Fantastic Vignettes

by Jerry

  “Aw hell, Skipper,” Blake, Communications Officer and gin-rummy partner to the commander, said, “let’s quit for a while.” He flung the deck down on the small metal table.

  Franding shrugged: “O.K.” He glanced at the chronometer.

  “Almost watch-time for you, Andy, right?”

  Suddenly there was a pounding on the Skipper’s door.

  “Come in,” Franding said. Blake was shrugging into a heaving sweater. The door opened and young Peters rushed in. He was excited and nervous and his sense of discipline seemed lacking.

  “Sir,” he burst out, “I left Crane at the ’scope. Come on and take a look. Something funny’s going on. There’s a couple of cruisers off the starboard.” Franding catapulted to his feet and dashed through the door almost bowling over the sailor and closely followed by Blake.

  Three seconds later he had his face glued to the periscope. Through the water-washed tube he could see dimly. Not eight hundred yards away, two ships, one a cruiser, the other a small carrier, lay side by side. Even in the choppy weather and the poor visibility, Franding could see small boats plying between the craft, and he could make out dimly the outlines of a huge plane on the flush-decked carrier. There was no mistaking the nationality of the ships either.

  Admiral Senton’s words came through the back of his mind, even as he automatically stopped the motors of the sub: “Son,” the wise Old Man had said, “they may try to pull something. That’s why you’re on patrol. If you see anything funny, shoot first and ask questions afterward. There won’t be any trouble from this end—and if they fail, I doubt if they’ll say anything. We expect trouble—real trouble—three years from now—around seventy-one or seventy-two—when they get the hydrogen bomb . . .”

  For five minutes, Franding watched the tableau before him. He dared take no chances. It was clear what was going on. They were planning to throw an atomic bomb! That plane on the deck of the carrier already had its jets warming!

  Franding snapped into action. In less than two minutes everything was ready—the sub carried loaded torpedo tubes. In another minute they were on their way. For a moment Franding thought he was too late. The bomber was already starting its run on the carrier deck.

  As the torpedoes struck, a cluster of eight, a spread of horror, gusts of flame and explosion rocked through the water. Both carrier and cruiser were almost blown in half and were sinking Rapidly.

  Instantly Franding threw the sub to the surface. For the bomber was on the way, carrying its cargo of destruction toward sleeping Frisco! The sub emerged and crewmen poured from the hatches toward the guided missiles.

  In less than two minutes the deadly winged tubes were in the air. The burning and exploding remnants of the two enemy vessels were ignored although the men were manning the light guns in case they tried to board. Every eye was on the pair of missiles vanishing into the darkening skies.

  It took time for them to catch up—but finally they did. The sky burst into a hideous mushroom. The missiles had caught their prey.

  Franding went below followed by Blake and the men who had launched the missiles. His face was white and his hands were shaking. “Blake,” he said softly, “I’m sending a coded message. Then let’s have another game of gin, O.K.?”

  Blake’s jaunty manner resumed. “Right, skipper,” he said as if nothing had happened, “let’s relax for a while . . .”

  Drug-Eater Reception

  W.R. Chase

  THE ROCKET BASE, Base Three as it was called, jumped with activity the minute the news came in. Commander Phillips’ office was a milling beehive even as the coded message was released.

  “Freighter Z-234 coming in with a full load. Careful—crew may be hopped . . .” That cryptic message was enough. Phillips knew that the Jovian operator had spotted a loading of the violent virulent drug—paradane. Now it was up to him to confiscate the load—and crew. Sometimes, if crew members knew a cargo of the stuff was being carried, they got into it. Then it was too bad.

  Crisply Phillips snapped his commands. Base Three was not a military reception port and Phillips was more a customs inspector than anything else, but ten minutes after the message was received he had set his reception committee in order.

  There was a half hour to go yet before the freighter was due to dock, but Phillips wandered down to check the area. It had been carefully blocked off.

  “How is it?” Phillips asked Semmons, his lieutenant.

