They Came From Outer Space

by Jim Wynorski (editor)

  They followed Stockton swiftly toward the back door.

  “Outside, quick!” he whispered. “He can’t see us. The cot’s in the way.”

  They clambered through the gaping hole the shotgun charge had made. It was not easy, and Mary’s clothing caught on a sharp splinter.

  The cloth ripped as Stockton jerked at it.

  Footsteps thudded across the floor. The door was flung open. Thorkel switched on the floodlight.

  His shadow momentarily hid the three as they raced forward. The mouth of the mine-shaft loomed up before them, a plank stretched across the pit.

  “Down there!” Stockton gasped. “It’s our only chance.”

  It was the only possible place of concealment. But Thorkel’s one good eye did not miss the little people’s movements as they scrambled over the brink and down the steep rock of the shaft-walls. Skirting the windlass, he fell to his hands and knees and crawled out upon the plank, steadying himself with one hand on the rope that ran down into black depths.

  Stockton, clinging to a rock, realized that he still held his

  scissor-blade sword.

  He lifted it in futile threat.

  There was a splintering crack as Thorkel struck at his quarry. The gun-barrel clashed on rock. And, abruptly, the plank caved in and dropped.

  Thorkel still gripped the windlass-rope with one hand, and that saved him.

  For a second he swung wildly, while the echoing crash of the falling wood and the gun-barrel echoed up from the depths. Then his grip became surer.

  Panting, he hung there briefly, his bald head gleaming with sweat.

  He began to climb up the rope.

  Stockton glanced around quickly. Mary was clinging to a sloping rock, her white face turned toward the giant.

  Baker was looking at the mineralogist, and his gaunt gray features were twisted with hopeless fury.

  Stockton made a quick gesture, pointed to his sword, and began to swarm back up to the surface.

  Instantly Baker caught his meaning. If the rope to which Thorkel clung could be cut But it was thick, terribly thick, for a tiny man and a scissor-blade!

  Thorkel pulled himself slowly upward. In a moment Baker saw, he would reach safety. The trader’s lips drew back from his teeth in a mirthless grin; he abruptly rose and edged forward a few paces.

  Then he sprang.

  Out and down he went, and his clutching hands found Thorkel’s collar.

  Before the scientist could understand what had happened, Baker was clawing and snarling like a terrier at his throat. Thorkel almost lost his grip.

  Gasping with fear and rage, he shook his head violently, trying to knock his assailant free.

  “You dirty killer!” Baker snarled.

  He was tossed about madly, once a]most crushed between Thorkel’s chin and chest. And then, suddenly, Thorkel was falling.

  With a whine and a whir the windlass ran out as the rope was severed.

  A long, quavering cry burst from Thorkel’s throat as he dropped away into the darkness. Higher and higher it rose—and ended.

  Stockton ran to the brink and peered over. Mary was clambering weakly up toward him. And, behind her, was Baker.

  Bill was standing beside an upright book, a curious expression on his face. He looked around vaguely.

  “The machine—“ he told Mary. “Can you work it?”

  Mary was poring over Thorkel’s notebooks. She said despondently, “It’s no good, Bill. The device is only a condensor. It can’t bring people back to normal size. We’ll have to remain this size the rest of our lives. And now, we’ve got to get back to civilization, somehow—“ “As we are?” Baker’s face fell. “That’s impossible.”

  “Wait a minute,” Stockton interrupted. “I’ve a hunch—do you remember when we first saw Thorkel, after he reduced us?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill us then. He just wanted to weigh and measure us But after he examined Dr. Bulfinch, he turned into a vicious killer. Why do you suppose that happened?”

  “He probably intended to kill us all along. For trying to steal his secrets,” Baker suggested. “He was probably afraid that we would warn the Allies of his plans.”

  “Maybe. But he wasn’t in any hurry at first. He knew he could dispose of us any time he wanted. Only after he examined Dr. Bulfinch he—found out something that made it necessary to get rid of us in a hurry.”

  Mary caught her breath. “What?”

  “I saw a white mule in the jungle a while ago. A colt. Paco was playing with it. At first I figured it might be Pinto’s colt, but mules are sterile, of course. That meant two albino mules here—which isn’t very probable—or else it was Pinto. Remember, Pedro said the dog used to play with the mule.”

  “How big was the mule?” Baker asked abruptly.

  “The size of a half-grown colt. Listen, Steve, when we first came out of the cellar I measured myself against that book-Human Physiology. It was just higher than my head. But now it only comes up to my chest!”

  “We’re growing!” Mary whispered. “That’s it.”

  “Sure. That’s what Thorkel found out when he examined Dr. Bulfinch, and why he tried to kill us before we grew back to normal size. I think it’s a progressively accelerative process. In two weeks, or perhaps ten days, we’ll be back to normal.”

  “It’s logical,” the girl commented. “Once the compressive force of radium power is removed, we expand—slow]y but elastically. The electrons swing back to their normal orbits. The energy we absorbed under the ray will be liberated in quanta—“ “Ten days,” Baker murmured. “And then we can go back down the river again!”

