The Giants From Outer Space

"Something wrong," Jerry said through his teeth. He was a slim youngman--Pink, who stood six-three and hefted in at two hundred, would havemade two of Jerry--and his normally joyous expression was now writhedinto a frown. "The red light's not on, but the scanner's not working."

  "How d'you know?"

  "Had a hunch. Don't ask me why--unless it's that the Martian makes mesuspicious. Anyway, I tested the scanner; turned it inside and aimed itall over the ship. Nothing doing. No life in here, according to it. Sosomething's the matter with it, and I'm damned if I can figure what."

  Pink said, "That means what?"

  "Means that if Fawcett or any of his men are out there, we won't knowit. We could flash right by them, or through 'em for that matter, andnever know it."

  "Nothing more serious, though?"

  "That's bad enough, isn't it?" Jerry asked him.

  "Sure, sure." Pink shook himself. "I feel--I guess _wary_ is the word."Jerry looked a question. "Yeah," said Pinkham uncomfortably, "it's theMartian. A nice guy and all, but he makes me wonder."

  "Four thousand years plus," nodded Jerry.

  "No, not that. I think that's possible. It's something else, son."

  "What?"

  Pink said slowly, futilely, "I don't know." He patted the O.O.'sshoulder. "Keep at it, Jerry." He went out and walked down the long rampto the astrolab. Daley was there. "How's it going?" Pink asked him.

  "We aren't moving," said the lieutenant.

  "I know. I told Kinkare to put her into the same orbit as the asteroidbelt. We want to stay in the same relation to the planetoids till wedecide where to look for Fawcett."

  "I know you issued those orders, Pink. I meant we aren't in the orbit.We're hanging in space, and the dang asteroids are shooting past us."Daley flipped on his great banks of scanners. "See?" Bands of light weretiny balls of inert matter, flashing by an obviously stationary_Elephant's Child_.

  Pink jumped for the intercom. "No use," said Daley. "It's dead. I sentCalico for Randy Kinkare." They looked at each other. "I think it'sYnohp," said Daley.

  Pinkham took out a pad and pencil. Without saying anything, withoutadmitting to himself that he agreed with his officer, he put down anumber of figures. Then he said, "I left Ynohp just fourteen minutes agoin his stateroom. I've put down the distances he'd have to travel toreach all the things that have gone wrong since then. He could have doneit--if he was invisible, and could move at the rate of two hundred feetper second."

  "Maybe he can."

  "You know Martians have the same rate of speed, roughly speaking, asTerrestrians."

  "And if Ynohp isn't a Martian at all?"

  "Washington, did you ever see a Martian?"

  "Yeah."

  "Could anything in the universe make itself look like a four-foot-tall,four-armed, slate-gray man with pink eyes?"

  "I don't know," said Daley. "Maybe there's something in System Ninetythat can. Hypnotism, matter transference, fluidity or a lot of otherfacts could explain it."

  Kinkare and Bill Calico came in on the run.

  Their news didn't surprise Pink greatly.

  The space drive was out of commission.

  They were adrift in the void.

  CHAPTER IV

  The intercom, the space drive, the life-scanner. So far apart that oneman _couldn't_ have put them out of whack. No one connected in any waywith the others. Ynohp snoring gently in his stateroom. Pinkham, Daley,Silver, Kinkare, Jerry Jones, Calico, and the girl, all gathered in theCaptain's quarters, tense, baffled, and all talking at once.

  And out of the hubbub, one clear sweet voice saying something thatdidn't make sense and yet electrified Pink as if he'd put his hand on alighted cigar....

  "Maybe it's the space giants?"

  "Shut up!" bawled Pinkham. The officers turned toward him, browslifting, mouths still open. "Now," he said quietly, "Circe--MissSmith--what did you say?"

  "Space giants," she repeated "I don't think they exist, but I certainlysaw something."

  "Give it to us slow," said Daley.

  "Well, a couple of times while I was anchored to the asteroid, watchingtri-di movies, I had the impression that something enormous was floatingjust beyond my face plate, watching me. Of course I was slowed down sofar that it must have taken me an hour to register the fact, and anotherhour or two to flick my eyes up away from the movies. What was a secondto me was at least that long. But just once I got a clear view ofsomething incredible. It vanished almost at once."

