Leigh Brackett

“ And then motion beyond the west windows caught Fallon's eye. A colder fear crawled in his heart, but his voice surprised him, it was so steady.
"Kashimo. Look out there."
The bright black eyes flicked warily aside. They widened sharply, and the cords went slack about the jaw. Fallon sprang.
He had forgotten the wound across his back. The shock of his body striking Kashimo turned him sick and faint. He knew that the little man fell, staggering the others so close behind him.
He knew that Joan Daniels was shouting, and that Bjarnsson had caught up an ebony war-club and was using it. ”

“ Kashimo was a fool, too, but he was a gambler. But we, Fallon, you and I—we were the bigger fools."
"The kind of fools," said Fallon doggedly, "that men have always been. And damn it, I think I'd rather be the fool I am than the smart guy I was!"
Bjarnsson's laughter echoed in his helmet. Fallon had a moment's eerie feeling that he heard with his brain instead of his ears.
"Wonderful, Fallon, wonderful! You see how circumstance makes us traitors to ourselves? But there is no need for heroics. You can turn back, Fallon." ”

“ Fallon's legs were sagging, and his heart was a leaping pain. The girl crumpled up against him.
They stared out of the window, dazed, detached, like spectators watching an imaginative motion-picture and not believing it.
There was carnage outside, on the broad sunlit beach. Men and women and children died, some caught directly, others trampled down and unable to escape. But more than men were dying.
Things fought and ate each other. Things of mad distortion of familiar shapes. Things unlike any living creature. Normal creatures grown out of all sanity. ”

“ The blows on the hull grew fewer, farther between. Fallon began to breath again.
Einar Bjarnsson relaxed, just a little. His voice came muffled by his helmet. "The worst, Fallon—we're through it."
Fallon's throat was as dry as his face was wet. "But how?"
"Sometimes, in the deeps, one meets creatures. Hungry creatures, as large even as this ship. So I prepared the hull. That switch transforms us into a travelling electric shock, strong enough to discourage almost anything. I hoped it would get us through."
Thinking of what might have happened, Fallon shut his jaw hard. ”

“ I am Mind—as some day we will all be.
"You will be safe, Fallon. The invasion will fail as the power is shut off, and America can deal with any further dangers. Marry Joan, and be happy.
"I don't know about myself, yet. The possibilities are too vast to be explored in a minute. I am not dead, Fallon. Remember that! But—" and, here Fallon heard an echo of Bjarnsson's harsh, mocking laughter—"if you should ever cease to be a fool and become again a smart guy, I shall find a way to send you back along evolution, to a stupid ape! ”

“ His gaze went back to Bjarnsson's body, rolling slightly with the motion of the ship. It boiled down to that. Murder. His careless, selfish murder of Bjarnsson. The murder of countless civilians. War, bitter, brutal, desperate.
Fallon drew a long, shuddering breath. His head dropped forward in his helmet, and his slanting wolf's eyes were closed. Then he turned and sat down at the controls.
The single forward 'scope field gave him vision enough to steer. Anything might attack from the sides or the stern—another beast grown incredibly huge, but not yet a lung breather. ”

“ Fallon's lips were drawn in a tight grin. "Suppose the officers of the Japanese ship saw the beginnings of the effect. Suppose they radioed home, and someone did some quick thinking. Suppose, in short, that they're lying."
"Ja," whispered Bjarnsson. "Let us think."
"I've already thought," said Fallon. "Two weeks would give them time to arrange everything. The important thing is this—if the force is man-made, even destroying the projector won't do any good. They'll have others. But if it were a natural force, the psychological aspect of the thing alone would be tremendous. ”

“ There was nothing out there in the water but darkness. Even the deep-sea fish had felt the impulse and avoided the sub. Fallon got up.
"Bjarnsson," he said, "I'm going to sleep."
The explorer half turned in his seat.
"Ja?" he said quietly.
"There's nothing out there," growled Fallon. "Why should I sit and glare at that periscope?"
"Because," Bjarnsson returned with ominous gentleness, "there might be something. We will not reach the volcano for perhaps ten hours. You had better watch." ”

