Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

The agent, with a wry smile, lifted his arms.

  “All right,” he said. “You can go along. Put that thing away.”

  “Get out!”

  “Now, this is going too far,” the IIB man threatened.

  “Get out!” she repeated. “This gun isn’t a gag.”

  Somerset obeyed. Sue slid into the front seat beside Powell, her gun still covering the agent.

  “Lynn, get in the back. Shut the door. Brain, start going.”

  Powell waited for no more. He gunned the motor and sent the sleek black car hurtling along the street. In the rear-view mirror he saw Somerset running after them, with a stiff, jerky stride, his mouth open in a shout. Then they whirled around a corner and the IIB man vanished.

  “What are you laughing at?” Sue demanded furiously.

  “You.”

  “You ought to be grateful.”

  “For what? You drum up a murder charge against me—you’ve probably got the poison ring in your pocket—and then hold up an IIB man to get me out.”

  “You shouldn’t have done it, Sue,” Plumb croaked from the back seat.

  “Oh, quiet! You know why I got you out of it, Brain, don’t you?”

  “Sure. You want to horn in on my scoop.”

  “And I’m going to,” Sue said, significantly toying with her gun. “Keep your appointment with that burglar.”

  Powell considered. He had already wasted much time. He might refuse to obey the girl, but what good would that do?

  It would simply mean delay, while Dr. Owen might escape, if he had not already done so.

  “Okay,” he said, swerving toward Central Park.

  The streets were for the most part empty of life, though occasionally they swept past bodies of men and monsters. At one yellowish, pulpy corpse, Sue shuddered and turned greenish. Powell noticed that Plumb, in the back seat, was using his pocket camera from time to time.

  Powell grimaced, and then, as a thought struck him, laughed ironically. Habit made him think in terms of scoops. But what good would a scoop do on this alien world? There simply wouldn’t be any market. And the chances were all against New York being returned to its former position on Earth.

  YET there was that chance, a forlorn, single one, and that was why the vast organization of Summit Newsreels continued to function under pressure. The boss was a newsreel man to the core. Like Mike Powell, Gwynn was the kind who’d take pictures while falling into the crater of Vesuvius, and then try to throw the camera over the rim where someone might pick it up.

  Central Park looked unfamiliar. The grass was growing abnormally fast. Some thickets were tall as bamboo clumps. The trees were strange—twisted, gigantic monstrosities that bore little resemblance to oak or maple or elm. Their leaves rustled, though there was no wind at all. Vines lay across the sidewalk, stretching out tentacles large as a man’s leg, mottled with scrabrous reddish patches and overgrown with fine cilia.

  Powell parked the car by a drugstore. He got out, and Martin emerged from a nearby doorway.

  He hesitated, with a questioning glance at Sue and Plumb, who were at Powell’s heels.

  “They’re okay,” the cameraman said. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Dr. Owen hasn’t showed. He’s still in that house.”

  “Well, then, let’s go in after him,” Powell said.

  The house was a glass-brick, two-story cottage cramped between apartment buildings. The lock yielded without much difficulty to Martin’s skilled fingers.

  Silently, the four entered.

  It looked like an ordinary residence, well furnished, and containing nothing to excite suspicion.

  “Owen isn’t here,” Powell said disappointedly. “You must’ve missed him.

  Martin was examining the windows, adjustable glass shutters constructed like Venetian blinds.

  “He couldn’t have got out except by the back door. I’ll check that.” The ex-burglar returned after a moment. “No. I stretched a piece of thread across it from the outside, and it hasn’t been broken.”

  “Too bad I haven’t some X-ray glasses with me,” Powell lamented.

  “We don’t need ’em.” Martin began to go over the house foot by foot, testing walls and floors with delicate fingertips. Plumb wriggled impatiently.

  Sue sat down on a couch of flexible glass and winked at Powell.

  “So the Brain’s baffled, eh?” she observed.

  There was no time to answer. Martin’s voice came, excited and triumphant.

  “Here’s a panel that’s—look at this!”

