THAT DARN SQUID GOD

by Nick Pollotta

  Interrupting her with a cry, Lord Carstairs cast away the field glasses. "Great Scott, my dear, that's it!" he gushed excitedly. "The Dutarian legends said that the Squid God was invulnerable to man-made weapons!"

  A loudcra-ackof a large caliber rifle sounded once more from the rooftop. Lady Danvers' supply of ammunition seemed endless. But if her efforts were yielding any results, it was not apparent amid the warfare filling the city.

  "I don't see the point," Professor Einstein said, gesturing at the rampaging squid. "The walkers are Venusian inventions."

  "Exactly the point, dear Uncle," Mary said, shifting position to keep her cast on a flagstone and out of the dewy grass. "The Royal Army tripods are copies of the Venusian designs. They were only designed by aliens, but every piece of these machines was actually forged by English mechanics."

  "Made by men," Einstein whispered, going pale. "Oh, dear."

  Loudly and bitterly, Lord Carstairs cursed in fourteen different languages, including Dutarian and lower Welsh.

  "By thunder," the lord cried, returning to English, "If only a single one of the original Venusian war machines had survived intact, we'd show that beastly thing some British spunk!"

  Pivoting about clumsily, Mary stared at the professor. He grinned innocently, and turned away to start whistling.

  "Uncle Felix…" Mary said in a very dangerous tone of voice.

  Looking skyward, the professor began to study a passing cloud of smoke riding the noon breeze. "Yes, too bad we don't have any of those," Professor Einstein said to nobody in particular. "Such a pity. How sad."

  Sensing the futility of further discussion, Mary took Lord Carstairs by the hand and started pulling him along. "Benjamin, come with me!" she ordered.

  "Whatever for?" the lord queried as he politely followed.

  "Just come along," Mary repeated, shambling quickly across the damp lawn. "And I'll show you!"

  "No, wait!" Einstein cried, dropping the dinosaur tooth. "It's, ah, no, I mean, the key! The key is lost!"

  "Then we'll break in!" Mary tossed over a shoulder hobbling along steadily.

  In mortal anguish, Professor Einstein weighed the balance between the total destruction of the world and damaging his prize exhibit. His prized, secret, illegal, contraband exhibit.

  "Oh, hell," the professor muttered in resignation as he started after them. "Wait for me!"

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As the trio hurried along the grassy lawn, Lord Carstairs could see that they were heading for a large carriage house just past the ruins of the rose garden. The bushes were trampled, the sundial toppled over sideways, and the gazebo was reduced to little more than busted kindling. This was obviously the result of the Ladies' Auxiliary's tangling with the Squid God worshipers.

  Stopping at the side door of the carriage house to catch her breath, Mary impatiently waited for her uncle to arrive.

  "Come along!" she urged, snapping her fingers.

  As the professor redoubled his speed, Lord Carstairs looked over the carriage house. The red brick building was unusually large for a family of only two people and a small staff.

  The steeple was made of heavy gray slate and edged with barbed iron spikes, and the large wooden door at the front seemed to be permanently nailed shut. Thick iron bars covered the closed oak shutters, and the only visible door was draped with so many lengths of linked iron chains that it appeared to be wearing Medieval chainmail.

  How very curious , the lord ruminated. The building resembled a small bank more than it did a simple carriage house.

  "I'm here! I'm here! Don't break anything," the professor chided, pulling a key from his vest pocket.

  Impatiently, Mary snatched the key from her uncle and started releasing the collection of heavy padlocks. As each lock was disengaged, she yanked away the accompanying chain and tossed it over a shoulder into the rose garden.

  When the iron-plated door was finally revealed, Professor Einstein replaced his niece at the door and spun the combination dial to his birthday, height, and the number of times he had been arrested in Tokyo. With a solid clunk, the internal bolts disengaged, and Einstein pushed open the armored door.

  The inside of the carriage house was pitch dark.

  Striking a match on the doorframe, Mary shuffled into the blackness and pulled down an alcohol lantern hanging by a length of chain from a rafter. Sliding up the flue with a thumb, she lit the wick and turned the clear blue flame up all the way.

