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Read Ebook: The Last Monster by Fox Gardner F Gardner Francis Ingels Graham Illustrator
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Ebook has 304 lines and 12557 words, and 7 pages
Emerson touched his forearm gently, and shuddered.
Nichols bit his lips, and thought of Marge and the kids; Gunn licked his lips with a dry tongue and kept looking at Emerson.
With one sweep of his brawny arm, Mussdorf sent the apparatus flying against the far wall to shatter in shards.
No one said a word.
Something whispered in the ship. They jerked their heads up, stood listening. The faint susurration swept all about them, questioning, curious. It came again, imperative; suddenly demanding.
"Gawd," whispered Gunn. "Wot is it, guv'nor?"
Emerson shook his head, frowning, suddenly glad that the others had heard it, too.
"Maybe somebody trying to speak to us," stated Nichols.
The whispers grew louder and harsher. Angry.
"Take it easy," yelled Mussdorf savagely. "We don't know what you're talking about. How can we answer you, you stupid lug?"
Gunn giggled hysterically, "We can't even 'alf talk 'is bloomin' language."
The rustle ceased. The silence hung eerily in the ship. The men looked at one another, curious; somehow, a little nervous.
Mussdorf nodded, shaggy brows knotted.
"We'll see what his next move is," he muttered. "If he gets too fresh, we'll try a sun-blaster out on him."
The ship began to glow softly, flushing a soft, delicate green. The light bathed the interior, turning the men a ghastly hue. Gunn shivered and looked at Emerson, who went to the port window; stood staring out, gasping.
"Wot's happenin' now?" choked Gunn.
"We're off the ground! Whatever it is, it's lifting us."
The others crowded about him, looking out. Here the green was more vivid, intense. They could feel its surging power tingling on their skins. Beneath them, the jagged peak of the mountain almost grazed the hull. Spread out under their eyes was the panorama of a dead planet.
Great rocks lay split and tumbled over one another in a black desolation. Sunlight glinting on their jagged edges, made harsh shadows. Far to the north a mountain range shrugged its snow-topped peaks to a sullen sky. To the south, beyond the rocks, lay a white waste of desert. To the west--
"A city," yelled Nichols, "the place is inhabited. Thank God, thank God--"
Mussdorf erupted laughter.
"For what? How do we know what they're like? An inhabited planet doesn't mean men. We found that out--several times."
"We can hope," said Emerson sharply. "Maybe they have some radium, stored so that our spectroscope couldn't pick it up."
The mighty globe that hung over the city glimmered in the morning suns. Beneath it, the white towers and spires of the city reared in alien loveliness above graceful buildings and rounded roofs. A faint mist seemed to hang in the city streets.
"It's empty," said Nichols heavily. "Deserted."
"Something's alive," protested Emerson. "Something that spoke to us, that is controlling this green beam."
A section of the globe slid back, and the spaceship moved through the opening. The globe slipped back and locked after it.
"They have us now," grunted Mussdorf. He slid his fingers along the transparent window, pressing hard, the skin showing white as his knuckles lifted. He said swiftly, "You guys can stay here if you want, but I'm getting myself a sun-blaster. Two of them. I'm not going to be caught short when the time for action comes."
He swung through the trap and out of sight. They heard him running below; heard the slam of opened doors, the withdrawal of the guns. They could imagine him belting them about his waist.
"Bring us some," cried Emerson suddenly, and turned again to look out the window.
The spaceship settled down on the white flagging of an immense square. The green beam was gone, suddenly. The uncanny silence of the place pressed in on them.
"Think it's safe to go out?" asked Nichols.
"Try the atmospheric recorder," said Emerson. "If the air's okay, I'd like to stretch my own legs."
Nichols twisted chrome wheels, staring at a red line that wavered on a plastic screen, then straightened abruptly, rigid.
"Hey," yelled Nichols excitedly. "It's pure. I mean actually pure. No germs. No dust. Just clean air!"
Emerson leaped to his side, staring, frowning.
"No germs. No dust. Why--that means there's no disease in this place! No disease."
He began to laugh, then caught himself.
"No disease," he whispered, "and every one of us is going to die of cancer."
Mussdorf came up through the trap and passed out the sun-blasters. They buckled them around their waists while Mussdorf swung the bolts of the door. He threw it open, and clean air, and faint tendrils of whitish mist came swirling into the ship.
Nichols took a deep breath and his boyish face split with a grin.
"I feel like a kid again on a Spring day back on Earth. You know, with a ball and a glove under your arm, with the sun beating down on you, swinging a bat and whistling. You felt good. You were young. Young! I feel like that now."
They grinned and went through the door, dropping to the street.
They turned.
It was coming across the square, flowing along on vast black tentacles towering over twenty feet high, with a great torso seemingly sculpted out of living black marble. A head that held ten staring eyes looked down at them. Six arms thrust out of the torso, moving like tentacles, fringed with cilia thick as fingers.
"Lord," whispered Mussdorf. "What is it?"
"Don't know," said Emerson. "Maybe it's friendly--"
His hand dove for the sun-blaster in his holster; yanked it free and upward, firing brilliant yellow jets as he jerked the trigger.
The thing twisted sideways with an eerie grace, dodging the amber beams of solar power that sizzled past its bulbous head. As it moved, its tentacled arms and legs slithered out with unthinkable rapidity, fell and wrapped around Mussdorf.
The big Earthman was lifted high into the air, squeezed until his lungs nearly collapsed. He hung limp in a gigantic tentacle as Emerson ran to one side, trying for a shot without hitting Mussdorf. But the thing was diabolically clever. It held Mussdorf aloft, between itself and Emerson, while its other arms stabbed out at Gunn and Nichols, catching them up and shaking them as a terrier shakes a rat.
"Hold on," called Emerson, dodging and twisting, gun in hand, seeking a spot to fire at.
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