  “First rate, sir,” the other grinned behind the helmet of his heavy space suit, “we’ve got enough armament—all the portable stuff at least, to blow them all to hell, if they start anything.”

  Phillips quietly noted the portable flamers, heat rays of fierce intensity, their power cables snaking back to generators.

  “You’d better climb into armor, if you’re going to stay around,” Semmons suggested as he noticed his chief peering at Things he thought to himself.

  “Can’t pick them up, sir,” a radioman reported, “Looks nasty.”

  “They’re going to give us trouble,” Semmons said. “Good thing we’ve get enough men. Did you order the surrounding area cleared, Sir? It’s going to be hot in here shortly.”

  “Not a soul around,” Phillips nodded. He looked odd behind his stellite suit.

  The freighter appeared in the sky and within minutes it was warping into the dock on its underjets. With a heavy thud, slight for its massiveness it settled into its berth. For a moment nothing happened.

  “All members will come out with their hands up, unarmed. This is a formal patrol inspection,” Phillips said curtly over the ’phone. No answer.

  “Take half a dozen suited men and a cutt—Look out!” Phillips voice broke as the outer door swung open. No one appeared in it. The dock was in silence. Behind their projectors and portable apparatus the patrolmen crouched, waiting for what they suspected.

  Suddenly, as if ejected from a catapult a half dozen bodies appeared through the open airlock door. Heavily encumbered though they were by armor, they moved fast. Weapons were in their hands, and behind their helmets could be seen—if close—the drug-crazed eyes of total maniacal murderers. That was paradane.

  Their weapons flared, but the patrolmen were prepared. Coruscant blasts of heat beams seared down the length of the dock. High speed armor piercing projectiles coughed from mounted blasters. And the emerging men, frenzied as they were, and armored against the devil himself, died in the withering searing holocaust.

  There was no rhyme nor reason to their attack. But since when does a drug-eater know reason? They died hurriedly—it was better for them.

  In seven minutes, the dock area was a reeking shambles. Drug-eaters have a tenacity of life that requires reduction with nothing less than obliteration, and more than one patrolman still bears sears of the encounter.

  Finally it was finished. Phillips surveyed the scene of carnage and shook his head. “Poor devils,” he mused, and then he spoke into the coder-phone: “Z-284 received,” he said crisply, “crew destroyed . . .”

  Murder Moon

  John Weston

  BLACKIE FENTON crouched behind the outcropping of quartz, his feet ankle deep in the powdery pumice of the Lunar surface. His bulbuous helmet glittered strangely against the age-old shades and shadows. The fierce-beating sun left him untouched for the rocky protuberance sheltered as well as hid him.

  Blackie cradled the slim barrel of the rifle in his bulky plasto-gloves. A touch of the side button and a searing lance of flame would lash out from the muzzle—to crisp, Blackie thought, the tall figure of the man for whom he waited.

  Blackie licked his lips. Claren was carrying in the small case on his suit, better than three hundred thousand credits of natural diamond, the fruit of hard labor and luck. But Blackie was going to share it with Claren, even if the latter didn’t know it.

  He’d gun him down with a single stab of flame, take the flask, make the three hour trek back to Station three, and then grab ship to Earth. He was all set.
<
br />   Cautiously he peered over the rim of the outcropping—and then dropped back! Claren was coming. He could see the weird dusty puffs characteristic of walking on the powdery surface. He waited until the lone figure passed his observation point. As soon as Claren had gone by, Blackie brought up the flame rifle.

  He fired once, deliberately and accurately. The needle of death lashed out momentarily and its furious intensity was brighter than the sun.

  Claren dropped. Gleefully Blackie ran toward the prone figure. Blackie bent over the man. As he picked up the container and put it in a pouch at his side, the body jerked convulsively. In the back of his mind, he realized that the man was still in the throes of the death agony. Stonily, he turned after peering into the pouch to make sure the diamonds were there.

  Suddenly he turned. Blackie made one dive for the figure but it was too late. Claren had the flame rifle. The stud flared briefly and Blackie felt the lance, a blossom of exquisite agony, flare into his chest.

