20 Million Miles to Earth

by Henry Slesar

  “But why? Why? What makes it so important to you ?”

  “I don’t know,” Calder said. “It was like a preview of Hell up there. Great dust clouds, hot orange sky, mist, burning desert. And then that poison in the air, the choking, the pain in the lungs—”

  “How terrible!”

  “Terrible and wonderful!” Calder said. “I never experienced such pain or such fear in my life, Marisa. But I’d go again, if they asked me. And I’d go to Mars—to Neptune— to Jupiter—to the stars!”

  She was shaking her head sadly.

  “I don’t think much of your dream, Colonel. It’s like a crazy thirst that can’t be quenched. What can such trips bring you ? More death ? More creatures like that—”

  “It makes no difference!”

  “It does!” she said angrily. “With such an imperfect world here—what gives us the right to seek others? What can we bring them?”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I do! You men have given up on this world of ours. That’s why you look up at space and have your crazy dreams! You don’t know how to live on Earth. You kill each other, torture, betray—” Her voice was shrill. “So you want escape, Colonel. That’s the real truth, isn’t it? Escape from yourselves!”

  Surprisingly, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Marisa!”

  “Oh, let me alone! Go out and kill your poor beast. Show it how well we behave on our planet. Shoot it with your guns—destroy it with your bombs—”

  Panic flared. Would the chains hold?

  * * *

  “Hey, hey,” he said gently, his arms closing around her comfortingly. “Take it easy, almost-a-doctor. Why so upset?”

  She put her head against his shoulder.

  “Listen,” Calder told her, “I’m the last guy in the world that wants to kill the poor thing. It was harmless on its own world. I want to keep it alive, so we can find out how it breathes—how it can survive on Venus when we can’t.”

  She dried her eyes, and moved away from him.

  “Your humanity is touching—”

  “Whose being bitter now?”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked up and smiled wanly. “This— this is very unprofessional behavior.”

  He laughed, and put his arms towards her again.

  “Bob!”

  They looked towards the door. Dr. Uhl was in the doorway, his face flushed, his hand clutching the notebook they had taken from the dead hands of Dr. Sharman. Marisa’s grandfather was behind him, his face reflecting the scientist’s excitement.

  “What is it?” Calder said.

  “Something I found in Sharman’s notebook. Look— he wrote that the basic diet of the creatures is sulfur— raw sulfur!”

  “Yes, I remember reading that. But what’s the point?”

  Dr. Leonard stepped forward. “There are rich sulfur beds in Sicily. Not many kilometers from here—”

  “From here?”

  “Yes! At the base of Mount Etna!”

  Calder’s fist struck his palm with enthusiasm. “Of course! We’ll scour that mountain area in the morning! If the creature’s there—we’ll capture him!”

  Dr. Leonardo spoke to Dr. Uhl. “At that time, Doctor, I would consider it an honor to extend the facilities of the Gardino Zoologica in Roma for its observation and examination.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Leonardo.”

  A new voice came from the doorway.

  “That will not be necessary, gentlemen.”

  They looked at the stony face of the Commissario of Police.

  “There will be no further attempts to capture that monster alive.”

  “I don’t understand,” Calder said.

  “I must inform you that there is no longer cooperation between us. The monster must be destroyed! It has badly maimed one man—it may kill others. My duty is first to the welfare of my people. A poor second to contribute to such outlandish scientific investigations.” He bowed. “I am sorry, gentlemen. But this is how it must be.”

  He turned to the door again.

  “Please Signore Commissario!” Calder said loudly. “Wait a minute! You can’t

  He followed the police chief outside, and saw the Commissario already entering the jeep with three of his Carbinieri. With a grind of its motor, the, vehicle started down the road, heading back for Gerra.

  The second jeep was quickly occupied by another of the Sicilian policeman, and Calder, his face livid, jumped to stop him from turning the key in the ignition.

  “You got a passenger, pal!”

