Invaders of Earth

by Groff Conklin

  “Huh? Notes? Then what are you so scared about?”

  “I’m not scared,” Parker answered stiffly.

  “You sound like it.”

  “Maybe the radio is distorting my voice.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Maybe that’s it,” Hanson said. “Oh, well— Are you sure you’re all right, lad?”

  “Sure. You bet. Sure.”

  “All right, then. For a minute you had me worried. Is that all you want?”

  “Yes,” said Parker. “Yes.”

  “O.K., then.”

  The speaker snapped into silence. Parker wiped the sweat off his face, then turned off the transmitter. He rose to his feet, looked out the window. A haze was beginning to appear over the Gulf. Far up in the sky white clouds were appearing.

  That was all there was in the sky—white clouds and a beginning haze. There was no sound of distant thunder.

  Parker looked at the floor. There were still a few wet blotches on the boards where a castaway, who seemed to like water, had stood while he shook himself. The spots were drying rapidly. In a few minutes they would be completely gone.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Eric Frank Russell

  IMPULSE

  In this story you will learn about a small myriad of nasties from a meteorite—creatures that could well have happened upon us and never been reported on, as you will find out as the story develops.

  This is the kind of invasion story that approaches the classic in its perfection; there can be nothing more ghoulish. Aficionados of horror in science fiction will recall Lovecraft’s “The Colour out of Space,” Wandrei’s “Macklin’s Little Friend,” and Hilliard’s “Death from the Stars” when they read this tale. It is doubtful that they will find this one any less memorable than those mentioned.

  ~ * ~

  IT WAS his receptionist’s evening off, and Dr. Blain had to answer the waiting-room buzzer himself. Mentally cursing the prolonged absence of Tod Mercer, his general factotum, he closed the tap of the burette, took the beaker of neutralized liquid from beneath, and set it on a shelf.

  Hastily he thrust a folding spatula into a vest pocket, rubbed his hands together, gave a brief glance around the small laboratory. Then he carried his tall, spare form to the waiting room.

  The visitor was sprawled in an easy chair. Dr. Blain looked him over and saw a cadaverous individual with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale, bloated hands. The fellow’s clothes didn’t fit him much better than a sack.

  Blain weighed him up as a case of pernicious ulcers, or else a hopeful seller of insurance that he had no intention of buying. In any event, he decided, the man’s expression had a weird twist. It gave him the willies.

  “Dr. Blain, I believe?” said the man in the chair. His voice gargled slowly, uncannily, and the sound of it grew pimples down Blain’s spine.

  Without waiting for a reply, and with his dead optics fixed on the standing Blain, the visitor continued. “We are a cadaverous individual with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale, bloated hands.”

  Sitting down abruptly, Dr. Blain grasped the arms of his chair until his knuckles stood out like blisters. His visitor gargled on slowly and imperturbably.

  “Our clothes don’t fit us much better than a sack. We are a case of pernicious ulcers, or else a seller of insurance that you have no intention of buying. Our expression has a strange twist, and it gives you the willies.”

  The speaker rolled a rotting eye which leered, with horrible lack of luster, at the thunderstruck Blain. He added, “Our voice gargles, and the sound of it raises pimples on your spine. We have decaying eyes that leer at you with lack of luster that you consider horrible.”

  With a mighty effort, Blain leaned forward, red-faced, trembling. His iron-gray hairs were erect on the back of his neck. Before he could open his mouth, his visitor spoke his unuttered words for him: “Good heavens! You’ve been reading my very thoughts!”

  The fellow’s cold optics remained riveted to Blain’s astounded face while the latter shot to his feet. Then he said briefly, simply, “Be seated.”

  Blain remained standing. Small globules of perspiration crept through the skin of his brow, trickled down his tired, lined face.

  More urgently, warningly, the other gulped, “Be seated!”

  His legs strangely weak at the knees, Blain sat. He stared at the ghastly pallor of his visitor’s features and stammered, “W-who the devil are you?”

  “That!” He tossed Blain a clipping.

  A casual look, followed by one far more intent, then Blain protested, “But this is a newspaper report about a corpse being stolen from a morgue.”

  “Correct,” agreed the being opposite.

  “But I don’t understand.” Blain’s strained features showed his puzzlement.

  “This,” said the other, pointing a colorless finger at his sagging vest, “is the corpse.”

  “What?” For the second time, Blain came to his feet. The clipping dropped from his nerveless fingers, fluttered to the carpet. He towered over the thing in the chair, expelled his breath in a loud hiss, and sought vainly for words.

  “This is the body,” repeated the claimant. His voice sounded as if it were being bubbled through thick oil. He pointed to the clipping. “You failed to notice the picture. Look at it. Compare the face with the one that we have.”

  “We?” Blain queried, his mind in a whirl.

  “We! There are many of us. We commandeered this body. Sit down.”

