The Metallic Muse (25 page)

“Did Smith give you a Terran Customs license for Elmer?”

Bronsky shook his head.

Allen turned away. “Place this man under arrest, Commissioner.”

Bronsky yelped. “Hey—I haven’t done anything! Neither has Elmer. You find him and bring him back to me. That’s your job.”

“My job is to protect the human race from fools like you.”

“I haven’t done anything!”

“Look,” Allen said. “Ten, twelve years ago there was a serious famine in Eastern Asia. It took all the food reserves of the rest of the world to keep the populations from starving. There was no harvest of cereal crops for two years, and it all happened because a young space cadet brought home a Venusian flower for his girl. It was only a potted plant—nothing worth bothering customs about, he thought. But on that plant were lice, Venusian lice. Not many Venusian insects would thrive in Earth’s atmosphere, but these did, and they had the food supplies of Japan and China ruined before we knew they were around. By the time we stopped them they were working into India and up into the Democratic Soviet. We spent a hundred million dollars, and finally we had to import a parasite from Venus to help us. That parasite could eventually do as much harm as the lice. It’ll be decades before the whole mess is cleaned up.

“We have dozens of incidents like this every year, and each one is potentially disastrous. Even if Elmer didn’t kill those kids, he could be carrying bacteria capable of decimating the human race. This is something for you to think about in the years to come. The minimum prison term for having unlicensed alien life in your possession is ten years. The maximum is life.”

Bronsky, stricken silent, was led away by Sergeant Darrow.

“Do you suppose there really was a Smith?” the commissioner asked.

“It’s likely. There’ve been a lot of Smiths lately. It was a mistake for the government to dump those surplus spaceships on the open market. A lot of retired spacers picked them up expecting to make a fortune freighting ore. They couldn’t make expenses, so some of them took to smuggling in anything they could pick up, figuring that there’d be a nice profit in souvenirs from outer space. Unfortunately, they were right. Who’s this?”

A dignified, scholarly-looking man entered the tent and stood waiting by the entrance.

“Did you want something?” the commissioner asked.

“I’m Professor Dubois,” the man said. “You probably don’t remember me, but a short time ago you were asking if anyone had seen that perfidious snail. I haven’t seen it, but I can tell you one of the places it went. It broke open one of my display cases and ate an exhibit.”

“Ah!” Allen exclaimed. “You’ll be from the Exotic Wonders of the Universe. You say the snail ate one of the ‘Wonders’?”

“I don’t know what else would have wanted it that badly.”

“What was it?” “Venusian moss.”

“Interesting. The snail’s been on Earth nearly three years, and it probably missed its natural diet. Let’s have a look.”

A plastic display case at the rear of the tent had been ripped open. Inside lay a bare slab of mottled green rock—Venusian rock.

“When did it happen?” Allen asked.

“I couldn’t say. Obviously at a time when the tent was empty.”

“None of your customers noticed that a Wonder was missing?”

He shook his head. “They’d think the rock was the exhibit. It’s about as interesting as the moss. There wasn’t much to it but the color scheme—yellows and reds and blacks with a kind of a sheen.”

“And so friend Elmer likes moss. That’s an interesting point, since Bronsky claims the snail was by preference a vegetarian. Thank you for letting us know. If you don’t mind, we’ll take charge of this display case. We might be able to let you have it back later.”

“It’s ruined anyway. You’re welcome to it.”

“Would you look after it, Commissioner? Just see that no one touches it until our equipment arrives. I want a close look at some of these Wonders.”

The commissioner sighed. “If you say so. But I can’t help thinking you two aren’t acting overly concerned about this thing. You’ve been here the best part of two hours, and all you’ve done is walk around and look at things and ask questions. I’ve got three hundred men out there in the fields, and what we’re mostly worried about is how we’re supposed to handle this snail if we happen to catch him.”

“Sorry,” Allen said. “I should have told you. I have five divisions of army troops being flown in. They’re on their way. The corps commander will place this entire county under martial law as soon as he touches down. Another five divisions are under stand-by orders for use when and if the general thinks he needs them. We have a complete scientific laboratory ordered, we’ve drafted the best scientists we can lay our hands on, and we’re reserving one of the Venus frequencies for our own use in case we need information from the scientific stations there. Alien life is unpredictable, and we’ve had some bitter experiences with it. And—yes, you might say we’re concerned about this.”

