Great Short Stories

by Stan Mason

‘Well you can’t leave it here,’ cut in number two sharply. ‘Not in the middle of the street. Why don’t you move it inside the government research establishment? They’ve got plenty of room for it in the compound.’

  The police officer considered the idea for a few moments. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ he admitted. ‘In the compound. It’s the only place around here for it to be.’

  He was interrupted by a young man from the crowd who came forward to offer his assistance.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he began, excitedly brushing back his mop of black hair with his hand. ‘I’m extremely well-versed in space phenomenon. I think I might be able to help you.’

  ‘To do what?’ demanded the Chief Inspector caustically.

  ‘To present a suitable case when aliens emerge from that machine. It clearly landed here by its own power. And they’ll have to come out eventually. They’ll need a representative from Earth to talk to them.’

  ‘And you think you’re the person who should talk to them,’ commented the police officer caustically.

  ‘Yes, I do. As I told you, I’m well-versed in space phenomenon. I’ve had twelve years of experience.’

  ‘Of talking to aliens from outer space.’

  ‘Well, not so much that. Not really. I’ve never actually come face to face with an alien.’

  ‘Where did you get your university degree on the subject?’ pressed the Chief Inspector suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t got a university degree,’ replied the man sadly. ‘But I’m a leading fan of the Star Trek Society in the country. Look, I’ve got a badge to prove it!’ He raised his lapel to show the token to the other man who raised his eyes to the sky in disbelief.

  ‘Will you kindly get out of here... sir... and leave us to finish the job. I think we can manage without your help.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ rattled the young man disappointedly, ‘but you’re missing out on a great opportunity.’ As the police officer turned away he moved back into the crowd.

  But that wasn’t the end of the interruptions. The Chief Inspector was soon accosted by another person who pushed her way forward to reach him.

  ‘I’m Councillor Penhaligan,’ she announced in a stentorian voice. She was a woman of about fifty years of age, quite unattractive, with her hair pulled harshly to the back of her head and held tightly in a bun. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘You tell me,’ snapped the police officer unfairly.

  ‘We can’t have objects such as this in our roads, not on cup football day. You’ll have to move it.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ responded the police officer in a dull tone of voice. ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘This is vandalism, you know,’ she went on coldly. ‘I’ve seen an awful lot of it around here and it’s costing the Council a pretty penny, I can tell you. People don’t realise that we have a budget to account to. We can’t afford incidents like this.’ She paused for a moment as an idea struck her. ‘Do you think it’s been sent by the Russians or the Chinese? We don’t want to start World War Three in this village, do we?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as sinister as that, madam,’ returned the Chief Inspector dryly. ‘Not World War Three. Now, if you don’t mind, please leave us to handle it in our own way. You can report the matter back to your Council in due course.’

  By this time, the police had cordoned off the area so that no one could get near to the egg or enter the government research establishment which infuriated some of the clerks who worked there. The Chief Inspector was still unsure whether or not to let anyone go near the egg fearing that, in the worst scenario, the outcome might be disastrous. For all he knew, a panel might open at any moment and a number of aliens would climb out with superlative weapons ready to destroy the whole human race. He had seen it in films shown on television and considered it to be a possibility in this case. He cursed his bad luck on this occasion. Why did it always happen to him? He had been appointed a Chief Inspector for the police force in a quiet backwater and yet he still had to face stressful situations... .like a large green egg appearing in the middle of the street in a quiet village! On analysis, the egg was far too smooth to be a meteorite but more importantly it had made no dent in the street. Consequently, it could have have landed there like a spaceship. It might well be an alien machine which had travelled from another planet in outer space. Who knew what was really inside the large green egg?

  Fifteen minutes later, a large machine with a fixed crane attached to it drove up to the egg at the end of the street. It had been requisitioned by the police from a company which operated in a nearby town. However, as soon as it had stopped, the driver emerged from his cabin with a whimsical expression on his face. ‘How the hell can I move the bloody thing?’ he demanded of the senior policeman. ‘I can’t get it on the lorry. There’s nothing I can attach the crane to.’ The Chief Inspector looked at him ruefully. In his haste to get someone to remove the object from the street, he hadn’t thought the issue through too carefully. Without any kind of an attachment on the egg, the crane would be unable to lift it.

  ‘Damn!’ muttered the police officer. ‘How can we move it?’

  ‘What you need for this job is a Bellway Deliverer.’

  ‘A Bellway Deliverer! What kind of a machine is that?’ cut in Alcock sharply still writing notes copiously in his notepad.

  ‘It’s a machine with two individual adjustable arms designed to lift very heavy objects of a difficult nature,’ replied the driver slowly. ‘I reckon it could get its arms under each end of that egg and lift it to wherever you want it to go. There’s a hire company in Carrumpton which has one.’

