The Star Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Lummox was through the three greenhouses before he had time to notice them, leaving a tunnel suitable for a medium truck. Straight ahead, three miles away, lay downtown Westville. It might have been better if he had been headed in the opposite direction toward the mountains.

  John Thomas Stuart listened to his mother’s confused account with growing apprehension. When he heard about Mr. Ito’s greenhouses, he stopped thinking about his savings account and started wondering what assets he could convert into cash. His jump harness was almost new…but shucks! it wouldn’t pay the damage. He wondered if there was any kind of a dicker he could work with the bank? One sure thing: Mum wouldn’t help him out, not the state she was in.

  Later reports were spotty. Lummox seemed to have gone across country until he hit the highway leading into town. A transcontinental trucker had complained to a traffic officer, over a cup of coffee, that he had just seen a robot pedatruck with no license plates and that the durned thing had been paying no attention to traffic lanes. But the trucker had used it as an excuse to launch a diatribe about the danger of robot drivers and how there was no substitute for a human driver, sitting in the cab and keeping his eyes open for emergencies. The traffic patrolman had not seen Lummox, being already at his coffee when Lummox passed, and had not been impressed since the trucker was obviously prejudiced. Nevertheless he had phoned in.

  Traffic control center in Westville paid no attention to the report; control was fully occupied with a reign of terror.

  John Thomas interrupted his mother. “Has anybody been hurt?”

  “Hurt? I don’t know. Probably. John Thomas, you’ve got to get rid of that beast at once.”

  He ignored that statement; it seemed the wrong time to argue it. “What else happened?”

  Mrs. Stuart did not know in detail. Near the middle of town Lummox came down a local chute from the overhead freeway. He was moving slowly now and with hesitation; traffic and large numbers of people confused him. He stepped off the street onto a slidewalk. The walk ground to a stop, not being designed for six tons of concentrated load; fuses had blown, circuit breakers had opened, and pedestrian traffic at the busiest time of day was thrown into confusion for twenty blocks of the shopping district.

  Women had screamed, children and dogs had added to the excitement, safety officers had tried to restore order, and poor Lummox, who had not meant any harm and had not intended to visit the shopping district anyway, made a perfectly natural mistake…the big display windows of the Bon Marché looked like a refuge where he could get away from it all. The duraglass of the windows was supposed to be unbreakable, but the architect had not counted on Lummox mistaking it for empty air. Lummox went in and tried to hide in a model bedroom display. He was not very successful.

  John Thomas’s next question was cut short by a thump on the roof; someone had landed. He looked up. “You expecting anyone, Mum?”

  “It’s probably the police. They said they would…”

  “The police? Oh, my!”

  “Don’t go away…you’ve got to see them.”

  “I wasn’t going anywhere,” he answered miserably and punched a button to unlock the roof entrance.

  Moments later the lazy lift from the roof creaked to a stop and the door opened; a safety sergeant and a patrolman stepped out. “Mrs. Stuart?” the sergeant began formally. “‘In your service, ma’am.’ We…” He caught sight of John Thomas, who was trying not to be noticed. “Are you John T. Stuart?”

  John gulped. “Yessir.”

  “Then come along, right away. ’Scuse us, ma’am. Or do you want to come too?”

  “Me? Oh, no, I’d just be in the way.”

  The sergeant nodded relieved agreement. “Yes, ma’am. Come along, youngster. Minutes count.” He took John by the arm.

  John tried to shrug away. “Hey, what is this? You got a warrant or something?”

  The police officer stopped, seemed to count ten, then said slowly, “Son, I do not have a warrant. But if you are the John T. Stuart I’m looking for…and I know you are…then unless you want something drastic and final to happen to that deep-space what-is-it you’ve been harboring, you’d better snap to and come with us.”

  “Oh, I’ll come,” John said hastily.

  “Okay. Don’t give me any more trouble.”

  John Thomas Stuart kept quiet and went with him.

  In the three minutes it took the patrol car to fly downtown John Thomas tried to find out the worst. “Uh, Mister Patrol Officer? There hasn’t been anybody hurt? Has there?”

