Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Quade swore under his breath as he stepped out into the roaring, white-lit expanse of Lunar-Boulevard. Far beneath him was the cavern where the Plutonian set had been erected. And, though he did not know, it, his hunch was right. Kenilworth’s biological experiment was in the process of going haywire.

  THE road cut through the jungle like the slash of a ray-gun’s beam. Over its surface raced the autocar, and on every side towered the fantastic scenery that duplicated the terrain of the System’s only radioactive planet. It was a glittering mirage of blinding color, gigantic vegetation, leafless, but covered with a glowing, many-hued coating of metallic scales.

  Four men and a girl were in the car. Quade, Kathleen, Baker, and two others. One was thin-faced, a stooped oldster who peered, near-sightedly through the hollow shells of optical glass that overlapped his eyeballs. That was Kenilworth, the biologist.

  The face of the other man had, eight years before, been familiar to every youngster in the System. At that time Interplanetaries had held the place that, in the Twentieth century; Westerns had occupied. At every matinee the giant figure of Blaze Argyle had fought his way through hordes of inhuman beings, with gun, blade and fist. His jutting jaw and famous grin had provoked a storm of applause from youthful audiences at every appearance.

  He was working in a hash joint when Quade found him. His hair was iron gray, and there were wrinkles in the tanned, strong face. That was the way in Hollywood on the Moon. A vogue passes quickly. There were many onetime stars who had been supplanted by younger men as the years rolled by.

  But Quade had remembered the man who had since been his hero, his boyhood ideal of courage and strength. So, despite Von Zorn’s objections, he had signed on Blaze Argyle in a supporting role in Doom World.

  Somehow the wrinkles were fewer now on Argyle’s scarred, weathered face. The old war-horse smelled again the smoke of battle. His role was that of a veteran pilot of a tramp space ship, and it was tailored to fit him. Neal Baker, who preferred to have the only heroic part himself, was not pleased.

  Subdued crashings in the gleaming forest spoke of life. Quade turned to Kenilworth.

  “I still don’t see how you’ve done it,” he said. “You say the radioactivity isn’t dangerous?”

  “Uh? No, no, of course not. Haven’t you learned elemental physics? I didn’t use a radium basis; I used an isotope of radium, one of the newly-discovered ones. Same charge, but different masses.” Kenilworth’s thing face wore a scowl. “I’m paid to work at biology, not to give lectures to jackasses.”

  Blaze Argyle chuckled deep in his throat. Abruptly his huge hand shot forward, closed over the control lever. The car jerked to a halt.

  Immediately the reason for his action became clear. Something was charging along the road toward them, a creature that might have emerged from a nightmare.

  “Plutonian devil,” Kenilworth said, snatching up a small, portable instrument board from the floor. “Watch, now.”

  The thing had the grotesque, plated head of a sea-horse towering from a thick, serpentine body that flowed along effortlessly on a dozen stumpy legs. Its muzzle was tubular, surmounted by a single unwinking eye. It was about ten feet long, and thick as a man’s torso.

  ARGYLE’S hand flashed to his belt, but the gun he carried was loaded with blanks; he realized this and cursed softly. Kenilworth’s fingers were dancing over the instrument board. The Plutonian devil stopped.

  It stood quiescent a moment, and then slowly moved aside. The car slid forward, raced on.

  “You want to watch out for the thing’s spray,” Kenilworth said. “It spouts a toxin that has rather peculiar effects.”

  “If you think I’m going to work with those things, you’re crazy,” Neal Baker said, his face very white.

  “There’s no danger,” Kenilworth told him. “They’re handled with the usual robot control.”

  “Never used robots in my day,” Argyle observed. “When we went on location, we took guns and plenty of ammunition. I remember one time we ran into a whip on Venus—”

  Baker interrupted sharply.

  “Quade, it’s up to you to take every precaution. Understand?”

  “There’s no danger, I tell you,” Kenilworth snapped irritably. “The power generator’s in my laboratory, and you’ll have plenty of portable control units to handle the robots.”

  “Just how does that work?” Quade asked. “Haven’t you built up a wider range than usual?”