  As the light filled the building house, Lord Carstairs could see that the walls were lined with tools and workbenches. In the corners were barrels of grease. Along one wall was a steam-powered lathe of clever design. But his inspection stopped dead at the sight of a Venusian war machine squatting in the middle of the carriage house.

  Only a sort of gurgle escaped his slack lips. There was no way this infernal device could possibly be mistaken for one of the British-made counterparts. The catch-basket at the rear was a mess of twisted hoops, but the dome was the color of smooth, burnished silver, although marred in hundreds of spots from the ricochets of British bullets. The infamous telescoping legs were compacted to a mere yard in length. A wooden stepladder gave easy access to the open hatchway in the side of the alien dome.

  Involuntarily raising an arm to block the sight, Lord Carstairs had a flashback to the war when he had stood helpless amid the blood and thunder of the cackling alien conquerors. The war for the world. The terrible nightmare that the newspapers of the planet took to calling The Troubles, after it was all over, and Humanity emerged as the winner.

  Shivering from the adrenaline rush, the British lord inhaled deeply as he stood proudly erect and walked over to spit on the vile machine in raw hatred.

  Shuffling closer, Mary squeezed his muscular arm. "I understand, my love. But the machine belongs to us now, and could mean the survival of Humanity."

  "Yes, of course. I understand," Lord Carstairs said through clenched teeth. "But, by God Almighty, how I hate those damn creatures!"

  Closing the outside door and locking it again, the professor gave a snort. "That's why keep we it well hidden, lad!"

  "Stop wasting time," Mary said, clumsily starting to climb the ladder. "Let's get going!"

  Taking her about the waist, Lord Carstairs gave the woman a boost through the oval doorway of the dome. Squaring his broad shoulders, Carstairs summoned his resolve, and also entered, although his stomach gave a flip at the thought of doing so under his own volition.

  Slowly, the lord stood in the dome, wary of hitting his head against the low ceiling designed for its non-human creators. The fetid smell of the aliens was long gone, having been replaced with the homey aromas of grease, leather, and some sort of lemon waxy polish. Interestingly enough, the dome still had its original flooring of a woven material that was as soft as lambs wool, but as resistant to fire as concrete. However, the lord noticed with marked satisfaction that it was badly stained in numerous spots, as if green ink had been tossed about randomly. The Venusian crew must have died hard before surrendering their craft. Good!

  While Mary and the professor rushed about the interior turning on various machines, Lord Carstairs studied the craft, comparing it to the few pieces of smashed wreckage on display at the Royal War Museum. The curved wall, which glowed softly, was lined with gauges and meters labeled in the aliens' angular script. A ceramic lattice at the rear of the dome closed off the engine room containing the bizarre power source that English technicians had sadly never been able to duplicate.

  Spanning the front of the craft's wall was a blank sheet of shiny material that dimly reflected the three explorers like a frosted mirror. Underneath that murky mirror was a curved panel covered with a multitude of controls, levers, dials, switches, and countless triangular buttons. Attached to the bottom of the control panel, as if grown there, were two oddly shaped chairs, festooned with power cables, hydraulic pistons, and the infamous 'feeding' tubes.

  Going to a wicker hamper, Professor Einst
ein tossed a fluffy pillow to Lord Carstairs. Going to one of the chairs, the professor arranged the pillow over the spiked gap in the bottom, and carefully sat down. With a faint whine, the chair automatically molded itself to the contours of his human anatomy.

  After grabbing a tuning fork from a wall bracket, Mary, keeping a firm grip on the dangling ceiling stanchions, hobbled away to disappear behind the ceramic lattice.

  "Here we go," Einstein muttered, pressing a button.

  A low hum rose from the belly of the alien war machine. The shiny panel above the control board cleared to become totally transparent. Now they could see the interior of the carriage house with astonishing clarity.

  "Amazing," the British lord breathed, watching tiny geometric figures scrolling along the side of the viewscreen. "I've never seen a war machine in such an excellent state."