  The policeman shook his head violently, and Calder pushed him off the wheel. He staggered out of the door and almost fell to the ground.

  “Dr. Uhl!” Calder shouted. The scientist came over at a trot and leaped into the seat beside the Colonel.

  “Fermati!” the Carbinieri cried, reaching for his gun as the jeep drove off. “Fermati!” He was frantic with rage.

  He lifted the gun in the air, but Marisa was behind him. Her arm went out and pulled the weapon down. He looked at her in disgust, and then ruefully put the gun back into the holster.

  Dr. Leonardo came to his granddaughter’s side.

  “Such a violent man,” he said softly. “This Colonel Calder. This is a passion with him.”

  “Yes,” Marisa said, staring down the road. “A passion . . .”

  CHAPTER VII Terror Brought to Bay

  THERESA slammed the dish of pasta in front of her husband, and Ignacio regarded the food with eyes stupefied by wine.

  “What is the matter?” she said shrilly. “Your big stomach has no more room ? It has been drowned in Marsala?”

  “Not hungry,” Ignacio muttered. “Give it to the pigs.”

  “It is for the pig. My pig. My big pig Ignacio!”

  She put her fists on her wide hips and glowered at him. “Perhaps if you went out and worked all day, like all other men, perhaps then you would have some appetite in the evenings!”

  He poured himself another red tumblerful of the wine and put the glass to his lips. It was the final straw for Theresa, and Ignacio knew what was to come next. She stomped to the door of their cabin and flung it open.

  “Out, pig!” she cried. “Out with the other wild beasts!”

  He rose wearily, accustomed to this routine. His legs shuffled across the floor, his hand scratching lazily at his round paunch. At the doorway, he bowed courteously to his wife and mumbled:

  “Good night, Signora.”

  “Good-bye.”

  She slammed the door after him, and immediately set up a wail inside the cabin, loud enough for him, the pigs, and neighbors a mile away to hear. It failed to change Ignacio’s stubbornly vague expression. He yawned widely and moved off down the road, heading for Louisa’s and more wine.

  It was a fine, bright night, with a full moon and many stars. He liked looking at the stars, especially when he was carrying wine. They blinked and shifted so prettily under the effects of it. Ah, Marsala was wonderful! He could see twice as many stars as the abstainers. Was that not in itself a very good reason for drinking?

  Ignacio felt very proud of this clever reasoning, and he began to hum a cheerful song as he trudged down the road towards the village tavern.

  But after a while, the long walk began to tire him. He sighed, and sat down on a rock to think things over. The wine felt warm inside him, and he closed his eyes in an invitation to a time of sweet slumber.

  The sound that awoke him was a growl.

  “Yes, yes, Theresa,” he said thickly. “I am going now, right now.”

  Still the growl came, and Ignacio pried open his eyes and looked around him.

  “Theresa?” he said.

  Then he realized he was in the woods, and that the growl had come from some animal thing. He chuckled to himself, thinking how he would tell the men at Louisa’s of his humorous error.

  He raised himself from the rock.

  The growl became a roar!

  Ignacio turned his hea
d swiftly this way and that, until he saw the thing moving among the trees. He rubbed his eyes and tried to erase the image. But the more he rubbed, the more the vision seemed real.

  “I see it,” he said to himself. “But naturally, of course, I do not see it. No one can see such things in Sicily. Therefore, I cannot see it.”

  The thing in the woods came closer, and its unbelievable head poked from the underbrush and stared at him.

  Ignacio’s legs began to tremble.

  “I do not see it,” he said aloud. “I do not see it. But I am afraid it sees me.”

  The thing’s jaws parted, and the sound that came from its scaly throat made Ignacio shriek in terror. He leaped into the air and turned his back on the creature. Then his legs, which had not moved with such speed since he was a boy, now remembered how to travel. They carried him back up the road, pumping furiously in an overwhelming desire to get away from the thing that was not to be seen in Sicily.

