The Horror on the Beach

Alan Dean Foster

“Do you realize that this ranchero is over three hundred years old, Mr. Corfu? Three hundred years! One of the greatest old Spanish Dons lived here. This isn’t a house, it’s a piece of history!” The agent sidled closer. “Pardon my saying so, Dave, but you’ll be sorry if you pass this up.”

David Corfu ignored the unsubtle switch from “Mr. Corfu” to “Dave.” All he saw was Julie, running her hands over the stonework, bringing imaginary azaleas and petunias to life in the empty planters. Well, the place was convenient to his office in Santa Barbara, near enough the Pacific Coast Highway, and the privacy was exceptional for beachfront property. Only one family near by . . . and the old beachcomber, who didn’t count.

Julie was talking. “About neighbors, Mr. Bascomb? Naturally we like privacy, and all, but Flip is barely eight. A boy his age ought to have some companions apart from school-time.”

“I quite agree, Mrs. Corfu. And I don’t think you need worry on that account.” He moved to stand by the front window. Big for the house, it was small by modern standards.

That window was a problem, Dave reflected. Oh well, they could have a larger one put in later. They’d damn well have to, because the thick wrought-iron bars behind it blocked out most of what light the ancient glass allowed in.

Bascomb gestured northward, up the beach. “As is specified in the deed, you share the beach and cove with just two other residences. The Birch family has their place just over that big dune, there. They have two twin daughters (two or four, mused Dave) and as I recall they’d be about your son’s age. Ought to get along fine. Down by the rocks, of course, there’s old Joshua Whipple.”

“That’s the beachcomber we’ve heard about, right?” asked Julie. “Is he . . . I mean, Flip . . .”

The agent’s hands fluttered nervously. “Oh, don’t worry! Old Josh is probably the best neighbor you could ask for, Mrs. Corfu. Doesn’t even come around to borrow the lawnmower.”

“No grass,” said Dave.

“Yes. Well he’s a bit taciturn, but friendly enough.”

“Oh, all right, we’ll take it.”

Julie’s thank you kiss almost made him forget about the mortgage.

It didn’t take Dave long to realize that he was attracting far more attention than an oil engineer in an ecology-conscious town ought to. Townsfolk favored him with brief, awkward glances. When he turned to stare at the whisperers, they became unnaturally cheerful or talkative to cover up their furtiveness. At first he ignored the attention, but it began to wear on his nerves. Even the men he worked with on the great platform out in the bay were not immune.

One afternoon he was sufficiently irritated to disregard etiquette and confront his watchers. Three drillers, their faces blackened with grease and crude oil so that they shone as if polished, stared back at him.

“Look, fellas, I’m getting sick of people talking at me instead of to me. Anything you have to say about me you can damn well say to my face.”

They glanced at the steel floor, at the rig, anywhere but at Dave. If he hadn’t been so upset he might have reflected on the oddity of three brawny, muscular bit-men reacting to the challenge of a slightly undersize engineer like so many kids caught snitching fudge.

One of the men licked his lips, fixed Dave with an uncertain stare.

“Sir, is it true that you live in the old house known as the Casa de Rodrigo de Lima? The one on the dirty sand beach in Cabrillo Cove?”

“Since everyone in Santa Barbara seems to know it already, not much use in my denying it. Why?”

“Then, sir, may God have mercy on your soul!” and the man turned back to his work.

Try, plead, threaten as he might, Dave could not get any of them to utter another word.

         

That night was the first time they became aware of the drums.

They’d returned from their regular Sunday-eve bridge match with the Birches. It was a friendship practically forced on the two couples, since their nearest other neighbors were several miles away among the more accessible portions of the wild Pacific coast. And it was not likely that old Whipple catered to bridge.

Julie noticed them first. She woke him gently. He turned to stare drowsily in her direction. But when he saw her face, he sat up fast.

“Hey, what gives, hon?”

She whispered, even though Flip was long asleep down the hall and there was no one but him to hear. “Shssh. Don’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” he answered inanely.

“Listen!”

He concentrated. There did seem to be a faint humming sound. He rose from the bed and raised the one window slightly. It let in the sound, along with a gust of salt-edged air that cut the sleep from his eyes. Yes, a slight drumming sound, not clear. It seemed to be accompanied by a modulated keening, as of many voices moaning or singing in unison.