  “Sergeant Mendoza,” the sergeant answered. “I hope not. I don’t know.”

  John considered this bleak answer. “Well… Lummox is still in the Bon Marché?”

  “Is that what you call it?—Lummox? It doesn’t seem strong enough. No, we got it out of there. It’s under the West Arroyo viaduct… I hope.”

  The answer sounded ominous. “What do you mean: ‘you hope’?”

  “Well, first we blocked off Main and Hamilton, then we chivvied it out of the store with fire extinguishers. Nothing else seemed to bother it; solid slugs just bounced off. Say, what’s that beast’s hide made of? Ten-point steel?”

  “Uh, not exactly.” Sergeant Mendoza’s satire was closer to fact than John Thomas cared to discuss; he still was wondering if Lummox had eaten any iron. After the mishap of the digested Buick Lummox’s growth had taken an enormous spurt; in two weeks he had jumped from the size of a misshapen hippopotamus to his present unlikely dimensions, more growth than he had shown in the preceding generation. It had made him extremely gaunt, like a canvas tarpaulin draped over a scaffolding, his quite unearthly skeleton pushing through his skin; it had taken three years of a high-caloric diet to make him chubby again. Since that time John Thomas had tried to keep metal away from Lummox, most especially iron, even though his father and his grandfather had always fed him tidbits of scrap metal.

  “Um. Anyhow the fire extinguishers dug him out—only he sneezed and knocked two men down. After that we used more fire extinguishers to turn him down Hamilton, meaning to herd him into open country where he couldn’t do so much damage…seeing as how we couldn’t find you. We were making out pretty well, with only an occasional lamp post knocked down, or ground car stepped on, or such, when we came to where we meant to turn him off on Hillcrest and head him back to your place. But he got away from us and headed out onto the viaduct, ran into the guard rail and went off, and…well, you’ll see, right now. Here we are.”

  Half a dozen police cars were hovering over the end of the viaduct Surrounding the area were many private air cars and an air bus or two; the patrol cars were keeping them back from the scene. There were several hundred harness flyers as well, darting like bats in and out among the vehicles and making the police problem more difficult On the ground a few regular police, supplemented by emergency safety officers wearing arm bands, were trying to hold the crowd back and were diverting traffic away from the viaduct and from the freight road that ran under it down the arroyo. Sergeant Mendoza’s driver threaded his way through the cars in the air, while speaking into a hushophone on his chest. Chief Dreiser’s bright red command car detached itself from the knot over the end of the viaduct and approached them.

  Both cars stopped, a few yards apart and a hundred feet above the viaduct. John Thomas could see the big gap in the railing where Lummox had gone over, but could not see Lummox himself; the viaduct blocked his view. The door of the command car opened and Chief Dreiser leaned out; he looked harassed and his bald head was covered with sweat. “Tell the Stuart boy to stick his head out.”

  John Thomas ran a window down and did so. “Here, sir.”

  “Lad, can you control that monster?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “I hope you’re right. Mendoza! Land him. Let him try it.”

  “Yes, Chief.” Mendoza spoke to the driver, who moved the car past the viaduct and started letting down beyond it. Lummox could be seen then; he had taken refuge under t
he end of the bridge, making himself small…for him. John Thomas leaned out and called to him.

  “Lum! Lummie boy! Come to papa.”

  The creature stirred and the end of the viaduct stirred with him. About twelve feet of his front end emerged from under the structure and he looked around wildly.

  “Here, Lum! Up here!”

  Lummox caught sight of his friend and split his head in an idiot grin. Sergeant Mendoza snapped, “Put her down, Slats. Let’s get this over.”

  The driver lowered a bit, then said anxiously, “That’s enough, Sergeant. I saw that critter rear up earlier.”

  “All right, all right.” Mendoza opened the door and kicked out a rope ladder used in rescue work. “Can you go down that, son?”

  “Sure.” With Mendoza to give him a hand John Thomas shinnied out of the door and got a grip on the ladder. He felt his way down and came to the point where there was no more ladder; he was still six feet above Lummox’s head. He looked down. “Heads up, baby. Take me down.”