  Part of the wall was sliding aside, revealing a flight of stairs descending underground. The depths lit up as the panel opened.

  “Got a gun, Martin?” Powell said. “No? How about letting me use yours, Sue?”

  She shook her head determinedly. “I’ll hang on to it, thanks. Lynn, you wait here. Keep your eyes open. If we call you, come after us.”

  Plumb nodded, and the three others warily began to descend.

  STAIRS gave place to a passage that ended in a metal door. This swung open under a push. On the threshold, Powell stopped short.

  “It’s too easy,” he said in an undertone. “I don’t like it.”

  Sue edged past him, her gun ready. They stared at an immense laboratory, illuminated by radiant bars set in the roof.

  The room was huge, but barely large enough to contain the equipment that filled it. Pipes and wires writhed across ceiling and metal-sheathed walls. A televisor stood on a littered table near by. There was a transparent panel in the floor by the door. Looking down, Mike stared into another room, almost filled with a crouching monster dynamo.

  This, seemingly, was the robot’s power house.

  The laboratory itself was amazing. Some equipment was recognizable; others told of extraordinarily advanced scientific knowledge. The globe-topped towers of an atom-smasher nearly brushed the ceiling. Eyeing the device, Powell felt a sudden thought pass through his brain, so fleetingly that it was gone immediately. An atom-smasher—What associations did that have?

  Powell didn’t know, but he felt it was important. He filed the idea mentally for future reference.

  The three took little time to examine the laboratory. There was another door in the far wall, closed and cryptic. Quietly, they moved toward it.

  It, too, opened under a gentle push. Beyond it was a smaller room, bare, save for a few pipes bracketed to the walls.

  Across the room was another door. Powell started toward it, the others close behind.

  And, suddenly, catastrophe came!

  High-tension current whined. A panel in the wall burst open. From it a blunt metallic rod thrust out. The whine rose to a shrill skirling.

  Sue cried out. The gun spun from her hand and clattered to the floor.

  Powell’s body jerked convulsively. Jerked, and stiffened.

  Ice gripped him. Rigid, unable to stir a muscle, he remained frozen, seeing, firom the corners of his eyes, Sue and Martin standing beside him, equally powerless, robbed of all strength to move.

  The wings of panic began to beat through Powell’s brain. He could no longer feel his body! He could feel nothing!

  The door in the wall opened. Before them stood the creature they had come to find.

  Silently, the robot gazed at his captives.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The Captor Escapes

  HOPELESSNESS overwhelmed Powell. Why had he blundered into this obvious trap? He had been rushed into it—the arrest by Somerset, Sue’s part in the developments, the necessity for speed—all these had contributed to rashness rather than to forethought. But Powell had known his enemy was no fool. He should have taken precautions.

  The robot did not move. It was the same creature Powell had seen on the televisor screen. Seven feet from the floor was the top of its globular head, which sat directly on the cylindrical body, without a neck. The arms looked short in comparison with the long, thin bars of the three legs. The metallic torso glinted like a battleship in the
cold light.

  Faceted, expressionless eyes watched. The precise, toneless voice spoke.

  “Conversation seems unnecessary at this point. There is nothing I wish to tell you, and my electric ray has paralyzed you so that you cannot speak.” The globular head turned toward the blunt rod protruding from the wall.

  Powell’s throat contracted as he tried to force out words. It was impossible. He could merely gurgle unintelligibly.

  “There is certain information I require,” the robot went on. “I must know if my retreat is known to any others.

  “This ray, incidentally, is not deadly. It transmits electric high-potential energy along a beam to your bodies. It blocks the synapses, so that your thought impulses, which are electrical in nature, cannot bridge them. A higher voltage would kill, but I do not intend to use this, unless, of course, you refuse to yield the information I ask for.”

  There was a scurry of racing footsteps. The robot moved swiftly. Its hand darted back out of sight through the doorway in which it stood. Simultaneously, a body crashed down to the floor at Powell’s side. The face of Lynn Plumb, contorted and white, glared up.

  Plumb remained in a twisted heap, unable to move, trapped like the others by the paralysis ray.