  He climbed back into his cabin and drove off unable even to attempt the job. The Chief Inspector ordered one of his men to requisition the Bellway Deliverer and have it driven to the village poste-haste. There was a considerable delay in getting it there. It arrived almost two hours later. By this time, all the crowd had melted away, the clerical staff had been allowed to enter the government research establishment where they were employed and the excitement had faded considerably. It was all much to the relief of the police, allowing them the access they required. Alcock, on the other hand, was riding on the crest of a wave. Whatever the outcome of this affair, he was on a sensational scoop. Subsequently, he wasted no time in sending his photographer back to the newspaper office to file his report and the photographs but he still remained with the police to follow through with the story in case any further developments occurred.

  The Bellway Deliverer was the ideal machine for the job. It looked like a naval destroyer with a driver’s cabin located at the front. On the top, it sported two extremely individual metal poles, the thickness of a ship’s mast, each of which extended to twelve feet in length. Both of them could be adjusted in a multitude of ways at all kinds of angles. On receiving advice from the Chief Inspector, the driver manipulated the poles to enable them to pass approximately one quarter of the way under each side of the egg. By shifting a number of gear levers, he lifted the large green object slowly and headed forward tortuously towards the wide-open gates of the government research establishment. Once inside, the vehicle crawled its way like a tortoise to the far end of the car-park area and lowered the egg down very gently in one corner well away from prying eyes. The job was done! As far as the police was concerned, their part of the job was over. It was now down to the government research establishment staff to make head or tail of the egg and dispose of it in any way they considered possible.

  All the scientists at the establishment stopped work on their projects to take a closer look at the egg and some of them set to the task with fervour without delay. A small group soon approached it, checking it externally with great care as they tried to determine its structure and contents. After a while, one scientist emerged with a powerful electric drill in an attempt to penetrate the surface but he gave up in due course
after breaking two drill bits having made no impression at all. Eventually, they all gave up trying to unfold the mystery of the large green egg to return disconsolately to their work on projects inside the building. They had tried their hardest but there was nothing more they could do to reveal the secret of what lay inside the egg.

  In a short time, the residents of the village settled down to their normal peaceful life whereby the existence of the egg became simply a topic for discussion, nothing more. It was placed out of sight and therefore was soon out of mind. Clearly, it wasn’t a spacecraft but some kind of prank being perpetrated by a person with an evil mind. That night, however, new sinister developments began to take place. The mystery began to unfold but it would still remain a secret to the public at large.

  It was dark and all the scientists, the clerical staff and the cleaning staff had left the building at the end of the working day leaving only one nightwatchman on duty to secure the establishment. There was no crime in this quiet village in Hertfordshire where nothing ever happened so security was always kept to a minimum. This night was to be an exception. Outside, in the far corner of the car-park, the soft sound of a hydraulic pump throbbed inside the egg. Shortly afterwards, a small platform at the bottom, some two feet square, where it touched the ground, started to move lifting the whole egg upwards. Very soon, there was sufficient room for someone to climb out from inside. Two men who had been installed in the egg clambered out and they moved swiftly across the car-park to the outside of the building where the alarm system was in view. This was their first task and it took them less than three minutes to disable it. Thereafter, checking that the night-watchman was in a small room fully occupied in reading the daily newspaper, they approached a window at the rear of the establishment, placed a transparent sheet of material on one of the panes, and struck it sharply with a hammer. It shattered and fell inward silently allowing one of the men to put his hand inside and move a lever to open the window. They climbed inside quickly, making certain to close the window behind them. They had already pored over a plan of the internal design of the building before they started the operation and knowing exactly where they were going they made their way to the office section which housed the establishment’s computers. Covering the cameras which were perched on different walls of the room with cloths they had brought with them, one of the men proceeded to tap into the computer files in an effort to extract their secrets. He soon discovered the password required to gain him entry into the system and examined a number of files which were relevant to the task in hand. When he was satisfied, he began to print off all the details relating to five specific products which he had been employed to steal; products which would astound the technical world in the near future. It took both men almost an hour to complete the task. When he had finished, one of them switched off the computer and they made their way back to the window, climbing out stealthily and closing it behind them. They returned to the large green egg and one of the men pressed a button just inside the rim of the platform which started the hydraulic pump again, moving back sharply before the egg lowered itself to the ground to return to its original position. Finally, the two men climbed over the fence to leave the establishment showing a clean pair of heels. No doubt, eventually, someone would notice that one of the window panes had been broken but they would have no idea of the intrusion by strangers. Equally, if someone bothered to check the computers, they would discover that someone had looked at the files during that particular night. Whatever conclusion they came to, they would not know what had really happened. And, as far as the green egg was concerned, it was a white elephant which stayed at the end of the car-park for eternity with no one being able to determine what it was or for what reason it was used.

