“Tell me,” Challenger said, smiling grimly. “As you are the authority around here, what are you going to do about that?”
The screaming came from a young woman with a baby in a large pram. Three tentacles had snaked up out of a sewer grate and were wrapped tight around the pram’s tin body, the soft metal squealing as they squeezed. Several passers-by looked on, seemingly at a loss as to what to make of the situation.
Challenger had no such qualms.
He strode forward and snatched the babe from the carriage, just as the metal gave completely and the crushed mangled mess of tin and swaddling was dragged away with a screech, down into the sewer. With a final tug, it was gone. Challenger passed the baby to the young mother, who immediately took to her heels and fled, screaming at the top of her voice until she was lost in the town’s maze of streets.
Silence fell. The police sergeant stood beside me, mouth open in the breeze, lost for words.
A second scream came from further along the promenade, seconds before a cast-iron manhole cover blew twenty feet in the air, landing with a loud ringing clang mere feet from a small gaggle of elderly gentlemen who were having a quiet smoke by the sea rail.
A nest of tentacles, like writhing snakes, burst out of the hole, ten, fifteen feet high before stretching outward.
One of the old fellows didn’t move quickly enough—five tendrils caught him at neck, torso and thigh, and tugged, hard. His head bounced twice on the road before he was dragged away, too quickly for anyone to react, leaving only a long smear of blood to mark his passing.
A second manhole cover went up, twenty yards further up the shore, closer to town. More tentacles lifted in the air, and this time a two-foot-wide shell, the pink segments below just visible, pulled itself up onto the promenade.
“Do something, man!” Challenger shouted to the police sergeant.
“It’s not my job …” the man started, before Challenger grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him.
“If not you, then who? These people here are relying upon you.”
That simple appeal to his duty seemed to give the man a moment of strength. He reached into his pocket, took out a whistle, and blew long and hard, rousing half a dozen uniformed officers from the station across the street.
Three more of the smaller shell-creatures emerged onto the promenade. The road surface bulged and buckled in a bubble that rose nearly three feet, then split. Rubble and dirt shifted as larger shells joined the smaller ones in pulling themselves up into the open.
The policemen stood in a huddle—no one had a clue as to how to deal with the growing menace. A bottleneck formed as people tried to escape from the promenade, with too many of them crammed into a narrow lane that was normally a short-cut to the relative safety behind the shop frontages. Long tentacles caught two fleeing children and squeezed the life out of them as they screamed. More of the creatures, drawn by the frenzied activity, shuffled in that direction, but thankfully the blockage of people cleared and most escaped. Not all, though—when the passage cleared there were at least four bodies on the ground, but I only caught a quick glimpse before they were obscured as the shell-creatures crawled over them.
“For pity’s sake, man, do something,” Challenger said again to the police Sergeant. “Close down the sewer system—that’s your first priority—they’re feeding on your effluent.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start …”
“Then find someone who does,” Challenger shouted. “And quickly!”
The whole seafront was now little more than a mass of the shell-creatures, all with tentacles waving high, as if tasting the air. They all seemed to be orientated in the same direction—facing away from the shore, up the main thoroughfare towards town.
“The main sewer goes that way?” Challenger said, pointing up the road.
“Yes, sir,” a young constable said. “It runs up past the school and …”
Challenger cut him off.
“Get everybody off the shore and back up there—as far as you can. Do you have any fire hydrants on the street?”
The same young officer spoke up again.
“Three, sir, ever fifty yards.”
“Get the valves open, get water flowing down to the sewer—these beasts are sea creatures—fresh water should repulse them. At least I hope so, for I can’t think what else we can do short of calling in the forces, and that’ll take too long.”
“I cannot authorize …” the sergeant started.
Challenger rounded on him.
“Stop telling me what you can’t do, and start thinking what you can do, or get out of my way,” the Professor said.
The young constable had the sense to do Challenger’s bidding, and left at a run, heading up the main street. I was by no means sure we would have time for any action—tentacles squirmed everywhere I looked, and some of the smaller shell-creatures were getting rather too close for comfort.
“Challenger?” I said. “We can’t stay here.”
“I agree—fall back, up to town, and hope my idea works—it’s our only chance.”
We backed away just as the last of the stragglers from the shore passed us, leaving the promenade to the creatures. The largest one we had yet seen, some eight feet across the top of its shell, pulled itself up out of the growing hole.
I heard water gurgle under our feet—the young constable must have opened the hydrants further up the slope. But the creatures kept advancing.
“There’s a flaw in my thinking, Malone,” Challenger said. “There’s no use putting fresh water into the sewers if the beasts are all above ground. Quick—let’s get the grates blocked—we need to get the water running down the road.
I was first to reach the closest grate—the hydrant was sending out a voluminous spray of water, but most of it was immediately running down the grate into the sewer. I did the only thing I could think of—I took off my jacket and stuffed it over the top of the grate. The result was immediate—water started to flow down the main road, washing at Challenger’s feet and then down to lap against the shells of the creatures.
