by Henry Slesar
“I am at your service, General McIntosh. In what way may I assist?”
“We shall need divers first of all, divers to descend to the wreck of the space vessel and search for the specimen.”
The government official went briskly to the telephone.
“They shall be here before morning.”
The greatest gunfighter in the West put away his wooden pistol, his interest in Indians and rustlers suddenly abated. There was a new excitement for his young eyes, in the throng that was gathering at the foot of the wharf of Gerra.
Pepe edged closer to see what current wonders were on display. When he saw what was happening, his mouth dropped open, and he squealed involuntarily with excitement. This was a week of weeks! There were divers climbing into boats, strong muscled men with big pipes strapped to their broad backs, and round windows of glass dangling from straps around their necks. They carried odd rubbery things in their hand, that flapped like the fins of great sea-monsters.
Slowly, the beast came out of shock.
* * *
When he was closer still, he could hear the voices of the men on the shore, as they spoke to the divers before they rowed away.
“Buona fortuna!” one of them cried, and Pepe recognized the man in the uniform with the birds on the shoulders, the man who had lain stricken and unconscious on the stretcher only two days before.
“Grazie,” the divers replied, and they pulled on the oars away from the beach.
Then a large, impressive gentleman was speaking, a man also of the uniform Americano, with even more decorations on his chest, and silver stars shining on his shoulders. Pepe regarded this hero with respect.
“And now, Signore Commissario,” the General was saying, “if it is possible, I would like to speak to the fishermen who went aboard the wreck.”
“But of course,” the Commissario said. “They are waiting for you.”
“Me! Me!” Pepe thought. “I, too, was with Verrico’s fishing boat!” But he was too frightened of the impressive man with the stars to come forward. What if they wished him to return Dr. Leonardo’s two hundred lira?
“Verrico!” the Commissario was calling. “Mondello! A moment of your time, please.”
Pepe walked nearer as his fishing companions responded. If Verrico did not fear, why should he?”
“Si, Signore Commissario ?” Verrico said.
“General, this is Verrico and this is Mondello. They are the two men who went into the great ship before she sank, and brought forth Colonel Calder and the other man.” He looked at the fishermen. “The American General wishes to speak of an item of great value.”
“Si,” Mondello said eagerly. “We will tell you what we know.”
“First, let me congratulate and thank you for your heroic work in the ship,” the General said. “Your actions have been recorded and sent to capitols of your country and mine, and I wouldn’t be surprised if both Governments award you men citations of bravery.”
Verrico looked flustered, but Mondello’s chest swelled proudly.
“However, a far more urgent matter concerns us now,” the General continued. “We are looking for something that was brought in the aircraft. It is a metal cylinder about this high and this round.” He pointed towards the diver’s boat, now well out at sea. “Very probably, it went down with the ship, somewhere out there. But there’s always the possibility that it was knocked loose and will drift ashore somewhere. Today, tomorrow—who can tell!”
Pepe was startled at his words. A cylinder, like the one he had found! Would he be punished for selling it? Or was there perhaps a greater reward for him in revealing his information. His mind was torn between fright, avarice, and awe.
“It’s important that we recover that cylinder,” the General said. “So important that we find the cylinder and its-contents that I have offered a reward of a half million lira to anyone who discovers it. Please have that information spread around among your people.”
Pepe could contain himself no longer. A half million lira! He could buy a thousand cowboy hats! A horse! Boots! A silver saddle! Why, perhaps he could buy Taixas itself!
“Signore—”
The General looked at him curiously.
“Signore, you will not take my hat from me?” He smiled.
“Silencio!” Verrico growled. “The American General is speaking to us, little one.”
“But, Signore—”
Colonel Calder saw something in the boy’s face. He said: “Wait, this may be something. What is it, son? What is it you wish to say?”
“It—it is only if I speak about this thing from the ship, you must promise me that I may keep my—my hat from the great country of Taixas.”
They were all looking at Pepe now. Calder dropped to one knee to put his face close to the boy’s.
“Of course you may keep your hat. But what do you know of the big container?”
Pepe eyed him shrewdly. “And there is the matter of a half million lira. How much is that.”
“A lot of money.”
“Sufficient to purchase for me a cowboy horse like they ride in Taixas?”
“Enough to buy many horses.” Calder’s mouth was dry. The anger was coming on him, but he knew he must be gentle with the boy. “What do you know about the container ?”
“You promise me about the hat—and the horses?”
McIntosh said: “You have our promise, son.’’
Pepe’s face glowed. “It is there!”
He ran quickly towards a rocky cave diagonally across the beach.
They followed after him, and saw him point proudly to the hidden cylinder.
“And now,” he said triumphantly, “may I have my horses, per favore ?”
Colonel Calder grabbed for the cylinder, peered inside, and threw it away in disgust.
“Empty!”
His arm went out and grabbed the boy’s shoulder roughly. He started to shake him, and the General had to command him to stop.
“Easy, Bob,” the General said. “That’s not the way.”