  “But—”

  “Sit down!” The creature in the chair slid a cold, limp hand inside his sloppy jacket, lugged out a big automatic, and pointed it awkwardly. To Blain’s view, the weapon’s muzzle gaped hugely. He sat down, recovered the clipping, and stared at the picture.

  The caption said, “The late James Winstanley Clegg, whose body mysteriously vanished last night from the Simmstown morgue.”

  Blain looked at his visitor, then at the picture, then at his visitor again. The two were the same; undoubtedly the same. Blood began to pound in his arteries.

  The automatic drooped, wavered, lifted up once more. “Your questions are anticipated,” slobbered the late James Winstanley Clegg. “No, this is not a case of spontaneous revival of a cataleptic. Your idea is ingenious, but it does not explain the thought reading.”

  “Then of what is this a case?” demanded Blain with sudden courage.

  “Confiscation.” His eyes jerked unnaturally. “We have entered into possession. Before you is a man possessed.” He permitted himself a ghoulish chuckle. “It seems that in life this brain was endowed with a sense of humor.”

  “Nevertheless, I can’t—”

  “Silence!” The gun wagged to emphasize the command. “We shall talk; you will listen. We shall comprehend your thoughts.”

  “All right.” Dr. Blain lay back in his chair, kept a wary eye on the door. He felt convinced that he had to deal with a madman. Yes, a maniac—despite the thought reading, despite that picture on the dipping.

  “Two days ago,” gargled Clegg, or what once had been Clegg, “a so-called meteor landed outside this town.”

  “I read about it,” Blain admitted. “They looked for it, but failed to find it.”

  “That phenomenon was actually a space vessel.” The automatic sagged in the flabby hand; its holder rested the weapon on his lap. “It was a space vessel that had carried us from our home world of Glantok. The vessel was exceedingly small by your standards—but we, too, are small. Very small. We are submicroscopic, and our number is myriad.

  “No, not intelligent germs.” The ghastly speaker stole the thought from his listener’s mind. “We are less even than those.” He paused while he searched around for words more explicit. “In the mass, we resemble a liquid. You might regard us as an intelligent virus.”

  “Oh!” Blain struggled to calculate the number of jumps necessary to reach the door, and do it without revealing his thoughts.

  “We Glantokian
s are parasitical in the sense that we inhabit and control the bodies of lesser creatures. We came here, to your world, while occupying the body of a small Glantokian mammal.” He coughed with a viscous rumble deep down in his gullet, then continued.

  “When we landed and emerged, an excited dog chased our creature and caught it. We caught the dog. Our creature died when we deserted it. The dog was useless for our purpose, but it served to transport us into your town and find us this body. We acquired the body. When we left the dog, it lay on its back and died.”

  The gate creaked with a sudden rasping sound that brought Blain’s taut nerves to the snapping point. Light footsteps pit-patted up the asphalt path toward the front door. He waited with bated breath, ears alert, eyes wide with apprehension.

  “We took this body, liquefied the congealed blood, loosened the rigid joints, softened the dead muscles, and made it walk. It seems that its brain was fairly intelligent in life, and even in death its memories remain recorded. We utilize this dead brain’s knowledge to think in human terms and to converse with you after your own fashion.”

  The approaching footsteps were near, very near. Blain shifted his feet to a solid position on the rug, tightened his grip on the arms of his chair, and fought to keep his thoughts under control. The other took not the slightest notice, but kept his haggard face turned to Blain and continued slushily to mouth his words.

  “Under our control, the body stole these clothes and this weapon. Its own defunct mind recorded the weapon’s purpose and told us how it is used. It also told us about you.”

  “Me?” Startled, Dr. Blain leaned forward, braced his arms, and calculated that his intended spring would barely beat the lift of the opposing automatic. The feet outside had reached the steps.

  “It is not wise,” warned the creature who claimed to be a corpse. He raised his gun with lethargic hand. “Your thoughts are not only observed but their conclusions anticipated.”

  Blain relaxed. The feet were tripping up the steps to the front door.

  “A dead body is a mere makeshift,” the other mouthed. “We must have a live one, with little or no organic disability. As we increase, we must have more bodies. Unfortunately, the susceptibility of nervous systems is in direct proportion to the intelligence of their owners.” He gasped, then choked with the same liquid rattle as before.

  “We cannot guarantee to occupy the bodies of the intelligently conscious without sending them insane in the process. A disordered brain is less use to us than a recently dead one, and no more use than a wrecked machine would be to you.”

  The patter of leather ceased; the front door opened, and somebody entered the passage. The door clicked shut. Feet moved along the carpet toward the waiting room.

  “Therefore,” continued the human who was not human, “we must occupy the intelligent while they are too deeply unconscious to be affected by our permeation, and we must be in complete possession when they awake. We must have the assistance of someone able to treat the intelligent in the manner we desire, and do it without arousing general suspicion. In other words, we require the co-operation of a doctor.”

  The awful eyes bulged slightly. Their owner added, “Since this inefficient body is beyond even our power to animate much longer, we must have a fresh, live, healthy one as soon as it can be obtained.”