  He reached the doorway of his cabin in a fifth of the time he had taken to reach the rock in the road. He yanked open the door, shut and bolted it behind him, and stood panting against it with opened mouth and fear-filled saucer eyes.

  “What is it?” his wife said, pausing at her meal, the pasta still dripping from her fork.

  “A beast—a thing—a demon—” Ignacio gasped.

  “You are crazy. Crazy with drink!”

  “I swear to you! A dragon in Sicily! Fifty feet high! Breathing flames! I saw it with my own eyes!”

  She snorted, and continued to eat. “Wine and an empty stomach,” she said contemptuously.

  Ignacio looked suddenly uncertain.

  Then his face became determined. He stalked over to the table and lifted the half-full bottle of Marsala. He took it over to the wash-basin and poured the contents down the drain.

  “Never again!” he said forcefully.

  Theresa clapped her hands in happiness. “Ignacio—you mean this?”

  “Yes! I mean it, Theresa! Never again buy such cheap wine. From now on—only the best!”

  General McIntosh scowled at the rude flooring of the Commune di Gerra. Every now and then, the striding feet of the Commissario of the Gerra Police crossed his line of vision, and his scowl grew broader.

  Beside him, the Italian Government official, Signore Contino, watched the Commissario’s restless pacing with grave patience.

  “This is my position, Signore Contino.”

  The police chief mopped at his brow, and his .hands gestured in the air.

  “The safety of the people in this district is my affair— my primary affair—as long as I am Commissario.” He stopped in front of Contino. “It may be that you will wish me replaced. That, of course, is your privilege. But until then, I intend to function as Commissario.”

  Signore Contino clucked.

  “You are an efficient man, Signore. A man of sincerity. There can be no question of replacing you.”

  “This Colonel Calder,” the Commissario said, his teeth clenched. “Never have I met a man more stubborn. Even when this creature from Hell was tearing at the flesh of an old man before his eyes—he worried for the creature’s safety. The creature’s safety. When our bullets failed to kill the beast, I would swear to the saints that the man was happy! I am not accustomed to such cold-bloodedness, Signore Contino. Even in the days of the fascisti—” His face went dark at that memory.

  General McIntosh cleared his throat, as if in preamble.

  “You’re not being wholly fair, Commissario,” he said quietly. “I won’t try and explain Colonel Calder to you. But you must understand what this man has lived through. You must understand the strange need that drives him. He feels the importance of our explorations in space with all the fervor of a crusade. Maybe he’s a fanatic; I don’t know myself. But I do know that without that creature from Venus for us to study—alive—the possibilities of future explorations become dim. It was tough enough to make the first voyage. As for the second—with such disastrous results, with so many men dead—public opinion is not going to be on our side. Things are bad and could get worse.”

  “These are deep problems,” Contino said sadly.

  “Too deep, perhaps,. for me!” The Commissario stepped in front of the General. “I must tell you, General, that at daybreak, I intend to use every means at my disposal to hunt down and destroy that creature before it actually kills someone.”

  “You can’t!”

  They looked towards the doorway at the man who had spoken. Colonel Calder’s face was wrathful as he strode into the room, followed by Dr. Uhl.

  “Bob—” the General said.

  “He can’t do it, General! Not before—”

  “Bob!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “May I remind you that the Commissario is a Sicilian police chief, performing’ the duties of his office?”

  “Yes, sir, but—” Calder’s face changed as a thought struck him. “Would there be any objection if Dr. Uhl and I tried to track the animal and take it alive?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Uhl said eagerly. “Before the Commissario has it destroyed—”

  McIntosh shrugged. “No objection from me. But from what I’ve heard of the beast, it won’t be that easy.” He looked at Signore Contino.

  “What do you think, Signore ?”

  Contino said: “How do you propose to do this? How will you go about it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Calder said eagerly. “I remembered something we found out about the creatures, by accident. We had set up power lines outside the ship, and one of the beasts got careless and tried to chew them up. They weren’t high-voltage lines, but the charge was still strong enough to stun the creature into senselessness. That means they’re extremely susceptible to electric shock. Controlled voltage can paralyze it. If we could get us two helicopters and a squad of armed paratroopers, we might be able to drop an electrically-charged wire net on the beast.”

