The Replicators

  A. E. van Vogt

  From the short story collection ‘The Far Out Worlds of A E Van Vogt’

  * * *

  v0.9 by the N.E.R.D’s. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.

  * * *

  ONE

  Standing there, after killing the monster, Matlin began to get mad.

  In its death throes, the twelve-foot creature had done a violent muscular convulsion and somersaulted over into the dump section of Matlin’s truck.

  There it lay now, with its elephantine head and quarter-length trunk twisted to one side, and a huge arm and hand flung up and visible over the rear end. What must have been tons of shiny, black body was squashed limply down into the bottom of the cavernous metal carrier… creating a problem.

  That was all it was to Matlin: a problem.

  Steve Matlin was an abysmally suspicious and angry man. His impulse now was to dump the beast in the weeds beside the road. Reluctantly, he decided against that. He had unfortunately been seen driving along this little used lake road by the two officers of a highway patrol car. If the patrolmen found the creature’s body, they would assume that he had shot it.

  This benighted man, Matlin, envisioned himself as being the person who would have to see to the disposition of the dead monster. As he reasoned it out, if he made the mistake of dumping it in the wrong place, he’d have to hire a crane to get it into his truck again. And if he simply took it home, he’d have the job of digging a hole for it.

  Better take it to the police, he decided gloomily, and follow their advice like a good little fellow.

  Seething at the nuisance, but resigned, he drove to the main highway. There, instead of turning left to his farm, he headed for Minden, the nearest suburb of the city. Arrived in town, he drove straight to the police station, braked to a halt, and vigorously honked his horn.

  Nobody showed.

  The exasperated Matlin was about to lean on his horn and really blast them with sound, when he made an electrifying discovery. The police headquarters was on a side street and, whatever the reason, there wasn’t a car or person in sight… Hot afternoon, empty street, rare opportunity -Matlin tripped the lever that started the dump mechanism.

  A moment later, he felt the beast’s body shift. He simply drove out from under it and kept on going, gunning his motor and reversing the dump mechanism.

  TWO

  That night, before they went to bed, his wife, Cora said to him, ‘Did you hear about the creature from space?’

  Matlin’s mind leaped to the memory of the beast he had carted into town. He thought scathingly: Those nuts! Creature from space indeed! But he said aloud, gruffly, ‘You watching that junk on TV?’

  ‘It was in the news report,’ she said defensively. ‘They found it right there in the street.’

  So it was the thing he had killed. He felt a sudden glee. He’d got away with it. He thought smugly: Saved myself twenty-five bucks. Time I had a little luck.

  He went silently to bed.

  Cora lay for a while, listening to his peaceful breathing, thinking of the monster from space - and thinking of the universe that she knew existed somewhere beyond the narrow world of Steve Matlin. She had once been a teacher. But that was four children and two decades ago. It was a little hard sometimes to realize how far away the real world was these days.

  Out there, a creature never before seen on Earth had been found lying dead in the street in front of the Minden police station. The TV cameras brought front views, side views and top views into everybody’s living room. No one had any idea how the thing had gotten where it was discovered, and, according to the news commentators, top government and military officials were beginning to gather around the colossal corpse like buzzing flies.

  Two days went by. A monster-hunting expedition arrived at the Matlin farm - among other places - but Cora shook her head to their questions and denied in a take-it-for-granted tone that Steve was the one who had transported the beast. After all,’ she said scathingly, ‘he would have told me. Surely, you - uh!’

  She stopped, thought: That man! That incredible man! He could have.

  The visitors seemed unaware of her sudden confusion. And they also evidently believed that a husband would have told his wife. The principal spokesman, a fine looking, soft-voiced man of her own age, who had introduced himself as John Graham - and who was the only person present not in a police or military uniform - said in a kindly tone, ‘Tell your husband there’s quite a reward already, something like a hundred thousand dollars, for anyone who can help us effectively.’

  The expedition departed in a long line of noisy motor-cycles and cars.

  It was about mid-morning the next day when Steve Matlin saw the second monster.

  He had been following the trail of the first one from the lake road. And suddenly here was another.

  He dived into a gully and lay there breathless.

  What he had expected, in coming here by himself, Matlin had never considered clearly. When Cora had told him of the reward money, he had instantly derided her trusting nature.

  ‘Those S.O.B.’s will never split that reward with anyone who hasn’t got his claim staked and ready to fight,’ he had said.

  He had come to stake his claim.

  His shock on seeing this second creature was like a multitude of flames burning inside him. He was aware of the heat rising along his spine and searing his brain. Fear! Trembling, he raised his rifle.

  As he did so, the creature - which had been bending down - came up with something that glinted in the sun. The next instant, a bullet whistled past Matlin’s head and struck a tree behind him with an impact like a clap of thunder. The ground trembled. An instant later, the sound of an explosion came to Matlin’s ears.

  The explosion was loud enough to have come from a small cannon.