  But it was a month before the three, once more normal in size, reached the Andean village that was their first destination. The sight of human beings, no longer gigantic, was warmly reassuring. Indians leaned against the huts, scratching lazily for fleas, Peering down the archway along the street, a ragged Bill Stockton turned to grin at Mary.

  “Looks good, eh?”

  Baker was absorbed in thought. “We’ve got to decide,” he said, scratching his stubbled chin. “One way, we get our pictures in the paper and tanks of free pulqua But it’s just as likely we’ll end up in a padded cell if we tell the truth. If we don’t tell the truth—“ He paused, stiffening. A mangy cat had appeared from beyond the arch.

  Baker’s muscles tensed; his breath burst out in an explosive “Scat!”

  as he sprang forward.

  The cat vanished, shocked to the core.

  Baker’s chest inflated several inches. “Well,” he said, with the quiet pride of achievement, “did either of you see that?”

  “No,” murmured Stockton, who was seizing the opportunity to kiss Mary.

  “Go away. Quietly. And quickly.”

  Baker shrugged and followed the cat, a predatory gleam in his eye.

  DR. CYCLOPS Paramount 1940

  76 minutes. Produced by Dale Van Every; directed by Ernest B.

  Schoedsack; screenplay by Tom Kilpatrick; director of photography, Henry Sharp; process photography by Farciot Edouart and Wallace Kelley; art direction by Hans Dreier and Hearl Hendrick; music composed and conducted by Ernst Toch.

  Gerard Carbonara and Albert Hay Malotte; edited by Ellsworth Hoagland; sound by Harry Lindren and Richard Olson; Technicolor consultant, Natalie Kalmus.

  cast Albert Dekker (Dr. Alexander Thorkel), Janice Logan (Mary Mitchell), Tom Coley (Bill Stockton), Charles Halton (Dr. Rupert Bulfinch), Victor Kilian (Steve Baker), Frank Yaconelli (Pedro), Bill Wilkerson (Silent Indian), Allen Fox (Cab Driver), Paul Fix (Dr. Mendoza), Frank Reicher (Prof.

  Kendall).

  WHO GOES THERE? by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  filmed as

  THE THIN FROM ANOTHER WORLD

  (RKO, 1951 )

  The original concept for The Thing from Another World came about in the August 1938 issue of Astounding Stories. That magazine’s prolific editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., wrote the c
hilling tale under the pseudonym Don A.

  Stuart (after his wife, Donna Stuart) and it became an immediate success.

  More than a dozen years later, at the dawn of the nuclear age, noted director-producer Howard Hawks (Red River, Rio Bravo) unleashed his own motion picture treatment of this classic alien-invasion story. The two versions are so different that direct comparisons are just about impossible, and it would be difficult to decide which of the pair is more exciting.

  In the novella, the tension revolves around the Thing’s ability to change form and assume the identities of humans, after conveniently disposing of the originals. Thus, destroying the monster becomes almost secondary to identifying it.

  The “alien chameleon idea was apparently discarded by screenwriter Charles Lederer, who chose instead to instill the theatrical creature with the dread ability to reproduce itself in hoards at an amazingly accelerated rate.

  In the first-draft screenplay, the monster came the closest to resembling Campbell’s original description of a hunched-over anthropoid with three eyes, rubbery blue hair and razor-sharp tentacles. However, in succeeding rewrites, the Thing’s appearance was ultimately changed to that of a giant, hairless Frankenstein-like humanoid. It may not have done much to improve on the story, but it did wonders for the career of “Gunsmoke’s” future Marshal Dillon, James Arness—who, at the time, was tagged out of hundreds of hopefuls to play the unusual part of the outer-space invader.

  The huge six-foot-three actor was just the first of many to portray various “Things” during the science fiction film boom in the 1950s.

  “Who Goes There?” and the film it inspired spawned countless other creature-features with such bloodcurdling titles as The Man f rom Planet X, Invaders from Mars and It Came from Outer Space.

  But viewers and critics agree that none of these successors equaled the combined force of John Campbell’s novel premise and Howard Hawks’s powerful cinematic approach to it.

  WHO GOES THERE?

  by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  CHAPTER I

  ThE PLACE STANK. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combatted the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs.

  The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.

  Lingering odors of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of harness dressing and leather. Yet, somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates—dogs, machines and cooking—came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruing thing, a faintest suggestion of an odor alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.

  Blair, the little bald-pated biologist of the expedition, twitched nervously at the wrappings, exposing clear, dark ice beneath and then pulling the tarpaulin back into place restlessly. His little birdlike motions of suppressed eagerness danced his shadow across the fringe of dingy gray underwear hanging from the low ceiling, the equatorial fringe of stiff, graying hair around his naked skull a comical halo about the shadow’s head.