  Claren held both fingers against the twin holes in his suit. He could make it back to the post. Blackie hadn’t made sure. But Claren had. He locked both fingers of of one hand into the holes, and used the other to fire the rifle again. But Blackie. was through—he didn’t feel the secondary lashes . . .

  Visit in the Dawn

  Lee Owen

  KAH SAW the intrusion. He saw it from its inception. The simple mind encased in his Neanderthal’s skull didn’t comprehend it, but his eyes saw it.

  First the sky filled with roaring fire. Kah lay in his lair and trembled when that happened. For a moment fear prodded him and he half arose to flee, but the innate sense of curiosity overcame the fear—especially since no food seemed involved here, no food that could bite back!

  Nevertheless, Kah lay there trembling, his powerful limbs twitching with the feeling of terror, yet he followed the whole affair. The roar and flame increased. Kah gripped his clumsy stone-headed spear tighter. Behind his sloping forehead, the mind churned to rudimentary reason. What manner of strange beast was this which appeared with blasting fires in the heavens?

  The very flame enveloped the earth a thousand paces from Kah and then miraculously the flaming ceased and as if by some strange magic, Kah’s eyes saw a large spherical boulder as big around as two men’s height. But this boulder was shiny and smooth. Even at this distance the sharp eyes of Kah noticed these details.

  The fear drained from Kah with the fire. There was nothing to be afraid of. He started to walk toward the strange boulder.

  Abruptly he stopped and flung his naked length to the ground; as if to press out a hiding place for himself. But the vegetation concealed him adequately.

  Kah watched a strange opening appear in the side of the boulder, and from it emerge three strange creatures who walked on four legs but whose shape and skins were like those of Chah the Big Glider—the reptile Kah hated so much.

  The Neanderthal watched silently for a. long time and nothing more happened. The strange creatures disappeared over a ridge to the south of the boulder and they did not return at once. Kah ventured nearer the boulder, his curiosity now bold and excited. He would touch the boulder. And he did.

  He jumped back in alarm at the warmth that came from it. He peered in its opening and the profusion of weird things made no impression on him. He saw nothing but shiny “stone”.

  Bold now that nothing untoward had happened, Kah tried to crawl into the opening but he ceased after once almost getting stuck. He stuck in the stone-tipped point of his spear, and probed around the interior of the boulder. At first nothing happened.

  Suddenly the spear head contacted something inside and the weapon was wrenched from Kah’s grasp as the boulder shot skyward! Kah screamed with terror and fell back. He watched the boulder rise into the sky, flames enveloping its bottom. Then in a gigantic curve, it arced ever and disappeared far away into the sea—far out into the watery surface.

  Frightened Kah stared at the spot where the boulder had vanished, Suddenly he was aware of the three strange things. From the tentacle of one of them shot an unbearable light—and Kah died, rooted to the spot from which he had inadvertently sent the strangers’ boulder . . . and the strangers did not live long after . . .

  The Crystalline Beast

  Lee Owen

  IF YOU’RE ever in the mood to while away a Sunday afternoon, and you’re tired of the tourist Luna runs, or the video becomes a little boring, why don’t you grab a rocket to Stellarport in Washington? The Zoological Gardens there are now exhibiting that singular Plutonian specimen, the Ice-Beast, the only one so far captured. While it is of prime interest to scientists, the public is permitted to see the strange creature on Sundays.

  And it is strange. Biologists and biophysicists have known for a long time that there was a very broad line between so-called “organic” and inorganic matter. The dividing line between living and non-living things is by no means very sharp. Interplanetary exploration broadened this idea. Until the capture of the Ice-Beast, nothing so odd had been encountered.

  When you step into the larger wing of file building which houses the monster, you’ll file past a long heavy quartz window, and unless it’s feeding time you won’t see a great deal. But if you’re lucky you’ll see the “thing” being fed with heat and it’s a weird sight indeed.