  “Yes, from forty meters down to seventy millionths of a centimeter. The robots are handled by remote control, of course, but I’ve got a key wave which is continually hitting the receiving apparatus in each robot. I’ve used that to make the receivers automatically compensating, so they’ll adjust themselves to get any wave length I send out within the limits of my transmitter. For some reason there’s a lot of interference down here and I don’t want any trouble.”

  “What I can’t understand,” Kathleen said, “is how you’ve made the robots—alive. They—”

  “They are alive. Those Plutonian creatures are so complex that if you used a straight robot system they’d look like walking dummies. I duplicated the physiology of the things all right, and created artificial brains, as any competent biologist can do today. Remember those specimens of Plutonian life we trapped?”

  Quade nodded. A dozen space ships had hovered above the range of Pluto’s deadly radiations, and had let down on cables gigantic traps, in which, a number of curious life-forms had been captured.

  “Well, I grafted the cerebrum—.the part of the brain that handles the motor nerves—on to my artificial brains, as well as certain other important parts. The instinct-control, for instance, was necessary. I couldn’t transplant the entire brains, because they’d die without radioactivity. But the creatures are impregnated with a radium isotope that has proved quite satisfactory.” Kenilworth grinned and bobbed, while everybody except Quade looked slightly dazed. Blaze Argyle said, “I see,” and scratched his head.

  THEY came in sight of a hut. An electrified fence guarded it from marauding beasts. All around it stretched the glittering rainbow blaze of the forest. As the car halted Quade had an inexplicable feeling of danger and menace that lurked between the shining columns of the trees. Light beat down strongly from the gigantic arcs far above in the cavern roof. He had a momentary sense of actually being on a far, alien world, instead of in an artificial set only a mile beneath ultra-modern Hollywood on the. Moon.

  “I’m going back to the laboratory,” the voice of Kenilworth said creakingly. “You’ll find another car in the shed over there.”

  Quade nodded. The rest of the cast—a very small one—and the crew would be along soon, piloted by Kenilworth’s assistant. They could begin shooting within an hour. Probably the picture would be safely in cans within a week, for the sequences which did not deal with Pluto had already been filmed. The meager figure of the biologist dwindled; the car faded to a speck and vanished. From the shining forest some creature bellowed angrily.

  Again Quade felt that queer sense of foreboding. But he could not know what was happening all about him, the slow growth of living tissue that was to have a cataclysmic effect on the wireless receivers buried deep within the brains of the Plutonian robots.

  CHAPTER III

  INTERIOR: Kenilworth’s laboratory. One week later. Close, shot.

  KATHLEEN and Neal Baker strolled between tables of working equipment—microscopes, electrical stimulators, intricately twisted apparatus, masses of flesh; in their glass containers. A heavy odor of formaldehyde, ozone, and less pleasant things made the girl use her scent bottle often. Behind the two Blaze Argyle wandered disconsolately.

  The old-timer was unhappy. Films had changed since his day. Too much faking. Ten years ago a man had to have backbone to star in Interplanetaries. But now, with double exposures, montage, telephoto lenses and robots, any ham could be a hero.

  But Argyle wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He sympathized with Quade, who had
been having a hard time of it. Especially the way Kathleen and Baker had been treating him.

  Characteristically, Argyle ignored the innumerable petty annoyances to which he had been subjected by Baker. The crooner never let Argyle forget that the oldster was playing a minor role, and that he, Neal Baker, was co-star of Doom World. The one-time headliner, used to the easy camaraderie of a bygone day, was hurt, but never showed it.

  The worst of it was, Argyle thought savagely, the crooner was infecting Kathleen. The girl had gone Hollywood with a vengeance. A big star might get away with it, but not a youngster in her first flicker. When Kathleen had acquired a languid slouch, Quade had chewed his pipe in bitter silence. He swore under his breath for ten minutes the day she high-hatted a cameraman. Finally, when she made use of a studied drawl and became temperamental during a crucial shot, Quade erupted and made the air sizzle with pointed remarks. For a day Kathleen was subdued, but Neal Baker’s fascination soon reestablished its sway.

  There was only a day’s shooting left, but this comprised only backgrounds which Quade handled himself, with one assistant. The others had gone back to Kenilworth’s laboratory.

