SPAWN OF THE COMET Read online

  “Don’t move, Dick,” said the professor softly. “We are both in deadly peril. I have a plan.”

  Slowly, cautiously, he reached beneath the table. He groped there for a moment, then brought out a gasoline blowtorch, Turning a valve, he filled the generator. Then he struck a match and ignited it.

  I noticed that when he made the quick motion necessary for the lighting of the match, the tentacles of the creature floating above us suddenly extended toward him as if attracted by the movement.

  The professor noted this, also, and worked the air pump of the torch slowly and carefully, while he kept an eye on the medusa. The creature had halted, its tentacles still extended toward him, as if undecided whether to attack or not. Presently it began to float slowly in his direction.

  Knowing that he would be unable to get his torch going in time to use it effectively, I looked about for a weapon. Across the room, at a distance of about ten feet from me, was the professor’s golf bag. The driver and brassie reared their heads invitingly above the other clubs. If I could but get one of them!

  The medusa drew nearer and nearer to the professor, who coolly continued to work the pressure pump. The torch began to roar, but I knew it would not be in operation for at least another half minute, and the exploring tentacles were now less than a foot from the Scientist.

  Had I been content to move slowly, I might have averted that which followed. But I arose with rash haste and leaped toward the golf clubs.

  Before I could make a second move, with a suddenness that was appalling, the monster pounced on me. At the first touch of those wiry tentacles I felt a terrific shock, as if a powerful electric current had passed through my body. Every muscle was numbed, stiffened. I was unable to move a finger.

  A second shock followed—a third. There was a roaring in my ears; there rose a penetrating stench like that of burning feathers. I could feel the wiry tentacles biting into my flesh, yet the numbing waves that came from them rendered the wounds almost painless.

  The roaring sound increased. I heard a horrible, wailing shriek. Then things went black before my eyes and I lost consciousness.

  WHEN I came to my senses once more, I was lying on a davenport in the drawing-room. The professor was holding a phial of some pungent aromatic beneath my nostrils, while Sue and Mrs. Davis chafed-my hands.

  I blinked, sat up, and tried to remember what had happened. Then it all came back to me—the grip of wiry tentacles, the roaring sound, the numbing shocks, the sickening stench, and that horrible shriek. I remembered it as sounding something between the wail of a steam siren and the scream Of a woman.

  “Better lie down for a while, Dick,” cautioned the professor. “You’ve had a narrow escape. If that animated galvanic battery had been just a little more powerful you could never have recovered from those shocks.”

  I leaned back on the cushions, for it made me giddy to sit up.

  “I passed out when the thing screamed, or at least I thought it screamed,” I said. “What followed?”

  “When you thought it screamed,” said the professor, “you were right. It screamed not once, but again and again. It roared before it screamed. Didn’t you hear it roar?”

  “I heard a roaring sound,” I replied. “I didn’t know whether it was made by the torch or the creature.”

  “Possibly it was both,” said the professor. “The roaring of the monster sounded very like the roaring of the torch, except that it was louder. It began to roar as soon as its tentacles touched you. I could tell by the spasmodic jerking of your muscles that it was sending ah electric current through your body, and quite a powerful one.

  “There are a few animals already known to science which have this power. Some of them are deep sea creatures, but the electric eel of Brazil is the most striking example. This eel, when its electrical organs are fully charged, is said to be capable of rendering a man or a large animal unconscious from electric shock. So it is not surprising that this creature, so many times larger than the largest electric eel, was able to do the same for you with a number of shocks.

  “My torch began to function just as the creature attacked you, and I first tried to rescue you by burning off the wiry tentacles. But it had so many of these in reserve that the task seemed endless. I, too, was attacked and had the creature’s store- of electrical energy not been depleted by the shocks it had sent through your body, it is probable that both of us would have been rendered unconscious and ultimately devoured. As it was, I was rapidly becoming helplessly entangled in the tentacles, so I turned the torch on the monster’s body. It was then that it shrieked—not once, but many times. The volume of its terrible voice was astounding; its weird tones were horrible to hear!

  “But the torch finally won. All the tentacles let go except those which had been burned off, and the thing, after bumping around on the walls for a time, flew against the window screen with such force that it was ripped from the frame. Then it disappeared, still screaming weirdly, into the night.

  “I made a very weak solution of prussic acid and painted the remaining tentacles with this. There were quite a few around your arms, legs and body. One also was tightly 'bound around your forehead. All relaxed instantly when the solution’ was applied. I then used it on the tentacles which still clung to me, after which Wong and I carried you here.”

  “Was it prussic acid solution you used on my finger this morning?” I asked. “That stuff that had a bitter almond odor?”

  “That was it,” replied the professor. “Prussic acid has a paralyzing effect on the nervous system. It is a good thing that I learned, this morning, that it will cause the tentacles of these creatures to relax. It would have been dangerous to have had to experiment with the longer tentacles in the position they had gripped you this evening.”