“ Some of the rays swooped to the crowded beach. Others came on, scenting human food.
Guns began to crack from the cliff-tops, from the windows of apartment houses. Fallon caught the chatter of sub-machine guns. One of the rays was struck almost overhead.
It went out of control like a fantastic plane and crashed into the hillside, just behind Fallon and the girl. Men died shrieking under its twenty-foot, triangular bulk. ”

“ Kashimo was going to hold you here until the Government capitulated. Then he was going out to shut off the power. There's no projector, Bjarnsson. It was the volcano. If we can close that fissure while there's still resistance, we'll have 'em licked!"
Bjarnsson's ice-blue eyes fixed Fallon with a sharp, unwavering stare, and he spoke slowly, calmly, almost without expression.
"It will take about three days to get there, working together. One fit of cowardice or indecision, one display of nerves or temper may destroy what slight chance we have." ”

“ Bjarnsson's small blue eyes glinted through his helmet pane. "Too bad there is not a radio here, Fallon, so that you might broadcast as we go. As it is, I fear the world may miss a very exciting story." ”

“ Fallon said flatly. "They seem to be telling the truth. Fragmentary radio messages have come in from the Pacific. Monsters attacked just as suddenly as they did here, and at about the same time. They simply clogged the guns, smothered the men, and wrecked ground equipment by sheer weight of numbers." ”

“ Yours can go where the big ones can't—and go deeper. These monsters are all heading for land, which means they gravitate to the surface. You might get through below."
"Yes." Bjarnsson strode up and down the cluttered room. "We could take a depth charge. If we found the volcano to be the cause, we might close the fissure.
"Time, Fallon! That is the thing. A few days, a few weeks, and the sheer pressure of these hordes will have forced the defenders back to the mountains and the deserts. Civilian morale will break." ”

“ A fleet of flat triangular bodies with bat-like wings, in numbers that clouded the sun. Rays, blind and savage and utterly uncaring.
Machine guns brought them down by the hundred, but more of them came. They crashed into heavy ships, fouled propellers, broke controls.
Joan looked away, "And there are so few planes," she whispered.
Fallon nodded. "The whole coast is under attack, remember, from Vancouver to Mexico. There just aren't enough men, guns, or planes to go round. More are coming from the east, but...." ”

“ American naval bases throughout the ocean are useless, and the fleet where it still exists is isolated. In all cases our new weapon has succeeded. The Pacific states, with the islands, come within our natural sphere of influence. We advise them to submit peacefully.'"
Joan Daniels looked up at Fallon. ”

“ They were well hidden. Chances were the rays would go right over them—after they'd finished off Kashimo and his men. Bjarnsson said softly, "What did they want with me, Fallon?"
"There's only one thing they couldn't get from somebody else," returned Fallon. "Your submarine."
"Yes. The mechanisms are of my own design. They would need me to operate it. Does that mean we are right about the volcano?" ”

“ Joan put both hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. "What kind of a man are you, Webb Fallon?"
"God knows," he said. "Where do you keep your boat, Bjarnsson?"
"In a private steel-and-concrete building at Wilmington. Some of the improvements are of interest to certain people. I keep them locked safely away. Or so I thought."
Fallon rose stiffly. "Kashimo didn't come in a car, that's certain. He'd have been arrested on sight. Any place for a plane to land near here?" ”

“ He leaned against the car, his grey-green eyes half closed. The breeze came in from the sea, heavy with the stench of amphibian bodies. The radio droned on. The single deep line between Fallon's straight brows grew deeper. He began to talk, slowly, to Joan.
"The experts say that the Little Brown Brothers must have some kind of a movable projector capable of producing rays which upset the evolutionary balance and cause abnormal growth. Rays like hard X-rays, or the cosmic rays that govern reproduction.
"California Tech has dissected several types of monsters. ”

“ Fallon drew a rough circle with his fingertip, touching the Pacific Coast, swinging across the ocean through the Gilberts and the Marshalls, touching Wake, and curving up again to Vancouver.
"The volcanic formation is the center of that circle," Fallon said. "It was also the epicenter of the recent quake, according to Cal-Tech seismologists. That's what gave me the hunch. The monsters seem to be fanning out in a circle from some central point located about there."
"That is already explained," said Bjarnsson. "The Japanese may have their projector located there. And why not?" ”

“ They say that individual cell groups are affected, causing spontaneous growth in living individuals, and that metabolism has been enormously speeded, so that life-cycles which normally took years now take only a few weeks. ”