The Baen Big Book of Monsters, page 28
“It—it tore it down,” Mrs. Kirth said stupidly. “Do you think it’ll—Jay! Wait!”
But Kirth went forward, holding the gun ready. In the moonlight the gross bulk of the monster loomed hideously above him.
And the Beast thought: It is time. Time to establish communication. . . .
A huge foreleg lifted and began to trace a design in the dirt of the farmyard. A circle formed, and another. In time, a map of the solar system was clear.
“Look at the way it’s pawing,” Mrs. Kirth said. “Like a bull getting ready to charge. Jay—watch out!”
“I’m watching,” Kirth said grimly. And he lifted the gun.
The Beast drew back, without fear, but waiting for the man to see the design. Yet Kirth’s eyes saw only a meaningless maze of concentric circles. He walked slowly forward, his boots obliterating the design.
“He did not notice it,” the Beast thought. “I must try again. Surely it will be easy to make him understand. In such a highly organized civilization, only a scientist would have been entrusted with my care.”
Remembering the gesture of greeting among Earthmen, the Beast lifted a foreleg and slowly extended it. Shaking hands was fantastically impossible, but Kirth would recognize the significance of the motion.
Instead, Kirth fired. The bullet ripped along the Beast’s skull, a painful though not dangerous wound. The Beast instantly withdrew its paw.
The man did not understand. Perhaps it thought harm had been offered, had read menace in the friendly gesture. The Beast lowered its head in a motion of submission.
At sight of that frightful mask swooping down, Mrs. Kirth broke through her paralysis of terror. She shrieked in an agony of fear and turned to flee. Kirth, yelling hysterical oaths, pumped bullet after bullet at the reptile.
The Beast turned clumsily. It was not hurt, but there was danger here. Attempting to escape without damaging the frail structures all around, it managed to step on a pigsty, ruin a silo, and crush in one wall of the farmhouse.
But this could not be helped. The Beast retreated and was lost in the night.
The inhuman brain was puzzled. What had gone wrong now? Earthmen were intelligent, yet they had not understood. Perhaps the fault lay with itself. Full maturity had not been reached; the thought-patterns were still not set in their former matrices. The fogs that shrouded the reptile’s mind were not yet completely dissipated. . . .
Growth! Maturity! That was necessary. Once maturity had been achieved, the Beast could meet Earthmen on equal terms and make them understand. But food was necessary. . . .
The Beast lumbered on through the moonlit gloom. It went like a behemoth through fences and plowed fields, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake. At first it tried to keep to roads, but the concrete and asphalt were shattered beneath the vast weight. So it gave up that plan, and headed for the distant mountains.
A shouting grew behind it. Red light flared. Searchlights began to sweep the sky. But this tumult died as the Beast drove farther and farther into the mountains. For a time, it must avoid men. It must concentrate on—food!
The Beast liked the taste of flesh, but it also understood the rights of property. Animals were owned by men. Therefore they must not be molested. But plants—cellulose—almost anything was fuel for growth. Even the limbs of trees were digestible.
So the colossus roamed the wilderness. Deer and cougars it caught and ate, but mostly vegetation. Once, it saw an airplane droning overhead, and after that more planes came, dropping bombs. But after sundown, the Beast managed to escape.
It grew unimaginably. Some effect of the sun’s actinic rays, not filtered as on cloud-veiled Venus, made the Beast grow far beyond the size it had been on Venus eons ago. It grew larger than the vastest dinosaur that ever stalked through the swamps of Earth’s dawn, a titanic, nightmare juggernaut out of the Apocalypse. It looked like a walking mountain. And, inevitably, it became clumsier.
The pull of gravity was a serious handicap. Walking was painful work. Climbing slopes, dragging its huge body, was agony. No more could the Beast catch deer. They fleetly evaded the ponderous movements.
Inevitably, such a creature could not escape detection. More planes came, with bombs. The Beast was wounded again, and realized the necessity of communicating with Earthmen without delay. Maturity had been reached. . . .