  The Farnsworthy Expedition caught the Creature on Pluto. The capture cost two lives incidentally, the lives of two of the crew who were so unfortunate as to let the crystalline mass engulf them for a moment.

  The Zoological Gardens has had a huge refrigerated room built in to provide the proper environment for the monster. And as you walk by it, you see a crystalline mass, lying sluggish and inert in one corner. It weighs thirty tons and with the density of water, it is of good size indeed. It should have the density of water—for it is water!

  Yes, the living specimen of water consists of large ice-crystals with some strange binding forces and some weird nervous system. It moves slowly, crackling and hissing over the insulated floor and It appears incapable of action—that is, until it senses heat. Then it bursts into furious activity hurling its ponderous bulk hither and yon in an inconceivably vicious fashion, seeking out the heat-source that it may drain it. How the nervous system of the Ice-Beast absorbs this, is unknown, but in some fashion the energy is absorbed and stored. It uses energy at a high or low temperature.

  It is known that great numbers of these creatures occupy the frozen Plutonian plains and that they were the cause of the loss of three expeditions to the planet back in ninety-three. Whether or not the vast mineral deposits of the planets will be utilizable will depend to a great extent on what scientists learn about destroying these weird intelligences—for they have an intelligence of a rudimentary sort. More important is what will be learned about the nature of life.

  So make the jaunt It’s worth while. And when that sleepy mass gazes at you with its many-faceted points, think that sight is focused on you—believe me, you’ll be chilled . . .

  The Chill

  Lee Owen

  I’VE KNOCKED around the System most of my life and I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve even made a sub-etheric blast to Antares—the eleventh planet of their system. My profession is engineering—good practical engineering. Give me the tools and the men and I’ll build whatever you name—a space-ship or a toothpick. The point I’m making is that I’ve seen just about everything strange under a dozen suns. And somebody always asks me what my toughest job was or what the queerest thing I saw, was.

  Well, it’s easy to answer that one. I was in charge of the reception committee for the Zanides from Vega! You’ll ask right away—“an engineer on the reception committee? That’s ridiculous!” Maybe you don’t remember their visit. If you did you wouldn’t wonder. The Zanides are the strangest people—if I can use the word—who live in our Universe.

  The reason they impress me so, is because I had to get up living quarters for them. We located them in the desert Co-o on Mars about thirty kilo
meters from Aren City. This was so that they could be close enough for communication with the Council—and far enough away from heat!

  The Zanides have a metabolic system based on an extremely low-level of energy. They are in effect little more than thoughts. But they are material beings and they can’t stand high energy levels in any form. Heat, light, electricity—you name it—it’s too rough for them.

  So they told me to build living quarters for these creatures. And I did. I built an enormous refrigerator—actually less than a refrigerator than an insulated box. It was the size of a small shipyard it seemed, before I was finished, but its walls were seventy feet thick!

  And it was in here that the Zanides lived and ate—those words just don’t seem to fit. They existed in the mighty tomb. We allowed no one, we allowed nothing to come within range of them. They would have liked to locate themselves in space but the authorities wanted them on the planet, so that’s why we went all out to make them comfortable.

  You couldn’t light a match within ten kilometers of them for fear they complain. Of course they couldn’t help it. It was their nature. Any sort of an energy puke would cause them pain. Cosmic radiation they absorbed but anything coarser, they detested.

  Well, as you know, their visit worked out well—it’s from them we got the thought-screens and a lot about telepathic communication systems. But that gigantic tomb still stands in the Martian desert. I wonder if we’ll ever get another visit from them? I doubt it. They may like us—but a people who have molten fluids in their bodies are too much for the Zanides!

  Android Revolt!

  Lee Owen

  HENRY CARLTON sweated over the paperwork. “Let’s see,” he muttered to himself, “four point oh six eight, the sixth root, um, um . . .” The slide rule flew beneath his fingers. The research was progressing nicely. Soon he’d be able to build the counter and detector. He’d have to talk with Lesser. Lesser was the director of the Labs.