"Of course not," Trent replied. "I'm a scientist, just like you are. I don't know where it came from. In the absence of proof, I assume nothing. Just speculating, that's all. Once you see it, you may be moved to some speculation of your own."
Trent would have been a world famous geologist, had there been such a thing as a world famous geologist. He was one of the most respected men in his field, with several degrees and publications to his credit. Though his fame did not extend very far in the wider world, he was one of the most prominent citizens of the little village of Grover's Mill.
The woods thinned out and as the two men followed the path to the right, Lash could see people milling around near the pond. An area at the edge of the water was illuminated by two or three portable spotlights on tall metal stalks. The lights were on either side of a large piece of olive drab canvas stretched across some scaffolding. The intent was, obviously, to prevent anyone from seeing what was behind it.
Officers from the sheriff's department and the New Jersey State Police greeted Trent and Lash.
"Wait until you get a close look at it, Lash," said the professor. He turned to one of the uniformed men and asked him to turn the spotlights directly on the object.
The two men walked around the edge of the canvas and Lash got his first look at the mysterious cylinder that had caused so much excitement. His gray eyes narrowed and he focused his attention to the upended cylinder sticking out of the water, perhaps six feet from the shore. It was impossible to tell how large it was, since there was no way to determine how deep it had sunk into the mud. The visible portion was about twelve feet high and several yards wide. He noticed a small block of peculiar characters on the metallic skin. They did not belong to any earthly alphabet he knew of.
"Any witnesses to this thing's arrival?" he asked.
Trent nodded. "Abner Trowel saw it land. That is to say, he saw it come down, then lost sight of it behind the trees. He was walking along the road back there. He heard the splash, though, and ran out here to have a look."
"When was this?" Lash asked.
"Right at midnight. Abner is absolutely certain of the time because he always starts back home from the saloon at fifteen to twelve, and it takes him exactly fifteen minutes to reach this point."
"Really? Abner's a man of regular habits, is he?"
"Indeed. They say you can set your watch by his comings and goings. Never deviates by more than a minute."
"Interesting," Lash said thoughtfully.
"Abner said the thing appeared to be solid when he saw it in the water. No seams or anything. When the sheriff came back out with him, they found this hatch standing open at the top, as you can see. There are a number of what might be footprints on the shore."
"And you see this as some kind of craft?" Lash said. "Something someone could have used to travel here from... somewhere?"
"I don't see why not," replied Professor Trent. "Have a look inside."
Lash waded out and took hold of the grappling line someone had attached to the lip of the hatch. A couple of deputies in hip boots helped him steady himself, then he grabbed the rope and hauled his tall lanky form hand-over-hand up the side of the thing. He crawled over and found some foot and hand holds on the inner wall of the thing. Getting a firm grip, he removed a small flashlight from his jacket and switched it on.
"See anything?" came Trent's voice.
"Well," Lash said, "there's a lot of equipment in here. Electrical stuff... Can't make sense out of it, though."
It looked like someone had raided an electrical lab somewhere and dumped the loot into this cylinder. Wriggling down a bit further, Lash became aware of a very faint sound, like the ticking of a watch or a small clock. It seemed to be coming from behind a panel affixed to the interior wall. He got closer and looked over the edge of the panel.
There was a small red light flashing slowly, with an interval of three seconds between blinks. Lash had a bad feeling about it. As if in answer to his unspoken concern, the light stopped blinking and remained steady, and the ticking sound slowed down. He scrambled back up the interior wall and heaved himself through the trapdoor.
"Get away from here," he shouted "Bomb! Everyone clear out! Now!" Lash tumbled from the lip of the cylinder and splashed down into the pond. He waded swiftly to shore and started running toward the trees, urging everyone else to follow suit.
"Don't stop!" he yelled, "Keep on going, as fast and as far as you can!"
They had made it a few yards into the woods when they heard an earsplitting screech from behind the stretched canvas. This was followed by a brief silence.
Then the cylinder exploded.
The blast was tremendous. It shook the ground. The men saw a huge gout of flame rushing skyward from behind the canvas, then the barrier itself was blown away.
An hour later, firefighters and a National Guard unit were on the scene. The danger seemed to be over now. The assembled company discovered that the upper part of the cylinder had been completely obliterated.
"Well," said a National Guard captain, after he and his men had secured and searched the area, "that thing is a total loss. Never seen a blast quite like that." He scratched his head. "Very hot, very intense, but contained. Melted the capsule, and pretty much vaporized the contents. The lower part sank down into the mud so deep I don't think we'll ever be able to pull it out."
Lash said goodbye to Trent and returned to Manhattan, turning the events over in his mind and getting nowhere.
Chapter Two
THE FIGHTING BEGINS
As Lynn Lash grabbed a couple hours of sleep, the world turned...
The story of the New Jersey cylinder hit the streets at noon, in the form of a special extra rushed out by the New York Banner. Unlike the Banner's customary reportage, the article stuck close to the facts, such as they were. Crews from the New Jersey State Police, the National Guard, and the United States Army had combed the area, collecting as much of the wreckage as they could.
