuts! You can’t take your eyes off ‘em!”

  “That’s it,” said Villa promptly. “The children have gorillas, cows, they have never seen anything like war.”

  “Maybe they don’t know what war is,” said Adam. “It might just look as if we were fighting. None of their toys show a sign of war being ever waged by this race, like our own kids’ toys do.”

  “The toys of any people reflect their civilization in an unreliable and distorted way,” said Cal Full rather stuffily. “A visitor from Mars in one of our playrooms would conclude that we already have spaceships and ray guns, and that our usual clothing is chaps, sombreros, and spacesuits.”

  “They’ll get the idea,” Watkins said impatiently. The giant children outside were bawling the word that meant “Come!” He was in a hurry. These fools were always arguing. “Let’s go,” he said. “The four of you line up over there, catch the kids’ eyes, and High-pockets can boost me up to the beam. Then he’ll join you.”

  * * * *

  Watkins grinned tightly, slapped Adam on the shoulder, poked Villa in the belly, and dived behind the nearest many-colored pile of gear the moment he saw the children weren’t watching him. As he went toward the door, he heard Villa saying, “My fourth cousin Pancho was a great man for war, so I will be general. Spread out in the thin line and be ready to march when I command.”

  Summersby followed Watkins, and they came to the door. Watkins managed to get up on the big man’s shoulders, and waved a hand above his head. Nothing happened.

  “Stand on them,” said Summersby.

  He struggled to do so. “Un, dos, tres,” roared the Mexican down the hall. “Begin!”

  This time Watkins found the beam. The door glided aside. He dropped off Summersby’s shoulders, jumped into the next room. A quick look showed him it was empty. As the door closed he heard Villa shouting hoarsely.

  “Make bang noises for the guns. Fall dead, spring to life. We are mountain fighters of great skill. Climb on machines, drop off with bullets in your head, play you are—”

  The door cut him off. Watkins chuckled. “What a ham,” he said. He started for the opposite door.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was ten minutes to twelve. Summe
rsby was panting like a spent hound. He had not exercised in months, not since the doctors had told him his heart was just about gone, and he was surprised that he hadn’t keeled over before now. Dashing around playing guerrilla like some six-year-old! It had been a damn good idea, though. The giant children—there were two of them today—were still enthralled, lying on their bellies with their furry watermelon heads propped in fantastic two-thumbed hands.

  Leaning against a pink plastic maze wall, puffing, he thought, I’ve almost grown to like them. Why?

  Because for the first time since he was sixteen, John Summersby had to bend his neck back to look up at someone. These grotesque humanoidal beings were the only living things which did not make him feel overgrown, uncouthly out of proportion, a hulking lout. If a chair was too narrow for him, it would be like the head of a pin to one of these kids: if a fork felt uncomfortably small in his own hand, it would be a minikin indeed in one of those vast paws.

  In their shadows, Summersby was a very small man. It was an unwonted sensation, the most satisfying he had ever experienced.

  He looked at them out there, as they lay watching Mrs. Full and Adam mowing down Cal and Villa with imaginary Brownings. He grinned, felt his lips curve in the unaccustomed grimace, and thought with no particular bitterness that he was getting mellow in his last days. “Hello, High-pockets,” he said softly to the kid that owned him. “How’s the weather up there?”

  At five to noon the door opened. Summersby, seeing its silent motion, left off the mimic gunplay and started for the wall, where he could intercept Watkins and find out whether he’d been successful. But the safe-cracker came running down the middle of the room, yelling.

  “Come on, everybody!”

  “Come on?”

  The two giant children were on their feet, uncertain of what was happening. Obviously they didn’t realize Watkins had been out of the room at all.

  “The adults spotted me!” roared the blond man, swinging his briefcase wildly; where had he found that? “They’re after me!”