  Not one of the three saw the door slowly open, nor did they know that slowly approaching them was a healthy, full-grown specimen of Plutonis flagellum—a “gliding lash.” The thing was slate-gray in color, with no trace of sensory organs. Its conical, squidlike body was supported by a dozen very slender tentacles, serpentine and covered with saw-toothed, ridged scales. Between these appendages dangled a grayish, ragged membrane like a cape.

  Kathleen saw it first, and instinctively she looked around for the robot’s controlling operator. But neither Baker nor Argyle had a keyboard, and there was no one else in sight. The gliding lash tottered forward unsteadily on its slender, coiling legs.

  “Somebody’s playing a practical joke,” Baker chuckled. “Probably our friend Quade’s back. Pretend we don’t see it.”

  Blaze Argyle was watching the creature which, half as tall as his body, was slowly coming closer. Now he could see a cluster of threadlike filaments waving above the conical “head” of the thing—sensory organs, ultra-sensitive to vibrations.

  THE lash halted, crouched down, coiling its slender legs beneath it. Suddenly Argyle shouted, “Look out!” Simultaneously the creature sprang.

  The uncoiling legs shot it up like a streamlined projectile until it hovered a dozen feet above the floor. Now the purpose of the filmy membrane became plain. The lash slowly dropped down like a parachute, guiding its flight by manipulating the tentacles. It drifted, slipped sideward, and swept straight for Kathleen.

  She heard Argyle’s shout and leaped back in time. The creature seemed to pause in midair, then settled neatly over Neal Baker’s head. His frantic yelp was smothered suddenly.

  The slender tentacles swept into terrible action. They flailed viciously at Baker’s torso in a blinding whirlwind of motion. The thing was well named, and in a moment the saw-toothed scales of the lashes had ripped Baker’s coat into ribbons. Beneath it he wore a thin but very tough membraneous shirt, and this. Saved his life. The lashes could not reach the great arteries of his throat, but they swished down again and again at the man’s body.

  Kathleen cried out, made a frantic clutch at a tentacle. A crimson line sprang out on her bare arm. She was sent staggering by Blaze Argyle, who gripped a jagged fragment of glass he had salvaged from the wreckage of a retort.

  One hand before his face, fingers spread, he threw himself into the battle. Baker went down under the impact, but the deadly whips flailed with unimpaired vigor. Argyle ripped the point of his weapon into the monster’s pulpy, conical body.

  Pale, whitish blood spurted. Argyle slashed at the thing viciously the tentacles swung toward him. The tip of one brought blood from his hand as it ripped past his eyes. He aimed a desperate sweep at the threadlike filaments that made up the creature’s sensory organs, and managed to slice them off. Immediately the lashes dropped to hang limp and flaccid.

  Hastily Argyle pulled Baker free. His face was covered with a musky, thick slime, but save for a few minor cuts and bruises he was uninjured.

  Kathleen was on her knees beside him, wiping the grease from his features. Baker spat, made a wry face, and scrambled to his feet, putting a table between him and the dead lash.

  The door burst open. Mackay, one of Kenilworth’s assistants, caihe hurrying toward him, his youthful face white under bristling red hair. In his hand was a gun. Relief sprang into his eyes as he saw the writhing body of the mutilated monster.

  “Dead, eh?” he said. “Anybody hurt?”

  Kathleen shook her head.

  “What the devil are you trying to do?” Neal Baker gasped. “That thing nearly killed me!”

  Mackay’s mouth was a thin white line. “Not our fault, Mr. Baker. The robots have gone crazy. They—I can’t stop now! One of ’em’s wrecking the power generator.”

  He hurried away. After a moment the others accompanied him.

  KENILWORTH’S laboratory was a great gray fortress near one side of the cavern. The power unit was housed in a barnlike structure of stone, and a gaping hole in the wall told of some monster that had crashed through it. From within came shouts, warning cries, and the creaking voice of Kenilworth yelling orders. The four paused at the gap in the wall, staring.