By 7 p.m. that day, Lash was awake and hard at work in his laboratory in a swank Park Avenue apartment building. He was attempting to analyze a few fragments of the exploded cylinder that he had brought home with him. There didn't seem to be anything particularly extraordinary about the material.
He was preparing a sample for spectroscopic analysis when Rickey Dean, the pert young woman who served as Lash's secretary and girl of all work, stuck her head in the door.
"Phone call for you," she said. "It's the mayor. He sounds upset."
"What else is new?" Lash asked as he stepped out into the hall to the telephone table and picked up the receiver.
"Mister Mayor," Lash said smoothly, "what can I do for you?"
The mayor did not sound particularly cordial. "You can help catch these bastards from outer space," he barked.
"Bastards from outer space?" Lash repeated, wondering if he had heard right.
"That's what I said!" the mayor squawked. "Haven't you been listening to the news?"
"I've been busy in the lab."
"Well, allow me to enlighten you."
The mayor had quite a tale.
Shortly after 6 p.m., a group of very strange individuals invaded the main branch of the Crittenden National Bank in Downtown Manhattan. Witness accounts were vague and contradictory, but they all agreed on one thing: The bandits had not been human.
The marauders were dressed in purple jumpsuits and had faces like something out of a nightmare; reptilian creatures, with green skin and strange features. Six of these extraordinary beings had piled into the bank through the front entrance, brandishing strange weapons and jabbering in some indecipherable language. All of the customers were gone by this time, so the only witnesses were bank employees. The creatures herded them together in the middle of the room and proceeded to loot all the teller drawers.
All of the people who witnessed the robbery were suffering from shock and were taken to Bellevue Hospital.
"I'll be damned," Lash said as the mayor fini
shed his tale, "That certainly is odd. What would you have me do?"
"Investigate," the mayor sputtered. "That's what you do, isn't it?"
"Well," Lash said wryly, "at least this one involves a crime."
Chapter Three
STRANGE VISITORS
Lash wanted to talk with the witnesses before he did anything else. On the way to the hospital, with Rickey at the wheel, Lash noticed an extraordinary number of newsboys on the streets, all of them doing a brisk business. Most of them were hawking copies of the New York Banner. He instructed Rickey to pull to the curb so he could buy one.
As Rickey put the car into motion again, Lash sat back and glanced over the front page story. It was by Jack Caldwell, a Banner reporter who was familiar to Lash. As he read through the story, a couple of odd details jumped out at him-- things he knew that no reporter should have known. Had Caldwell been spying on the proceedings somehow? Or was there a leak?
There was an editorial on page five in which J. Tyler Amsterdam, the flamboyant publisher of the Banner, called upon the Governor of New Jersey and the Congress of the United States to undertake a full investigation of the "weird visitor" that had splashed down in the Grover's Mill pond before exploding. Amsterdam suggested that the explosion may have been the result of an ill-advised action by the U. S. military and raked them over the coals for foolishly risking an "interplanetary war."
*****
When they arrived at the hospital, Lash and Rickey were met in the lobby by Detective Sam Casey.
"You can go up and talk to them," Casey said. "But I don't think you'll get anything sensible. All I get is a bunch of crap out of a Flash Rogers story. Whatever the mayor told you, it couldn't possibly prepare you for what these people have to say."
"I think you mean Flash Gordon. Or Buck Rogers,"
"Well, some of us have full time jobs and can't sit around and memorize the comic strips."
Lash laughed. "Settle down, Casey. Just making a gentle correction, that's all."
They rode the elevator to the third floor, where the male bank employees had been placed in a large ward. Several of the patients-- all of whom seemed perfectly ambulatory and physically uninjured-- were giving statements to police stenographers. Casey looked the room over and spotted a patient who was not thus occupied. He approached the man and introduced himself and Lynn Lash.
The man said he was Gregory Watts, a teller trainee. He seemed twitchy and ill at ease, but Lash supposed that was to be expected.
"So, what did you see?" Lash asked.
Watts took a deep breath.
"They were..." he began, and then fell silent, groping for words. "Well, they were about the size and shape of an ordinary human. About six feet tall. Two arms, two legs, and so on. But their faces... They were more like lizards than anything."
"Couldn't these faces have been masks?" Lash asked.
"Oh, no sir." Watts said adamantly. "They weren't masks. Of that I am absolutely certain. I mean, you can tell, you know? Masks are just... masks. They don't move like a real face does, you know what I mean? I could see the pores in their skin and the muscles underneath. No way to fake that, not up close."
"You got a good look, then?"
"Oh, yeah." The man nodded his head. "The whole thing seemed to take a long time. Like it went on for hours. They say it was only twenty minutes, but that... That can't be right. I don't know, maybe those creatures can warp time somehow. I once read a story where something like that happened. Anyhow, I had time to look and look and look at those creatures. Study them. I know what I saw. It wasn't masks or makeup. It wasn't human beings."
Lash and Casey interviewed several more of the witnesses. He requested and received permission to take several items of clothing that the witnesses wore during the robbery.
As they exited the ward, Lash said to Casey, "Supposing this has something to do with that thing in New Jersey, and further supposing that those creatures came here in it from outer space-- Which I am not-- why in the hell would someone from outer space want to steal earth money?"