There was something of vital importance that Earthmen must know. Life had been given to the Beast by Earthmen, and that was a debt to be repaid.
The Beast came out of the mountains. It came by night, and traveled swiftly, searching for a city. There, it knew, was the best chance of finding understanding. The giant’s stride shook the earth as it thundered through the dark.
On and on it went. So swift was its progress that the bombers did not find it till dawn. Then the bombs fell, and more than one found its mark.
But the wounds were superficial. The Beast was a mighty, armored Juggernaut, and such a thing may not be easily slain. It felt a pain, however, and moved faster. The men in the sky, riding their air-chariots, did not understand—but somewhere would be men of science. Somewhere. . . .
And so the Beast came to Washington.
Strangely, it recognized the Capitol. Yet it was, perhaps, natural, for the Beast had learned English, and had listened to Kirth’s televisor for months. Descriptions of Washington had been broadcast, and the Beast knew that this was the center of government in America. Here, if anywhere on Earth, there would be men who understood. Here were the rulers, the wise men. And despite its wounds, the Beast felt a thrill of exultation as it sped on.
The planes dived thunderously. The aerial torpedoes screamed down. Crashing they came, ripping flesh from that titanic armored body.
“It’s stopped!” said a pilot, a thousand feet above the Beast. “I think we’ve killed it! Thank God it didn’t get into the city—”
The Beast stirred into slow movement. The fires of pain bathed it. The reptilian nerves sent their unmistakable messages to the brain, and the Beast knew it had been wounded unto death. Strangely it felt no hate for the men who had slain it.
No—they could not be blamed. They had not known. And, after all, humans had taken the Beast from Venus, restored it to life, tended and fed it for months. . . .
And there was still a debt. There was a message that Earthmen must know. Before the Beast died, it must convey that message, somehow.
The saucer eyes saw the white dome of the Capitol in the distance. There could be found science, and understanding. But it was so far away!
The Beast rose. It charged forward. There was no time to consider the fragility of the man-made structures all around. The message was more important.
The bellow of thunder marked the Beast’s progress. Clouds of ruin rose up from toppling buildings. Marble and granite were not the iron-hard stone of Venus, and a trail of destruction led toward the Capitol. The planes followed in uncertainty. They dared not loose bombs above Washington.
Near the Capitol was a tall derricklike tower. It had been built for the accommodation of newscasters and photographers, but now it served a different purpose. A machine had been set up there hastily, and men frantically worked connecting power cables. A lens-shaped projector, gleaming in the sunlight, was swinging slowly to focus on the oncoming monster. It resembled a great eye, high above Washington.
It was a heat ray.
It was one of the first in existence, and if it could not stop the reptile, nothing could.
Still the Beast came on. Its vitality was going fast, but there would still be time. Time to convey its message to the men in the Capitol, the men who would understand.
From doomed Washington arose a cry, from ten thousand panic-strained throats. In the streets men and women fought and struggled and fled from the oncoming monster that towered against the sky, colossal and horrible.
On the tower soldiers worked at the projector, connecting, tightening, barking sharp orders.
The Beast halted. It paused before the Capitol. From the structure, men were fleeing. . . .
The fogs were creeping up to shroud the reptile brain. The Beast fought against increasing lassitude. The message—the message!
A mighty forepaw reached out. The Beast had forgotten Earth’s gravity, and the clumsiness of its own gross bulk.
The massive paw crashed through the Capitol’s dome!
Simultaneously the heat ray flashed out blindly. It swept up and bathed the Beast in flaming brilliance.
For a heartbeat the tableau held, the colossus towering above the nation’s Capitol. Then the Beast fell. . . .
In death, it was terrible beyond imagination. The heat ray crumpled it amid twisted iron girders. The Capitol itself was shattered into utter ruin. For blocks buildings collapsed, and clouds of dust billowed up in a thick, shrouding veil.
The clouds were blinding, like the mists that darkened the sight and the mind of the Beast. For the reptile was not yet dead. Unable to move, the life ebbing swiftly from it, the Beast yet strove to stretch out one monstrous paw. . . .