  “I have always thought,” I said, “that the touch of prussic acid to the human skin was poisonous, particularly to a cut surface, and that one whiff of the fumes was usually deadly.”*

  “So it is,” replied the professor. “In a sufficiently strong solution it would be deadly to apply it to an abraded skin, arid' one whiff of prussic or hydrocyanic acid gas is usually lethal. But the solution I used was diluted sufficiently to make it safe for application to the human skin, or even to an open wound. I purposely made a weak solution this morning, intending to make it a little stronger if necessary, but as you saw, it worked.”

  At this moment, Wong entered with a tea tray and a steaming pot of fragrant Darjeeling.

  I sat up for my cup of tea, and we discussed the strange incidents of the day.

  Then Mrs. Davis ordered us all to bed with a firmness that would not be gainsaid.

  EARLY the next morning Wong awakened me with a gentle knock at my door, and upon my bidding him enter, brought me a demi-tasse and cigarettes.

  “Plofessey Davis like see you along lab’toly plenty quick,” he said.

  “Tell him I’ll be right down,” I replied.

  I dressed and hurried downstairs. The professor was waiting in his laboratory.

  "Dick,” he said, “something has happened since last evening that has, it seems to me, a rather sinister significance. I haven’t told my wife or Sue, as I don’t wish to alarm them.”

  “What has happened?” I asked.

  “Come with me,” he replied. “I told my wife you and I were going for a walk, so we can go out without arousing her suspicion. Sue, I believe, is still sleeping. The poor child is exhausted after the ordeal of yesterday.”

  After threading our way among the various outbuildings, we entered the lane between a corn and wheat field which led to the pasture. Traversing the lane, we came to the pasture itself. Sue and I had crossed it only the day before, and it had revealed at that time, only the undulating, blue grass.

  But overnight there had sprouted, near Its center, a colony of gray-white growths, varying in height from three to nearly twelve feet. They were roughly cylindrical In shape, and their tops were fringed with squirming, wiry tentacles, some o
f which reached nearly to the ground, while others stood at various angles at or near the horizontal, and still others reached skyward.

  That the movements of the tentacles were not due to the morning breeze was quite evident from the fact that they moved in all directions. The cylindrical stalks, also, bent in various directions from time to time, almost as if they were bowing to each other, and those that bent toward us revealed cavernous openings at their tops, greatly resembling the mouths of anemones.

  The wind, blowing from them to us, carried the revolting charnel smell that had become so familiar to us.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “You know as much as I,” replied the professor. “They may be one of the life phases of the cloud-medusae. From the similarity of their tentacles, and the analogy we have in our submarine medusae, as well as the similar, I might say identical stench that emanates from them, I am inclined to think this is the case. Yet they might be a totally different race of creatures, which have traveled to us simultaneously with the medusae, from the space wanderer which we believe is responsible for this unprecedented invasion. Only a careful observation of them will tell.”

  While we were talking, Jake Smith, the professor’s farm hand, approached, driving a herd of cattle before him with the assistance of a young collie. The racket they made—the clatter of hoofs, the bawling of cattle and calves, the barking of the dog, and the shouts of the man-seemed to have a magnetic effect on the strange growths before us, for instantly all bent toward the herd, mouths gaping and tentacles wriggling menacingly.

  With the herd were three calves which showed a tendency to wander. While the collie was bringing in one of these strays another got away and scampered straight toward the mysterious growths. As it drew near them, all bent toward it, and when it would have run between two of the tallest, the nearer, arching its cylindrical stem like a striking serpent, suddenly pounced upon it and bore it struggling and bawling, aloft, hopelessly entangled in the myriad tentacles.

  Then the mother cow, evidently attracted by the cries of distress of her doomed offspring, dashed after it. By the time she reached the thing that held her calf aloft, the little creature’s cries had ceased. She ran helplessly around the stem for a moment, then backed up as if about to charge it head on. But she backed within range of the tentacles of three more of the horrible monstrosities, which instantly bent over and seized her, holding her helpless.

  The farm hand and dog rushed after her, but the man was warned off by the professor, and he succeeded in calling off the dog before it was too late.

  “Go back to the house, Dick,” said the professor. “Bring my blowtorch as quickly as you can. Also my twelve-gauge pump gun and twelve-gauge double barrel, with as many shells as you can carry. I’ll stay here and watch. Hurry!”

  As fast as my legs would carry me, I dashed toward the house. I found the professor’s blowtorch in the laboratory where he had left it the night before; and having gone shooting with him many times, I knew where to find the weapons.

  Slipping into a hunting coat, I loaded the game pockets with the torch and all the ammunition they would safely bear. Then, taking the two guns, I hurried back to the pasture.

  The professor had. approached to within fifty feet of the outer line of monsters. One of these, the one which had captured the calf, had grown considerably taller. Whereas it had been about twelve feet in height before, it was now nearer eighteen and still growing. The remains of the calf, still clutched to the mouthlike opening at the top, were barely visible as a rounded, dark mass showing here and there in the wilderness of tentacles which surrounded it.

  The three creatures that had captured the cow had also increased in size, and what we could see of the helpless bovine had dwindled tremendously. They continued their arched position over the carcass, feeding noiselessly, and apparently without any competition among themselves, unless it was one of speed.

  “Quick!” said the professor. “Give me the torch. I can be generating it while you load the gun.”

