"Stand still for a moment, lad," Einstein ordered, biting a lip.
Pushing this and rubbing that, Carstairs brought the machine to a rocking halt. Immediately, the artillery shells started exploding closer to them. Jiggling the lever with both hands, Einstein managed to center the innermost circle of the targeting system on the distant squid.
" En garde , demon!" the professor growled, squeezing a lever.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
From the battered box dangling at the end of the metal arm there lanced out a pale ray that struck Nelson's Monument and melted the bronze statue into a glowing puddle.
"Damnation!" Professor Einstein muttered, releasing the lever. "The calibration must be off. Never thought I'd use the machine in a fight!"
"Sir, until we've established our bona fides, I really don't want to give them a stationary target," Lord Carstairs said through clenched teeth, as a nearby water tower was blown apart from the barrage of shells. "Or the squid, either."
With nightmarish speed, the colossus wriggled towards them, its deadly tentacles writhing about like a nest of insane snakes.
"All right, lad, let's try that again!" the professor stated confidently and pulled the lever again.
***
Once more, the feeble alien heat ray reached across London, heading for the giant squid. But this time it hit. In a flash of superheated vapor, two of the beast's tentacles literally disintegrated under the onslaught of the power beam.
Reeling from the pain, the Squid God gave a high-pitched shriek that cracked glass and sterilized chickens for a dozen miles in every direction.
***
"God's teeth, it worked!" Lord Carstairs shouted, starting the walker into motion once more.
"Jolly good shot, Uncle," Mary said, inserting a new blue thing into the wall where the old blue thing had cracked into dust and sprinkled to the carpeted deck.
***
"Cease fire!" a general shouted, trying to focus his binoculars on everything at once.
As the cannons ceased their roar, the officer pondered, being not exactly sure what was happening. A functioning Venusian war machine had staggered from the north side of London and joined the fight against the giant squid? Were the two vying for supremacy?
The general scowled. No, that made no sense. Only one answer was possible. An antique machine appearing from the general vicinity of Wimpole Street could only mean the International British Museum for Stolen Antiquities. Well, the owner may be certified balmy, but he was loyal to the core.
"It's that madman Professor Einstein!" the general shouted to a nearby lieutenant. "Spread the word! The damn thing is on our side!"
"Yes, sir!" the lieutenant replied crisply, and raced to find a sergeant to get the job done.
Within moments, semaphores were flashing the incredible message across London. Soon, flags began to wave a warning. Flares shot skyward, and bugles began tooting musically.
Rather loath to accept the bizarre orders, the soldiers were slow to turn their cannon away from the hated tripod and back towards the giant squid. But as always, the British Army blindly obeyed orders and allowed the alien war machine free and unrestricted rein across the capital.
***
With the walker clattering at every step and tiny bits of rust flaking off from a rent in the bottom, Lord Carstairs drove the tripod in a bold advance towards the trembling squid. Furious at being confronted, the angry demon hooted a challenge. The horrible noise sounded like a cat caught in a mechanical reaper.
Inside the dome, a wire-mesh-covered box on the wall blurted, " Tu'end deouhf? gohb Wspfm dgfudbcs jax!"
Both of the Einsteins and Carstairs glanced at each other in total shock.
"That's Venusian," Mary identified in wonder as she wrapped some tape around a leaking pipe.
"There must be some form of mechanical translator," Lord Carstairs postulated, twirling two dials in unison.
Working the aiming lever, Professor Einstein nodded in agreement. "Didn't know the walkers had that ability," he said, squeezing the firing mechanism. Then he softly added, "I wonder what else this bloody thing can do that we don't know about?"
***
Barely visible in the morning light, the alien death ray shot over the rooftops to strike the squid again. Trying to dodge out of the way, the beast got only a glancing blow. But when the ray made contact, a thick slice of the creature disintegrated into radiant steam. Hooting in agony, the squid tried to hide behind a church, but the beam struck it again, annihilating another chunk of its pulsating anatomy.