  "Not surprising, considering how the mobs tore them apart. What you see is the result of a lot of hard work by Mary and me," Einstein said, running his hands over the control panel with the ease of long practice. "We found it in the yard of the museum where it had been hidden from the clean-up squads. It was quite badly battered, but we managed surreptitiously to salvage parts from several other wrecks."

  "You have done a superlative job."

  "Thank you. Now if only the damn thing works," Professor Einstein muttered, fiddling with a large dial.

  Using the pillow, Lord Carstairs took a seat. "Eh? What was that, sir?"

  "Oh, nothing, lad. Nothing at all."

  With a stuttering hiss, a section of the floor separated into several pieces, and Mary crawled into view. Her long hair was now tucked under a cloth cap bearing the logo of the Orient Express, and she was wearing a canvas engineering apron composed almost entirely of pockets filled with tools.

  "We're ready to go, Uncle," she said, limping to a chair near the lattice. "We have more than sufficient allotropic iron fuel." As the woman sat, a section of the curved wall irised open, exposing a full set of alien controls and some twinkling circuitry that musically hummed.

  "Good show, lass!" the professor beamed in delight. "By any chance, Lord Carstairs, do you know how to operate the steering mechanism?"

  "I am familiar with the basics," Carstairs acknowledged. "My family happens to be a patron of the Venusian War Museum. I spent a great deal of time in the simulators."

  "Superb! I helped found that establishment," the professor said, twisting a button and sliding a dial. "Nice to know that it's been useful."

  Scowling in concentration, Carstairs studied the jerky writing on the dashboard before palming buttons and levers. "This, and this, should do it," he said confidently. A throb of power from below answered in a positive manner.

  "Energy levels are?" the professor asked.

  "Nine over nine and steady," Mary said as she checked a pulsating meter while strapping herself firmly into place with a purely human-designed safety harness.

  "Beginning primary sequence, now!" Lord Carstairs announced, flamboyantly throwing a trip bar. Instantly, the machine quivered all over. A shower of sparks sprayed from a box on the wall. The lord quickly reversed the switch.

  "Cursed thingamabob shorted out," Professor Einstein snarled, rising from his seat. "Just be a second."

  As the professor headed for the rear of the craft, Mary tossed him a shiny copper wedge topped with a corkscrew. Making the catch with one hand, Professor Einstein disappeared into the rear engine compartment, from which there soon came the sound of hard banging.

  Studying the exposed circuits inside the wall, Mary slid some noisy components into new positions as if operating a four-dimensional abacus. In response, the twinkling lights changed color and hue.

  "That has it fixed, Uncle," Mary shouted, over a shoulder.

  "Well, for the time being, at least," Professor Einstein stated, walking back into view, bearing the severely dented copper wedge.

  Very displeased, Mary scowled at the sight of the damaged tool. The professor could only shrug as he gave it back.

  "I really was gentle as possible," he apologized.

  "Of course," Mary murmured, dropping it into a box bolted to the floor. Inside were a dozen more of the tools, each one equally disfigured. Men!

  Resuming his seat, Professor Einstein tightly buckled on the safety harness. "Try it once more, lad."

  With some trepidation, Lord Carstairs eased a slightly different switch into position, and the war machine violently lurched, smashing straight through the wooden door of the carriage house in an explosion of splinters.

  As the machine rampaged across the lawn, Carstairs thumped a dial, and the tripod eased to a rocking halt. With direct sunlight bathing the craft, the viewscreen automatically polarized to remove any unwanted glare.

  Feeling the eyes of his two companions on him, the British lord sheepishly smiled over a shoulder. "Sorry. Bit out of practice, you know."

  "Well, the door needed replacing anyway, lad," Professor Einstein said with a shrug.

  Cracking his knuckles, Lord Carstairs began caressing the controls with both hands. Creaking loudly, the dome rose to its full height, the telescoping legs extending in a staggered series of burps and hisses. On the floor between the two men, a small screen slid out from the control panel to display a view directly below the tripod. Craning his human neck, Lord Carstairs could see that all three of the thick columns were streaked with rust. One had a large welding patch holding it together. But the alien machinery seemed to be working fine, in spite of all the noise and trembling.