  Lummox lifted another pair of legs from the ground and carefully placed his broad skull under John Thomas, who stepped onto it, staggering a little and grabbing for a hand hold. Lummox lowered him gently to the ground.

  John Thomas jumped off and turned to face him. Well, the fall apparently had not hurt Lum any; that was a relief. He would get him home first and then go over him inch by inch.

  In the meantime Lummox was nuzzling his legs and making a sound remarkably like a purr. John looked stern. “Bad Lummie! Bad, bad Lummie…you’re a mess, aren’t you?”

  Lummox looked embarrassed. He lowered his head to the ground, looked up at his friend, and opened his mouth wide. “I didn’t mean to,” he protested in his baby-girl voice.

  “You didn’t mean to. You didn’t mean to! Oh, no, you never do. I’m going to take your front feet and stuff them down your throat. You know that, don’t you? I’m going to beat you to a pulp and then use you for a rug. No supper for you. You didn’t mean to, indeed!”

  The bright red car came close and hovered. “Okay?” demanded Chief Dreiser.

  “Sure.”

  “All right. Here’s the plan. I’m going to move that barrier up ahead. You get him back up on Hillcrest, going out the upper end of the draw. There will be an escort waiting; you fall in behind and stay with it all the way home. Get me?”

  “Okay.” John Thomas saw that in both directions the arroyo road had been blocked with riot shields, tractors with heavy armor mounted on their fronts, so that a temporary barrier could be thrown across a street or square. Such equipment was standard for any city safety force since the Riots of ’91, but he could not recall that Westville had ever used them; he began to realize that the day that Lummox went to town would not soon be forgotten.

  But he was happy that Lummox had been too timid to munch on those steel shields. He was beginning to hope that his pet had been too busy all afternoon to eat any ferrous metal. He turned back to him. “All right, get your ugly carcass out of that hole. We’re going home.”

  Lummox complied eagerly; the viaduct again trembled as he brushed against it. “Make me a saddle.”

  Lummox’s midsection slumped down a couple of feet. He thought about it very hard and his upper surface shaped itself into contours resembling a chair. “Hold still,” John Thomas ordered. “I don’t want any mashed fingers.” Lummox did so, quivering a little, and the young man scrambled up, grabbing at slip folds in Lummox’s durable hide. He sat himself like a rajah ready for a tiger hunt.

  “All right. Slow march now, up the road. No, no! Gee around, you numskull. Uphill, not down.”

  Docilely, Lummox turned and ambled away.

  Two patrol ground cars led the way, two others brought up the rear. Chief Dreiser’s tomato-red runabout hung over them at a safe distance. John Thomas lounged back and spent the time composing first, what he was going to say to Lummox, and second, what he was going to say to his mother. The first speech was much easier; he kept going back and embellishing it with fresh adjectives whenever he found himself running into snags on the second.

  They were halfway home when a single flier, hopping free in a copter harness, approached the little parade. The flier ignored the red warning light stabbing out from the police chiefs car and slanted straight down at the huge star beast. John Thomas thought that he recognized Betty’s slapdash style even before he could make out features; he was not mistaken. He caught her as she cut power.

  Chief Dreiser slammed a window open and stuck his head out. He was in full flow when Betty interrupted him. “Why, Chief Dreiser! What a terrible way to talk!”

  He stopped and took another look. “Is that Betty Sorenson?”

  “Of course it is. And I must say, Chief, that after all the years you’ve taught Sunday School I never thought I would live to hear you use such language. If that is setting a good example, I think I’ll…”

  “Young lady, hold your tongue.”

  “Me? But you were the one who was using…”

  “Quiet! I’ve had all I can take today. You get that suit to buzzing and hop out of here. This is official business. Now get out.”

  She glanced at John Thomas and winked, then set her face in cherubic innocence. “But, Chief, I can’t.”

  “Huh? Why not?”

  “I’m out of juice. This was an emergency landing.”

  “Betty, you quit fibbing to me.”

  “Me? Fibbing? Why, Deacon Dreiser!”

  “I’ll deacon you. If your tanks are dry, get down off that beast and walk home. He’s dangerous.”