Although cruel, vicious, bloodthirsty, and cheap to friends on their birthdays, the Squid God was no fool. It knew real danger when danger arrived. Determined to take out this new adversary as quickly as possible, the crazed mollusk did the only logical thing. It charged straight for the dilapidated machine.
***
Inside the dome, the translator box finally switched over to English and gushed forth a stream of vulgarities, mostly involving anal orifices and a sharp stick.
Not good. Most definitely not good . "Evasive tactics!" Lord Carstairs shouted, shoving a finger into a hole on the control board and scratching the interior surface.
With a lurch, the alien walker pivoted about in a wobbly circle, its legs almost twisting into a knot as it twirled out of the path of the monster's headlong rush. Carried by its own momentum, the squid missed the tripod and crashed into Westminster City Hall. Stone blocks and office furniture flew into the smoky sky. As the dizzy squid untangled itself from the smashed building, the heat ray swept across the slimy torso, and more of the hellspawn beast was painfully atomized. Mad with desperation, the squid raised a chunk of the building as a shield. But with incredible accuracy, the pale ray went through one window and out another to strike it smack between the eyes.
With a chunk of its brain gone, a terrible chilling truth came to the squid as it realized that it was on the verge of losing the fight. Which translates into d-dying! Turning to flee, the squid only made it a block before the heat ray hit yet again, shearing off a fourth tentacle. Thrashing about mindlessly, the smoldering rope of muscle dropped to the street, ironically crushing a beer wagon and a temperance hall at the same time.
While the tripod paused to vaporize the limb, the wounded squid took advantage of the lull. Frantically, it cast a dozen healing spells upon itself.
Ah, better , it sighed in relief. Then a boiling wave of mollusk madness filled the demon, and it rallied to the attack.
Circling each other in the manner of prizefighters, the two outlandish combatants warily searched for an opportunity to end the deadly fight quickly. Although the squid had repaired all of the damage incurred so far, it was now reduced to its original size from the sheer amount of tissue lost.
The squid lashed out a tentacle, and missed the dome. In response, the heat ray swept the neighborhood, setting a dozen rooftop fires before catching the beast squarely in the left eye.
Overwhelming pain filled the Squid God as the orb burst into oily fumes. Half blind, the squid decided that was enough. Even the final demise-from-which-there-was-no-return would be preferable to this humiliating death by inches.
Spinning about in a waggle of limbs, the squid called upon its mother moon for aid, and then insanely tapped some of its own life force to cast an incredibly deadly spell. With a gesture, a hoot, and a pyrotechnic flash, the squid unleashed a sparkling rod of elemental destruction from its remaining eyeball.
Streaking across London, the ravening beam annihilated the very air as it headed for the enemy war machine.
***
Every alarm, bell, and jingling toot the Venusian walker possessed sounded in warning at the approach of the incoming energy surge.
"Duck!" Lord Carstairs yelled, flipping a button.
Hissing steam, the legs retracted, and the dome dropped lower, but not quite fast enough. The effervescent death beam caught the dome full in its hellish glare! But the scintillating dagger of magic
stopped a scant yard away from the surface of the alien machine, and splayed out harmlessly, like water hitting an invisible steel plate.
Inside the dome, the humming of the equipment was the only sound for a while.
"Absolutely incredible," Professor Einstein exhaled, unable to tear his sight away from the fantastic light display outside.
"We seem to be protected by some sort of energy blister," Mary rationalized, studying the effect on her little viewscreen. "Similar to the field of force around a magnet."
"It does make sense that the Venusians would have a defense against energy weapons," Lord Carstairs smiled grimly, tightening his grip on the steering yoke. "Bally good show! This inviso-shield thingy gives us a formidable advantage!"
Inviso-shield? "For Queen and country!" Professor Einstein cried, brandishing a fist, carried away by a rush of patriotism.
Raising the dome to its full height, Lord Carstairs eagerly started forward, while Professor Einstein lashed out with the heat ray again, and again, and again! But in spite of the relatively short distance separating the combatants, the pale beam faded to nothingness before reaching the cowering squid.
"Oh, what is wrong now?" the professor demanded petulantly, pounding on the control panel.