  "What was it?"

  "A very big man, naked, bald, with eyes like fires. That's the only wayI can describe him. He looked humanoid, except he was so big."

  "How big?"

  "I can't tell and hate to make a guess--but at least a thousand feet. Ofcourse I hadn't anything to compare him with."

  "Wait a minute," said Randy Kinkare, the assistant pilot, voice reekingwith unbelief. "How could you see through an opaque face plate?"

  "It's not opaque," said Joe Silver officiously. "It's translucent fromwithout and transparent from within. I took a look at it thisafternoon."

  "Space giants," groaned someone. "Oh, Lord!"

  "We can't discount it," said Pink, realizing that he was doing justthat, but refusing to disbelieve Circe. Illusion? Not a lie, surely?"She wasn't drugged, after all. She was in full control of senses thatwere merely slowed down."

  There was a discomfortable silence.

  Intercom, space drive, life-scanner. Maybe other machinery by this time.Sabotage in such a clever way that no one of the highly skilled officersand technicians could discover how it was done, what was wrong. Spacegiants? Ah, come on, Pink!

  Ynohp. Something wrong with him, some flaw in his looks? No, he wasMartian in every oversize pore. Some anachronism?

  Hey! Anachronism. Pink's mind fished up the dictionary definition. Anerror in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to eachother....

  He had it.

  He got to his feet, motioned Jerry and Wash Daley to go with him. Theycongregated outside the door, as further talk broke out inside hisquarters. He said urgently, "Remember what Ynohp said about hiscataleptic state? 'Moth and rust do not corrupt.' He said it as if itwere a quotation."

  "It is," said Daley. "More or less word for word it's from the KingJames version of the Bible."

  "Dated, if I remember correctly, about 1611 A.D.?"

  "Yes."

  "At which date the Martians had been without space flight for about3,600 years. At which date, further, Ynohp claims to have been sittingon an asteroid for about 4,000-plus years."

  "Coincidence?" asked Jerry.

  Pink asked, "Do you think so?"

  "Hell," said Jerry, "no."

  "Let's go look at his space suit," said Daley urgently. They ran downthe corridor, shoving for the lead.

  Ten minutes later they sat back on their heels and stared at theinterior of the suit.

  Rust had corrupted here, or at any rate decay; the Martian steel,ancient and harder than any known metal, was worn to a papery shell, andin many places tiny holes had eroded clear through the suit.

  "No man or Martian or anything I know except the space-eating bacteriaof Pallas could have lived in that suit, cataleptic state or not." Pinklooked around at his friends. "_What in the name of heaven have webrought into the ship?_"

  Then the three were racing for the "Martian's" stateroom. They burst in,and found that now it was empty of life.

  They stood, indecisive, just outside. Pinkham's gaze went to the door,on which, as was the custom, a hastily-printed card had been placed withthe officer's name upon it. He read it. Then he blinked.

  "Look," he said, gesturing.

  "What about it?"

  The card blared its secret, its pun, at them.

  Y N O H P.

  "Read it backwards," said Pinkham....

  CHAPTER V

  "None of you thought to look at the Martian spacesuit when we'd removedit?" asked Pink. The others shook their heads. They were all in hisquarters again.
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  "Neither did you, Captain," said Joe Silver. "You were as busy lookingat the Martian as we were."

  "True enough," admitted Pinkham. "Well, the thing to do first is radiothe _Diogenes_ and the _Cottabus_ to stand by for trouble." He lit acigarette. "If the radio hasn't been tampered with," he said. "Silver,go tell Sparks to start sending to them. _Diogenes_ is down by PlanetFive, and _Cottabus_ heading for Four. Tell them to look for ussomewhere in the planetoid orbit. They'll have to come in on the radiobeam. I don't suppose we can expect them for a day." Joe Silver gaveCirce's arm an encouraging squeeze--they'd got on together pretty damnfast--and started out. "And instruct them not to pick up anybody, offasteroids or planets or out of the ether. I don't care if they see theirgrandmothers floating outside a spaceport."