  The feet in the passage hesitated, stopped. The door opened. At that instant, the dead Clegg stabbed a pallid finger at Blain and burbled, “You will assist us”—the finger swerved toward the door—”and that body will do for the first.”

  The girl in the doorway was young, fair-haired, pleasingly plump. She posed there, one hand concealing the crimson of her small, half-opened mouth. Her blue eyes were wide with fearful fascination as they gazed at the blanched mask behind the pointing finger.

  There was a moment’s deep silence, while the digit maintained its fateful gesture. Its owner’s features became subject to progressive achromatism, grew more hueless, more ashy. His optics—dead balls in frigid sockets—suddenly glittered with minute specks of light, green light, hellish. He struggled clumsily to his feet, teetered backward and forward on his heels.

  The girl gasped. Her eyes lowered, saw the automatic in a hand escaped from the grave. She screamed on a note weak because of its height. She screamed as if she were surrendering her soul to the unknown. Then, as the living dead tottered toward her, she closed her eyes and slumped.

  Blain got her just before she hit the floor. He covered the distance in three frantic leaps, caught her smoothly molded body, saved it from bruising contact. He rested her head upon the carpet, patted her cheeks vigorously.

  “She’s fainted,” he growled, in open anger. “She may be a patient or may have come to summon me to a patient. An urgent case, perhaps.”

  “Enough!” The voice was curt, despite its eerie bubbling. The gun pointed directly at Blain’s brow. “We see, from your thoughts, that this fainting condition is a temporary one. Nevertheless, it is opportune. You will take advantage of the situation, place the body under an anesthetic, and we shall claim it for our own.”

  From his kneeling position beside the girl, Blain looked up and said slowly and deliberately, “I shall see you in hell!”

  “No need to have spoken the thought,” remarked the creature. He grimaced horribly, took two jerky steps forward. “You may do it yourself, or else we shall do it with the aid of your own knowledge and your own flesh. A bullet through your heart, we take possession of you, repair the wound, and you are ours.

  “Damn you!” he cursed, stealing the words from Blain’s own lips. “We could use you in any case, but we prefer a live body to a dead one.”

  Throwing a hopeless glance around the room, Dr. Blain uttered a mental prayer for help—a prayer cut short by the grin of understanding on his opponent’s face. Getting up from his knees, he lifted the girl’s limp form, carried her through the door, along the passage, and into his surgery. The thing that was the body of Clegg stumbled grotesquely behind him.

  Gently lowering the girl to a chair, Blain rubbed her hands and wrists, patted her cheeks again. Faint color crept back to her skin; her eyes fluttered. Blain stepped to a cupboard, slid aside its glass doors, grasped a bottle of sal volatile. Something hard prodded him between his shoulder blades. It was the automatic.

  “You forget that your mind processes are like an open book. You are trying to revive the body and are playing for time.” The sickly countenance behind the weapon forced its facial muscles into a lopsided scowl. “Place the body on that table and anesthetize it.”

  Unwillingly, Dr. Blain withdrew his hand from the cupboard. He picked up the girl, laid her on the examination table, switched on the powerful lamp that hung directly overhead.

  “More meddling!” commented the other. “Turn off that lamp—the one already burning is quite sufficient.”

  Blain turned off the lamp. His face drawn with agitation, but head erect, his fists bunched, he faced the menacing weapon and said, “Listen to me. I’ll make you a proposition.”

  “Nonsense!” The former Clegg wandered around the table with slow, dragging steps. “As we remarked before, you are playing for time. Your own brain advertises the fact.” He stopped abruptly as the recumbent girl murmured vague words and tried to sit up. “Quick! The anesthetic!”

  Before either could move, the girl sat up. She came upright and looked straight into a ghastly face that moped and mewed a foot from her own features. She shuddered and said pitifully, “Let me out of here. Let me out. Please!”

  A bloated hand reached out to push her. She lay down to avoid contact with the loathsome flesh.

  Taking advantage of the slight diversion, Blain slid a hand behind his back, felt for an ornamental poker hanging on the wall. The gun swung up even as his fingers found the impromptu weapon and curled around its cool metal.

  “You forget yourself.” Pin-point fires sparkled in the other’s blotchy orbs. “Mental understanding is not limited in direction. We see
you even when these eyes are elsewhere.” The gun moved to indicate the girl. “Tie that body down.”

  Obediently, Dr. Blain found straps, fastened the girl securely to the table. His gray hair was limp, his face moist, as he bent over her and threaded the buckles. He looked at her with courage hardly justified and whispered, “Patience—do not fear.” He threw a significant glance at the clock ticking upon the wall. The instrument’s hands indicated two minutes before eight.

  “So you expect aid,” effervesced the tones of a corporate myriad. “Tod Mercer, your handyman, who ought to have been here before now. You think he might be of help, though you have little faith in what few wits he has. In your opinion, he is a dumb ox—too stupid to know his feet from his hands.”