by William Tenn
He noticed that whatever information he absorbed in this fashion, he seemed to absorb permanently; there was no need to go back to previous data. Probably left a permanent print on his mind, he concluded.
He had it all now, at least as much about running the ship as it was possible to understand. In the last few moments, he had been operating the ship—and operating the ship for years and years—at least through Rabd’s memories. For the first time, Manship began to feel a little confident.
But how was he to find the little spaceship in the streets of this utterly strange city? He clasped his hands in perspired bafflement. After all this—
Then he had the answer. He’d get the directions from Rabd’s mind. Of course. Good old encyclopedia Rabd! He’d certainly remember where he parked the vessel.
And he did. With a skill that seemed to have come from ages of practice, Clyde Manship riffled through the flefnobe’s thoughts, discarding this one, absorbing that one—“…the indigo stream for five blocks. Then take the first merging red one and…”—until he had as thorough and as permanent a picture of the route to Rabd’s three-jet runabout as if he’d been studying the subject in graduate school for six months.
Pretty good going for a stodgy young assistant professor of Comparative Literature who up to this night had about as much experience with telepathy as African lion-hunting! But perhaps—perhaps it had been a matter of conscious experience of telepathy; perhaps the human mind was accustomed to a sort of regular, deep-in-the-brain, unconscious telepathy from infancy and being exposed to creatures so easy to receive from as flefnobes had brought the latently exercised powers to the surface.
That would explain the quickly acquired skill that felt so much like the sudden surprising ability to type whole words and sentences after months of practicing nothing but meaningless combinations of letters in certain set alphabetical patterns.
Well, it might be interesting, but that particular speculation was not his field of research and not his problem. Not for tonight, anyway.
Right now, what he had to do was somehow slip out of the building unobserved by the crowd of flefnobe vigilantes outside, and get on his way fast. After all, it might not be long before the militia was called out to deal with something as viciously destructive as himself…
He slipped out of his hiding place and made for the wall. The zigzag doorway opened. He stepped through—and bowled over a tentacled black suitcase who’d apparently been coming in.
The flefnobe recovered fast. He pointed his spiraly weapon at Manship from where he lay and began winding it. Once more, the Earthman went rigid with fright; he’d seen what that thing could do. To be killed now, after all he’d gone through…
And once more, there was a quiver and a mental scream of distress from the flefnobe: “The flat-eyed monster—I’ve found him—his eyes—his eyes. Zogt, Rabd, help! His eyes—”
There was nothing left but a twitching tentacle or two and a puddle of liquid rippling back and forth in a little hollow near the building wall. Without looking back, Manship fled.
A stream of red dots chattered over his shoulder and dissolved a domed roof directly ahead of him. Then he had turned the corner and was picking up speed. From the dwindling telepathic shouts behind him, he deduced with relief that feet moved faster than tentacles.
He found the correct colored streams and began to work his way in the direction of Rabd’s spaceship. Only once or twice did he come across a flefnobe. And none of them seemed to be armed.
At sight of him, these passersby wound their tentacles about their bodies, huddled against the nearest wall, and, after a few dismal mutters to the effect of “Qrm save me, Qrm save me,” seemed to pass out.
He was grateful for the absence of heavy traffic, but wondered why it should be so, especially since he was now moving through the residential quarters of the city according to the mental map he had purloined from Rabd.
Another overpowering roar in his mind gave him the answer.
“This is Pukr, the son of Kimp, returning to you with more news of the flat-eyed monster. First, the Council wishes me to notify all who have not already been informed through their blelg service that a state of martial law has been proclaimed in the city.
“Repeat: a state of martial law has been proclaimed in the city! All citizens are to stay off the streets until further notice. Units of the army and space fleet as well as heavy maizeltoovers are being moved in hurriedly. Don’t get in their way! Stay off the streets!
“The flat-eyed monster has struck again. Just ten short skims ago, it struck down Lewv, the son of Yifg, in a running battle outside the College of Advanced Turkaslerg, almost trampling Rabd, the son of Glomg, who courageously hurled himself in its path in a valiant attempt to delay the monster’s flight. Rabd, however, believes he seriously wounded it with a well-placed bolt from his blaster. The monster’s weapon was the high-frequency beam from its eyes—
“Shortly before this battle, the flat-eyed horror from the outer galactic wastes had evidently wandered into a museum where it completely destroyed a valuable collection of green fermfnaks. They were found in a useless winged condition. Why did it do this? Pure viciousness? Some scientists believe that this act indicates intelligence of a very high order indeed, and that this intelligence, together with the fantastic powers already in evidence, will make the killing of the monster a much more difficult task than the local authorities expect.
“Professor Wuvb is one of these scientists. He feels that only through a correct psycho-sociological evaluation of the monster and an understanding of the peculiar cultural milieu from which it evidently derives will we be able to work out adequate counter-measures and save the planet. Therefore, in the interests of flefnobe survival, we have brought the professor here tonight to give you his views. The next mind you hear will be that of Professor Wuvb.”
Just as the newcomer began portentously, “To understand any given cultural milieu, we must first ask ourselves what we mean by culture. Do we mean, for example—” Manship reached the landing field.
