The Metallic Muse

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  Patrols passed their tent, and occasionally the soldiers’ muttered remarks were sharp enough to be understood. “How often does this thing get hungry?” one wanted to know. Allen wished he knew the answer. He lay awake until dawn, wearily projecting his thoughts against the rumble of Hilks’s snoring and the vast restlessness of the camp. Finally reveille sounded, and a short time later he heard the crunch of marching feet as the soldiers went to breakfast.

  Allen had worn his facts threadbare, and he could think of only one avenue of exploration still open to him. He had to interview young Johnnie Larkins, who had, through chance or agility, lost only his legs to the thing from Venus. Allen fervently hoped he had lived to tell about it.

  General Fontaine established a “Contaminated Zone” centering about the town of Gwinn Center. The first problem, as he saw it, was to contain the thing within this zone. The second problem was to find it and destroy it.

  He ringed the zone with armed men and attempted to move all civilians out. Some of the carnival people and a few other crotchety individuals refused to go, one of them being Dr. Anderson. Allen advised against the use of force, so the general contented himself with gloomily forecasting their probable fate and allowed them to remain.

  Allen found Dr. Anderson in his home, which was also his office. The front room was a waiting room furnished with comfortable, antique-looking chairs. On the door to the inner office a small sign read, “Doctor is in. Please be seated.” Allen ignored it and knocked firmly on the door.

  Dr. Anderson emerged with a scowl of stern disapproval on his wrinkled face. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. What d’ya want?”

  Allen told him. The doctor’s scowl deepened, and he said, “Office hours. I couldn’t leave before noon, and I’d have to be back by two.”

  “I rather doubt that you’ll be having any patients this morning, Doctor. Gwinn Center’s population has been reduced to something like two dozen and all of them are staying home.”

  “Matter of principle,” the doctor said.

  “If this mess isn’t cleared up, you may never have any patients. I’m hoping that the boy can help us.”

  Dr. Anderson stroked one withered cheek and continued to scowl. Finally, with an abrupt motion, he turned to the sign on the door and reversed it. “Doctor is out,” it read.

  “I’ll get my hat,” he said.

  They walked out to the street together, and Allen handed the doctor into his plane. He turned for a last look about the abandoned town and felt a twinge of alarm as somewhere far down the street a door slammed. “There should be troops stationed in town,” he told himself. “I’ll speak to the general about it.”

  They flew south. The doctor continued to grumble until Allen patiently explained a second time that the boy would undoubtedly feel more comfortable answering questions with a familiar face present, and then he sulkily settled down to watch the scenery.

  Langsford was a modern city, with tall apartment buildings rising from its park-like residential sections. The hospital was part of a vast service complex at the center of the city, a low, web-like structure with narrow, sprawling wings. All of the inner rooms opened into plastic-domed parks.

  They found the boy outside his room laughing gaily, a squirrel perched on each arm of his powered chair and a flock of brightly colored birds fluttering about him. The birds flew into a nearby tree when they approached. The squirrels remained motionless.

  “Hello, Johnnie,” Dr. Anderson said.

  The boy smiled at the doctor and then turned large brown, extremely serious eyes on Allen.

  “Found yourself a couple of pets, I see,” the doctor said.

  “They’re my friends,” Johnnie said and ceremoniously offered each squirrel a nut.

  “Mr. Allen wants to ask you some questions about your accident. Do you feel like talking about it?”

  “I don’t know much about it,” the boy said.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Allen asked.

  The boy shook his head. “We were playing. Sharon and Ruthie and me. Then it grabbed me. I couldn’t get away. It hurt.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “A rag,” the boy said.

  Allen pondered that. “What sort of rag?”

  “A real pretty rag. It was sailing through the air, and it landed on us.”

  “What color was it?”

  The boy hesitated. “Lots of colors.”

  Allen scratched his head and tried to envision a sailing, multicolored rag. “A big rug?” he asked.