“Odd. That’s certainly not the ocean. Seems to be coming from the north, near the Point. Must be some kind of party or something.”

“I don’t like it,” Julie said firmly. “It doesn’t sound like any kind of party music I ever heard.”

He yawned. “Well, it’s harmless, whatever it is (why shouldn’t it be? Why’d he think of that?). Probably a bunch of long-hairs from the University. Nothing worth losing sleep over.”

The Birches had also heard the sounds . . . Martin Birch refused to call them “drummings.” No, he didn’t know what they were and yes, they’d heard them before. Although since the Corfus had arrived the nightly concerts had increased in frequency. Command performances for the new savior of the coast, Martin had grinningly suggested.

Dave grinned back. He was still grinning when he walked into Bascomb’s office that afternoon.

“What I’d like to know, Bascomb, is why the townspeople give a hoot about the place I’m living in. At first I thought it was me, now I find out it’s the house. Why? And why’d the last tenants move out, if it was such a great buy?”

Bascomb considered Dave through the steeple he’d formed of his fingers.

“Um. Well, the deed is ironclad, so I suppose you might as well know. Kindly do not laugh, Mr. Corfu, but people hereabouts have some funny notions where the de Lima residence is concerned. And some think they might have reason . . .”

“I’m home, honey!”

She was kissing him as he opened his briefcase, said “Big deal!” kissed him again, harder. He drew her over to the big couch.

“It seems there’s quite a story behind our humble abode.”

“You saw the agent?”

“I saw Bascomb. It seems that this was the de Lima’s equivalent of a second home-cum-export plant. Hides and tallow from the de Lima herds were shipped from here to deep-water schooners. The shore drops off sharply out past the point and the big ships could maneuver in fairly close. Anyhow, it seems the first de Lima made a pact with the devil.”

“The devil?”

“Uh-Uh. With a devil. The legend apparently is very specific on that point. Which particular devil no one seems to remember. In 1724 the de Lima ranchero was attacked by a whole tribe of Yani Indians. The family retreated from their central hacienda, near the old mission. Maybe they thought this place would be easier to defend with what they had left, since their retreat to Pueblo de Los Angeles was cut off. Maybe they hoped to signal a boat. Regardless, they were wiped out to the last man.”

“The de Limas?”

“Nope. The Indians. Quite an accomplishment for three men, their wives, kids, a bunch of frightened servants, and old de Lima himself. He and the Indians never did get along, it seems. Which is funny in itself, because like most California tribes, the Yani were inclined towards being peaceable.

“After word got around, no one bothered the de Limas again. Not Indian, Spaniard, Mexican, or American, when they arrived. Something in the family reputation—or the family—got on people’s nerves. So much so that the family eventually had to sell out and move to Brazil. Interesting?”

“In a gruesome sort of way, yes.”

“And there’s more. Know when the previous tenants vacated? 1889! Not a terribly popular piece of property, it seems.”

“David, you stop that! Now, what about the funny music we heard last night, hmmm? What did he have to say about that?”

“Oh yeah.” He frowned. “Funny, but Bascomb was willing to chat about the house all day, yet when I mentioned our ‘music’ to him he clammed right up tight. He insisted he didn’t know what I was trying to ‘pull.’ You know, I met old Whipple on the road in and just on an off chance, I asked him. Turned positively green, he did. Now, I can get used to the noise—the Birches have—but I don’t like this silence concerning it, either. I think I’ll ask around town some more tomorrow.”

         

But he didn’t, because tomorrow was Tuesday, the day platform #2 started to leak. Despite frantic efforts of the platform’s crew, the quantity of crude petroleum bubbling out of the ocean floor grew rapidly to critical proportions. Planes cruising over the area were the first to notice the phenomenon and were quick to radio the information to shore. So before the panicked oil company could get on top of the situation the news media were gleefully splashing it over every available line of communication.

“Oh, Dave! I heard on the radio . . . it’s all true, about the oil?”

Dave flipped his briefcase onto the couch and collapsed in his favorite chair with a heartrending sigh.

“ ‘Fraid so, luv. We can’t seem to cut the blasted thing off, it doesn’t respond to normal shut down procedure . . . and it looks like we’re shortly going to be on the receiving end of howls of outrage from down south. I’m glad I’m just an engineer and not the head of the public relations department!”