  Flipping switches and turning knobs, Lord Carstairs started the tripod walking forward at a more reasonable pace. Rattling at every step, the walking machine awkwardly clumped past the museum. As she came into view, a grinning Lady Danvers on the rooftop paused in her reloading efforts, and gave them a game thumbs-up of encouragement.

  "What a splendid woman," Professor Einstein sighed in resignation.

  Daintily stepping the tripod over the barbed-wire-topped iron fence, Lord Carstairs eased the machine along Wimpole Street towards the distant fighting. Unfortunately, the lord was finding it almost impossible to maintain an even keel as the huge, segmented shoes at the bottom of the telescoping metal legs kept shimming at every minor bump in the road.

  "Sir, are you sure this machine is battle worthy?" Lord Carstairs demanded, fighting for control of the alien walker.

  Privately wishing for the original shark's tooth, the professor nervously fondled the replacement lucky dinosaur's fang. "Have we a choice?" he asked bluntly.

  "No, not at all," Mary said, holding on for dear life.

  Despite the best efforts of Lord Carstairs, the tripod wove drunkenly down the road. The city on the viewscreen constantly, maddeningly, bobbed about. Luckily, the jerky swaying had little effect on the stalwart constitutions of the veteran sea voyagers.

  Squinting to see through the blanket of smoke swirling in the outside air, Professor Einstein caught a glimpse of the squid dismembering a full battalion of Royal Dragoons. Chunks of men and horses flew everywhere. A hard lump formed in his throat at the carnage, but the professor forced it back to the proper location. Here we come, old chap!

  "Target in sight!" Professor Einstein announced, feeling a surge of cold fury.

  "Range is, ah, eighteen frukongs!" Mary said, reading figures off of a teardrop-shaped gauge.

  While steering the tripod, Carstairs did the mental conversion to metric. So that would be … One hundred twenty three point four yards. Close enough. "Ready the heat ray!" he ordered.

  "Affirmative," Einstein said, pulling a lever and pressing three buttons in ascending order.

  On a small viewscreen, Mary watched as from the top of the dome a round portal irised open. Out rose a skeletal limb of interconnected metal braces. At the very end was a squat box-like apparatus, vaguely reminiscent of an American magic lantern projector. A louvered grill covered the large crystal lens.

  ***

  At the sight of the non-British walker, t
he fleeing civilians turned chalk white. Dogs began to howl. Grown men screamed, women cursed, and horses fainted. Without a thought, all the soldiers in London turned their weapons toward the old and hated enemy, the rampaging squid having been momentarily forgotten. As the tripod staggered towards the river, dozens of shells began whistling past it in a steady rain of high explosive death.

  ***

  "Professor, this is terrible!" Lord Carstairs snarled, as two shells collided in mid-air. The resulting double-explosion showered the walkers with hot shrapnel imitating the sound of a winter hailstorm.

  "Just what I was afraid might happen," the professor said grimly, running his fingertips over the control panel.

  "They think we're Venusians!" Mary realized, holding onto her hat with one hand. "Bunny, do something!"

  With a sharp metallic bang, a dent appeared in the side of the dome near the oval hatchway. As the depression popped out again, the wall lights dimmed, and only very slowly returned.

  "Good shooting, lads!" Lord Carstairs complimented, brandishing a fist. "And at this range, too! That really is quite impressive, sir."

  "Too bad we're on their side," the professor grumped, hunching lower in his chair.

  "Easily solved, sir," the lord said, playing the control panel with both hands. "Let's just show them which side we are on. Boost iron flow! I want full power!"

  "Done!" Professor Einstein replied, flipping buttons. "Engines at twenty over twenty."

  "Battle stations!" Mary loudly commanded.

  As Lord Carstairs labored to weave a safe path through the incoming bombardment, Professor Einstein referred to a small journal chained to the wall. He then threw several switches on the control board. One of the scrolling figures along the bottom of the viewscreen rose to become a tight series of concentric circles. Fumbling to operate a joystick mechanism not meant for human hands, the professor struggled to place the circles on the colossal beast, but the erratic weaving of the walker made his task nigh impossible.