  “Real big.”

  “As big as a blanket?”

  The boy frowned. “Not a real big blanket, I guess.”

  Dr. Anderson spoke in a low voice. “You can pinpoint the size by the area it covered.”

  Allen didn’t agree, but he smiled and continued his questions. “How high did it fly, Johnnie?”

  “Don’t know,” the boy said.

  “Was it attached to something?”

  The boy looked puzzled.

  “I mean, was it fastened onto something?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay, Johnnie. We want to try and catch that rug before it hurts someone else. You’ve been a help. If you should remember anything else about it, you tell your doctor, and he’ll see that I’m told.”

  They walked away and left the boy with the motionless squirrels.

  “Dratted waste of time,” Dr. Anderson said.

  “Perhaps. There’s the matter of colors to consider. Could Elmer make himself different colors? The photos I saw were black and white.”

  “He could,” the doctor said.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I was one of the people he did an imitation of. This fellow Bronsky called me up on that platform. I only went out of curiosity. Then that dratted snail did an imitation of me. Made me feel like a dratted fool. But I was wearing a black suit and a red necktie, and it didn’t have any trouble with those colors. Showed me wearing a black suit and a red necktie.”

  “Then that part is all right. As for the part about flying through the air—I wonder if it can come out of its shell and fly around. That would—perhaps—explain things.”

  “Don’t see what there is to be explained,” the doctor grumbled. “Catch the thing and do away with it before it eats someone else. Explain about it afterward if you think you have to.”

  The doctor had nothing more to say, not even when Allen landed him back in Gwinn Center. He shrugged off Allen’s thanks and marched resolutely through his front door. Through the window Allen saw him reverse the sign to read, “Doctor is in. Please be seated.” He disappeared into his inner office and closed the door firmly.

  When Allen got back to base camp he found that the laboratory plane had arrived, a gigantic old converted transport. The scientists Hilks had requisitioned had also begun to report, but many of them would have little to do until someone brought in Elmer, dead or alive, for them to work on.

  Hilks had set up an office for himself in what had been the navigation room, and he looked thoroughly at home as he waved a cigar with one hand and a piece of paper covered with alarmingly shaped symbols with the other. Two of the newly arrived scientists were waving their own symbols in reply.

  “The trouble is,” Hilks announced to Allen, “all the experts we need are on Venus, because if they stayed here they’d have so little Venusian life to study that they wouldn’t be experts. And if we were to ask them to dash back here to help us cope with one so-called snail, they’d laugh us right out of the Solar System. Did you get anything?”

  “Maybe,” Allen said. He transferred a pile of books from a chair to the table and seated himself. “Elmer is more talented than we’d thought. He decks himself out in technicolor. The doctor saw him on display and verifies that. And the injured boy says Elmer looked like a pretty rug flying through the air.”

  “We figured he had to fly?’ Hilks said.

  “Yeah. But that youngster is no dunce, and i
f he saw a big shell come whizzing through the air, I don’t think he’d call it a rug.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “We’ve got to come up with something that’ll help Fontaine capture it and keep it captured.”

  “Uh huh,” Hilks said, scowling. “I’ve been studying the report on Private Agazzi. He did empty a full clip at whatever it was he saw, and his officer thinks he was a good enough shot to hit what he aimed at. Add the fact that while you were gone a patrol spotted Elmer skimming across a field. They called it skimming. He vanished into a large grove of trees, and I do mean vanished. The general had a regiment standing by for just that contingency, and he dropped them around the grove in nothing flat. That was two hours ago, and they still haven’t found anything.”

  “Are any of them missing?”

  Hilks shook his head. “Maybe Elmer hasn’t had time to get hungry again. We’ve come up with a thought that’s somewhat less than pleasant. Elmer might be able to reproduce all by himself, and if he likes Earth enough to start populating the planet with baby snails, this continent could become a rather unpleasant place to live.”