  “I expected him, of course,” the robot said. “My alarm system told me you had left one of your party upstairs.”

  Abruptly, a bell shrilled in the distance. An odd indecision came into the automaton’s attitude. It swung half around, hesitated, and then without a word moved swiftly through the doorway. The panel shut silently after the gleaming body.

  Behind Powell came a low thud. He guessed that the other door had closed, imprisoning the four humans.

  Well, what now? Questions thronged the cameraman’s brain. Where was Dr. Owen? What had called the robot away? Had the bell warned him of an intruder?

  A movement caught Powell’s eye. Plumb’s foot was wriggling slightly. Were the effects of the ray wearing off? Powell strained to move, but found it impossible. A low rumble escaped from his throat as he tried to call out.

  Again Plumb’s foot moved. It stretched out toward the wall. The toe reached a metal pipe and hooked over it.

  Apparently, not all of Plumb’s body lay within the influence of the beam. He could move his leg—but would that be enough?

  SLOWLY, very slowly, Plumb’s knee bent. His foot hooked over the pipe; he was trying to drag his body out of the ray’s range.

  Inch by inch, Plumb pulled himself closer to the wall. One hand moved experimentally. And then the battle was over.

  He gripped the pipe. With one painful wrench he jerked his body into the zone of safety.

  For a moment he lay gasping. Then he rose, went warily to the rod projecting from the wall. He did not touch it. After a careful examination, he walked around behind Powell and fumbled with something that sounded metallic.

  Then he reappeared. His cherubically round face was intensely worried.

  “I can’t shut the damn thing off. And the door’s locked. Can you talk at all, Sue, or you, Powell?”

  With grinding effort, the camerman managed to emit a hoarse croak. His lips and tongue were paralyzed, but it was possible to force out his breath in an audible rumble that was mostly vowels. He did this a dozen times before Plumb understood.

  “The other door? I’ll try it.” But the portal through which the robot had disappeared was also barred. “That’s no good.”

  Powell thought frantically. The room was empty, save for the pipes and the ray projector. If the ex-burglar were free, he might be able to open the doors. Or if Plumb had Martin’s tool—But the moment Plumb tried to get them he would fall under the ray’s influence again.

  “Barrier—block—ray,” Powell grunted painfully.

  Plumb guessed his meaning. He searched his pockets. There was nothing that might act as a non-conductor to the electric beam. Finally Plumb took off his shoe and carefully held it before the projector. Nothing happened.

  Powell’s frozen eyes searched every detail of the part of the room he could see, trying to find some means of escape. His eye fell on Plumb’s tiny camera, still strapped to his belt.

  “U-u-m-m,” he wheezed.

  “Yeah?”

  It took nearly ten minutes for Powell to communicate his idea. With a doubtful glance at Sue, Lynn took off his camera and removed the spool of thin wire film. Unrolling this, he bound one end around a pipe that led down through the floor, and made a loop in the other end. Casting from a distance, he flung the coil of wire over the projector rod, lassoing it neatly.

  THERE were instant results. The binding chains that fettered Powell vanished. Volition returned to him.

  He scooped up Sue, sent Martin rolling headlong with a frantic shove, and dived to safety. Almost simultaneously blue flame hissed and cracked. The wire melted under the high voltage. Once more the paralysis beam lashed out. But the four were out of its path, flattened against the wall.

  “Short-circuited it,” Powell said, gulping. “Lucky you were using wire film, Plumb.”

  “Lucky for who?” Sue snapped. “You ruined that reel!”

  “Could I help it?” the cameraman asked reasonably. “Trust a woman to kick at anything. Martin, can you open that door?” He nodded toward the one through which the robot had vanished.

  The ex-burglar sidled toward it, keeping out of the path of the ray, and went to work. Powell picked up the gun and held it ready, ignoring Sue’s outstretched hand.

  The lock clicked. The panel swung back. A dimly lit corridor stretched ahead.

  It was empty, a metal-sheathed tube that led underground to some unknown destination. The four hurried along it.

