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Read Ebook: Jimsy and the Monsters by Sheldon Walter J
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Ebook has 93 lines and 6140 words, and 2 pages
Flaubert screamed an unholy scream. He threw the chair and the whip and the gun at the monster and dove from the exit. Dr. Mildume opened the cage door with his rope and Flaubert went through it--himself a blur. The monster, in his wake, slammed into the door and stayed there, trembling, still chirping its rage.
"Hully gee, what kitties!" said Flaubert, pale and sweating.
Mr. Untz groaned.
"I got some of it!" yelled Eddie Tamoto from his camera. "It was terrific! But we need more!"
Then--simultaneously--there were several loud screams of alarm. Mr. Untz looked at the cage again. The smaller monster had found a crack, and was moving the cage door and squeezing through.
Harold stepped forward. "Back everybody," he said in his best calm voice. "Walk--do not run--to the nearest exit."
The second monster was already vibrating across the cage and the smaller one was holding the door open for it. Dr. Mildume had tried to maneuver the control ropes to close the door again, but hadn't been able to work them--and now he had left his post.
Harold pointed to the man with the rifle and said, "Fire!"
The rifleman fired.
Nothing--nothing at all happened. He fired several times more. The monsters didn't even jerk when the bullets hit them.
"They're--they're impervious yet!" cried Mr. Untz.
After that it was every man for himself.
Moments later Harold found himself outside of the sound stage and on the studio street, bunched with the others and staring at the thick closed door. Nobody spoke. Everybody just thrummed silently with the knowledge that two alien monsters were in there, wreaking heaven knew what damage....
And then, as they stared, the thick door began to open again. "It isn't locked!" breathed Mr. Untz. "Nobody remembered to lock it again!"
A tentacle peeked out of the crack of the door.
Everybody scattered a second time.
Harold never remembered the order in which things happened amidst the confusion that followed. It seemed he and Mr. Untz ran blindly, side by side, down the studio street for awhile. It seemed all kinds of people were also running, in all kinds of directions.
Bells were ringing--sirens blew--a blue studio police car took a corner on two wheels and barely missed them. Harold had a glimpse of uniformed men with drawn pistols.
They ended up somehow at Mr. Untz's office-cottage. They went inside and Mr. Untz locked the door and slammed his back to it. He leaned there, panting. He said, "Trouble, trouble, trouble. I should have stayed in Vienna. And in Vienna I should have stood in bed."
The door of the shower and dressing-room opened and Jimsy LaRoche came out. He had a number of snails in his out-stretched hand and he coolly kept them there, making no attempt to conceal his obvious purpose in the shower. He looked directly at Mr. Untz with his dark disconcerting eleven-year-old eyes and said, "Well, Max, what goof-off did you pull this time?"
Jimsy began to look a little frightened.
Mr. Untz stared at Harold queerly. Suddenly he said, "Why didn't I think of it before?"
"Think of what?" asked Harold.
But Mr. Untz had already grabbed Jimsy LaRoche's hand and dragged him through the door.
There were several reasons why Harold Potter did not immediately pursue. For one thing he stood there for several moments stupified with surprise. Then, when he did recover, he plunged forward and promptly tripped on the cream-colored carpet and fell flat on his face. He tripped again going over the step to the cottage door. He bumped into a studio policeman rounding the next corner. He snagged his coat on a fence picket going around the corner after that. But he kept Mr. Untz and the dragged youngster in sight.
Eventually he came to the door of Sound Stage Six.
Speaking from a police standpoint all laymen had disappeared. A ring of studio police and firemen, along with some policemen and detectives from the outside, had been drawn around the monsters and everybody and his brother was shooting off pistols and rifles at them. With no result, of course. Nor did anyone dare get too close.
Harold caught up with Mr. Untz about the time a man he recognized as a reporter did. The reporter was stout, freckled and bespectacled.
"Look in tomorrow's paper!" growled Mr. Untz, brushing the reporter aside. He kept Jimsy's arm in a firm grip. Jimsy was bawling at the top of his lungs now. Mr. Untz breasted the police cordon, broke through.
Max evidently had. He moved so swiftly that everyone was too surprised to stop him. He burst into the small human-walled arena where the two bewildered monsters squatted and he thrust little Jimsy LaRoche out before him--right at the monsters.
"Hold your fire, men!" called a police captain, probably just to get into the act.
Dr. Mildume appeared again from somewhere. So did Etienne Flaubert. So did Eddie Tamoto and some of the other technicians. They gaped and stared.
Slowly, inexorably, using Jimsy LaRoche as his threat, Mr. Untz backed the two monsters into the studio, and gradually to the cage. Dr. Mildume leaped forward to shut them in once more.
And through it all Jimsy LaRoche continued to bawl at the top of his lungs.
Later, in Mr. Untz's office-cottage, Harold read the newspaper accounts. He read every word while Mr. Untz was in the other room taking a shower. He had to admit that Max had even thrown a little credit his way. "My assistant, Mr. Potter," Untz was quoted as saying, "indirectly gave me the idea when he said that one man's meat was another man's poison.
"Dr. Mildume had already explained that the monsters came from a high-gravity planet--that the smaller of the species evidently seemed the more capable, and therefore the dominant one." Harold was sure now that the statement had been polished up a bit by the publicity department.
"The only logical assumption, then," the statement continued, "was that small stature would dominate these life forms, rather than large stature, as in the environment we know. They were, in other words, terrified by tiny Jimsy LaRoche--whose latest picture, 'The Atomic Fissionist and the Waif,' is now at your local theatre, by the way--as an Earth-being might have been terrified by a giant!"
Mr. Untz came out of the shower at that point. He was radiant in a canary-colored rayon sharkskin. He was rubbing his hands. He was beaming.
"Max," said Harold, staring at him quietly.
"Yes, Harold?"
"Just answer me one thing truthfully. I swear I'll never repeat it--or even blame you. But for my own curiosity I've got to know."
"Why certainly, Harold, what is it?"
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