"Power is at ten over ten," Mary stated, staring aghast at a gauge. She tapped it with a rubbery fork, but the reading stayed the same.
"Well, boost iron flow, girl!" Professor Einstein ordered.
"I already did that, Uncle!" she retorted. "It's no use. The protective energy blister is consuming too much energy. We cannot fight and keep the blister at the same time."
"Then cut the inviso-shield," Lord Carstairs said calmly, cracking his knuckles as a preparation to rejoining the battle.
Inviso-shield? "Be glad to," Mary snorted, gesturing at the overlapping circuitry of the alien controls at her station. "After you tell me how!"
"Hmm, good point," the professor acknowledged sadly. "Any suggestions?"
"Give me a minute," Carstairs said, staring at the control panel, his inner sight lost in his dimly remembered days at the war college.
"Sorry, lad," Professor Einstein said, pointing out the viewscreen, "but it appears that we don't have a bloody goddamn minute. Look!"
***
Although woozy from the massive expenditure of magic, the squid decided to try a different approach. Lifting its front tentacles, the squid exposed its beak and vomited a combination of fire and acid at the street below the tripod. The purely chemical spray passed without hindrance through the defensive Shield to form a puddle on the ground that started dissolving the granite cobblestones.
As the tripod's segmented shoes began to sink into the scummy lava, it started to tilt. Seizing the opportunity, the squid quickly swallowed the rest of the venom, and breathed out a wave of bitter cold. Snow and ice hit the tripod, but it was already out of the pool of molten rock and onto solid ground. However, the tripod wobbled with each step as its shoes were now coated with irregular lumps of hardened stone.
***
Stepping out from behind the ceramic lattice, Mary triumphantly waved a severed cable. "The field of force is off!" she cried, casting away the crystalline tube.
"Excellent," the professor growled, immediately firing the heat ray.
This time the pale ray reached the squid. There was an eruption of flesh as a vast section of the monster disintegrated. The battered squid wailed so loud that banshees answered from distant Ireland. A torrent of blood gushed from the gaping wound, and then the break slammed shut and closed, to heal without a trace of a scar.
The sight was amazing! But more importantly, Professor Einstein, Mary Einstein, and Lord Carstairs could see that the monster squid had been reduced in size again by the loss of flesh. Now it stood a scant ten yards in height: almost the exact same height as the Venusian walker.
"A fair fight at last!" Mary yelled, working the controls in savage glee. "Time to die, squiddie!"
As if it also realized this fact, the Squid God vented a squeal of pure aquatic fury, and lunged for the tripod with every tentacle writhing.
Trying to dodge, Lord Carstairs sent the walker spinning away like a Whirling Dervish turned ballerina, but it was to no avail. A slimy green tentacle wrapped around a rusty metal leg and latched on tight. Again the heat ray spoke, burning deeply into the squid. Ignoring the destruction of its own flesh, the creature undulated closer, to coil all of its remaining tentacles about the dome and squeeze. Squeeze!
Alarms sounded all over the Venusian walker as the booming beat of the giant squid's heart filled the dome like wild jungle drums. The status lights on the control panel changed from puce to mauve, and read-outs changed from flowing lines to sharp angularities.
"I can't move the walker!" Lord Carstairs growled, his hands starting to bend the control yoke. "We're trapped!"
The mottled belly of the squid filled the viewscreen, its snapping beak chipped at the dome. A forked tongue licked hungrily along the exterior, leaving behind a trail of sizzling, puce-colored slime.
"Same here, lad!" Professor Einstein shouted, smacking the control. "I can't focus the heat ray on the beast when it's this close!"
Checking her little viewscreen, Mary saw that the mechanical arm supporting the heat ray was pinned to the dome under a thick tentacle. Hundreds of suckers along the writhing limb slurped at the alien metal. Then a section of the tentacle accidentally moved directly in front of the heat ray box.
"Uncle, shoot right now!" she ordered.
"Righto!" the professor cried, triggering the weapon. But he was a split second too late. The tentacle had moved. The beam stabbed into the sky to only hit nothing a few clouds.
"Damnation!" Lord Carstairs snarled, leaning in closer for a better view. Come on, squiddie, do it again.
