Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  The man did not understand. Perhaps, it thought harm had been offered, had read menace in the friendly gesture. The Beast lowered its head in a motion of submission.

  At sight of that frightful mask swooping down, Mrs. Kirth broke through her paralysis of terror. She shrieked in an agony of fear and turned to flee. Kirth, yelling hysterical oaths, pumped bullet after bullet at the reptile.

  The Beast turned clumsily. It was not hurt, but there was danger here. Attempting to escape without damaging the frail structures all around, it managed to step on a pig-sty, ruin a silo, and crush in one wall of the farmhouse.

  But this could not be helped. The Beast retreated and was lost in the night.

  The inhuman brain was puzzled. What had gone wrong now? Earthmen were intelligent, yet they had not understood. Perhaps the fault lay with itself. Full maturity had not been reached; the thought-patterns were still not set in their former matrices. The fogs that shrouded the reptile’s mind were not yet completely dissipated . . .

  Growth! Maturity! That was necessary. Once maturity had been achieved, the Beast could meet Earthmen on equal terms and make them understand. But food was necessary . . .

  The Beast lumbered on through the moonlit gloom. It went like a behemoth through fences and ploughed fields, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake. At first it tried to keep to roads, but the concrete and asphalt was shattered beneath the vast weight. So it gave up that plan, and headed for the distant mountains.

  A shouting grew behind it. Red light flared. Searchlights began to sweep the sky. But this tumult died as the Beast drove farther and farther into the mountains. For a time, it must avoid men. It must concentrate on—food!

  The Beast liked the taste of flesh, but it also understood the rights of property. Animals were owned by men. Therefore they must not be molested. But plants—cellulose—almost anything was fuel for growth. Even the limbs of trees were digestible.

  So the colossus roamed the wilderness. Deer and cougars it caught and ate, but mostly vegetation. Once, it saw an airplane droning overhead, and after that more planes came, dropping bombs. But after sundown, the Beast managed to escape.

  It grew unimaginably. Some effect of the Sun’s actinic rays, not filtered as on cloud-veiled Venus, made the Beast grow far beyond the size it had been on Venus eons ago. It grew larger than the vastest dinosaur that ever stalked through the swamps of Earth’s dawn, a titanic, nightmare juggernaut out of the Apocalypse. It looked like a walking mountain. And, inevitably, it became clumsier.

  The pull of gravity was a serious handicap. Walking was painful work. Climbing slopes, dragging its huge body, was agony. No more, could the Beast catch deer. They fleetly evaded the ponderous movements.

  Inevitably, such a creature could not escape detection. More planes came, with bombs. The Beast was wounded again, and realized the necessity of communicating with Earthmen without delay. Maturity had been reached.

  There was something of vital importance that Earthmen must know. Life had been given to the Beast by Earthmen, and that was a debt to be repaid.

  The Beast came out of the mountains. It came by night, and traveled swiftly, searching for a city. There, it knew, was the best chance of finding understanding: The giant’s stride shook the earth as it thundered through the dark.

  On and on it went. So swift was its progress that the bombers did not find it till dawn. Then the bombs fell, and more than one found its mark.

  BUT the wounds were superficial. The Beast was a mighty, armored Juggernaut, and such a thing may not be easily slain. It felt pain, however, and moved faster. The men in the sky, riding their air-chariots, did not understand—but somewhere would be men of science. Somewhere . . .

  And so the Beast came to Washington.

  Strangely, it recognized the capitol. Yet it was, perhaps, natural, for the Beast had learned English, and had listened to Kirth’s televisor for months. Descriptions of Washington had been broadcast, and the Beast knew that this was the center of government in America. Here, if anywhere on Earth, there would be men who understood. Here, were the rulers, the wise men. And, despite its wounds, the Beast felt a thrill of exultation as it sped on.

  The planes dived thunderously. The aerial torpedoes screamed down. Crashing they came, ripping flesh from that titanic armored body.

  “It’s stopped!” said a pilot, a thousand feet above the Beast. “I think we’ve killed it! Thank God it didn’t get into the city—”

  The Beast stirred into slow movement. The fires of pain bathed it. The reptilian nerves sent their unmistakable messages to the brain, and the Beast knew it had been wounded unto death. Strangely it felt no hate for the men who had slain it.