She sat down next to him and began massaging his neck muscles. He turned so that she could reach the tight spots more easily.

“Oh, I had a chance to talk with the local sheriff. They’ve heard of our nocturnal celebrants, but since no one’s bothered to file a complaint, they’ve never interfered. They’re definitely not college kids, though. Apparently it’s some local nut cult that meets out on the Point.”

“Like the Elks and those people?”

“Not quite.” He chuckled, shifted on the couch. “The group seems to consist mostly of the poorer locals, with a sprinkling of more respectable types. As far as the sheriff could find out there aren’t any criminal elements among them. The townsfolk don’t care for them, but they’ve caused no trouble. They don’t make much fuss, so I couldn’t see swearing out a complaint.”

Julie chewed on a lip, said, “I’ve talked with Sue Birch, and she says it’s the rhythm that bothers you most.”

“Well, we can get used to it too.”

Julie sighed. “I guess so.” She paused. “Dave, do you know sometimes I couldn’t help but . . . you’ll think this is silly, and I don’t blame you . . . but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and the house almost seems to . . . well, to be moving in sympathy with that drumming, or chanting, or whatever it is. There, I’ve said it! Now go ahead and laugh.”

But he didn’t.

Because the same thing had happened to him.

         

Polite hammering on bells far away swipe at them but they wouldn’t leave dammit and how was a man . . .

Dave’s eyes opened slowly. He looked around in that stupor of awkward awakening that people are prone to early in the morning. He stared at the phone which yammered back demandingly. Raising himself slowly to a sitting position, he glanced at the fluorescent dial of the night table clock. Now who the hell would be calling at four . . . no, five in the morning? Probably some crazy reporter, out for a candid comment on the oil spill. He’d give him a candid comment!

He lifted the phone from the receiver.

What came over was not the voice of a reporter.

The words were distorted, high, shrill. They were all the more difficult to understand because of the sound of breaking wood which dominated the background. Despite the confusion and the unnatural timbre of the voice, he recognized the frightened, utterly terrified tones of Martin Birch.

“David . . . Dave, is that you? Listen Dave, you’ve got to get away! Take Julie and the boy and get away! My God, what an abomination!”

There was a pause, followed by what sounded like a series of muffled gunshots. More breaking sounds, louder now. Evelyn Birch could be heard shrieking in the background, along with a muted, whimpering voice which was probably one of the twins. And there was another sound, which Dave couldn’t identify. The hair on his body tingled.

Martin’s voice resumed, masked with long, heavy gasps for breath. “Hurry, man, hurry! There’s nothing you can do here! Save yourselves! It’s all around us! Don’t come over here! It’s coming in, my God, THE WINDOW . . . GREAT HEAV—!”

There was a crisp, shattering sound, and the line went dead with an abruptness that left Dave staring dumbly at the silent receiver. To his surprise he found he was soaking wet from sweat. Julie was standing by the open window. He hadn’t even heard her get out of bed.

“Dave . . . I could hear sounds, from their direction. It sounded like things . . . breaking up. Oh D-d-dave. . . .”

She was in his arms then, shivering uncontrollably.

“Don’t worry, hon, we’re safe.” He was aware of how hollow it sounded. Hollow.

“Well then, Mr. Corfu, what seems to be the problem?” The graying sergeant was gruffly courteous, but got it across he didn’t like being called away from a warm station-house at daybreak on some damnfool nut call. “I understand you phoned in something about your neighbors. Been a bit rowdy, have they? That’s natural, the night before . . .”

“That’s not it at all, sergeant. I’m afraid they may have been victims of, well, vandals or something. Anyways, their phone line is dead.”

“So you reported,” said the younger cop.

“It’s just over that dune,” Dave added hastily. “Shorter than driving the long way ‘round.”

The sergeant grumbled, but followed Dave as he started up the sandy incline. The muttering and grumbling stopped the minute they cleared the last rise and got a clear view of the beach below.

The Birch home was a recent addition to the topography of the cove. Unlike Dave’s, which had been there for hundreds of years, the wealthy Birch had had materials trucked in. The resultant ultra-modern structure had been an interesting contrast to the ancient abode of the de Lima ranch-house.