  Two days later, Gerhard Schloss sat behind a polished desk in his large office on the thirty-third floor in a monolithic building in Geneva with a satisfied expression on his face. The office was adorned with the finest furniture, a multitude of rare books, a large ornate mirror on one wall and a giant chandelier which hung from the centre of the ceiling. He was an expansive man with excellent taste; a full-time entrepreneur who boasted a number of very good connections. Business and money were the essence of his life however many of the products made by his companies had started to run out of steam and his research departments had started to falter in terms of new ideas. Consequently, he needed to make new plans in order to correct the situation. An aficionado of Greek mythology, he contemplated the story of the Trojan Horse where the Greeks left a wooden horse on its own outside the gates of Troy. The inhabitants of the besieged city were bemused by the object which they took into their city. When night fell, a trapdoor was opened from inside the horse and a number of Greek warriors climbed out. They opened the city gates to allow the Greek army to enter in force and defeat their enemy. Why not use the same operation in business, he thought to himself? Why not? He contacted a steel manufacturer who had designed a new metal product which was very heavy and had a structure that could not be penetrated. He commissioned him to manufacture a large green egg ten feet high and twenty feet long with a small trapdoor at its base, just like the Trojan Horse in the mythical story. He then employed a professional burglar who could disable alarm systems and penetrate doors and windows with ease. The man had a long criminal record, although he had only been caught once in his lifetime, and was well respected in the underworld of crime. Schloss also recruited a computer expert to join the burglar in the operation. With inside information on the products being established at the government research establishment in Hertfordshire, he had the egg transported to Britain on one of his own vessels which was delivered by a special lorry to the designated place at dead of night. Once deposited there, the two men climbed inside through the panel at the bottom and they waited patiently for the time to begin the operation. There was enough oxygen inside the egg to last them for two full days so there were no worries about survival. Ultimately, when the time was right, they operated the hydraulic control to release the trapdoor at the bottom of the egg and then continued to carry out their task professionally before returning to Switzerland with the information required so urgently by Schloss. Suddenly, having faced a serious slowdown in his business activities, he could boast five new products which he would produce in his companies to make him a fortune in world markets. It was a case of industrial espionage at its highest level... areal steal... and, as a result, the products would no longer be known as British ideas but Swiss inventions. Poor Britain, he mused. I feel sorry for the government officials who would be blamed for losing the business. Almost certainly, they would be left with egg on their faces... green egg!

  Baudelaire Inc.

  His name was Ian Ross but it could easily have been Ivan Rostoff because his family emigrated from Minsk in Russia to the United States at the turn of the century. At the time, Ian’s mother was pregnant and the family decided to change its name from Rostoff to Ross a few months before he was born. The situation in Russia had become worse year by year with the Bolsheviks becoming more disgruntled about their poverty as time went on. Their anger against the monarch and the aristocracy continued unabated. A revolution had taken place in France in 1789; there was a distinct political change occurring in Russia and it was becoming patently obvious that it would foment and would boil over into a revolution within the foreseeable future. In 1900, with an element of foresight, Georgi Rostoff sold his business in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and sailed for the United States to set up a new life there. It was the wisest thing he ever did in his life!

  He was one of the new pioneer entrepreneurs, setting up with one grocery shop and eventually becoming the proud owner of three of them. Not surprisingly, when he reached adulthood, his son was appointed manager of one of the shops. For nearly thirty years from the start of the twentieth century, America prospered. However, in 1929, there came the Wall Street crash and although many investors and business executives suffered severely because of their inherent greed, R
oss’s father remained proud and solvent. He had carefully salted away his profits each year, ignoring advice from all and sundry who told him to invest as much as he could in the New York Stock Market. Consequently, when everyone around him was practically destitute, as a result of the financial crisis, he sat back in comfort counting his money and assets. Young Ross was not quite as astute as his father. He had committed some of his money to Stock Exchange investment but not a great deal. Therefore he was fortunate not to have his fingers badly burned like so many others. Nonetheless, he was extremely concerned about the danger to his closest friend, Johnny Meadows. The man worked for a company named Baudelaire Inc. which manufactured toasters, electric kettles and high-grade pots and pans. Its share-price had been moving steadily upwards since its entered the Stock Market lists some twelve years earlier and it had gained for itself a high reputation. However, when the Wall Street crash occurred it suddenly found itself in financial difficulties like all the other companies in the country. Markets began to fail for its products and it soon discovered it had assets of forty thousand dollars and liabilities of seventy thousand dollars with creditors pressing for half of that amount immediately. Clearly, many of the staff would have to be laid off and Meadows considered that he would be one of the executives to be made redundant. The future hardly looked rosy. Worse still, the Chairman, the Chief Executive and five members of the Board had resigned, leaving the company with no one at the head to control it. The future looked extremely bleak; the company appeared to be doomed.

  ‘Why doesn’t your father come and take control?’ asked Meadows, hoping to engender some reality into the situation. ‘He’s a real businessman after all. He might be able to help.’

  ‘You can ask him but I don’t think he’d be interested,’ replied young Ross. ‘I mean he’s great in grocery but he doesn’t know much about manaufacturing or the products of Beaudelaire. However, if the chips are down, I’m up for it.’