He came out upon it near the corner on which Rabd’s three-jet runabout was parked between an enormous interplanetary vessel being loaded with freight and what Manship would have been certain was a warehouse, if he hadn’t learned so thoroughly how wrong he could be about flefnobe equivalents of human activities.
There seemed to be no guards about, the landing field was not particularly well-lit, and most of the individuals in the neighborhood were concentrated around the freighter.
He took a deep breath and ran for the comparatively tiny, spherical ship with the deep hollow in the top and bottom, something like an oversized metallic apple. He reached it, ran around the side until he came to the zigzag line that indicated an entrance and squeezed through.
As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been observed. Outside of the mutter of loading and stowage instructions coming from the larger ship, there were only Professor Wuvb’s louder thoughts weaving their intricate sociophilosophical web: “…So we may conclude that in this respect, at least, the flat-eyed monster does not show the typical basic personality pattern of an illiterate. But then, if we attempt to relate the characteristics of a preliterate urban cultural configuration…”
Manship waited for the doorway to contract, then made his way hand over hand up a narrow, twisting ladderlike affair to the control room of the vessel. He seated himself uncomfortably before the main instrument panel and went to work.
It was difficult using fingers on gadgets which had been designed for tentacles, but he had no choice. “To warm up the motors of the Bulvonn Drive—” Gently, very gently, he rotated the uppermost three cylinders a complete turn each. Then, when the rectangular plate on his left began to show an even succession of red and white stripes across its face, he pulled on the large black knob protruding from the floor. A yowling roar of jets started from outside. He worked almost without conscious effort, letting memory take over. It was as if Rabd himself were getting th
e spaceship into operation.
A few seconds later, he was off the planet and in deep space.
He switched to interstellar operation, set the directional indicator for astronomical unit 649-301-3—and sat back. There was nothing else for him to do until the time came for landing. He was a little apprehensive about that part, but things had gone so well up to this point that he felt quite the interstellar daredevil. “Old Rocketfingers Manship,” he grinned to himself smugly.
According to Rabd’s subliminal calculations, he should be arriving on Earth—given the maximum output of the Bulvonn Drive which he was using—in ten to twelve hours. He was going to be more than a bit hungry and thirsty, but—What a sensation he was going to make! Even more of a sensation than he had left behind him. The flat-eyed monster with a high-frequency mental beam coming out of its eyes…
What had that been? All that had happened to him, each time a flefnobe dissolved before his stare, was a good deal of fear. He had been terribly frightened that he was going to be blasted into tiny pieces and had, somewhere in the process of being frightened, evidently been able to throw out something pretty tremendous—to judge from results.
Possibly the abnormally high secretion of adrenalin in the human system at moments of stress was basically inimical to flefnobe body structure. Or maybe there was an entirely mental reaction in Man’s brain at such times whose emanations caused the flefnobes to literally fall apart. It made sense.
If he was so sensitive to their thoughts, they should be sensitive to him in some way. And obviously, when he was very much afraid, that sensitivity showed up with a vengeance.
He put his hands behind his head and glanced up to check his meters. Everything was working satisfactorily. The brown circles were expanding and contracting on the sekkel board, as Rabd’s mind had said they should; the little serrations on the edge of the control panel were moving along at a uniform rate, the visiscreen showed—the visiscreen!
Manship leaped to his feet. The visiscreen showed what seemed to be every vessel in the flefnobe army and space fleet—not to mention the heavy maizeltoovers—in hot pursuit of him. And getting closer.
There was one large spacecraft that had almost caught up and was beginning to exude a series of bright rays that, Manship remembered from Rabd’s recollections, were grapples.
What could have caused all this commotion—the theft of a single jet runabout? The fear that he might steal the secrets of flefnobe science? They should have been so glad to get rid of him, especially before he started reproducing hundreds of himself all over the planet!
And then a persistent thought ripple from inside his own ship—a thought ripple which he had been disregarding all the time he had been concentrating on the unfamiliar problems of deep-space navigation—gave him a clue.
He had taken off with someone—or something—else in the ship!
Clyde Manship scurried down the twisting ladder to the main cabin. As he approached, the thoughts became clearer and he realized, even before the cabin aperture dilated to let him through, exactly whom he would find.
Tekt.
The well-known female star of fnesh and blelg from the southern continent and Rabd’s about-to-be bride cowered in a far corner; all of her tentacles—including the hundred and seventy-six slime-washed ones that were topped by limpid eyes—twisted about her tiny black body in the most complicated series of knots Manship had ever seen.
“Oo-ooh!” her mind moaned. “Qrm! Qrm! Now it’s going to happen! That awful, horrible thing! It’s going to happen to me! It’s coming closer—closer—”
“Look, lady, I’m not even slightly interested in you,” Manship began, before he remembered that he’d never been able to communicate with any flefnobe before, let alone a hysterical female one.
He felt the ship shudder as the grapples touched it. Well, here I go again, he thought. In a moment there would be boarders and he’d have to turn them into bluish soup.