From somewhere in the darkness came the snap of a rifle, and then another, and finally a rattling hum as the weapon was switched to full automatic.

“I didn’t expect that,” Allen said.

“Why not?” Hilks asked.

“These are regular troops. They shouldn’t be shooting at shadows.”

“Maybe word got around about what happened to the kids.”

“Maybe.” Allen went to the door of their tent. Corps Headquarters was a blaze of light; the remainder of the encampment was dark, but the men were stirring nervously and asking one another about the shooting. The full moon lay low on the horizon, silhouetting the orderly rows of tents.

“What were you muttering about just now?” Allen asked.

“I’m still trying to figure out how Elmer got his six-foot shell from one tent to another, and smashed that display, and ate the moss, and got himself across fifty yards of open ground and over a fence into that yard and grabbed off the kids before they saw him coming, and then got clean away. It’s enough to make a man mutter.”

“It was a much better trick than that,” Allen said. “He also did it without leaving any marks. You’d think an object that large and heavy would crush a blade of grass now and then, but Elmer didn’t. Which really leaves only one explanation.”

“The damned thing can fly.”

“Right,” Allen said.

“How?”

“It’s the world’s greatest mimic. Bronsky says so. When it feels like it, it can make like a bird.”

Hilks rejected the suggestion profanely. “It must be jet-propelled,” he said. “Our own squids can do it in water.

It’s theoretically possible to do it in air, but in order to lift that much weight, it’d have to pump—let’s see, cubic capacity, air pressure—what are you doing?”

“Going back to bed. I’d like to get some sleep, but between the army’s shooting and your snoring—did you send a message to Venus?”

“Yes,” Hilks said. “I asked for Elmer’s pedigree.”

“I’ll give you two-to-one Venus has never heard of him.”

Hilks reflected. “I think fifty-to-one would be fairer odds.”

Allen closed his eyes. Hilks continued to mutter. He would not be able to sleep until he had reduced the jet-propelled Elmer to a satisfactory mathematical basis. Allen considered it a waste of time. He had no faith in Earth mathematics when applied to alien life forms.

Hilks turned on a light. A moment later his portable computer hummed to life. Allen turned over and kicked his blanket aside. The night was distressingly warm.

Footsteps crunched outside their tent. A tense voice snapped, “Allen? Hilks?”

“Come in,” Allen said. Hilks continued to mutter and to punch buttons on the computer.

The tent flap zipped open, and a very young major stood blinking in at them. “General Fontaine would like to see you.”

“Do we have time to dress, or is the general in a hurry?”

“I’d say he’s in a powerful hurry.”

Allen pulled on his dressing gown and slipped on a pair of shoes. Hilks was out of the tent ahead of him, shuffling along in his pajamas. The camp seemed suddenly wide awake, with voices coming from every tent.

They found General Fontaine in his operations headquarters pacing up and down in front of a map board. An overlay of colored scribbles identified troop positions. The general had aged several years since that afternoon. Obviously he had not been to bed, and he wore the weary, frustrated look of a man who has just realized that he might not get to bed.

Allen felt sympathetic. The general was young, but he seemed competent, and doubtlessly he had mastered command functions and the campaigns of ancient wars and thought himself ready to fight a war of his own, despite the fact that land warfare had gone the way of the internal combustion engine and the electric light.

Now fate had provided an opportunity, perhaps the only one that would come his way in his entire military career, and he found himself maintaining a defensive position against an oversized alien mollusk. It was enough to make a military man weep, and General Fontaine looked as though he would do that as soon as he found time.

“I’ve lost a man,” he announced to Allen.

“How?” Allen asked.

“He’s disappeared.”

“Without a trace?”

“Not exactly,” the general said. “He left his shoes.”

Despite strict orders that sentries were to stand duty in pairs, the missing man, Private George Agazzi, had been posted alone on the edge of a small wood. Nearby sentries heard him shout a challenge and then open fire. They could not leave their posts to investigate, but Agazzi’s sergeant was on the spot within minutes.