“But I know where it is!” Pepe sobbed. “The thing that was inside!”
“Where? Where?”
“I took it to the Professor Leonardo. I sold it to him for two hundred lira—” He took off his Stetson. “That is how I have the hat from Taixas!”
“This Professor Leonardo,” the General said, turning to the fishermen. “Where is he?”
Verrico shrugged. “He must be somewhere on the road to Messina by now. He said that he must go to Roma.”
Calder put his arm on the big man’s wrist, holding it harder than necessary. Verrico suffered the indignity in silence without complaint.
“How will we find him?” the Colonel said. “How will we know him ?”
“You will know him easily, my friend. He drives a truck with a house that follows it like a goat.”
“A trailer!”
“Find it as quickly as you can,” the General said urgently. “I’ll wait for the divers.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Commissario, if you and your men will accompany the Colonel—”
“But certainly!” the officer bowed.
“Besides,” McIntosh grinned. I have to see a man about a horse—and a half million lira.”
He tousled Pepe’s hair, and the boy sighed with gratitude for the blessings that had rained upon him from the Sicilian heavens. He had really struck it rich.
It had been a long, hard drive, made more difficult by the steep mountainous highway. There was treachery in it, too, for there had been rain in the mountains the previous evening.
Marisa, spelling her grandfather at the wheel, drove slowly down the winding road, her eyes peering into the darkness.
But there was more on the girl’s mind than the dangers of the ride. The events of the past hours had suddenly brought the past into her mind. The sight of men in uniform, the talk of stricken aircraft, the wounds of the men in the hospital—these things brought sharp and painful
images of the war years to her mind.
She tried to blacken out the scenes that paraded before her inner eye: the cruel fences of the concentration camp outside Rome. The sound of bombing, and the shrieks of men and women caught beneath the descending fire. And then, cruelest image of all, she saw her mother’s face and heard her gentle voice; felt her father’s touch on her cheeks, and remembered how good his whiskered cheek had felt against hers. Then she remembered the day of the bombardment of Naples, and the moment she came running towards the heap of rubble that had once been home ...
She shook her head at nothing, and tried to think of her life in America. America, where everything was so different, and so calm. Where there was so little fear of war past and war future . . .
And yet, the American Colonel, with his rude manners and bitter voice—was it war that guided his inexplicable actions. Was it some kind of war game being played at their doorstep?
The wind cut sharply through the cab of the truck, and Marisa said:
“Such wind! Can you hear it, grandfather?”
“Yes. There is a sound somewhere in the truck— from the rear—”
They listened together, and heard the rhythmic flapping of the loose tarpaulin.
“Stop for a moment, mi cara. The canvas has come loose.”
She put her foot on the brake, and brought the vehicle to a stop. Her grandfather emerged first, and she followed, stretching her stiff muscles and yawning.
“Such a relief ...” she said, and walked around to the rear of the truck. Her grandfather was tugging at the ropes that held the canvas. She went to his side to help.
“It has occurred to me,” Dr. Leonardo said, as if continuing a conversation that had never begun, “that our strange friend is perhaps a mutation. But of what species? This I cannot say. And there is always the possibility that it might be a throwback to a prehistoric and unclassified—”
Marisa’s scream cut into his speech.
“What is it?” the Doctor said.
She screamed again, and he saw the three-taloned claw wrapped about her slim wrist. She jerked her arm away, and the grip was broken.
Yet still Marisa screamed, rubbing her wrist in horror and backing away from the truck.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!”
The tarpaulin, constructed of strong canvas, and made even stronger by the dampness of the night, was being split apart before their eyes— rended easily as if its composition were mere tissue. The hole gaped wide, and the thing that was ripping its way through to freedom hissed in a terrible sibilant sound that sent Dr. Leonardo and his grandchild staggering away in terror.
“How big . . . how big...” the Doctor muttered.
Gone was the three-foot creature that had been a prisoner in the zoologist’s cage. The cage itself had been twisted out of shape, its metal bars torn and broken as if they had been threads of cotton. The beast loomed up in the rear of the truck fully the size of a man, twice as large as before, twice as horrifying.
Then it leaped!
Marisa’s shriek rebounded over the mountaintops, and her grandfather croaked helplessly and reached for her arm. The beast landed on its feet before them, waving its three-taloned claws menacingly in the air, the sounds erupting from its throat filled with alien terror. They backed away, slowly, clinging to each other.
“Don’t move, my child,” Dr. Leonardo whispered. “It doesn’t intend us harm ... it won’t hurt us ...”
“Oh, God!” Marisa said. “The size of the thing—so soon—so soon—”
The beast remained frozen in its frightening attitude, as if uncertain of its' next maneuver.
Then, a terrifying thing, it started at them.
“No!” Dr. Leonardo cried as the creature rushed towards them. He pushed his granddaughter aside, out of its path.
But the creature wasn’t bent on attack. It brushed by them, its ugly eyes fixed on some unguessable destination.
Then it was gone.
They stared after it, their breaths rapid.