Evidently, Tekt had been sleeping aboard the vessel when he took off. She’d been waiting for Rabd to return and begin their mating flight. And she was obviously a sufficiently important figure to have every last reserve called up.
His mind caught the sensation of someone entering the ship. Rabd. From what Manship could tell, he was alone, carrying his trusty blaster—and determined to die fighting.
Well, that’s exactly what he’d have to do. Clyde Manship was a fairly considerate individual and heartily disliked the idea of disintegrating a bridegroom on what was to have been his honeymoon. But, since he had found no way of communicating his pacific intentions, he had no choice.
“Tekt!” Rabd telepathed softly. “Are you all right?”
“Murder!” Tekt screamed. “Help-help-help-help…” Her thoughts abruptly disappeared; she had fainted.
The zigzag aperture widened and Rabd bounced into the cabin, looking like a series of long balloons in his spacesuit. He glanced at the recumbent Tekt and then turned desperately, pointing his curlicued blaster at Manship.
“Poor guy,” Manship was thinking. “Poor, dumb, narrow-minded hero type. In just a second, you’ll be nothing but goo.” He waited, full of confidence.
He was so full of confidence, in fact, that he wasn’t a bit frightened.
So nothing came out of his eyes, nothing but a certain condescending sympathy.
So Rabd blasted the ugly, obscene, horrible, flat-eyed thing down where it stood. And scooped up his bride with loving tentacles. And went back home to a hero’s reception.
Afterword
Two days after Christmas 1954, the woman with whom I was living and with whom I was planning marriage made me a bang-up supper featuring all kinds of sharp spices. Two hours later, I was admitted to the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. As a free-lance writer, I had no medical insurance of any kind; my usually low bank account had to be completely emptied so that I could be admitted in a status other than that of charity patient.
The word spread rapidly through the New York City science-fiction community, and for some reason the word that was spread was that I gone to St. Vincent’s Hospital for an ordinary check-up. As a result, science-fiction folk showed up in my hospital room that night with all kinds of bizarre gag accouterments, only to find out that I was involved in some very serious business indeed. Harry and Joan Harrison, for example, came in holding a lily each—and were crushed to discover that the doctors were trying to decide if a dangerous immediate operation should be attempted.
After a conference, the doctors decided to hold off on the operation unless the bleeding intensified during the night. Then, one by one, the people around my bed drifted off, still apologizing for their jokey entrances. The last one to go was the woman with whom I was planning to share my life. She bent over me and put her warm, wet mouth to my ear.
Now I know that when a writer memoirizes some fifty years after the event, he cannot be expected to remember exactly every word of every speech. I therefore ask the reader to keep in mind two essential considerations: One, for most of my time on this planet, I have been blessed and cursed with almost perfect recall; and, two, such was the matter of her communication to me that it kind of seared itself into my brain.
“Now, darling,” she asked warmly, wetly. “Is it true that you are absolutely penniless?”
“Absolutely,” I told her. “My brother, Mort, cleaned out my whole bank account just to get me in here. I don’t know what I’ll do for next month’s rent. Not to mention the surgeon’s bill if they do decide to operate.”
“That’s what I thought,” she breathed, still warm and still wet. “Now sweetheart, please listen to me. You are flat on your back, physically, psychologically, and financially. There’s really nothing in this for me anymore. So I’ll be going. Goodbye, my darling.”
I pulled my head away and swiveled round to stare at her. “Hey,” I said. “You can’t be serious.”
“Now, don’t be selfish,” she said, backing away to the door. “Try to look at it from my po
int of view. Goodbye.”
Then she raised her right hand, waved it twice at me, closed the door behind her, and was gone.
I sat up in bed. I stared at the closed door for a long time. Then I picked up the telephone and called Horace Gold, the editor of Galaxy. (Horace was an agoraphobe and edited the magazine out of his apartment in Peter Cooper Village.)
Horace had heard what was going on with me. “Listen,” he said. “They tell me you’re in tough shape and you’re broke. I’ll put a voucher through tomorrow morning for five hundred dollars. You can have someone pick up the check for you about eleven a.m. What I want you to do for me…I want you to write a ten-thousand-word novelette—it should be very, very funny. Okay?”
“Thanks, Horace,” I said. “I’ll do it. If I live.”
“Right,” he agreed. “If you live. Meanwhile, don’t forget. Very, very funny.”
I hung up the phone, swallowed a large pill, and reached for the clipboard that my brother, Morton, and his wife, Sheila, had placed on my bedside table. What should I write? Well, there was the fact that Galaxy prided itself on not being a cheapo science-fiction magazine like those pulps that featured “bug-eyed monster” covers, with stories full of slime-dripping horrors to match. And there was my great fondness for two early stories by A.E. van Vogt, “Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet.” I had long dreamed of doing a minor and respectful parody of the sociological analysis of aliens both stories featured.
The nurse came in, took my temperature, urged me to rest and get a good night’s sleep—and left.
I picked up a pencil. Trying hard not to bleed, I began writing, in longhand, “The Flat-Eyed Monster.” Now, what, I mused to myself as I wrote, would Horace consider very, very funny?
Written 1954 / Published 1955
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