Darkly it thought: I must give them the message. I must tell them of the plague that destroyed all life on Venus. I must tell them of the virus, borne on the winds, against which there is no protection. Out of space, it came to Venus, spores that grew to flowers. And now, the flowers grow on Earth. In a month, the petals will fall, and from the blossoms the virus will develop. And then, all life on Earth will be destroyed, as it was on Venus, and nothing will exist on all the planet but bright flowers and the ruins of cities. I must warn them to destroy the blossoms now, before they pollinate. . . .
The mists were very thick now. The Beast shuddered convulsively, and lay still. It was dead.
On a rooftop, a man and a woman watched from the distance. The man said: “God, what a horrible thing! Look at it lying there, like the devil himself.” He shuddered and glanced away.
The white-faced woman nodded. “It’s hard to believe the world can hold so much horror, and yet can give us anything as beautiful as this. . . .” Her slim fingers stroked the velvety petals of the blossom that was pinned to her dress. Radiant, lovely, the flower from Venus glowed in the sunlight.
Already, pollen was forming within its cup.
The Island of the Ud
INTRODUCTION
In his younger days, William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an apprentice seaman. Later he became known for his supernatural stories, many of them eerie tales of the sea, including two yarns about Captain Jat, told from the third person viewpoint of his long-suffering young cabin boy Pibby Tawles. In this one, the not-so-good Captain heads for an unknown island, hoping again to see an old female acquaintance and also to steal a number of valuable pearls. Things get complicated by both the lady friend and the pearls having fearsome guardians who may or may not be altogether human, and another guardian who is definitely not human—and also is very large . . .
William Hope Hodgson is now recognized as one of the preeminent fantasy writers of the early twentieth century, particularly his extraordinary novel of the far future, The Night Land, set millions of years from now, when the Sun has gone out and the last remnants of humanity huddle in a mountain-sized pyramid, besieged by monsters, many themselves also mountain-sized. Also notable are his novels The House on the Borderland, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, and The Ghost Pirates, as well as the stories of the occult detective Carnaki, and many other short stories. His complete works are available in five omnibus volumes on Baen e-books. While I highly recommend The Night Land, it is written in a pseudo-archaic style which is not for every taste, but his other novels and his short stories of the sea and of Carnaki’s exploits have no such stylistic quirks, and I recommend them as well.
The Island of the Ud
by William Hope Hodgson
Pibby Tawles, Cabin-boy and deck-hand stood to lee-ward of the half-poop, and stared silently at the island, incredibly lonely against the translucence of the early dawn—a place of lonesome and mysterious silence, with strange birds of the sea wheeling and crying over it, and making the silence but the more apparent.
A way to wind’ard, Captain Jat, his Master, stood stiff and erect against the growing light, all his leathery length of six feet, five inches, set into a kind of grim attention as he stared at the black shadow upon the sea, that lay off his weather bow.
The minutes passed slowly, and the dawn seemed to dream, stirred to reality only by the far and chill sound of the birds crying so dreely. The small barque crept on, gathering the slight morning airs to her aid, whilst the dawn-shine grew subtly and strengthened up, so that the island darkened the more against it for a little while, and grew stealthily more real. And all the time, above it, the sea birds swung about in noiseless circling against the gold-of-light that hung now in all the lower sky.
Presently, there came the hoarse hail of the lookout man, who must have waked suddenly:—
“Land on the weather bow, Sir!”
But the lean, grim-looking figure to the wind’ard vouchsafed no reply, beyond a low growled “grrrrr!” of contempt.
And all the time, Pibby Tawles, the boy, stared, overwhelmed with strange imaginings—treasure, monsters, lovely women, weirdness unutterable, terror brooding beyond all powers of his imagination to comprehend! He had listened to some marvelously strange things, when Captain Jat had been in drink: for it was often then the Captain’s whim to make the boy sit at the table with him, and dip his cup likewise in the toddy-bowl.