“Are you hurt?” the Doctor said.
“No,” Marisa gasped. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe— maybe I frightened it as much as it frightened me. Its claw—”
“What about it?”
“It was strangely hot—” She looked at her wrist, in curiosity and revulsion.
“Listen!” the Doctor said.
They cocked their, ears into the night, and the shrill scream of sirens broke the silence.
“Someone’s coming,” Marisa said. “Thank God—”
There were two jeeps approaching, and as they came in view of the truck and trailer, they braked sharply to a halt. At first, Dr. Leonardo and the girl were alarmed at the number of strange men who jumped out. There were armed Carbinieri, the Commissario of the Gerra police force, an unfamiliar balding gentleman in civilian clothes, and—
Marisa saw the man in the uniform, and recognized her own bandages on his arm and forehead. The sight of him somehow caused her to become more confident and composed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said to her grandfather. “But you must be Professor—”
Dr. Leonardo wouldn’t wait for the formalities. He turned to the Commissario and said: “There is a strange animal, Signore. We were carrying it in our truck, and it broke away—”
“Wait!” the young man snapped. “A strange animal —like nothing you’ve ever seen before?”
“Like something no one has seen before,” the Doctor said emphatically. “I had been keeping it in a cage in back of the truck, but it broke out. I do not know where such strength comes from. It grabbed my granddaughter, and then ran off—”
The Colonel looked at the girl for the first time.
"Hello! It’s you—almost-a-doctor.”
His words brought her chin into the air, and she turned her head aside. But instead of noticing her haughty gesture, he continued to speak to Dr. Leonardo.
“Tell me about the creature, Professor. It’s all right —I'm Colonel Robert Calder, United States Air Force. The —the creature is connected with an important mission.”
“And I,” Dr. Leonardo said proudly, “am not Professor Leonardo. My title, sir, is Doctor. Doctor of zoology. This is my granddaughter, Marisa.”
Marisa looked at Colonel Calder, but his worried face didn’t respond to her glance. She didn’t like being ignored, but the hard-eyed young Colonel was intent upon learning more about the escaped beast.
“The creature,” he said impatiently. “You must tell me everything you know. Everything, mind.”
“First it was this high,” Dr. Leonardo said, measuring with tremulous hands. “Then this height. And now it is tall, nearly as tall as a man. Bigger—bigger.”
Dr. Uhl spoke. “Is that the normal rate of growth?”
“Not as far as I know,” Calder said. “The only data we have are in Dr. Sharman’s notes.” He frowned at the old man. “And where is the animal now?”
“It fled into the woods. It has amazing strength, Colonel; the very bars of its cage were torn apart. It’s dangerous—”
“Let’s go,” Calder said. But Dr. Leonardo stopped his departure.
“Please! You must tell me. I must know! What is that creature? Where does it come from?”
“I can’t answer questions now. Best thing for you and your granddaughter now, Doctor, is to keep heading towards Rome, away from here.”
“Let us go with you!”
“Sorry, Doctor. Not now. But thanks for all your help.”
He turned and gestured towards the others.
“Into the woods,” he said. “We’ll have to track the beast down on foot!”
They moved on towards the wooded area. Marisa looked after them, particularly at the retreating back of the rude and single-minded young officer.
“It looks like my patient’s recovered,” she said ruefully. “But his manners are no better.”
“Come, Marisa.” Dr. Leonardo headed back for the truck. “We must make Rome by dawn
. There are many things I must tell them at the Museo . . .”
CHAPTER VI Horror Takes Shape
THE creature hungered.
The hunger was sharp in its vitals. Unsatisfied juices oozed into its mouth. Its three-taloned hands quivered with its need. Its eyes burned with the desire for nourishment.
It staggered through the thick underbrush, a blind instinct taking control of its strangely _ articulated legs, driving it forward to some-unknown source of food. A food it had never tasted, but a food that millennia of in-breeding on a world far away had made necessary for its survival.
The food was here. It waited somewhere beyond this tangled wilderness, and the creature was determined to reach it.
A whinnying sound halted its progress. Four-legged beasts, with long silky manes and narrow shanks, became frightened at its approach. They bolted from beneath the large tree where they had been grazing peacefully, their manes streaming out behind them.
The creature regarded their flight blankly, and moved forward again.
Then he saw the structures.
They were small, snug buildings that housed the excitable two-legged things which had placed him in a metal prison and brought him high to the mountains. There was a fence that enclosed more of the silky-maned four-legged beasts, and they too whinnied as he came into view.
From further off, a bleating noise was heard.
The creature joined the night-chorus of sounds. His breathing became heavy. He grunted and hissed in defiance and hatred of the world that was now his home, his tail swishing back and forth on the tall grass. Then he roared a challenge eons old to the universe at large, and lumbered towards the sound of bleating animals in the field.
They were smaller animals than he had surprised under the tree, animals covered with kinky hair. Their bleating intensified as he came upon them, and then they broke and scattered in instinctive fear of the alien creature.