  “Lummie dangerous? Lummie wouldn’t hurt a fly. And besides, do you want me to walk home alone? On a country road? When it’s almost dark? I’m surprised at you.”

  Dreiser sputtered and closed the window. Betty wiggled out of her harness and settled back in the wider seat that Lummox had provided without being told. John Thomas looked at her. “Hi, Slugger.”

  “Hi, Knothead.”

  “I didn’t know you knew the Chief.”

  “I know everybody. Now shut up. I’ve gotten here, with all speed and much inconvenience, as soon as I heard the newscast. You and Lummox between you could not manage to think your way out of this, even with Lummox doing most of the work—so I rallied around. Now give me the grisly details. Don’t hold anything back from mama.”

  “Smart Alec.”

  “Don’t waste time on compliments. This will probably be our only chance for a private word before they start worrying you, so you had better talk fast.”

  “Huh? What do you think you are? A lawyer?”

  “I’m better than a lawyer, my mind is not cluttered with stale precedents. I can be creative about it.”

  “Well…” Actually he felt better now that Betty was present It was no longer just Lummox and himself against an unfriendly world. He poured out the story while she listened soberly.

  “Anybody hurt?” she asked at last.

  “I don’t think so. At least they didn’t mention it.”

  “They would have.” She sat up straight. “Then we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “What? With hundreds, maybe thousands, in damage? I’d like to know what you call trouble?”

  “People getting hurt,” she answered. “Anything else can be managed. Maybe we’ll have Lummox go through bankruptcy.”

  “Huh? That’s silly!”

  “If you think that is silly, you’ve never been in a law court.”

  “Have you?”

  “Don’t change the subject. After all, Lummox was attacked with a deadly weapon.”

  “It didn’t hurt him; it just singed him a little.”

  “Beside the point. It undoubtedly caused him great mental anguish. I’m not sure he was responsible for anything that happened afterwards. Be quiet and let me think.”

  “Do you mind if I think, too?”

  “Not as long as I don’t hear the gears grind. Pipe down.”

  The parade continued to the Stuart hom
e in silence. Betty gave him one piece of advice as they stopped. “Admit nothing. Nothing. And don’t sign anything. Holler if you need me.”

  Mrs. Stuart did not come out to meet them. Chief Dreiser inspected the gap in the grating with John Thomas, with Lummox hanging over their shoulders. The Chief watched in silence as John Thomas took a string and tied it across the opening.

  “There! Now he can’t get out again.”

  Dreiser pulled at his lip. “Son, are you all right in the head?”

  “You don’t understand, sir. The grating wouldn’t stop him even if we did repair it…not if he wanted to get out. I don’t know anything that would. But that string will. Lummox!”

  “Yes, Johnnie?”

  “See that string?”

  “Yes, Johnnie.”

  “You bust that string and I’ll bust your silly head. Understand me?”

  “Yes, Johnnie.”

  “You won’t go out of the yard again, not ever, unless I take you.”

  “All right, Johnnie.”

  “Promise? Cross your heart?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “He hasn’t really got a heart,” Johnnie went on. “He has an uncentralized circulatory system. It’s like…”

  “I don’t care if he has rotary pumps, as long as he stays home.”

  “He will. He’s never broken ‘Cross my heart,’ even if he hasn’t got one.”

  Dreiser chewed his thumb. “All right. I’ll leave a man out here with a portophone tonight. And tomorrow we’ll put some steel I-beams in there in place of that wood.”

  John started to say, “Oh, not steel,” but he thought better of it. Dreiser said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Uh, nothing.”

  “You keep an eye on him, too.”

  “He won’t get out”

  “He had better not. You realize that you are both under arrest, don’t you? But I’ve got no way to lock that monstrosity up.”

  John Thomas did not answer. He had not realized it; now he saw that it was inevitable. Dreiser went on in a kindly voice, “Try not to worry about it. You seem like a good boy and everybody thought well of your father. Now I’ve got to go in and have a word with your mother. You had better stay here until my man arrives…and then maybe sort of introduce him to, uh, this thing.” He passed a doubtful eye over Lummox.