And presently, when Captain Jat had drunk his toddy steadily out of the big pewter mug, he would begin to talk; rambling on in garrulous fashion from tale to tale; and, at last, as like as not, mixing them quite inextricably. And as he talked, the long, lean man would throw his glance back over his shoulder suspiciously every minute or so, and perhaps bid the boy go up to the little half-poop, and discover the wherabouts of the officer of the watch, and then into the cabin of the officer whose watch it might chance to be below, and so to make sure that neither of his Mates were attending listening ears on the sly.
“Don’t never tell the Mates, boy!” he would say to Pibby Tawles, “Or I’ll sure maul you! They’d be wantin’ profits.”
For that was, in the main, the substance of all his talks—treasure, that is to say. To be exact, treasure and women.
“Never a word, boy. I trusts you; but no one else in this packet!”
And truly, Captain Jat did seem to have a trust in the boy; for in his cups, he told him everything that came up in his muddled mind; and always the boy would listen with a vast interest, putting in an odd question this time and that to keep the talk running. And indeed it suited him very well; for though he could never tell how much to believe, or how little, he was very well pleased to be sitting drinking his one cup of toddy slowly in the cabin, instead of being out on the deck, doing ship work.
It is true that the Captain appeared both to like the boy, in his own queer fashion, and to trust him; but for all that, he had with perfect calmness and remorseless intent, shown him the knife with which he would cut his throat, if ever he told a word of anything that his master might say to him during his drinking bouts.
Captain Jat’s treatment of the lad was curious in many ways. He had him sleep in a little cabin aback the Mate’s where through the open door he could see the boy in his bunk. When he ran out of toddy, he would heave his pewter mug at the lad’s head as he lay asleep, and roar to him to turn-out and brew him fresh and stronger; but this trick of the Captain’s was no trouble to Pibby; for he rigged a dummy oakum-head to that end of his bunk which showed through the open doorway and slept then the other way about.
And so with this little that I have told you may know something of the life aft in the cabin of the little barque Gallat, which vessel belonged, stick-and-keel, to Captain Jat; and some pretty rum doings there were aboard of her, first and last, as you may now have chance to judge.
At times, another side of Captain Jat would break out, and he would spend the whole of a watch having a gorgeous pistol-shooting match against Pibby; and a wonderful good shot the boy was, both by natural eye, and by the training he had this way. In the end, the boy became a better shot than Captain Jat himself, who was an extraordinarily fine marksman; though somewhat unequal. Yet for all that Pibby beat him time after time, this peculiar man showed no annoyance, but persisted in the matches, as if his primary intention were to make the boy an expert with the weapon; and indeed, I have little doubt but that this was his real desire.
Now, although Pibby Tawles had tremendously confused and vague ideas as to what strangeness of mystery was concerned with the island, yet he knew perfectly that it was no chance that had brought them that way; for all the Captain’s talks over his toddy had gone to show that the true aim of the voyage was to bring up near the island for some purpose that the lad could only guess at in a mystified way, owing to the muddling fashion in which Captain Jat had run his yarns one into another; treasure, women, monsters, and odd times a queer habit of muttering to himself about his little priestess—his little priestess! And once he had broken out into a kind of hazy ramble about the Ud, rolling his eyes at the boy strangely and gesticulating so impressively with his pewter mug that he managed to spread his toddy in an unprejudiced manner over Pibby, the table and the floor generally.
Therefore, having, as I have said, a sure knowledge that the island they approached was the real goal of the voyages, though there was an honest enough cargo below hatches, you may imagine something of Pibby’s blank astonishment when Captain Jat allowed the barque to sail quietly past, touching neither brace, sheet nor tack; so that, by the time morning was full come, the island lay upon the weather quarter, and presently far away astern.
Yet, as they had gone past, the lad had studied it very eagerly, and had seen in the light of the coming day that it was wooded almost everywhere, even close down to the shores, with a long, bold reef of stark rock running out in a great sweep upon the South side, so that it was plain a boat could be landed there very safely and easily under its lee. The island, Pibby had noticed, rose towards the centre, into a low, seemingly flat-topped hill, with the forests of great trees very heavy on its slopes.
