by Ron Goulart
"Since we helped thwart a plot to knock him out of office, he should keep looking on us with favor," said Red. "I also think he's the sort of guy who follows through on his promises."
Rocky eased a packet of carrot sticks out of his royal purple tunic. "Had a hell of a time finding organic carrots anywheres. Want one?"
"Pass."
"You ought to be more careful with your diet. Otherwise you're going to end up looking like General Cuerpo."
"Okay, I'll have one."
"Here," said Rocky, passing the packet. "You don't think Prof is goofy, do you?"
"Sure, he's goofy. Why?"
"What I'm getting at is, did he really see that monster in the lake?"
"He says he did."
"Prof says a lot of things which ain't eventually true."
"I sense," said Red after a nibble at his hunk of carrot, "some motive beneath your queries." "If Prof could convince 'em there's a monster in Lake Sombra, then he can spend more time out there with June."
"Rocky, do you remember our activities of earlier today? When we invaded the general's house by way of the rooftops?"
"Sure, I remember. What's that got to do with Prof making time with Juney?"
"When it came time to jump from roof to roof, you didn't hesitate. You didn't try to think up some alibi to give to anybody who might have noticed us. You simply jumped."
"That's the best way to do it."
"Exactly, and it's the same with girls."
"You mean I should jump on 'em?"
"Not literally, but you have to be as direct as you are in the other areas of your life," advised Red. "What I'm trying to get you to see . . . Prof doesn't make up yarns as an excuse to spend time with ladies. See?"
"He's a pretty tricky guy."
"Tricky, yes, but direct."
Rocky said, "You figure he ain't been out here making points with June?"
"Maybe he has. If you want to get June interested in you, you have to take a more direct approach."
"I ain't cut out for romancing broads."
Red said, "Maybe you'll feel differently once you get your medal."
A blue tranquillity surrounded them.
"Not a bad jalopy," commented Ace, who was at the controls of the borrowed minisub.
"Exactly what one would expect from the people who gave us the Volkswagen." Prof sat sideways in the passenger seat, getting into his diving gear.
"Sure you want to head out there?"
"I'm equipped." He touched at a holster rigged around his middle.
"You've seen more of this creature's handiwork than I have. He's a rough one."
"You have a nice flair for understatement. The thing is not only rough, he's ferocious."
"I don't want to see you torn limb from limb."
"You can, should that sad event occur, always avert your eyes," Prof told him. "We talked this all over when we were still at our home base in Colorado. The gear we brought down should be sufficient to overcome our monster."
"Should be," said Ace slowly.
"I'm damn certain, Ace, there's not another creature like this on earth. I want to capture this one."
Eyes on the milky-blue waters of the lake of shadows, Ace asked, "You buy the theory die old professor handed June? Think this thing is an alien, from some other planet?"
"He has an unearthly air about him. Which is another reason I'd like to get him someplace where we can study him."
Ace checked the control panel. "We're just about at the spot where you saw him last night."
Nodding, Prof got up. "You sure Esther Williams started this way?" He climbed down to the exit chamber.
When he was completely ready to go, Prof allowed the chamber to eject him out the bottom hatch and into the chill lake waters.
"We are now passing through a veritable water wonderland," he said into the microphone built into his breathing mask. "All about us Mother Nature's wet wonders beckon—"
"Okay, okay," came Ace's voice into the earphone in Prof's diving cap. "Stow the travelogue."
"One thing I am not noticing," said Prof as he frog-kicked away from the minisub. "No fish." He clicked on the waterproof underwater light strapped to his left wrist.
"Go careful, Prof. Could mean your creature's hanging around close by."
Bubbles from his air tanks trailed him as Prof swam lower. "When I retire I think I'll buy a couple acres down here. Build myself a nice little undersea ranch house and settle down. Or possibly an undersea housing development. Want me to reserve ... oops!"
"Something?"
"Sea monster at three o'clock," said Prof in a slightly awed voice. "He's about two hundred yards from me and I can just make him out in the lights from the sub "
"Get yourself ready."
"Now I lay me down to sleep," recited Prof.
"The gun? Have you got it out and set for maximum?"
"Ace, I can safely assure you, based on my performance just now, that I'm the fastest gun in Lake Sombra."
"I can see him, don't know if he .. . Yep, he's going to come at the cabin."