  No—they could not be blamed. They had not known. And, after all, humans had taken the Beast from Venus, restored it to life, tended and fed it for months.

  And there was still a debt. There was a message that Earthmen must know. Before the Beast died, it must convey that message, somehow.

  The saucer eyes saw the white dome of the Capitol in the distance. There could be found science, and understanding. But it was so far away!

  The Beast rose. It charged forward. There was no time to consider the fragility of the man-made structures all around. The message was more important.

  The bellow of thunder marked the Beast’s progress. Clouds of ruin rose up from toppling buildings. Marble and granite were not the iron-hard stone of Venus, and a trail of destruction led toward the Capitol. The planes followed in uncertainty. They dared not loose bombs above Washington.

  Near the Capitol was a tall derricklike tower. It had been built for the accommodation of newscasters and photographers, but now it served a different purpose. A machine had been set up there hastily, and men frantically worked connecting power cables. A lens-shaped projector, gleaming in the sunlight, was swinging slowly to focus on the oncoming monster. It resembled a great eye, high above Washington.

  It was a heat ray.

  It was one of the first in existence, and if it could not stop the reptile, nothing could.

  Still the Beast came on. Its vitality was going fast, but there would still be time. Time to convey its message to the men in the Capitol, the men who would understand.

  FROM doomed Washington arose a cry, from ten thousand panic-strained throats. In the streets men and women fought and struggled and fled from the oncoming monster that towered against the sky, colossal and horrible.

  On the tower soldiers worked at the projector, connecting, tightening, barking sharp orders.

  The Beast halted. It paused before the Capitol. From the structure, men were fleeing . . .

  The fogs were creeping up to shroud the reptile brain. The Beast fought against increasing lassitude. The message—the message!

  A mighty forepaw reached out. The Beast had forgotten Earth’s gravity, and the clumsiness of its own gross bulk.

  The massive paw crashed through the Capitol’s dome!

  Simultaneously the heat ray flashed out blindingly. It swept up and bathed the Beast in flaming brilliance.

  For a heartbeat the tableau held, the colossus towering above the nation’s Capitol. Then the Beast fell . . .

  In death, it was terrible beyond imagination. The heat ray crumpled it amid twisted iron girders. The Capitol itself was shattered into utter ruin. For blocks buildings collapsed, and clouds of dust billowed up in a thick, shrouding veil.

  The clouds were blinding, like the mists that darkened the sight and the mind of the Beast. For the reptile was not yet dead. Unable to move, the life ebbing swiftly from it, the Beast yet strove to stretch out one monstrous paw . . .

  Darkly it though: I must give them the message. I must tell them of the plague that destroyed all life on Venus. I must tell them of the virus, borne on the winds, against which there is no protection. Out of space, it came to Venus, spores that grew to flowers. And now, the flowers grow on Earth. In a month, the petals will fall, and from the blossoms the virus will develop. And then,
all life on Earth will be destroyed, as it was on Venus, and nothing will exist oh all the planet but bright flowers and the ruins of cities. I must warn them to destroy the blooms now, before they pollinate . . .

  The mists were very thick now. The Beast shuddered convulsively, and lay still. It was dead.

  On a rooftop, a man and a woman watched from the distance. The man said: “God, what a horrible thing! Look at it lying there, like the devil himself.” He shuddered and glanced away.

  The white-faced woman nodded. “It’s hard to believe the world can hold so much horror, and yet can give us anything as beautiful as this . . .”

  Her slim fingers stroked the velvety petals of the blossom that was pinned to her dress. Radiant, lovely, the flower from Venus glowed in the sunlight.

  Already, pollen was forming within its cup.

  SCIENCE IS GOLDEN

  Pete Manx Visits the Days of Robin Hood and Proves That the Arrow Is Mightier Than the Sword!

  THE taxi screeched to a stop before Plymouth University. Pete Manx bounced out and thrust a bill at the driver. Up the steps he scuttled, casting a terrified glance down the street.

  He jammed his derby down on his bullet head and shot through the portals of learning, orange tie and brown-check coat-tails flapping in the breeze he created. His squat figure rocketed along the hall, caromed off a star quarterback, zoomed around a red-headed sophomore co-ed, and vanished into the laboratory of Dr. Horatio Mayhem.