  He looked back and forth at the General and Signore Contino. “All I ask is permission to try.”

  Contino pursed his lips.

  “If it can be done—before human life is threatened— then the Italian Government has no objection.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  McIntosh touched his arm. “You’ll have your ’copters first thing in the morning ..

  The giant whirlybird, its motors roaring and its rotors spinning, pushed itself off the air strip and hung like some peculiar insect about eight feet in the air.

  The crew chief, a thick-shouldered Sergeant with a grinning face black with grease, ducked beneath the upraised fuselage and beckoned for his men to follow. They came on the run, dragging a huge net of steel wiring, and began fastening it to the undercarriage of the helicopter. When the job was completed, he commanded them again, and they scattered.

  “Up you go!” he shouted.

  The helicopter’s rotors increased their revolutions, and the big craft rose into the air.

  Colonel Calder and Dr. Uhl, standing to one side of the air strip, watched in suspense as the pilot reached his arm over the side of the cabin, tugging at the releasing wire. The net was freed of its fastening, and it plummeted to the ground.

  “Right on target!” the crew chief grinned.

  He came running towards the Colonel as the ’copter descended once more.

  “The hook’s working fine, sir. Maybe we ought to try a few more dry runs.”

  “No,” Calder said. “We don’t have the time to spare. We’ll just have to pray that the net doesn’t jam when we’re over our target.”

  “Yeah,” the chief grinned. “This here target, sir. I hear it’s some kind, of big lizard—”

  “Something like that. Only a little uglier than any lizard you ever saw, Sergeant. And bigger. It was the height of a man, last time we saw it. It’s probably bigger now.”

  “Sounds like fun. Shoulda brought my camera.”

  Dr. Uhl smiled at him. “You won’t have time for pictures, Sergeant. If tha
t charged net doesn’t knock the creature out, we’ll all be pretty busy. Bullets don’t have any effect on it.”

  The crew chief’s smile became strained. Then he looked over at the soldiers who were loading sacks into the helicopter.

  “What’s that for, sir?”

  “Sulfur,” Calder told him. “I’m taking on a load of sulfur to feed our prisoner when we capture it.”

  Dr. Uhl watched the loading, his face glum.

  “Yes. If the Commissario doesn’t capture it first.”

  A signal from the first ’copter caught the attention of the crew chief.

  “Looks like we’re ready to board ’Copter One, sir.”

  “Good.” Calder looked at the Doctor. “You take the first ’copter, Doc. I’ll take the second with the men. And Doc—”

  “Yes ?”

  “That net you’re carrying. It’ll be like a parachute, Doc —it’s got to work the first time.”

  Dr. Uhl grinned and hurried off.

  Calder headed for the second helicopter warming up on the airstrip. A squad of soldiers, carbines strapped to their field packs, were entering the craft. Two of them carried a portable generator. The Colonel hopped in beside the pilot, and waved two fingers at him.

  “All aboard. Let’s go!”

  Even as Colonel Calder’s helicopters were readying for the takeoff, the Commissario and his Carbinieri were already on the track of the beast.

  Not since the war had such a grim contingent appeared on the rugged Sicilian countryside. Uniformed, tight-lipped men, heavily armed with pistols, carbines, M-3’s. There were flame-throwers, too, with the long ugly snouts and the promise of searing death in their black, ugly muzzles.

  The men walked swiftly, heading for a pile of flat rocks ahead, the panting police dogs straining at their leashes by their side.

  “Wait,” the Commissario said.

  He stepped forward to mount the rise and survey the countryside with his binoculars.

  Something moved in range of his lenses, and he let the binoculars fall to his chest. Then he gestured the men forward.

  His Sergeant-at-arms came alongside. “Did you see him, Commissario? The big beast from the heavens?”