They Came From Outer Space

by Jim Wynorski (editor)

  He had been lying wide-eyed for perhaps an hour, when he heard the noise. He stiffened, strained his ears. The sound came again. No doubt now. From the basement. He got up and clawed for the lamp at his bedside when the door opened. The light snapped on to reveal Johnny’s pale, frightened face.

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Johnny whispered, “Did you hear it, Dad? From downstairs. It—“ “Lee, I’ll bet. He couldn’t sleep and came back for another look. Let’s go see.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. You know what I think? It wasn’t dead! The thing was still alive and now it’s come to and it’s prowling the basement. What are we going to do, Dad? We don’t know anything about it. Maybe it’s dangerous—deadly—“ “Now don’t get excited. I’m sure it’s Lee.” Sam picked up the phone and dialed. They waited tensely as another of the rattling sounds came from the basement. Then Lee Hayden’s voice. “Hello.”

  “Lee—Lee, for God’s sake. Get over here! There’s trouble. The thing’s come alive.”

  Lee Hayden didn’t even bother to answer. Sam heard the phone slammed down.

  He pulled on his pants and had just finished with his shoes when the front gate slammed and there were running footsteps on the walk. They met Lee as he came in the front door. “What’s wrong?” he snapped.

  “What’s happened?”

  “There’s someone down there,” Johnny said. “We thought maybe it was you—“ “What would I be doing down there? Why didn’t you go find out?”

  “Then maybe—maybe the thing came alive.”

  “And you didn’t check? Do you realize what it would cost us if it got away?”

  “But it may be dangerous.”

  “Nonsense, but if it did come to, it’s ten times more valuable.” Lee was already at the basement door. He went fearlessly down the steps, Sam and Johnny Carter following behind with more caution.

  At the foot of the stairs, Lee stopped dead. He pointed. The freezer cover was lifted back. Lee rushed across and looked in. “It’s empty,” he moaned.

  “It got away.”

  He turned toward the open door leading into the backyard. “Come on—we’ve got to catch it—got to get it back!” He dived out into the darkness. Sam, following, snatched a flashlight off its hook by the door.

  In the yard, he bumped hard into Lee Hayden, who had stopped suddenly.

  “The garage,” Lee whispered hoarsely. “The side door. It’s open!”

  Sam flashed the light and the three of them walked softly forward.

  “Maybe somebody’s just trying to steal it,” Johnny whispered.

  Then Sam snapped on the garage light and no one did any more talking.

  There were six of the things present. Two of them were carrying the body from the freezer. The other four carried peculiar tubes in their hands, somewhat smaller than Sam’s flashlight. And if the creatures were repulsive when dead, they were bone-chilling when alive and functioning. Their cold, lidless eyes bored into the three men and Sam muttered, “We’re done for!”

  The creatures regarded them with no fear whatever. There appeared to be contempt in the leering faces, and the tone of the odd, birdlike chirping with which they apparently communicated with each other, heightened Sam’s feeling that they were voicing this same contempt.

  But something told him they were deadly. Sam breathed, “Don’t move!

  For God’s sake, stand where you are! Don’t antagonize them!” He had the same feeling he’d have had at facing a den of rattle-snakes; the feeling that one false move would bring out striking fangs.

  The creatures seemed to discuss the three among themselves, and Sam was sure the weird squeaking that punctuated the chirpings was their form of laughter. But they made no move to kill, and Sam began to hope they were harmless.

  Then he was speedily disabused of the idea. In a concerted move, they turned their small tubes on the front of the Packard. There was no sound, no heat as from a high-frequency ray, only the soft sound of metal being bent and twisted by a hand gloved in velvet. And the three men stared as the front end of the Packard twisted and writhed itself into the same disorder that would have resulted from smashing headlong into a brick wall.

  Then the truth dawned on Sam—or what appeared to be the truth. “They aren’t mad at us. They think the Packard did it; they’re punishing the car for killing their comrade. Don’t you get it?”