  “Doc!” yelped Pete, skidding to a halt just short of a dangerous looking rheostat. “I done you some favors. Now you gotta help me. I gotta take a powder—fast!”

  Dr. Mayhem, conversing at the moment with a colleague, was lean and scrawny. Bending over like a startled stork, he scrutinized Pete as he might examine a strange growth on a dog’s hind leg.

  “Ah, Pete,” he said at last. “I thought you were in New York. What’s all this, about a powder? I’m not a physician, you know.”

  Mr. Manx clutched his friend’s lab smock despairingly. His face worked with anxiety. He looked somewhat like a schizophrenic gorilla.

  “You don’t get it,” he babbled. “I gotta scram. Blow. Go up the pipe.” Still Mayhem did not understand. He looked vaguely around in search of a possible pipe. Pete sought frantically to express himself.

  “I’ve got to-er-to go away,” he managed, in triumphant relief.

  Mayhem was not helpful. “All right, go away,” he said. “Good-by.”

  Pete was galvanized into a fresh outburst.

  “Doc, I’m on the spot. They got the finger on me. Moratti and his gang are out rodding for my hide!”

  The gentleman to whom Mayhem had been talking suddenly intervened. He was large, overwhelming, with pince-nez and a Captain Bligh stare.

  “Calm down and talk English!” he snapped. “Now, what is this all about?”

  PETE glared at Professor Aker, and was promptly glared at in return. They were not good friends, having carried on a feud that commenced in the days of the Roman Empire.

  Pete drew a deep breath, however, and glanced apprehensively at the door.

  “Well, I—uh—got in a crap game last night. With Moratti. See? And I cleaned him out. Made twenty-eight passes.” Pete had the grace to blush. “Took him for his roll, thirty-three slot machines, and a ten percent interest in his model airplane factory.”

  “Mile-away Moratti makes model airplanes?” Mayhem blurted.

  “Sure. A racketeer has to have a legit business, so’s he can show the Federal boys where he gets his dough. Moratti manufactures toy airplanes. But don’t ever let on you think it’s pantywaist. He’ll murder you.” Pete suddenly remembered his plight. “That reminds me. Last night, Moratti grabbed the dice after we was through and looked ’em over. They—” He stopped.

  “I see. I suppose Moratti found you’d been cheating.”

  “It’s a lie!” Pete said with righteous indignation. “It was a frameup. But Moratti’s after my scalp. A big shot like him could knock me off and get away with it, easy. So’s he trailed me out here an’ he’ll take me for a ride, unless—”

  “I’ll phone the police,” said Professor Aker.

  Pete emitted a short, sharp cry.

  “Keep the bulls out o’ this! Anyhow, it’s too late. Moratti’ll be here any minute, Only thing’ll save me is a hideout.”

  Mayhem considered, then raised his head brightly.

  “Doubtless you could elude Mr. Moratti for a time in the university’s halls.”

  “That ain’t the answer, Doc. You can fix me up with the best hideout ever thought of. Just send me back in time, like you done before. Lemme duck back a few hundred years till the heat’s off.”

  “What good would that do? You couldn’t stay in the past permanently.”

  “Look. You shoot my brain into time, don’t you? My body stays here, but I ain’t in it. So it looks like a stiff, don’t it? Okay. When Moratti shows, let him look at me. Tell him I had heart failure or something. If he figures I’ve kicked the bucket, he’ll give up. Catch?”

  “It might work,” said Mayhem slowly. “I can send you back in time. At least I can send back your consciousness, your id, as I’ve done before. My experiments have shown—”

  Pete wasn’t listening to the impromptu lecture. He was slyly inserting a small parcel into the coat pocket of Professor Aker, who didn’t notice.

  “The truth of certain broad principles. These things we may postulate—”

  “Attaboy, Doc.” Pete slid into one of two familiar seats that unpleasantly resembled electric chairs. “Turn on the juice.”

  MAYHEM made certain adjustments on the surprisingly uncomplicated time machine. Generators generated, converters converted; tubes glowed. The doctor continued his monologue, unaware of Aker’s gaping yawn of boredom.