"Who knows?" Casey said with a shrug. "Maybe they're testing us. You know, seeing how we defend ourselves. Who the hell knows what men from Mars might do?"
"Nobody," admitted Lash. "But I know a whole lot about what men from Earth will do. I just can't puzzle out how or why. Yet."
*****
Casey, Lash and Rickey rode the elevator back down to the lobby. No sooner had they stepped out of the car than a reporter buttonholed Casey.
"Dammit, Detective," griped the man, "they ain't letting anybody from the press in to talk to these people."
"There's a reason for that," Casey snarled.
"That crumb Caldwell from the Banner scooped us on the cylinder, and I can't weasel any info on that out of anyone. And now this! This is America, you know. We got a free press."
"Go write to your congressman," Casey said sourly. Murphy snarled and went back to his chair in the lobby.
"Too bad Al Cord's out of town," Lash lamented, referring to the journalist from the Times-Dispatch who often assisted him. "He might be able to help me make sense of this business."
"What does he know about spacemen?" Casey wanted to know.
"Nothing, but he knows plenty about newspapers and reporters."
Lash did not elaborate, but when he got back to his headquarters, he got on the phone and placed a call to Al Cord in California. The two men conversed for half an hour, and when he hung up, Lynn Lash felt slightly more enlightened.
Chapter Four
THE POISON RAY
The following day, things turned deadly.
The queer marauders showed up at one of the city's largest jewelry stores. Again, they struck shortly after closing time, when the place was almost empty of customers. Only two remained on the premises, along with fourteen of the store's employees.
Of the sixteen people on the premises, only three survived the incident.
This time, a human being accompanied the “spacemen”. He seemed to be in charge, according to the witnesses. He told his green-faced companions what to take and what to leave behind. And then he very crisply and very coldly ordered them to kill.
Lash got word from the mayor's office shortly after the crime had taken place and headed out to the jewelry store.
Lash parked near the building, having flashed his ID card to the officers guarding the perimeter. Ambulance attendants were still trundling sheeted corpses out to the small fleet of ambulances idling at the curb. Entering the lobby of the store, Lash spotted Casey, who had herded the survivors together in a corner. Lash joined them.
"The human guy told us he was gonna 'make an example' out of us," one of the men was saying. "The green monsters opened up with some kind of weird guns. They didn't shoot bullets. It was just beams of light, like really powerful flashlights. Then, pretty soon, everybody started... Aw, God, they're all dead." The man broke down sobbing. "Just yesterday there was such a nice birthday party for one of the bookkeepers. And now..."
"This was yesterday?" Lash asked. "What time?"
The witness gave him an odd look and said, "Just after closing."
"Did you notice anything unusual at the birthday party?"
"No. I wasn't there. I just started back today after being sick for two weeks. My God, how am I going to break this news to Margaret?"
"Who is Margaret?" Casey asked.
"One of the clerks, Margaret Dell. She's out sick today. Probably caught the same bug I had. I tried calling her, but I didn't get any answer."
"Casey," Lash said. "I have a strong feeling we ought to go talk with her."
They got her address from the files, and Casey and Lash drove out to Margaret Dell's house in an unmarked police car.
They got no answer to their repeated insistent knocking.
Casey," said Lash, "I have a very bad feeling about this. Let’s knock the door down."
They forced the door with only a modicum of damage, hoping Miss Dell wouldn't be
upset. They needn't have worried. Margaret Dell, a petite fortyish woman, was dead, lying prone on the floor of her living room. Thin trickles of blood seeped from her eyes and nose.
Chapter Five
SKIRMISH
The men quickly searched the little house and found no trace of any intruders. They found nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. There were no obvious signs of forced entry anywhere on the premises.
"She can't have been dead for very long," Casey said. "She's still a bit warm. And look at that blood! The poison ray victims had the same thing. God, what happened here, anyhow? Did those... whatever the hell they are, come here and use the ray on her?"
Lash collected a couple cc's of Margaret Dell's blood in a syringe from a medical kit he carried in his car. Then he went directly to his apartment and spent a couple of hours in the lab with the woman's blood. He didn't learn anything definite, but he noticed a few things that were very suggestive. He broke off his analysis and went to the phone.
He called the jewelry store. A police officer answered the phone. Lash identified himself and asked if The man he and academy had spoken to was still there at the scene. He was, and a moment later, Lash was speaking with him.
"Was this birthday party catered?" he asked.
"Why, yes it was."
"By whom?"
The witness gave Lash the name of the catering firm. He scribbled the information on a slip of paper and handed it to Rickey, who was sticking close to headquarters, sleeping in the guest room, for the duration of this peculiar emergency.
"Could you check on this for me, please? I'm going to be busy in the lab for a while."
"Sure thing."
Lash returned to his lab, where he eagerly pounced on the shirt he'd brought back from the hospital. He was in the habit of jumping back and forth between problems when he had more than one on his plate. It kept his mind nimble, he believed. He was making progress when Rickey returned.
The New Adventures of Lynn Lash Page 5