I let out a small cry of triumph as they backed away immediately. There was no sign that the water was actually damaging the beasts in any way, but they were clearly not enamored of any contact with it.
The other policemen—the sergeant excepted, as he still stood open-mouthed and speechless—saw what I had achieved and headed up the slope to do the same with the rest of the hydrants. We soon had a good flow of water pouring down across the promenade, and as Challenger had hoped, the beasts retreated completely before it, moving back first to the edge of the gaping hole, then, as that started to fill with fresh water, down into the sewer again. The last we saw of them was a nest of tentacles waving from the manhole nearest the shore, then even that was gone, and we were left with just the sound of running water as we looked over the scene of devastation.
“Now what do we do?” the police sergeant asked.
“I’m sure I have no idea,” Challenger replied. “I’m not the one in authority around here. You might start with asking the people of the town not to flush their cisterns until you do come up with a plan. Good luck with that.”
Challenger took me by the arm and we left the Sergeant standing there, open-mouthed, like a fish out of water.
Challenger was quiet on our train journey back to London.
“I was thinking about poor Davis,” he said when asked. “He was right—the textbooks will have to change—but so will the habits of everyone around the coast of this island of ours. I hope the Sergeant has the gumption to report this matter fully, for vigilance will be needed from now on—vigilance, and better sewage control systems.
“We haven’t seen the last of these things, Malone—you mark my words.”
Ice
I had not seen Challenger for six months or more. That wasn’t particularly unusual, as he was often away on one or another of his enthusiastic quests for knowledge.
I was mi
nding my own business that Saturday, basking in a rare weekend away from the hectic round of too much or too little news that was my day-to-day existence at the paper. I just happened to be in Regent’s Park, taking a constitutional stroll, when the larger of the two ponds froze. Now, a freezing pond in London parkland is not in itself a news story, but what would make this front-page news was the timing—we were only three days from midsummer, and the temperature was in the seventies.
By the time I arrived at the waterside, a thaw had already set in, but it was obvious that the freeze had been extensive and several of the trees would see an early autumn, given that their leaves had dried and shriveled in a sudden burst of cold.
The remnants of ice seemed thickest at the northern end of the lake, up toward the zoo, and it was my reporter’s curiosity that set me walking in that direction as the ice retreated away from me, summer once again asserting itself in the immediate area.
It quickly became obvious that the most bitter cold, and the thickest ice, was concentrated inside the zoo at the northernmost end of the park. I paid my shilling at the gate, and went inside. Most of the patrons, dressed for summer but now frozen to the bone, were streaming out in the other direction.
It did not take me long to find the center of the phenomenon—I was led there by a booming bellow I knew only too well. I arrived at a large new building that had not been there on my last visit and went inside to find Challenger haranguing three white-coated youths.
“If you had done what you were bloody well told to do in the first place, there wouldn’t even be a problem, now would there?”
He looked much as he had the last time I saw him—squat, barrel-chested, his great beard bristling with indignation. He had been in sunnier climes, for he was heavily tanned, being most evident in his face, the darkening only making the piercing blue of his eyes all the more startling.
He saw me at the door.
“I should have bloody known,” he said, smiling. “Typhoid Mary, first on the scene as always.”
We shook hands warmly.
“I was going to get you up here on Monday,” he continued. “But these blithering idiots have spoiled the surprise.”
I finally took in my surroundings. We stood in a large, almost cavernous dome, cut in half by thick iron bars that looked more like a prison cell than a zoo exhibition area. The other side of the bars was obviously meant to hold animals, and some large ones at that, but as yet it was empty—empty, that is, apart from the thick ice that covered every surface and even ran partly up the walls. There was a distant constant hum that I felt through the soles of my feet.
“I take it you’re responsible for the ice out in the park?” I said.
He grinned even more broadly.
“It reached the park? Excellent. That means he was right. Now it’s just a matter of getting it to focus.”
“Who was right?”
“An old friend. Come through and say hello.”
He led me to the far end of the enclosure to a small door.
I turned back to look at the extent of the dome.
“What’s all this for?”
“It’s a new exhibit—an arctic landscape, they’re calling it—but that’s not the exciting bit. Come and see how we’ve made it work.”
I recognized the other part of the partnership as soon as I walked into a small, rather cramped laboratory—John Logie Baird stood over a brass and glass contraption festooned with switches and dials. This was the source of the hum, and the vibration was stronger here—if truth be told, rather alarming.
The small Scotsman’s brow was furrowed.
“It’s a wee bit more powerful than we imagined, Challenger,” he said. “We’ll need to pull back a bit on it. But now that I’ve seen the problem, it’s easily fixed, Those three lads might even have done us a favor—it could have happened on Monday, and left us all with red faces.”
He turned and saw me.
“Malone! How the blazes are you? Come for the show?”
“Let me try to understand this,” I said. “The pair of you have been put in charge of devising the refrigeration for this new exhibit—have I got that right?”
Both of then grinned.