  The creature paid no attention to the words. That emboldened Lee. He said, “I think you’re right. It’s incredible! How can they be smart enough to invent and use space ships, and yet not know the car isn’t responsible for the killing?”

  “I don’t know. Shall we back out of here? Make a break for it?”

  “I think we’d better stay just as we are,” Lee said promptly.

  This last proved good advice because, after demolishing the front end of the car to their satisfaction, the creatures squealed and chirped for a while, evidently voicing their satisfaction, and then trooped out into the darkness. As they moved past, each of them leered at the frozen three, squeaked a nerve-wracking farewell, and the troop was gone, carrying its dead with it.

  An explosive sigh from Lee Hayden broke the silence. “I’ve got a hunch we were damn lucky,” he said. “Damn lucky to still be alive.”

  “How do you think they found the house?” Johnny asked.

  Sam said, “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m just glad they’re gone.”

  “We’ve got to do something about this,” Lee Hayden said with virtuous indignation. “Alert the police. The village—the whole nation may be in danger. It’s up to us to do something about it!”

  Sam didn’t bother to call Lee’s attention to his sudden reversal. It didn’t seem important now. The only important thing was to spread the word.

  They left the garage and headed for the house. But, halfway up the walk, the sound of an approaching car stopped them. The car pulled up in front of the house and two uniformed men got out.

  “It’s the State Troopers,” Johnny shouted. “They must have got wind of it already!”

  The troopers approached swiftly. Lee began, “Officers—“ but one of them cut him off.

  “We’re looking for a Mr. Sam Carter. We got this address and—“ “I’m Mr. Carter,” Sam said. “There’s something—“ “I’ll do the talking.

  You have a son?”

  “Of course. This is my son—John Carter—“ “You have a Packard roadster?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was your son driving it on Garner Road last night? Near the farm of Frank Williams?”

  “Why, yes. He took his girl to a dance at Storm Lake and—“ “We know all about that. How do you suppose we traced you down?”

  “But why--?”

  The trooper scowled. “Did you think the body would not be found?”

  “But you couldn’t have—what body--?”

  The second trooper snorted in disgust. “Frank Williams’ body. Where a car smashed him into a tree and killed him. From what we can find out, no one used that road last night except your son.”

  Johnny stepped forward. “You mean Frank Williams was found killed on the road?”

  “That’s right. Now we may be wrong of course. But the car that hit him will be pretty well smashed up. If you’d let us take a thorough look at your car—“ Sam Carter said, “But this is absurd, officer.

  There was—there was—“ “Look, all we have to do is check your car. If it’s not damaged—“ It dawned on Sam, now, what the green intruders had been up to—what they’d accomplished. They’d killed Williams—set the scene—arranged the colossal frame-up. He looked at Lee Hayden and said, “We thought they were mad at the car! We thought—“ The trooper said, “What are you talking about, mister?”

  “Well, there was this little green man from Mars or somewhere, and Johnny hit him when—“ Sam stopped talking when he saw the look on the trooper’s face. Then he knew how foolish it would sound—how utterly unbelievable. He look
ed back at Lee Hayden and began to laugh. But there was no mirth in the sound. Only fear—and hopelessness.

  INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN American-International 1957

  69 minutes. Executive producer, Samuel Z. Arkoft; produced by James H.

  Nicholson and Robert Gurney, Jr.; directed by Edward L. Cahn; screenplay by Al Martin, with additional dialogue by Robert Gurney, Jr.; director of photography, Frederick E. West; art director, Don Ament; music composed and conducted by Ronald Sinclair; production manager, sart Carre; edited by Charles Gross, Jr.; special makeup by Paul slaisdell; special photographic effects by Howard A. Anderson; costumes by Marge Corso; sound by Phil Mitchell.

  Cast Steve Terrell (Johnny Carter), Gloria Castillo (Jean Hayden), Frank Gorshin (Joe Gruen), Lyn Osborn (Art Burns), Raymond Hatton (Farmer Larkin), Russ sender (The Doctor), Douglas Henderson (Lt. Wilkins), Sam Buffington (Army Officer), Bob Einer (Soda Jerk), Jason Johnson (The Detective).