  “First, our conception of time is the Einsteinian closed circle. It is, so to say, a wheel, with a central universal time consciousness as the hub. My apparatus frees an individual’s time sense, allowing it to travel to the central consciousness. From there it may travel outward again to any era, as on the spokes of a wheel.

  “The individual identity is bound by the time sense only while it inhabits a physical body. Once the identity is freed, it is magnetically attracted to the center of this cosmic wheel where time, as such, does not exist.

  “It cannot remain there, however. Impetus, or perhaps a psychic form of centrifugal force, sends it on to the rim of the wheel in another time sector. There it enters the mind of someone existing at that particular period. By creating this psychic energy field—”

  “Oh, come!” Aker said wearily. “I’ve heard all that before.”

  Mayhem proceeded to create the psychic energy field. High potential arcs crackled. The smell of ozone became strong.

  Pete Manx abruptly assumed a corpselike aspect. He ceased to breathe. His eyes bulged glassily. His jaw dropped toward the ghastly orange tie. His rotund body sagged in the chair.

  “Good,” said Mayhem, switching off the juice. “He’s back in some other period now.”

  The door opened. The diabolical Mr. Moratti entered. Moratti was dark and muscular and very competent looking. Someone in the past had tried to carve a Sanskrit inscription on his face with the point of a dagger. Dr. Mayhem grew hysterically cordial.

  “Mr. Moratti; I presume? The racketeer?”

  “I’m Moratti, model plane manufacturer, bud. See?” Moratti corrected the savant. “I’m looking for a tramp named Manx. See?”

  Mayhem had seen some tough customers in his time, especially that left tackle Plymouth had stolen right out from under Columbia’s nose. But they were sissies, he quickly decided, compared with Moratti. He stepped aside, revealing the body of Manx.

  “So-o,” growled Moratti. “You rat . . .”

  He paused, scrutinizing his intended victim. It was all too obvious that Pete Had become a singularly horrid looking cadaver.

  “Stiff, huh?” Moratti said with a frightful oath. He gl
ared at Mayhem and Aker. “Who bumped him?”

  Mayhem shrugged. “Plain case of suicide. I was experimenting with electric charges when this man burst in and jumped into the chair, which closed the circuit: Lord knows why. I was just going to call the coroner.”

  MORATTI grunted. Bending over cautiously, he stared probingly into the glassy eyes. With dangerous softness, he spoke.

  “Maybe. And then again, maybe you know this Manx heel. Maybe he talked. Maybe a lotta things.” He produced a squat blue-steel automatic, waved it menacingly. “This is a frisk.”

  He searched Mayhem first, finding nothing more significant than the less appetizing half of a dissected frog. But Aker’s coat pocket gave up something that made Moratti stiffen. A packet of banknotes emerged. Moratti thumbed through them rapidly.

  “So! Manx slipped you the dough, hey? Trying to pull a fast one? Or maybe you birds knocked off Manx for the dough, hey?”

  Aker’s beef-pudding face turned pale. He stuttered disclaimers. He hadn’t known the money was in his pocket. He was ready to assure—Moratti’s forefinger dug in Aker’s paunch.

  “Fat stuff, you’re comin’ with me. And you,” he glanced at Mayhem, “will keep your trap shut.”

  “D-do you intend to kill me?” Moratti smiled horribly. “Naa. Just teach you a lesson.” He drew a knife. “Not here, though. Some place where we won’t be disturbed.”

  Aker stared at the knife, his flesh almost visibly crawling. The prospect of being, carved into steaks was definitely unappealing. Though not usually a man of action, Aker this time made a quick decision.

  He reeled realistically, then threw himself back into the chair beside the one which held Pete Manx’ body. The surprised Moratti lunged, but Aker swiftly reached up and pulled the switch. There was a crackling flash of blue flame.

  Aker stiffened, relaxed into apparent lifelessness.

  Moratti, whose hand clutched the professor’s arm, suddenly learned what it is to be a conductor of electricity. He, too, took the charge. Desperately he fought to get free as he felt his senses whirling. Instinct pulled the trigger of his gun as his right arm flailed the air. Glass and metal smashed and rattled.