“Logie Baird is doing the temperature control,” Challenger said. “I designed the enclosure—we’ll have seals, walrus, arctic fox, snowy owls—maybe even a great white bear in the future and …”
I put up a hand.
“Sorry, slow down—I’m just having trouble with the idea of putting you two in charge of anything—never mind something as grand as this.”
I had managed to annoy both of them simultaneously, and for several seconds I thought I’d only earned myself a quick exit, but finally Challenger smiled again.
“We are scientists,” he said. “We learn from our mistakes. We have this firmly under control.”
I was wondering whether the walkers in the park that morning would agree with me, but I was already on shaky ground, so kept my peace. Besides, this was a story, whichever way it played out, and I was now on the inside. As a reporter, I had a duty to see it through, although I had a bad feeling that this was just another disaster waiting to happen.
I spent most of the remainder of my weekend at the zoo. Logie Baird tried to explain his refrigeration unit to me—the device seemed to produce ice out of nowhere, but no matter how many times the Scotsman went over it, he always quickly lost me in the science. One thing stuck, a phrase I thought I might be able to use in my story—‘Ice is just water at a different energy level.’
I had more success with Challenger’s side of the operation, helping him with getting animals housed and comfortable in the freezing conditions. I had taken to wearing a thick woolen overcoat, hat and gloves when inside the dome, but even then, the cold bit hard all the way to my bones. Challenger seemed remarkably unaffected and worked with a tireless energy, directing the proceedings with a bark that brooked no argument.
They were cutting it close, but on early Monday morning he pronounced the exhibit ready—the grand opening could proceed. Logie Baird and Challenger both seemed certain of their coming success—and even I had been won over since Saturday. There was no repeat of the accident that caused the ice to spread out into the park; the hum and vibration, though still present, was now almost unnoticeable, and the animals all seemed quite happy to co-exist in their new habitat. The Royal Society had invited dignitaries from all over and had set up a marquee outside the enclosure for the food and drink after the ceremony.
As the crowd arrived, I realized I was rather underdressed for the occasion, given the variety of formal wear on display. Even Challenger had made an effort, although he had clearly gained some weight since the last time he wore what he called ’the monkey suit’, and looked rather like an overstuffed sausage.
He still cut an imposing figure as he stood before the enclosure door addressing the assembled crowd.
“What you are about to see is a wonder of modern engineering, coupled with the latest ideas in the care and maintenance of animals in the zoo environment. Every effort has been made to create a habitat as natural as possible for these creature—you may find it rather chilly. Like the arctic fox, perhaps you should have brought your furs.”
He cut a ceremonial tape, and ushered the crowd in.
I have to admit the exhibit was like no other I have ever seen. Two great walrus sat on a block of ice overlooking a clear blue lagoon full of seals. Behind them rose a huge slab of rock, ice and snow, towering to the highest part of the dome. Two white owls peered at us from the heights, and pale fox cubs gamboled on the slopes. The audience was quite taken, and rapt in attention, but that—and Challenger’s smile—didn’t last long. After five minutes the crowd thinned, either driven out by the biting cold or the lack of any activity from the animals. All too soon Challenger, Logie Baird and I were alone in the huge empty dome.
“That’s it?” Challenger said. “I’ve seen gnats with longer attention spans.”
I do believe the professor might have rushed outside and begun throwing people back in to the enclosure, demanding that they appreciate what was before them. But fate had another trick to play.
I felt it first, as before, through the soles of my feet, an insistent vibration, getting steadily stronger.
“Logie Baird?” Challenger said.
“It’s nothing,” the smaller Scotsman answered. “It probably just needs a tweak. I’ll go and check.”
He opened the door to the laboratory—and could proceed no further. The whole doorway—the whole room from what I could tell, was completely encased in ice.
“Shut it off,” Challenger shouted.
Logie Baird looked bewildered.
“We can’t. The generator is in the lab.”
“How long will it run?”
“Several days,” Logie Baird said. “Maybe a week? I filled it up this morning, and it’s an efficient wee engine, if I do say so myself.”
The stressed door frame cracked loudly, the hum and vibration rose, and we had to step back sharply as a wall of ice poured into the enclosure and began to spread. It was little more than slush at first but rapidly hardened as the cold intensified, running across the floor and walls, moving so fast that our escape was going to be cut off in seconds if I didn’t get us all moving. Challenger saw the risk at the same time I did, but Logie Baird merely stood there looking perplexed, and we had to bodily lift him and half-carry him out.
A crowd of well-dressed revelers stood around the marquee, drinks in hand, gaping in astonishment at three madmen—to their eyes—who had burst out of the enclosure. I felt cold at my neck and turned to see the ice run over the outside of the dome. Glass cracked; metal groaned. The sky overhead darkened. Clouds roiled, building up from out of nowhere, heralding a coming storm.
The crowd around the marquee finally realized they were in trouble as new ice flowed toward their feet. Once started, panic spread even faster than the cold, and there was a mad rush for the exit. Challenger wasn’t ready to join them quite yet.
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories Page 23