  THE FLY by George Langelaan filmed as THE FLY (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958)

  This terrifying mixture of science fiction and horror was an unprecedented hit with readers when it first appeared in the June 1957 issue of Playboy.

  It won that magazine’s Best Fiction Award and went on to be selected for inclusion in The Annual of the Year’s Best SF. It’s no wonder that “The Fly” was immediately snapped up by Twentieth Century-Fox and made into a very successful same-name movie.

  Director Kurt Neumann, who had previously helmed one of the first big SF hits, Rocketship X-M, infused the film with just the right balance of terror and black humor. Thanks to credible acting and superior makeup and effects, suspension of belief is easy when scientist Andre Delambre reveals and enters his homemade matter teleporter.

  Unfortunately he fails to notice the tiny insect which has flown into the chamber with him. And therein hangs a tale....

  Langelaan’s horrific vision hit the cinemascope screens in blazing color just about a year after its initial magazine appearance. Outside theaters, on posters and marquees, the producers offered the sum of one hundred dollars to anyone who could prove “it couldn’t really happen.”

  Considering that other concurrent genre efforts such as it: The Terror from Beyond Space and 4-D Man were prepared to pay fifty thousand and one million respectively for the same reason, this seems quite a meager amount. But no matter—not one moviegoer ever collected a dime on any exploitation picture during the 1950s.

  Yet audiences didn’t mind, as long as the film delivered the right dosage of fright and excitement. The Fly was a winner on both counts.

  The New York Tines called it “the most originally suggestive hair-raiser since ‘The Thing.”

  “ Variety labeled it “unusually believable.”

  Even the author, the late newsman George Langelaan, was quite pleased with the translation from printed page to silver screen. For once, not one fact in the story was altered to suit the whim of a producer, star or director.

  Even the original character names—right down to the house cat, Dandelo—were retained in the superior screenplay by James Clavell (Tai Pan, Shogun) .

  Unfortunately, the momentum was lost in two sadly inferior sequels, Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of the Fly (1965), both of which were pale rehashes of what had come before. The power and impact of the original remains unequaled to this day. Read it and see.

  THE FLY

  by George Langelaan TELEPHONES and telephone bells have always made me uneasy. Years ago, when they were mostly wall fixtures, I disliked them, but nowadays, when they are planted in every nook and corner, they are a downright intrusion. We have a saying in France that a coalman is master in his own house; with the telephone that is no longer true, and I suspect that even the Englishman is no longer king in his own castle.

  At the office, the sudden ringing of the telephone annoys me. It means that, no matter what I am doing, in spite of the switchboard operator, in spite of my secretary, in spite of doors and walls, some unknown person is coming into the room and onto my desk to talk right into my very ear, confidentially—whether I like it or not. At home, the feeling is still more disagreeable, but the worst is when the telephone rings in the dead of night. If anyone could see me turn on the light and get up blinking to answer it, I suppose I would look like any other sleepy man annoyed at being disturbed. The truth in such a case, however, is that I am struggling against panic, fighting down a feeling that a stranger has broken into the house and is in my bedroom. By the time I manage to grab the receiver and say: “Ici Monsieur Delambre. Je vous ecoute,” I am outwardly calm, but I only get back to a more normal state when I recognize the voice at the other end and when I know what is wanted of me.

  This effort at dominating a purely animal reaction and fear had become so effective that when my sister-in-law called me at two in the morning, asking me to come over, but first to warn the police that she had just killed my brother, I quietly asked her how and why she had killed Andre.

  “But, Francois! ... I can’t explain all that over the telephone.

  Please call the police and come quickly.”

  “Maybe I had better see you first, Helene?”

  “No, you’d better call the police first; otherwise they will start asking you all sorts of awkward questions. They’ll have enough trouble as it is to believe that I did it alone ... And, by the way, I suppose you ought to tell them that Andre ... Andre’s body, is down at the factory. They may want to go there first.”