With a gasp, Mary recoiled from the viewscreen as the delicate manipulator arms, formerly used to grab victims and toss them into the rear hamper, came to life of their own volition, and reached out to try to repair the larger mechanical arm.
Holding her breath, the woman watched in hopeful expectation. But the effort proved fruitless, as a tentacle crushed one of the tiny manipulator arms. Rallying to the defense, the other arm beat feebly at the monster with pitiful results.
Groaning under the strain, the dome bent slightly. A cluster of cables snapped free to whip across the interior, spraying out sparks and pinkish steam. Diving for cover, Professor Einstein and Lord Carstairs hit the floor as the cables lashed past. Wildly yanking gooey alien fuses from the wall, Mary managed to cut the power. The cables, impotent as the Flemish Army. went dead, and fell to the deck.
"Clear!" she called, just as the alarms went silent. Now the alien craft was filled with the pervasive hum of the generators and the steady pounding of the squid's inhuman heart pressed against the dome. The effect was unnerving.
Scrambling back into their chairs, Einstein and Carstairs needed no encouragement as they frantically threw switches and pressed buttons, and then pressed levers and twirled switches.
"I must admit, this is a deuced clever ploy," Lord Carstairs stated in an annoyed tone. His fingers danced on the controls in an effort to vent the spare allotropic iron onto the squid. But the vent would not open under the pressure of the ever-tightening tentacles.
"Sadly, I concur," Professor Einstein said, struggling to shunt power from the engines and electrify the hull. Some sort of automatic feedback device kept stopping him. Finally, it shut down that section of the control panel to prevent further attempts. Bloody automation!
With a terrible creak, the inner supports started to bend, and then the hatchway buckled, jamming the exit door firmly into place.
"If any of us also feels deuced clever," Lord Carstairs added as he released the useless control panel, "please speak quickly or forever hold your peace!"
For a full minute, the only sounds were of groaning struts and a ghastly chuckling from the embracing squid.
"By jingo, I have it!" Mar
y said as she released her safety harness and grabbed a ceiling stanchion, so as to stand. "We can take the blighter with us!"
Spinning around in his chair, Professor Einstein stared aghast at the woman. "Are...are you suggesting that we deliberately explode the engines?" he demanded.
"Yes, I am."
"My dear girl, that is sheer brilliance!" the professor shouted joyfully, yanking off his own harness. "When that Venusian walker exploded in Belgium near the end of The Troubles, the resulting blast leveled a whole city block!"
Already out of his chair, Lord Carstairs swayed to keep his balance in the tilting walker. "A capital idea!" he said over the increasing noise of beast and machine. "A detonation of that magnitude should be more than sufficient to blow this thing back to whatever Hell it originally came from."
"To the hold!" Mary shouted. Brandishing a heavy spanner, she started for the rear of the dome.
Scrambling around the ceramic lattice, the three explorers dashed through an hourglass-shaped door. Entering the engine room, they slowed and grew very careful where they stood. There was no proper floor here, only a nigh-incomprehensible maze of wires, pipes, tubes, conduits, cables, coils, and bus bars that completely filled the engine room in every direction.
"How do we make the power plant detonate?" Carstairs asked anxiously, looking over the complex maze of flexing machinery.
"The trouble has always been to keep the foolish device from exploding," Mary corrected, rolling up a sleeve. Choosing her target, the woman began banging the spanner on a rack of delicate crystals, smashing each of them in turn.
Grabbing a hammer, the professor assisted in the destruction. "Come on, lad! How often do you get a chance to vandalize a priceless artifact while still on British soil?"
In spite of the circumstances, the lord grinned. By Jove, that will be different! Ambling over, Carstairs appropriated a heavy wrench and joined the task.
After cracking a green glowing tube, Mary shoved the spanner deep into the works of a delicate matrix made of silver wires combined with a flowering shrub. There was a flash, the stink of ozone, and a spray of hot sap. The steady humming of the machinery began to rise in tempo and tone until it became a harsh keening.
THAT DARN SQUID GOD Page 31