"Noticed that." Prof was already swimming back toward the stationary minisub. "Get breathing gear on, in case—-"
"Pressure's likely to do me in if he smashes this cabin, but I'm prepared."
In his bare hand Prof held a long-barreled black pistol. There was a clear plastic bubble where the cartridge cylinder would be on a regular revolver, and inside the bubble was an intricacy of wires and tiny tubes.
Prof noticed his hand was quivering slightly.
Only a few feet directly above him was the white-streaked underside of the creature.
It spun, came diving straight for him.
Prof swung at the water with his left arm, kicked with his flippered feet and got himself out of the path of the thing.
As it passed him, the eyes in its terrible face glared directly into his. They were awesome eyes, evil and oddly glowing.
Prof was elsewhere, all at once.
There was a greenish mist swirling all around him. The ground underfoot was swampy, sucking at his scaly feet as he made his way across it.
High above him, huge black birds wheeled through the misty sky, their dry, scaly wings tinted by a fuzzy orange sun. The trees were twisted and stunted, smeared with blue moss that glowed faintly.
To his right, someone, something, was moving. Prof was aware of a large dark figure lurching forward through the green mist. They were both, he realized, heading in the same direction and sharing the same destination.
There were others moving with them, their shapes forming and fading in the flux of the mist.
He didn't want to go there. But he could not stop himself.
A temple loomed suddenly up ahead.
Built in a style which was both vaguely familiar and unsettlingly alien. Its green-tinted facade was illuminated by hundreds of handheld torches. Crowded across the temple courtyard were hundreds of men, each holding a torch aloft.
Not men, no. Creatures, Prof realized. Green, scaly, manlike creatures.
Creatures like . . . himself.
He held up his hands. But they weren't his, they were green leathery things. Claws protruding from each gnarled finger.
Where was he? Where was this elsewhere? How could he—
"Prof! What's wrong?" came a voice.
Who was that?
Someone he knew. Someone he knew on the other side.
The doorway glowed and throbbed. They were approaching him, hundreds of them, their feet rasping on the stones of the temple courtyard.
He did not want to cross that threshold, did not want to begin that exile.
Prof tried to struggle. They grabbed him, their rough hands seeking his throat.
"Prof! Prof! I've lost sight of you! Where are you?"
Blue water foamed all around him.
The taloned fingers were at his throat.
With an immense effort, Prof brought up both knees and then shoved with them.
> The creature was wrenched free of him, went spiral-ing away.
"Prof!"
"It's okay, Ace," he replied in a voice which sounded to him very unlike his own. "I was daydreaming."
"Daydreaming?"
"Tell you later."
The lake creature was charging at him again, teeth showing in a vicious snarl.
Prof went somersaulting out of the way.
But as it passed him, its sharp-clawed fingers raked his right hand.
Blood came out in ribbony swirls.
And the pistol fell from his grip.
Prof twisted, went diving after the falling gun.
It plummeted down and down, eluding him, through the water.
The creature didn't pursue him. It was going for the sub again.
Finally Prof, kicking with great force, caught hold of the weapon. He closed bloody fingers over the stock.
Shining his light like a beacon ahead of him, he went climbing back through the dark waters.
The creature glowed above him. Its green fists were pounding at the glass of the control cabin.
"Prof?" called Ace's voice.
"Watch out, Acel"
"You okay?"
"Yeah, merely a mite clumsy. Hang on." Prof swam close to die attacking creature, aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. An aftershock went ratcheting up his arm, jerked his elbow.
The huge scaly creature dealt one more blow to the cabin. It pushed away from the sub, turned to face Prof.
He fired the stunpistol again. Shock waves went ringing through the water.
The creature screamed, but Prof heard nothing. Its fearful mouth was wide open in a cry of pain.
Those eyes glowed at him again, seeming to burn away the churned water between them.
Prof didn't go all the way elsewhere this time. But alien images came tumbling through his mind.
The bleak, misted landscape, the great black birds kiting through the muffled sky.
The torches, circling.
The temple awaiting him.
A creature different than the others, older, incredibly older. A robe of glistening crimson over its bent shoulders. Arms raised skyward.
The doorway.
Exile.
He didn't want to cross that threshold.
He did not want to leave his world and cross over to . . .
To here.
A hand came raking through the water, reaching for him.
Prof fired yet again.
The monster's arms went flapping up and then ...
It was no longer there.
"Beg pardon?" muttered Prof.
The water was agitated and bubbling at the place where the creature had been.