A patrol searched the wood and found no trace of the missing man. Reinforcements were called out, and the search was expanded. Half an hour later a staff officer found Agazzi’s rifle, sundry items of equipment, and his shoes in tall grass less than six feet from his post. None of the searchers had seen them.

“Want to have a look?” the general asked.

Hilks shook his head. “In the morning, perhaps. We’ve already seen something similar, and I doubt that there’s anything to be learned there tonight. Perhaps you’d better put three men on a post.”

“You think this snail got Agazzi?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“He wasn’t the best-disciplined soldier in my corps, but he was tough, and he knew how to handle himself. He fired a full clip of atomic pellets, and that would make mincemeat out of any snail. It doesn’t make sense. I’d be inclined to think he’s gone A.W.O.L. if it weren’t for one thing.”

“Right,” Hilks said. “He wouldn’t have left his shoes.” They returned to their tent, and Allen lay awake with the camp stirring around him and sifted through the few facts he had collected. He could not fit them together. He examined each one carefully, testing it, pushing it aside, trying it again. Either he desperately needed more facts, or—could it be that he already had too many?

Patrols passed their tent, and occasionally the soldiers’ muttered remarks were sharp enough to be understood. “How often does this thing get hungry?” one wanted to know. Allen wished he knew the answer. He lay awake until dawn, wearily projecting his thoughts against the rumble of Hilks’s snoring and the vast restlessness of the camp. Finally reveille sounded, and a short time later he heard the crunch of marching feet as the soldiers went to breakfast.

Allen had worn his facts threadbare, and he could think of only one avenue of exploration still open to him. He had to interview young Johnnie Larkins, who had, through chance or agility, lost only his legs to the thing from Venus. Allen fervently hoped he had lived to tell about it.

General Fontaine established a “Contaminated Zone” centering about the town of Gwinn Center. The first problem, as he saw it, was to contain the thing within this zone. The second problem was to find it and destroy it.

He ringed the zone with armed men and attempted to move all civilians out. Some of the carnival people and a few other crotchety individuals refused to go, one of them being Dr. Anderson. Allen advised against the use of force, so the general contented himself with gloomily forecasting their probable fate and allowed them to remain.

Allen found Dr. Anderson in his home, which was also his office. The front room was a waiting room furnished with comfortable, antique-looking chairs. On the door to the inner office a small sign read, “Doctor is in. Please be seated.” Allen ignored it and knocked firmly on the door.

Dr. Anderson emerged with a scowl of stern disapproval on his wrinkled face. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. What d’ya want?”

Allen told him. The doctor’s scowl deepened, and he said, “Office hours. I couldn’t leave before noon, and I’d have to be back by two.”

“I rather doubt that you’ll be having any patients this morning, Doctor. Gwinn Center’s population has been reduced to something like two dozen and all of them are staying home.”

“Matter of principle,” the doctor said.

“If this mess isn’t cleared up, you may never have any patients. I’m hoping that the boy can help us.”

Dr. Anderson stroked one withered cheek and continued to scowl. Finally, with an abrupt motion, he turned to the sign on the door and reversed it. “Doctor is out,” it read.

“I’ll get my hat,” he said.

They walked out to the street together, and Allen handed the doctor into his plane. He turned for a last look about the abandoned town and felt a twinge of alarm as somewhere far down the street a door slammed. “There should be troops stationed in town,” he told himself. “I’ll speak to the general about it.”

They flew south. The doctor continued to grumble until Allen patiently explained a second time that the boy would undoubtedly feel more comfortable answering questions with a familiar face present, and then he sulkily settled down to watch the scenery.

Langsford was a modern city, with tall apartment buildings rising from its park-like residential sections. The hospital was part of a vast service complex at the center of the city, a low, web-like structure with narrow, sprawling wings. All of the inner rooms opened into plastic-domed parks.

They found the boy outside his room laughing gaily, a squirrel perched on each arm of his powered chair and a flock of brightly colored birds fluttering about him. The birds flew into a nearby tree when they approached. The squirrels remained motionless.