  “Have you come up with anything at all?”

  “Sure. One of the boys has designed a nifty steel net to be dropped out of a plane—if Elmer is ever spotted from a plane. We’re also working on some traps, but it’s a little hard to decide what to use for bait, since the only thing Elmer seems to like to eat is people. We might ask for volunteers and put cages inside the traps. Touchy proposition, we don’t know what sort of a cage would keep Elmer out, just as we also don’t know what sort of trap would keep him in.”

  “Did you do anything with that plastic display case Elmer broke into?” Allen asked.

  “No,” Hilks said. “I had it brought over here, but I completely forgot about it. Let’s go look at it now. Meyers, find someone who knows something about Venusian moss and fungus and related subjects. Since Elmer likes that particular moss enough to break a display case to get it, maybe we could use it for bait.”

  “Never mind,” Allen said. “We’re slipping on this thing, Hilks. That exhibit was licensed, so Terran Customs will have a complete file on it. I’ll ask for a report.”

  Allen copied the license number and called his office from the plane’s communications room, using his own emergency channel. Ten minutes later he bounded wildly into Hilks’s office.

  “What’s the matter?” Hilks demanded.

  “Everything. Get this Professor Dubois over here and fast. That exhibit was never registered. The license is a forgery.”

  The professor waved his arms excitedly. “I never dreamed!” he exclaimed. “I have been extremely careful with all of my exhibits. It does not pay not to be careful. But you must admit that the license looks genuine.”

  “You say you bought the exhibit on the West Coast,” Allen said. “Tell us about it.”

  “Let’s see—it was maybe three years ago. I was showing in upstate California. Fellow came in one day and said he was breaking up his own exhibit and had a few things left to sell. He made them sound good, and I went all the way to San Diego to see what he had. It really wasn’t bad stuff—it would have been a good basic collection for someone starting out, but there wasn’t anything there that would have helped my collection. I took that one because I hated to waste a trip and he made me a good price. And it was a pretty thing.”

  “Could you describe this man?”

  “I doubt it. It’s been a long time. His name? Oh—that I remember. It was Smith.”

  “Describe this ‘moss’ again, please.”

  “Well, like I said, it was pretty stuff. Vivid colors, red and black and yellow and white without any special pattern. It had a nice sheen to it—looked like a hunk of thick blanket.”

  “Or a hunk of rug?” Allen suggested.

  “Well, yes. I suppose you could say rug.”

  Allen backed over to a chair and sat down heavily. “The fact that it was small and thick means nothing. ‘Thick’ things sometimes unfold into objects many yards square. Hilks, take a look at that case. Take a good look.

  I want to know if it was smashed by something breaking into it, or by something breaking out of it.”

  Hilks bent over the case. “It bulges,” he announced. “If the snail could apply suction, it might have made it bulge this way.”

  Allen went to have a look. “The sides bulge, too,” he said. “It looks as though something inside applied force in all directions, and the top gave first.”

  Hilks nodded slowly. “Yes, it does look that way. Without a demonstration to the contrary by the snail, I’d say that something broke out of here.”

  Allen returned to his chair. For twenty years he had been studying Venus and all things Venusian, assimilating every scrap of information and every voluminous report that came his way. Now he could rearrange his facts, and this time he could make them fit.

  “Ever hear of a Venusian Night Cloak?” he asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “You have now. Tell General Fontaine to call off his snail hunt. This problem may be a lot worse than we’d thought.”

  They sat around a table in the large upper room of the lab plane—Allen, Hilks, General Fontaine, and Professor Dubois. Hilks’s scientists had crowded into the room behind them.

  Allen started the projector. The screen erupted a Venusian jungle, its blanched vegetation having a revolting, curdled appearance through the steaming mist. The camera shifted upward, taking in a square of greenish sky. In the distance, just above the seething treetops, appeared a blob of color. It enlarged slowly, as it sailed toward them, a multicolored flat surface that rippled and twisted and curled in flight.