  The thought of his armada joining him made Pink feel more at ease. Nosense to that, of course, but three ships are better than one, if onlyfor moral support. "Daley," he said then, "lower the Mutiny Gates."

  "You think it's wise?"

  "If I didn't, I wouldn't do it," he snapped. It would be the first timethat a mutiny gate had been used in more than forty years. All the largeships were equipped with them, great plastikoid barriers which operatedfrom the captain's room, sealing off the officer's sector from the restof the ship. They had been made standard equipment in the old days,before screenings became really effective and the danger ofpsychopathic trouble in the crew grew negligible. Now they were oftheoretical use in case of boarding by alien life, or of damage to alarge segment of the hull ... but they had never actually been broughtinto play in Pinkham's lifetime. "Drop 'em," he repeated.

  Daley pulled open a drawer, tugged at an unused switch, which creakedprotestingly; then the brief alarm clang that heralded the fall of theforty gates sounded in the distance. "If he's beyond the gates," thesenior lieutenant said heavily, "the crew may be done for."

  "No more than if the gates were up," Pink told him impatiently.

  "You're projecting," said Daley. "How do we know the nature of thebeast? He may mop 'em up in a fit of pique at being shut out there."

  "The chances are he's on our side of the walls," said Bill Calico."Nothing out there of much importance to him. The hydroponics farm,history room, library, and so on."

  "We don't know what's important to him," said Daley. "We don't know whatin blazes he wants aboard. We don't know a doggone thing!"

  Silver returned. "I heard the mutiny gates go," he said questioningly.

  "Are you all armed?" asked Pink. They nodded. "Then let's sweep theplace," he said, glancing from one grim face to another. "Pick up theother officers as we go, and make a chain of inspection that he can'tbust through. We'll corner him sooner or later. Then we'll see if atomicpistols will settle his hash." He looked at Circe. "You'd better stayhere," he said.

  "I agree," said Randy Kinkare suddenly. "And you'd best lock herin--from the outside."

  "Why?" blazed the girl.

  "We picked you up on an asteroid too," said the assistant pilot.

  Pink, restraining himself from bashing Kinkare in the nose, saidreluctantly, "You're right. We can't trust any stranger till we find outwhat's going on. Sorry, Circe."

  "I suppose you're right." She sat down, a little flushed, eyes snapping."Have I the right to ask for protection? I'm just as unsafe as you are,whether you believe me or not. Please leave Lieutenant Silver to guardme."

  He couldn't refuse. He nodded curtly to Joe Silver, who looked too damnsmug for words. So they'd paired off already? So much for his quickdream of marrying a spacegirl....

  It had never happened to him before, though, and it was a hard dream togive up, all the more so for its abrupt flowering in a heart thatheretofore had held nothing but love for the silence of the spaceways.John Pinkham, rugged, handsome, all a woman could want, had beendedicated to his profession since he was five; and many a wench hadfound that out to her disappointment. Now ... oh, well. Maybe therewasn't room for space and a girl in his heart, after all. And maybe shewasn't what she seemed.

  He led them into the corridor and locked the quarters behind him.

  Around the first bend and up the first ramp they found Second WatchOfficer Wright. They knew him by his chubby build and his uniform. Theycouldn't recognize his head, even when they found it three minuteslater.

  CHAPTER VI

  They gathered in Sparks' radio room. That was due to the simple factthat, aside from themselves, only Sparks was alive on this side of themutiny gates. The other officers were scattered--in the most grislysense of the word--all over the place.

  "Seven of us, if Silver's still alive," said Daley. "Eight with thegirl. Why us? He could easily have attacked us in a body." Five of thedead officers had been found in a heap, just-used pistols in their rigidhands. Atomic force was obviously useless against the thing from theasteroid.

  Pink said, fighting nausea, "All the senior officers are alive. We canrun the _Elephant's Child_ without the eleven who died. Maybe that'swhy. Maybe we have to be preserved to carry this monster wherever hewants to go."

  "Logical," said Jerry. "He'll have to be pretty persuasive, though. Ihope he knows that."

  Sparks said, "The radio's working. I had an answer from the _Cottabus_that she's heading this way. _Diogenes_ hasn't replied; she must befurther off."

  "Evidently he doesn't care if the radio works," said Calico.