  Commander Garry brushed aside the lax legs of a suit of underwear, and stepped toward the table. Slowly his eyes traced around the rings of men sardined into the Administration Building. His tall, stiff body straightened finally, and he nodded. “Thirty-seven. All here.” His voice was low, yet carried the clear authority of the commander by nature, as well as by title.

  “You know the outline of the story back of that find of the Secondary

  Pole Expedition. They have been conferring with Second-in-Command

  McReady, and Norris, as well as Blair and Dr. Copper. There is a

  difference of opinion, and because it involves the entire group, it is

  only just that the entire Expedition personnel act on it

  “I am going to ask McReady to give you the details of the story, because each of you has been too busy with his own work to follow closely the endeavors of the others. McReady?”

  Moving from the smoke-blued background, McReady was a figure from some forgotten myth, a looming, bronze statue that held life, and walked.

  Six-feet-four inches he stood as he halted beside the table, and, with a characteristic glance upward to assure himself of room under the low ceiling beams, straightened. His rough, clashingly orange windproof jacket he still had on, yet on his huge frame it did not seem misplaced. Even here, four feet beneath the drift-wind that droned across the Antarctic waste above the ceiling, the cold of the frozen continent leaked in, and gave meaning to the harshness of the man. And he was bronze—his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze.

  Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed.

  Age-resisting endurance of the metal spoke in the cragged heavy outlines of his face, and the mellow tones of the heavy voice. “Norris and Blair agree on one thing; that animal we found was not—terrestrial in origin.

  Norris fears there may be danger in that; Blair says there is none.

  “But I’ll go back to how, and why, we found it. To all that was known before we came here, it appeared that this point was exactly over the South Magnetic Pole of Earth. The compass does point straight down here, as you all know. The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about 80 miles southwest of here.

  “The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic. From the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous.

  No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface.

  “I think you should know the structure of the place. There is a broad plateau, a level sweep that runs more than 150 miles due south from the Secondary station, lan Wall says. He didn’t have time or fuel to fly farther, but it was running smoothly due south then. Right there, where that buried thing was, there is an ice-drowned mountain ridge, a granite wall of unshakable strength that has dammed back the ice creeping from the south.

  “And four hundred miles due south is the South Polar Plateau. You have asked me at various times why it gets warmer here when the wind rises, and most of you know. As a meteorologist I’d have staked my word that no wind could blow at--70 degrees—that no more than a 5-mile wind could blow at --50--without causing warming due to friction with ground, snow and ice, and the air itself.

  “We camped there on the lip of that ice-drowned mountain range for twelve days. We dug our camp into the blue ice that formed the surface, and escaped most of it. But for twelve consecutive days the wind blew at 45 miles an hour. It went as high as 48, and fell to 41 at times. The temperature was--63 degrees. It rose to--60 and fell to--68. It was meteorologically impossible, and it went on uninterruptedly for twelve days and twelve nights.

  “Somewhere to the south, the frozen air of South Polar Plateau slides down from that 18,000-foot bowl, down a mountain pass, over a glacier, and starts north. There must be a funneling mountain chain that directs it, and sweeps it away for four hundred miles to hit that bald plateau where we found the secondary pole, and 350 miles farther north reaches the Antarctic Ocean.

  “It’s been frozen there since Antarctica froze twenty million years ago.

  There never has been a
thaw there.

  “Twenty million years ago Antarctica was beginning to freeze.

  We’ve investigated, thought and built speculations. What we believe happened was about like this.

  “Something came down out of space, a ship. We saw it there in the blue ice, a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest.

  “Eh, Van Wall? Space? Yes, but I’ll explain that better later.”

  McReady’s steady voice went on.

  “It came down from space, driven and lifted by forces men haven’t discovered yet, and somehow—perhaps something went wrong then—it tangled with Earth’s magnetic field. It came south here, out of control probably, circling the magnetic pole. That’s a savage country there, but when Antarctica was still freezing it must have been a thousand times more savage. There must have been blizzard snow, as well as drift, new snow falling as the continent glaciated. The swirl there must have been particularly bad, the wind hurling a solid blanket of white over the lip of that now-buried mountain.

  “The ship struck solid granite head-on, and cracked up. Not every one of the passengers in it was killed, but the ship must have been ruined, her driving mechanism locked. It tangled with Earth’s field, Norris believes.

  No thing made by intelligent beings can tangle with the dead immensity of a planet’s natural forces and survive.

  “One of its passengers stepped out. The wind we saw there never fell below 41, and the temperature never rose above--60. Then—the wind must have been stronger. And there was drift falling in a solid sheet.

  The thing was lost completely in ten paces.” He paused for a moment, the deep, steady voice giving way to the drone of wind overhead, and the uneasy, malicious gurgling in the pipe of the galley stove.

  Drift—a drift-wind was sweeping by overhead. Right now the snow picked up by the mumbling wind fled in level, blinding lines across the face of the buried camp. If a man stepped out of the tunnels that connected each of the camp buildings beneath the surface, he’d be lost in ten paces. Out there, the slim, black finger of the radio mast lifted 300 feet into the air, and at its peak was the clear night sky.