  “That’s it!” the professor exclaimed. “The markings are just like my moss.”

  It came on until it filled the screen. Suddenly it plummeted away, and the camera followed it until it disappeared into the jungle.

  Allen switched off the projector. “Officially that’s the closest anyone has got to one,” he said. “Now we know otherwise. My feeling is that a number of scientists missing and presumed dead in the Great Doleman Swamp got rather too close to a Night Cloak.”

  The professor looked stricken. “This—my moss—killed those innocent children?”

  “None of our facts fit the snail. All of them fit the Night Cloak.”

  “Why do they call it a Night Cloak?” the general asked.

  “It was first observed at night, and it seems most active then. It grows to an enormous size, and as far as anyone on Venus knows—and don’t forget there’s a lot of the planet to be explored yet—it is found only in the Great Doleman Swamp. That’s the reason so little is known about it. A jungle growing in a swamp isn’t the easiest place for field work, and a Venusian jungle is impossible. Stations on the edge of the swamp occasionally observe the Night Cloaks, but always from a distance. They seem to be a unique life form, and the scientists were naturally curious about them. Twice expeditions were sent out to capture a specimen, and both parties disappeared without a trace. No one thought to blame the Night Cloaks—there are enough other things in that swamp that can do away with a man, especially some of the giant amphibians.

  “This film strip was shot by a lucky pilot who happened to be hanging motionless over the swamp. A Night Cloak won’t approach a moving plane. The scientific reports contain little but speculation. Frankly, gentlemen, we already know more about the Night Cloak than Venus does, and we’re going to have to learn in a hurry something Venus hasn’t discovered in a hundred years of field work: How to catch one.”

  “This fellow Smith caught one,” Professor Dubois said.

  “It was obviously a young one, and it’s possible that they have periods of dormancy when one could be picked up easily—fortunately for Smith. Something about being transported and placed in Earth’s atmosphere kept it dormant. It’s our misfortune that it didn’t die.”

  General Fontaine was drumming on the table with his fing
ers. “You say we know more about them than Venus knows. Just what do we know?”

  “We know that you can’t shoot one. Private Agazzi probably punched a lot of holes in it, but how would you aim at vital organs of a creature thirty feet square and who knows what fraction of an inch thick? We know that it has strength. It broke that plastic display case apart. We know a few unpleasant things about its diet and how it ingests food. We even know that its victims are likely to leave their shoes behind, which may or may not be a vital bit of information. And we know that our contaminated zone isn’t worth a damn because a Night Cloak can fly right over the ground troops and probably already has.”

  “I’ll have to call up all the planes I can get ahold of,” the general said. “I’ll have to reorganize the ground troops so I can rush them in when the thing is sighted.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the young scientist named Meyers. “What was that you said a moment ago about shoes?”

  “Just a little peculiarity of our Night Cloak,” Allen told him. “It will totally consume a human body, and it doesn’t mind clothing, but shoes absolutely do not appeal to it. It eats the feet and stockings right out of them, sometimes, but it leaves the shoes. I don’t know what it means, but it’s one positive thing we do know.”

  “Just a moment,” Meyers said. He pushed his way out of the room and ran noisily down the stairway. He returned waving a newspaper. “I picked this up when I came through Langsford this morning,” he said.

  He passed the paper to Allen, who glanced at the headline and shrugged. “Monster still at large.”

  “That isn’t exactly news to us,” General Fontaine said.

  “It’s down at the bottom of the page,” Meyers said. “A woman went for a walk last night and disappeared. They found her handbag in a park on the edge of Langsford, and a short distance away they found her shoes.”

  The general sucked in his breath sharply and reached for the paper. Hilks leaned back, folded his hands behind his head, and looked at the ceiling.

  “Langsford,” Allen said slowly. “Forty miles. But it also got Private Agazzi last night.”