  At one point they passed a tangle of knotted ropes lying on the ground, but this told them nothing.

  They came to stairs and mounted them. They emerged on a landing facing a blank wall, which yielded to Martin’s skilled fingers. Beyond the wall was a room, well furnished and also unoccupied.

  From the windows they could see the street one story down. They were in the apartment house next door to the glass-brick cottage.

  And that was that. The building had at least four exits. There was no trace of Dr. Owen or the robot. Questioning the desk clerk proved futile. The man that had rented the apartment was obviously innocent. No information could be obtained.

  Driving back downtown in a taxi—they decided against using Somerset’s official car—Powell told the driver to return to the Summit offices. Sue and Plumb remained glumly silent. They had little to show for their plot, and though Powell, too, was disappointed, he didn’t show it.

  He left the others downstairs and went up to his office, where he called the IIB office and told Stackpole, the chief, what had happened. Stackpole was willing to listen this time. He agreed to send out a squad to the robot’s laboratory, and was sanguine about the murder of which Powell had been accused.

  “If you’re telling the truth, you’ll be okay,” Stackpole said. “I’ll have Somerset recheck.”

  “And don’t forget to cross-examine Sue Clark,” Powell interjected, with a crooked smile. “She’s tough, but if you give her the fourth degree she’ll crack. She’s down in the lobby now, I think.”

  STACKPOLE nodded and broke the connection. Relieved, Powell went to find Eberle, who was still busily covering sheets of paper with intricate calculations. The scientist lifted a leonine head at Powell’s entry.

  “You’re back, eh?” he grunted. “Good. What happened?”

  The cameraman explained in detail, but got little encouragement from Eberle.

  “You’re dealing with a scientific criminal genius,” he declared. “I don’t think the robot is, technically speaking, alive. He might have a human brain transplanted in his skull, but that’s rather fantastic. Remote control is probably the answer.”

  Eberle turned to more important things. “I have seen Mrs. Cardotti again and used hypnotism on her. I’ve found out a good deal. We’re in another world, of course
, and I believe there are two races of intelligent beings here. The Colossi are our captors, the ones who transported New York from Earth into what I am convinced is their laboratory. The other race are enemies of the Colossi and are much smaller. How much smaller, I don’t know. They are trying to enter the fortress of the giants and destroy them.”

  “How does that help us?” Powell asked.

  “If we can communicate with the Colossi’s enemies, we may get aid from them, or, at least, valuable information. Radio won’t work. Telepathy isn’t effective—I’ve tried it with Mrs. Cardotti as an instrument. She’s a receiver, not a transmitter. To communicate with these besiegers of the Colossi, we must meet them face to face.”

  Powell grinned sceptically.

  “That can be done,” Eberle cried. “I’m having a rocket ship refitted, so it can utilize my space drive principle. It isn’t difficult. In a few days it’ll be ready. I’m going in that ship to find this other race.

  “Look here!” He fumbled among his papers and held up a chart. “I’ve studied the Tower photographs of the huge laboratory in which we are, and plotted a course that will take me to a window, or a ventilator. I’m not sure what it is, but it seems to be an opening into the outer world. A rocket ship couldn’t do it; it wouldn’t handle responsively and quickly enough. But a ship with my space drive would do it.” Powell didn’t give himself time to think. He didn’t dare, or he might have backed out. “I’m going along,” he said. “With plenty of film. Boy, oh boy! What a scoop this’ll make!”

  “Now I’ve done it,” he thought. “Oh, Lord! Why do these things always have to happen to no one but me?” And Mr. Powell wandered out in search of a drink.

  CHAPTER XV

  Into the Unknown

  PREPARATIONS for the flight were nearly finished. The cylindrical craft lay in its cradle atop the Airport Building, unheralded and unsung.

  For obvious reasons, Eberle’s plan had been kept hushed up, and the civilian population—and the military too, for that matter continued to live in worried suspense. Despite reassuring messages often broadcast, the perpetual strain of living in a new world was terrific. It plainly showed on everybody.