  The thing that was lumbering about the power room looked like a whale. A small whale, but quite big enough to cause havoc. Its huge body was plated with dully-glistening shields, like the armor of a rhino. Four columnar, stumpy legs carried it slowly forward. A dozen transparent bubbles shimmered on its back, and within these spheres slender things like eels, each half as long as a man, were coiling and writhing angrily.

  Already the monster had turned the room into a mass of wreckage. A dozen men, armed, scurried about purposelessly. The gaunt figure of the biologist was dancing near the monster, gripping a large hypodermic syringe in one hand, occasionally leaping to one side to avoid the sweep of the reptile’s tail.

  “What’s he trying to do?” Argyle asked. “He’ll kill himself. What’s wrong with the radio control?”

  “It doesn’t Work,” the red-haired assistant gulped. “Anyway, there’s no power now. The Juggernaut’s smashed the generator.”

  Argyle had faced Juggernauts before, during the filming of Doom World, but then the monsters had been under the power of the wireless units. He gripped Kenilworth’s arm as the biologist raced by.

  “You can’t get close enough to use that hypo,” he said. “A gun—”

  “Can’t risk it,” Kenilworth snapped. “The thing would tear the place to pieces before it died.”

  “Hypodermic bullets?” Argyle suggested.

  The biologist hesitated, nodded. He gave a harsh command, and in a moment Mackay had returned with a clumsy, long-barreled rifle. Argyle examined the weapon, lifted it.

  “Aim for the eye,” Kenilworth said softly, “The armor’s too thick everywhere else.”

  The Juggernaut lifted its great head, staring, as Argyle shouted a warning to the men. A calloused finger squeezed the trigger. Suddenly one of the monster’s eyes vanished. The reptile bellowed, slid down gently and lay motionless on the floor.

  Before the armored tail had stopped its twitching Kenilworth was beside it, examining his wrecked machines. The others followed. Kathleen was staring at the strange, transparent bubbles on the Juggernaut’s back, and the serpentine creatures that still coiled and writhed within them. With singular inappropriateness the red-headed Mackay, pale and shaken, began a lecture.

  “L-like the Surinam toad,” he informed Kathleen. “Develops its young in eggs on its back. Parasitic creatures, the embryos. They live on the parent’s blood, and by the time they hatch the mother’s a walking skeleton. She has to find four times as much food as usual to supply the eggs with nutriment. After the embryos hatch the parent Juggernaut usually dies—”

  “YOU blasted fool!” Kenilworth A snarled. “Get to work!
Want me to serve tea while you chat? Look at that—it’ll take nearly a day to repair the damage, and there’ll be no power until that’s done.”

  “Haven’t you any emergency power?” Kathleen asked. An unpleasant realization had come to her.

  “That’s smashed, too. I’ll—” Argyle put into words what had been worrying the girl.

  “What about Quade?”

  Kenilworth’s face was a twisted mask.

  “Ha! He’s probably dead by now, even though the electrified fence around his. camp’s charged by storage batteries. Those damned robots—they’re working on their brains now. He can’t handle them by the control units, for there’s no power. Besides, something’s wrong. Metabolism—tissue growth—I’m not sure, but I think the transplanted brains are getting too strong for the robot controls. For the last two weeks they’ve been growing, getting more and more in command of the neural systems of the creatures. Even after the generator’s fixed, I’m not sure it’ll work any more.”

  “But—can’t we help—” Kathleen’s eyes were wide.

  “How? I tell you, there’s no power! I’ve already sent a man to the surface, but it’ll take him hours to get there. Quade’s unarmed. If he can reach the laboratory in his car, he’ll be reasonably safe. If he had an airship—but you can’t bring a ship down here.”

  “I’m going after Tony,” Argyle said determinedly. “He won’t realize there’s anything wrong until it’s too late. I can reach him in an autocar.”

  The biologist nodded slowly.

  “It’s suicide, Argyle. But all right. You’ll need weapons—and other things. Come along; I’ll fix you up.”

  The two disappeared through the gaping hole in the wall. Kathleen and Baker were left to eye each other.

  “I’m going, too, Neal,” the girl said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Baker advised. “It’s hopeless.”

  “Will you come?” She persisted.

  Baker gulped, and noticed that several of the biologist’s assistants were watching. Kathleen put her hand on his arm.