  I handed him the torch and proceeded to load the two shotguns.

  “What can we do with shotguns against these monsters?” I asked.

  “Nothing, at present,” he replied, lighting the generator of the torch and working the pressure pump, “but if a certain theory of mine is correct we will soon have considerable use for them.”

  “Which gun do you want?” I asked.

  “The double barrel,” he replied. “When you start you will probably have to shoot straight and often. I only want the double barrel in case of an emergency, as I plan to use the torch. Give me about a dozen extra shells.”

  I HANDED him the shells, and he put them in his pockets after looking at the wadded ends.

  “Number fours,” he said. “About as good as any, I guess. Did you bring nothing but fours?”

  “I also brought a dozen loads of buckshot,” I replied, “and one box of number twos.”

  “We’ll try the fours first, at any rate,” he said. “Now I want you to watch the creature that captured the calf.”

  I looked, and saw that it had now reached a height of about twenty feet. Its victim seemed entirely consumed. But the startling thing I noticed was the strange metamorphosis that was taking place in the shape of the creature itself. The cylindrical body seemed to be separating into a number of disk-shaped segments, piled one on top of the other like stacked dishes. Tentacles were beginning to branch out from the top of each segment.

  “If I am not mistaken,” said the professor, “the top segment will presently arise and sail away, or rather attempt to sail away, for as soon as it flies clear of the others, I want you to shoot it down. If it is far enough from them to make it safe for me to approach it, I can then destroy it with the torch.”

  It was not long before a dense cloud of vapor formed around the top segment. Suddenly it rose and turned over, dropping the whitened bones of the calf. Then it sailed slowly away over the heads of its fellows, its wiry tentacles trailing below. As soon as it was beyond range of their tentacles,"I fired into the most dense part of the cloud. It dipped slightly. Again I fired, and it slowly sank to the ground.

  “Watch the next one,” shouted the professor, running to the one I had brought down, torch in one hand and shotgun in the other. “Don’t let any of them get away.”

  As he turned his torch on the writhing, squirming mass that lay on the ground, it gave vent to a shriek similar to the one which had rung in my ears the night before. Again and again it shrieked under the relentless flame. The noise distracted my attention for a moment and I looked back at the monster I was supposed to be watching, just in time to see a second cloud-covered medusa sail away. Two shots brought this one to the ground as they had the former. Meanwhile the shrieks of the first creature ceased and the professor moved on to the second to start another pandemonium with his searing torch.

  Pushing four more shells into the magazine, I waited for the next medusa to arise. The farm hand had, meanwhile, come up with another blowtorch and a double-barreled shotgun.

  “The professor told me to pen up the cows and bring these,” he said.

  “Light your torch,” I told him. “As soon as you get it going you can help the professor.”

  “What in tarnation’s he burnin’?” asked Smith, priming his own torch. “Smells like feathers or old shoes, or somethin’.”

  “It’s worse than either,” I replied. “When you get your torch going I’ll show you what to do.”

  Before the farm hand succeeded in getting his torch to roaring, two more medusae arose, and I brought them down. But, unfortunately, I fired at one too soon and it fell among its treelike fellows where the professor did not dare to approach it.

  The professor was searing his fourth medusa when I shot down the sixth, telling Smith to watch the professor, then imitate him.

  Before the seventh arose, the fifth, which I had shot down among the others, got up once more, thus affording me a demonstration of the marvelous
recuperative powers of these creatures. Although I must have riddled and emptied practically every helium-filled cell in its body, it had closed the rent and refilled them in this marvelously short space of time. This time I was careful not to shoot until it had cleared its treelike fellows.

  Twenty flying medusae in all arose from the stalk that had devoured the calf. When I had shot down the last one, I saw that the three creatures that had seized the cow had relinquished her dry bones, and were also forming into segemnts. It was evident that I would have to do some fast shooting when these segments started to fly.

  Before the first one arose, Sue came cantering up on Blue Streak, her favorite saddle horse. It was her custom to ride each morning before breakfast, and hearing the shooting, she had ridden out to investigate.

  “What are these things, and what in the world are you doing?” she asked.

  “They are medusae passing through one of their life stages,” I replied, “and I’m shooting them down as fast as they start to fly, while your father and the hired man kill them with the torches.”

  “Can’t I help you?” she asked. “Please let me do something.”

  “My supply of shells is running low,” I said. “You might dash back to the house and get me as many as you can carry— fours, twos, and threes.”

  “Splendid!” she replied, wheeling her mount. “I’ll bring my gun, too, and help you.”

  I had thought to keep her out of danger for the time being by sending her back to the house, but to my horror, the first three disks from the three monsters that had devoured the cow, rose, turned over, and sailed after her, evidently attracted by the rapid movement of her mount.

  I brought down the foremost with two quick shots, but in my haste and anxiety I missed the second, so I was forced to waste two more charges on it. I fired my last shot at the third, causing it to sag slightly, then pushed another shell into the magazine and quickly pumped it into the chamber. But to my horror I saw that I dared not fire again. The medusa was now so close to Sue that to fire would mean that she and her mount must surely be struck.