  “Did you say that Andre is at the factory?”

  “Yes ... under the steam-hammer.”

  “Under the what!”

  “The steam-hammer! But don’t ask so many questions. Please come quickly Francois! Please understand that I’m afraid ... that my nerves won’t stand it much longer!”

  Have you ever tried to explain to a sleepy police officer that your sister-in-law has just phoned to say that she has killed your brother with a steam-hammer? I repeated my explanation, but he would not let me.

  “Oui, monsiellr, oui, I hear ... but who are you? What is your name?

  Where do you live? I said, where do you live!”

  It was then that Commissaire Charas took over the line and the whole business. He at least seemed to understand everything. Would I wait for him? Yes, he would pick me up and take me over to my brother’s house. When?

  In five or ten minutes.

  I had just managed to pull on my trousers, wriggle into a sweater and grab a hat and coat, when a black Citroen, headlights blazing, pulled up at the door.

  “I assume you have a night watchman at your factory, Monsieur Delambre.

  Has he called you?” asked Commissaire Charas, letting in the clutch as I sat down beside him and slammed the door of the car.

  “No, he hasn’t. Though of course my brother could have entered the factory through his laboratory where he often works late at night ...

  all night sometimes.”

  “Is Professor Delambre’s work connected with your business?”

  “No, my brother is, or was, doing research work for the Minis tere de l’Air. As he wanted to be away from Paris and yet within reach of where skilled workmen could fix up or make gadgets big and small for his experiments, I offered him one of the old workshops of the factory and he came to live in the first house built by our grandfather on the top of the hill at the back of the factory.”

  “Yes, I see. Did he talk about his work? What sort of research work?”

  “He rarely talked about it, you know; I suppose the Air Ministry could tell you. I only know that he was about to carry out a number of experiments he had been preparing for some months, something to do with the disintegration of matter, he told me.”

  Barely slowing down, the Commissaire swung the car off the road, slid it through the open factory gate and pulled up sharp by a policeman apparently expecting him.

  I did not need to hear the policeman’s confirmation. I knew now that my brother was dead, it seemed that I had been told years
ago. Shaking like a leaf, I scrambled out after the Commissaire.

  Another policeman stepped out of a doorway and led us towards one of the shops where all the lights had been turned 011. More policemen were standing by the hammer, watching two men setting up a camera. It was tilted downwards, and I made an effort to look.

  It was far less horrid than I had expected. Though I had never seen my brother drunk, he looked just as if he were sleeping off a terrific binge, flat on his stomach across the narrow line on which the white-hot slabs of metal were rolled up to the hammer. I saw at a glance that his head and arm could only be a flattened mess, but that seemed quite impossible; it looked as if he had somehow pushed his head and arms right into the metallic mass of the hammer.

  Having talked to his colleagues, the Commissaire turned towards me:

  “How can we raise the hammer, Monsieur Delambre?”

  “I’ll raise it for you.”

  “Would you like us to get one of your men over?”

  “No, I’ll be all right. Look, here is the switchboard. It was originally a steam-hammer, but everything is worked electrically here now. Look, Commissaire, the hammer has been set at fifty tons and its impact at zero.”

  “At zero ... ?”

  “Yes, level with the ground if you prefer. It is also set for single strokes, which means that it has to be raised after each blow. I don’t know what Helem, my sister-in-law, will have to say about all this, but one thing I am sure of: she certainly did not know how to set and operate the hammer.”

  “Perhaps it was set that way last night when work stopped?”

  “Certainly not. The drop is never set at zero, Monsieur le

  Commissaire.”

  “I see. Can it be raised gently?”

  “No. The speed of the upstroke cannot be regulated. But in any case it is not very fast when the hammer is set for single strokes.”

  “light. Will you show me what to do? It won’t be very nice to watch, you know.”

  “No, no, Monsieur le Commissaire. I’ll be all right.”