It had been flattened as though by a typhoon.

In somber silence, the three scrambled their way down the side of the dune, over low beach scrub and iceplant, sand-flies puffing in sooty clouds about their feet. No one said anything.

The poured concrete pillars that had supported the front section of the house had been shattered like matchwood. The shipped-in boulders which had formed the bulwark of the seawall were scattered haphazardly about the beach. Two-by-fours and wooden planking, even the resilient redwood, had been pulped to near-cardboard thin. Shattered glass sparkled everywhere amidst the destruction. Hardly a piece of furniture appeared to be intact.

Of the Birches themselves, there was no sign.

Almost as unsettling as the ruins was the condition of the beach. The Birch home had been set down almost on the high water line, while Dave’s was much further inland. In a broad path all around the area of devastation the sand was gouged and compressed; no, depressed. The depression extended right down to . . . or up from, the watermark. It was as if something of considerable weight had been dragged up from the sea, around the house, and back down again. A storm-tossed boulder of great size could do that, Dave thought, but why in such a regular path?

Besides, there hadn’t been any storm.

When he finally spoke, the sergeant’s voice was muted, as if to fit the unnatural stillness of the air. Come to think of it, the normal raucousness of the gulls and sandpipers was missing this morning.

“I don’t know what happened here, Mr. Corfu, but you better believe we’ll check into this. I ain’t never seen nothing the likes of this.”

“Boy!” breathed the corporal. “Looks like someone did a job on this place with a big dozer. You say this guy gave you a call from here mister?”

“Yes. I could . . . I could hear the house coming down around them. He had a gun, too.”

“Um,” said the sergeant. He kicked at a mangled lampstand. “We’ll have to get a crew out here soon . . . search for the bodies. I dunno. I just dunno.” He shook his head as though it might help resolve an unresolvable situation.

Dave made no response. He was occupied in inspecting the depression, following it down to where it disappeared in the gentle ebb-flow of the sea.

         

“Honey, whatever happened over there this morning, and the sergeant had no more idea of what had than I . . . it took away a very strong man in Martin Birch. I don’t want it happening to us!”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “You’ve got an idea then, but for reasons of your own you don’t want to tell me what it is.” He tried to protest, but she cut him off. “Never mind. Are you going to talk to the police again?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t think they’d take kindly to my ideas. I’m going to have a talk with Pedro Armendariz.”

“Who? Oh, that biochemist friend of yours at the University?”

“That’s the one. If whatever happened to the Birches was caused by something that . . . that came out of the sea, then Pedro ought to know about it. Even if it was something ‘out of the ordinary.’ ”

The big Ford grumbled crankily . . . sea air gets into everything, he thought . . . but it started quickly enough. He swung out of the driveway, scattering dirt and a few birds . . . at least the gulls had returned . . . and headed up the dirt access road.

It would have been hard to miss the tall, scraggly figure ambling along in the same direction, bowed under a large pack. He peered harder as the distance closed. Yes, it certainly looked like their ancient recluse, but what was old Whipple doing with a heavy pack?

“Say, Josh! Josh Whipple!”

Whipple obviously heard him, but hesitated before trudging over.

“Mornin’ to ye, Mr. Corfu.” He leaned closer and smiled slightly. “Ah, I kin see ye know whut happened over at th’ Birch place, then.”

“I do. Fact is, I’m going into town to see someone about it right now. The police have already been and gone.”

“Huh!” snorted Whipple. “I kin imagin’ whut they found. Nuthin’!” He paused and stared sharply at Dave. Without knowing why, Dave squirmed as though under the eye of his superior.

“You listen to me, Mr. Corfu. Yer nice folks, ye are. The Birches wuz nice folks too, but it didn’t do them no good a’tall. So I’m givin’ ye a piece o’ good advice. Take yer Missus and yer kid and leave this place, now. There’s things takin’ place that are way past ye, here, Mr. Corfu, and I’m suggestin’ ye leave while ye got the chance.

“The Birches is dead.”

The way he said it, with utter surety, left no room for argument. Dave thought furiously. He hadn’t seen the oldster lately. Not that he’d been looking for him. He supposed it might have been possible for Whipple to visit the ruins before the police arrived. All of a sudden he was ashamed of what he’d been thinking. After seeing the wreck of the Birch home, Dave’s evaluation of their probable fate hadn’t been any more optimistic, although not so gruesomely positive.

