When The Stars Are Right

by William Meikle

  Dean is waiting to be given the nod by the General. I can see a bead of sweat running along the crease between his nose and his cheek. The battery meters show a slow but steadily climbing charge.

  He gets the nod from the General and starts twiddling the buttons on the console. The summoner appears in the centre of the pentagram, feet first.

  In the space of five seconds it builds to the tall wizard -- my face leering back at me through the window. Dean twiddles a few more buttons and the wizard sweeps his sword around the circle. He waits for another signal from the General. The bead of perspiration is now teetering on his mustache.

  I can see that the meters are rising faster. The General nods his head, Dean pushes another button and the summoner begins.

  A voice begins the harsh guttural chant and, although I know the words, they are spoken too quickly for me to comprehend them. Across the room I can see John mouthing the spell, keeping in time with the computer.

  Otherwise the silence is deep as can be.

  "Arak barang Cthulhu f'thang.

  "Cthulhu R'lyeh f'rhenghi Ia!

  "Ia Cthulhu

  "Ia Cthulhu"

  Twenty seconds pass. The computer stops chanting. The meters stop rising.

  The bead of sweat falls off Dean's chin to the floor. The General is glaring at me. I turn away, mostly in relief, but I get distracted by a movement near the pentagram.

  As if from a great distance I can hear a cry, like a wounded seagull.

  "Tekeli-li Tekeli-li."

  And behind that, a manic piping -- a crazed flutist who plays in a flurry of cacophonous discordances.

  Dean touches my arm -- he, too, has seen the movement. The meters start to rise -- more rapidly this time. At a point midway round the room between us and the other window, the walls start to bulge and flatten, bulge and flatten.

  The wall stretches and tears as easily as a piece of newly rolled dough. An arm appears, and appears and appears.

  It is three times as long as a human arm with texture similar to that of rhinoceros hide. There is an extra joint, between the wrist and the elbow, and six inch talons on each of the seven fingers. I notice that the meters are going crazy, passing fifty, then sixty per cent capacity as I watch.

  The shoulder-end of the arm is now being pushed through the wall, followed by the beginnings of a torso. Looking across the room I see John is in argument with the General. A movement catches my attention. I look round to see the wizard slipping across the pentagram.

  I look down and see that Dean has become distracted by the demon's entrance and has allowed the image to wander. I tap him on the shoulder. He starts, looks at me and twists the button. Too far. The wizard leaves the pentagram. And all hell breaks loose.

  The demon pushes the top half of his body through the wall. Try to image an ugly, wart-ridden toad with a set of teeth like a shark. Now try imaging it with three-foot wide head. Got that? Now imagine it smiling -- a Cheshire Cat grin which is all teeth and saliva and rotting gums. And from around the mouth, like a grotesque beard, hang a myriad of dancing tentacles, each with their own, fang-filled mouth, each screaming in time to the meters.

  The meters are going wild, eighty, ninety, one hundred percent as I watch.

  Across the room the General is trying to catch Dean's attention. Dean is trying to manoeuvre the wizard back into the pentagram -- with little success. The demon is beginning to pull the rest of its body through the wall.

  I can see what looks like a segmented tail starting from where you'd expect the legs to be. The lower half of its body oozes a trail of grey pulsating slime as it slides into the room. The interior of the room is beginning to glow golden.

  The demon has pulled ten meters of tail from the wall and it shows no sign of tapering towards the end. Its bulk dwarfs the hologram of the wizard, towering over it, dripping saliva to the floor where it hisses and boils like water on a hot griddle. I can barely see the other window -- only enough to notice that the General is now holding John, as if to stop him from doing something. I press the button to begin the banishment, more in hope than in anything else. As the voice begins, the demon looks straight at me. His eyes are golden and pierce me into stillness.

  A blue electric discharge snaps noisily from the talons on its left hand, running around the walls of the room, dancing across the walls. I lean forward towards Dean, but it is too late.

  The electric shock flings him backwards against the wall where he falls, slumped as if in a stupor.

  I can see that the demon has now pulled the whole of its body into the room.

  I try to get control of the wizard, which seems to have baffled the demon, when I realise that the banishment spell is still being broadcast.

  The demon gives up trying to grab the hologram and studies it instead. It lifts that huge broad head and looks straight at me. I see from the corner of my eye that three smaller, redder arms are beginning to push their way through the wall, groping blindly for purchase.

  The demon makes a move in my direction, but something stops it. As it turns I see, behind it, that John has entered the room, crucifix raised. He is saying something, but the noise from the banishment spell and the ever increasing hum from the batteries drown him out.

  I move the wizard back into the pentagram -- quite how, I'm not sure. The golden light in the room has increased so much that I have to shade my eyes.

  I can see that the demon has got John, holding him to his chest.

  I can see at least three of the tentacles piercing John's body, his blood falling to the floor to hiss and bubble alongside the saliva.

  The banishment spell is nearing its end. Blue bolts of electricity are crackling around the room. John is dead -- I can see that. The demon is moving towards me, still cradling John's body. The batteries have started to screech.

  I think of you and the kids just as the banishment spell ends. There is a blast of golden light which drives all further thought from my head.

  ~-oO0Oo-~

  (Tape No. 11 -- 2.30 pm -- August 11th -- 2045)

  That's all really. I woke up on the Asimov this morning and, apart from a severe headache, there seems to be no after effects.

  The General came to see me and, after exchanging some insincere pleasantries, he helped me fill in the parts which I'd blanked on.

  When the golden flash came, he was on the floor -- just getting to his feet after being sandbagged by John. He was turned away from the window, so didn't see what happened, but by the time he reached the door, the room had been scoured.

  There was no trace of the pentagram or of John's body. The whole room looked as if it had just been cleaned.

  He is very pleased with the results of our 'experiment.' The batteries are fully charged and he intends to go ahead with the Mars trip. He was suitably contrite about the deaths of John and Dean of course, but he still believes that there is a scientific rationale.

  He thinks we have tapped into a tremendous energy potential and says he intends to press for further experimentation.

  I told him that I'd fight him, but the look in his eyes showed me all I needed to know. To the military eye, the experiment was a success. He has already won.

  They took me to the viewing port to see the Poldakayne depart. We had to have full filters on the windows as it spun off across the sky, streaming golden light in a long comet tail behind it. It was night on earth below.

  Millions of people will have seen a new star.

  I need to see you, hug you. I need you to bring me back to reality -- to reassure me that I have done no wrong.

  I keep thinking of something John said: "Great Cthulhu has slept for millennia, but when the stars are right he will awaken and chaos will walk the skies."

  I wonder if the stars are right out there in the vastness, out towards Mars.

  See you very soon.

  Lots and lots of love and kisses.

  ~-oO0Oo-~

  FROM USOS ASIMOV FOR THE ATTENTION OF M. DOWLES -- 21ST JUNE 2
046.

  The Mars trip has been a great success. Congratulations. Request your help in our next mission. We are going to need more power.

  General J.E. Levi

  Commander U.S.S. Zeus

  ~-o0O0o-~

  This is an old one, from about 1993, not long after I started out. It got reworked into an expanded novella THE PLASM for Dark Regions Press, but here it is in its original form. Think of it in black and white, 50s B movie style — that's how it runs in my head.

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