"Ace?"
"Yeah, I saw."
"I think I know what happened, though I'm not sure exactly how."
"Get yourself back in here now; we'll talk about it while we head for home."
Prof noticed he was swimming in aimless and widening circles. "He just simply disappeared," he said. "This stun weapon acted as a key for him; it opened the door on our side."
"Get back in here," ordered Ace.
"Maybe his exile is over," said Prof as he swam for the hatch. "And we end up without so much as a trophy for the mantel."
"It's a sad day for American espionage." Holden Chote plucked a red blossom from the flower bush at his elbow. "Two of my most trusted agents prove to be untrustworthy."
"Spying's that way," Ace told the NEA chief by way of consolation. "You pay people to spy, somebody comes along and offers them higher pay to spy for them."
Chote's porky nose wrinkled. "There's a good deal more than money to the espionage trade," he said. "I'm aware it's not currently fashionable to appear patriotic, but I joined the National Espionage Agency originally because I love America and want to serve her."
"Everybody isn't like you," Ace said from his wrought-iron chair. "Or have you noticed?"
"Denny Yewell in the pay of some kind of Nazi conspirators." Chote walked aimlessly around the garden of the Challenger's rented house in the Ereguayan capital. "And Alex Hentoff, too. What a truly bizarre turn of events."
"Don't forget PetroSur, and its parent company back in the States. They had a part in all this."
"That remains to be established."
"Does it?"
"I realize Alex is claiming PetroSur financed his disreputable activities. We need more than the word of a man such as he proved to be."
"Want us to investigate?"
"Save yourselves for the more supernatural problems that arise," the National Espionage man said.
Ace watched the plump man ramble around the walled garden. "You've been out to the .underground facility?"
"Earlier today, yes."
"The secret of the Escabar Process for holding back aging. Did you find the formula down there?"
"A very difficult question to answer, Ace."
"Meaning you found it but NEA and Washington want you to pretend you didn't."
"You can come to whatever conclusion you wish. I'll neither confirm nor deny."
"After you boys test out the formula, who gets to avail themselves of it?"
"If such a Process does exist, and if the formula is in the hands of the United States government, then it is up to that government to issue a statement as to the ultimate disposition of the matter."
"Well put," said Ace. "Have you ever considered signing on as somebody's press secretary?"
"You've chosen a different path in life," said Chote, circling a birdbath. "Therefore you're not compelled to do the things some of us have to do."
"Nobody's compelled to do anything."
"Easy for a Challenger to say. At any rate, I don't want to debate the issue further," said Chote as he
dropped his fingertips absently in the water of the birdbath. "You'll turn in, I take it, a full report on the monster?"
"Soon as we get back home."
Chote's head nodded slowly a few times. "When I assigned the Challengers of the Unknown to investigate the creature, I'd heard rumors there was more going on in the Lake Sombra area than the reappearance of a legendary monster. I'm pleased you cleared most of it up."
"This guy wasn't legendary."
Chote asked, "What do you think happened to the thing? Why did it suddenly vanish on you?"
"When Prof was out there in the depths of the lake of shadows struggling with it, he tuned in on the creature's mind apparently," said Ace. "Could be the thing did that to all its victims, hypnotized them and gave them a glimpse into its head. We don't know for sure, since Profs the only one who lived after a confrontation. Prof thinks, and I tend to go along with him, that our creature was an exile from some other world."
"Other world?" Chote blinked. "You mean a planet, like Mars or Venus?"
"He's not somebody our astronauts are likely to meet in the immediate future," Ace answered. "He may have come from another planet, a planet immeasurably far from our own world. Or he may have come from some other dimension, some unknown world which parallels our own."
Shaking his head, Chote dropped his hands to his sides. "They're never going to accept anything like that in Washington."
"Our creature was from a world even stranger than Washington." Ace grinned briefly. "He crossed some sort of threshold, found himself here. The type of gun we used on him helped him cross back to wherever it was he came from."
"Then it might come back?" "Might, though I somehow doubt it." "Well, I came by to thank you all for the help you gave us," said Chote. "Are the rest of the Challengers here? I'd like to congratulate each of them personally."
"Afraid not. I'm the only one at home," said Ace. "Everyone else is out trying to catch up on the vacations this assignment interrupted."
"Perhaps that's for the best," said Chote with a slight sigh. "I don't know how much good-natured kidding I could stand today."
Unknown