  "Or else he wants the whole armada assembled," added Daley.

  "I could use a drink," blurted Kinkare. "You got anything in this place,Sparks?"

  "Gin on the shelf," said the radioman, pointing.

  Kinkare picked up the bottle. "You always leave the cap off?"

  "No! Somebody's been at it."

  "Where is he?" asked Pink in a whisper.

  "What, Captain?" Kinkare stopped the bottle halfway to his lips.

  "Where the devil is the brute? We combed the place. He can't have gotthrough the mutiny gates. He can't have slipped past our chain. Wherethe hell is he?"

  "Maybe disguised as one of us," said Daley slowly. "He isn't a Martian,but he imitated one to the last pore. Why couldn't he imitate us?"

  "Well, _I'm_ me," said Kinkare, and put the bottle to his mouth. Then hedropped it, screeching. Pinkham stared at him and saw his upper lipturned violent, hideous scarlet. Blood began to drip to the rug. Theskin and flesh of his lip had dissolved as though sprayed with acid.

  Kinkare fell to his knees, covering his face with both arms. The otherssprang to help him, Sparks reaching for the medicine chest; but Pinksnatched up the gin bottle. What the hell? Acid? Or--

  From the square spout poured a gush of smoke, writhing sinuous in thebright indirect light of the small room; it coalesced, clotted into abody. Impossible, brain-boggling, an unreal fantasy amid the mostconcrete achievements of man, the thing swelled into solidity before theCaptain's staring eyes.

  He was eight feet tall, three broad; his eyes were brilliant vermilion,his swollen head was egg-bald, and the expression on his coarse featureswas at once lecherous, evil, savage and cunning. He was stark naked,completely humanoid. And he had come out of the bottle.

  A voice boomed from him like a vocalizing cannon. "I object to anyonetrying to drink me!" he roared at them.

  In the reeling chaos of all his beliefs gone wild, Pinkham had one sanethought, and yelled it as fast and short as he could. "Don't shoot! ForGod's sake, don't shoot!" Then, as Calico and Jerry held their pistolspartly raised, he said urgently, "We'll only blast each other. Rememberthis thing's invulnerable."

  The pistols were holstered with reluctance. The five pale men--Kinkarestill thrashed in agony on the floor--gaped at the apparition, whichsaid, "I am Ynohp the Martian." Gargantuan laughter rocked him. "I amyour god, Earthmen. Bow down to me!"

  "Damfido," said Jerry, which was evidently all he could manage to getout of "Damned if I do."

  "Drop your weapons on the floor," said the being.

  Pink drew his gun; casually he sighted on the great head above him, andrisked one
shot, which had all the effect of a sunbeam; then he let thepistol fall. The others discarded theirs. The naked creature reached outa foot and herded the weapons into a corner. "You can't hurt me withthem," he said, "but you might try suicide, and I need you. Take heart,mortals," he said, laughing, "you may get out alive!"

  Then he dwindled and his lines blurred into ephemera and he slid outthrough the door, which was open perhaps an inch.

  CHAPTER VII

  "But by all that's holy," said Daley (it was an hour later, and theeight were gathered in the control room, Kinkare now bandaged andrelieved of pain, but unable to speak), "if he's a brain-picker, and gothis lingo out of our minds, who did he get 'take heart mortals' from?"The lieutenant glanced at Pinkham. "It may seem little, but it'sminutiae that will give us clues to his nature, and therefore how tofight him. Take heart, mortals, after all. Who talks like that?"

  "You're right," said Pink wearily. "It's little things we've got to lookfor. Like, evidently, gin bottles."

  "Item," said Jerry, who was eating a sandwich. "He's composed ofsomething alien to any life we know. Gas? I doubt it. Atomic shock woulddisseminate gas. Are his molecules loose and do they edge aside forobstacles, compress together when he wants to shrink, and so on?Possible. But anyhow, he's different--and so far as we know,invulnerable."

  "How did he gimmick the guns?" asked Calico, a note of desperation inhis voice. "We picked them up as soon as he'd gone, and they wouldn'tfire."

  "Same way he gimmicked the intercom, the life-scanner, the space drive.Known hereafter as Unknown Method One."