  Even as he made the mental comparison from his experience as a marine in World War II, the distant rifle - it looked a rifle, though a huge one - spat flame again. This time the bullet struck the rock ten yards in front of Matlin and sprayed him with a shower of rock splinters. His body stung all over, and when he was able to look again - after the second explosion had echoed from the distance - he saw that his hands were covered with dozens of droplets of his blood.

  The sight was both terrifying and galvanizing. He slid back, rolled over, half-clawed to his feet and, bending low, ran to the gully’s end, stopping only when he realized that it was becoming too shallow to be a shelter.

  What could he do?

  Shadowy memories came of wartime risks he had taken. At the time he had felt enforced, compelled by the realities of a war he never accepted - a war that had wasted several years of his life. But he remembered moving, crouching, going forward. He had always thought what a mad thing it was for a sensible person to force himself into enemy territory. Yet under the hated pressure of wartime discipline, he had resignedly gone into the most deadly situations.

  Was it possible he would have to do that now - because of his own foolishness in coming here?

  As he crouched there, appalled, two more cannonlike shells splattered the rock where he had been seconds before. A cannon against a rifle! Matlin wanted out, wanted away. The angry scheme he had had to get for himself whatever might be at the end of this search had no meaning in the face of the firepower that was seeking his destruction with each booming shot.

  He lay cringing at the shallow end of the gully, not even daring to raise his head.

  His own rifle seemed like a mere toy now…

  The phone rang. When Cora answered, it took her several moments to recognize the hoarse voice at the other end as her husband’s.

  ‘I’m calling from a roadside pay phone. Can you find out where that monster-hunting expedition is now?’ he said.

  ‘Mamie just called. They were over at her farm. Why?’

  ‘It’s chasing me,’ he said. ‘Tell ‘em I’m coming toward the highway from the boathouse. It’s driving a dump truck as big as a house.’

  ‘What’s chasing you?’ Cora yelled into the mouthpiece. ‘Where?’

  ‘A second one of the monsters. On that back road to the lake.’ Matlin moaned. And hung up.

  THREE

  The battle on the highway began about two o’clock in the afternoon. The creature climbed out of the cab of a dump truck that stood twenty feet high. Crouching behind the vehicle, it fired with a rifle the size of a cannon at anything that moved.

  The two dozen men with their frail cars and tiny rifles crouched in the underbush. Lying beside Graham, Matlin heard the man say urgently to an army major, ‘Call again for an air strike!’

  It was about ten minutes after that that the first helicopter appeared on the horizon. It turned out to be an enterprising TV station’s vehicle, with cameras aboard. The fluttering monstrosity of flying machine circled the dump truck, taking pictures of the great being beside it. At first it did not seem to occur to the creature to look at the sky for the source of the sound. But suddenly it got the idea.

  Up came that long rifle. The first bullet smashed through the cockpit. A splinter from somewhere hit the pilot and knocked him unconscious. The helicopter flew off erratically. As it retreated, another gigantic bullet smashed its tail. The stricken whirlybird fluttered down among the trees on the other side of a low hill.

  Worse, when the military helicopters arrived, they no longer had the advantage of surprise. The cannon-rifle fired at them as they approached. They veered off - but not before three went down, one in flames. With one exception, the others began to shoot back from a distance.

  The exception flew off to the left, disappearing low behind a hill. It reappeared presently to the rear of the monster and, while the other machines kept up a barrage from in front, this lone helicopter came in on the target from behind.

  The barrage of bullets that its pilot loosed downward almost tore off the great head of a creature which did not even see where the death came from.

  Matlin walked forward with the others, angrily fingering the ‘claim’ he had written out. It infuriated him that they were not offering to honour his rights. Even though he had expected it, the reality was hard to take.

  Arrived at the truck, he stood impatiently by while the men examined the creature, the huge vehicle and the rifle. Matlin was drawn abruptly out of his irritated self-absorption with the realization that he had been twice addressed. Graham indicated the ten-foot rifle.

  ‘What do you make of that?’

  The question approach, the appeal to him on an equal basis, momentarily neutralized the timeless anger in Matlin. Now! he thought. He handed Graham his claim with the request, ‘I’d like you to sign this.’ Then he bent down beside the huge weapon and examined it.

  He commented presently, ‘Looks like a pump action repeater, much like the one I’ve got, only many times as big. Could have been made by the same company.’

  It irritated him as he spoke to realize that Graham still held the claim sheet in his hand; had not even glanced at it.

  Graham said in an odd tone, ‘What company?’

  ‘Mine is a Messer,’ said Matlin.

  Graham sighed and shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Take a look at the nameplate on that big gun,’ he said.

  Matlin bent down. The word MESSER-made, stared back at him in indented, black metal lettering.

  ‘And what’s the name of your dump truck?’ Graham asked.

  Silently, Matlin loped around to the front of the oversized 1 truck, and peered up at the letters. They were exactly the same as on his own dump truck: FLUG.

  When Matlin returned with the identification, Graham nodded, and then handed him back his claim sheet, and said evenly, ‘If I were to write that claim, Mr Matlin, it would read: “As the man who had done the most to prevent the , creature from space being traced down, I recognize myself” -meaning you, Mr Matlin - “as the one person least qualified to receive the reward.” ‘

  It was such an unexpected reaction, so instantly threatening to his rights, so totally negative, that Matlin blanched. But he was stopped by the words only for a moment. Then the anger poured.

  ‘Why, you damned swindler!’ he began.

  ‘Wait!’ Graham spoke piercingly, raised his hand in a warning gesture. His steely gray eyes were cynical as he continued: ‘Now, if you were to lead us onto the real backtrack, help us locate these creatures, I’ll reconsider that judgment. Will you?’

  Night came and caught them on the hunt.

  As the monster-hunting expedition camped beside the lake, the darkness was shattered by a thunderous roaring sound. Matlin tumbled from the back seat of his car, ran to the lake shore, and peered across the dark waters toward the island in the lake’s center. He was aware of other men coming up behind and beside him.

  It was from the island that the noise came.

  ‘Sounds like a whole battery of jet engines,’ somebody yelled above the roar, ‘and it seems to be coming this way.’

  Abruptly, the truth of that was borne out. The jet sound was suddenly above them. Framed in a patch of dark blue sky, a monstrous sized helicopter was momentarily visible.

  It disappeared into a cloud bank. The great roaring receded, became a remote throb.

  In the darkness, Graham came up beside Matlin, said, ‘Didn’t you tell me you had a lakeside cabin near here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Matlin said, wary.

  ‘Got a boat there?’

  Matlin jumped to a horrid conclusion. ‘You’re not thinking of going over to the island?’ he gulped. ‘Now!’

  Graham said earnestly, ‘We’ll pay you for the rent of the boat, and guarantee you against damages - in writing. And if that’s the base these creatures operate from, I’ll sign your claim.’

  Matlin hesitated. The boat and the lakefront property were his one dream. No one, not even Cora, had ever realized how much they meant to him. On the very first day that he had killed the first monster, he had taken a load of sand from his farm and dumped it lovingly on the water’s edge.

  Standing there, Matlin visualized what the money would do for his dream: the rough shoreline fully sanded in, a hunting and fishing lodge, and a larger boat, the kind he had often fantasied but never managed to acquire.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

  On the island, using his flashlight sparingly, Matlin led Graham and two other men to where the ground suddenly felt… harder.

  When they dug down, they found metal bare inches under the grass.

  Graham talked softly by two-way radio to the camp they had left and then held his radio for Matlin and himself to hear the answer: a parachute army would be called by way of the more powerful radio at the camp. By dawn, several hundred seasoned men with tanks, demolition units, and cannon would be down with them.

  But, as the radio shut off, they were alone once more in the dark. The reinforcements of the morning were still hours away.

  It was Matlin - again - who found the overhang that led into a huge, brightly lighted ship.

  He was so intent, and interested, that he was inside the first chamber with the others before he clearly realized how far he had come.

  He stopped. He half turned to run: But he didn’t move.

  The scene held him.

  They were in a circular room about four hundred feet in diameter. A number of solidly built metallic extrusions came up from the floor or down from the ceiling. Except for them the room was empty.

  Matlin went with the Others to where a ramp led down to the next level. Here there were more of the huge, built-in machines - if that was what they were - but this level, also, was deserted.

  On the third level, they found two sleeping ‘children’.

  Each lay on its back in a long, black, metal, box-like structure. The larger was about half the size of a full-grown alien, the smaller a mere bit of a thing two feet long. Both were stocky of body and were, unmistakably, younger versions of the two creatures that had already been killed.

  As the three men - Graham and the two officers - glanced at each other questioningly, Matlin drew out his claim sheet, and held it toward Graham. The government agent gave him a startled look; then, evidently realizing Matlin meant it, he nodded resignedly, took the pen and signed.

  The moment he had the claim sheet back in his hands, Matlin headed for the ramp.

  He was sweating now with fear. Yet he realized he had no alternative. He had to have that signature. But now -

  … Get away from all this stuff that was none of his business!

  When he reached the lakeshore, he started the motor of the motorboat, and headed back towards his boathouse. He locked up the boat, walked stealthily through the darkness to his car, and drove off.

  As he came out of the line of trees a mile from his farm, he saw the entire yard was on fire. He heard the thunder of the gigantic engines - ‘

  His house, his barn, his machine shed - all were burning! In the vivid, fitful light from the flames he saw the huge helicopter lift up from the far side and soar up into the night sky.

  So that was where it had gone!

  It passed by above him somewhat to his right, a colossal sound, the source of which was now completely invisible in the darkness of an overcast sky.

  Matlin found Cora and the son that was not away at school crouching in the field. She mumbled something about the monster having come over and looked down at them. She said wonderingly, ‘How did it know this was your farm? That’s what I don’t understand.’

  FOUR

  The fire was dwindling. People were beginning to drive into the yard. Car doors slammed. In the fading brightness, Matlin in a bemused state carried his son and walked beside Cora to his station wagon.

 

1 2 3