“You know about that, then? Yes, obviously you do, although how you can be so sure, I don’t know. They’re missing, all right, but no bodies have been found as yet, and . . .”

For some reason Whipple found this very amusing. “Oh, they’re dead enough. You kin bet on thet. Why, back whe . . .” He stopped suddenly and shouldered his pack, centering the load more precisely on his slender frame.

Dave eyed the bulky load, essayed a wild guess.

“You couldn’t be leaving us, Josh?”

“I not only could, I am! I’ve things to do elsewhere, Mr. Corfu, things to do. ‘Sides,” and he chuckled drily, “ ‘taint safe around here for honest folks.”

“Can I give you a lift into town, then?”

“No, thankee, I prefer to walk. ‘Sides, I kin stay closer to the sea thetaways.”

Dave was reluctant to let the garrulous old man depart. “I wonder what could have happened to them. Perhaps they left for reasons of their own. I know I wouldn’t have stopped running yet.”

Whipple chuckled again . . . man had a decidedly odd sense of humor, Dave thought.

“Ye want to know whut happened to ’em, do ye? Well, I told them they shouldn’t ha’ built thet big new place there. It didn’t belong, ye know. I even offered to show old Birch the place in The Book, but he jest laughed at me . . . laughed! I warned him there wuz things goin’ on he couldn’t stop, and thet I couldn’t control too well myself. He don’t hanker to outsiders at this spot, Mr. Corfu!”

“He?”

“Call ‘im what you will . . . sea-god, sea-devil, he’s mor’n thet. Cthulhu, he . . .” He paused and gave a start, as though he’d been talking in a daze.

“Thet’s all I’m saying to ye, Mr. Corfu. Ye be thankful fer thet. I could tell ye too much fer yer own good!”

Despite Dave’s entreaties the old fellow set off at a steady pace over the low hills and was soon lost to sight . . . headed inland, he noticed.

         

Pedro Armendariz lived in one of the better sections of suburban Santa Barbara, on a hillside, commanding a sweeping view of the Pacific. Flowering iceplant and geranium covered the sloping grounds with a profusion of red and yellow blooms. Dave was enjoying the lethal poise of a garden spider, all yellow and black patience, when Armendariz opened the door. After mutual exchanges of hello and other small pleasures, they moved into the den which was the professor’s inner sanctum.

Armendariz settled himself into a deep chair across from Dave and propped his feet up on the wrought iron table separating them.

It had been some time since Dave had had occasion to converse with his friend other than by phone. The black hair was graying a bit more at the temples, the olive skin showed a few more wrinkles, the nose seemed a bit more aquiline . . . but the same tiny, jet-black eyes peered inquisitively out from under almost feminine light brows. They regarded Dave with much the same interest that he regarded them.

“Well, David, it is too long since you have visited Rosa and me. And so I suspect this is not entirely a social visit, eh?”

“It’s not about the oil spill, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No? I had thought certainly that . . . but what is it, then?”

“Pedro, early this morning the house of my neighbor was completely destroyed, by what I don’t know. Neither do the police. And the people themselves have not been seen since.”

“Que cosa. Yet I am no detective, my friend. Vandalism, perhaps? An explosion?”

“No, Pedro. I mean totally destroyed. And there are other factors. . . .”

As well as he could, Dave related the occurrences at Cabrillo Cove, beginning from the day they moved in.

Armendariz remained characteristically unperturbed by the narrative, sometimes nodding his head as though to indicate agreement, now and then interrupting for clarification of this or that seemingly insignificant point.

“I see. And neither you nor the police have any idea as to the whereabouts of the people?”

“Only what our imaginations can supply. Only . . .” he paused. “We have . . . rather, we had a second, rather eccentric neighbor. Old guy named Whipple. Beachcomber, a likeable sort, if a bit of a recluse. I ran into him accidentally on my way to see you. Seems he was in the process of moving out. As much as suggested I do the same. He had some cock-and-bull story, said he knew what had been responsible for the destruction.”

“Indeed?” said Armendariz politely. “And what did he offer as an explanation? Ghosts, perhaps? A petulant poltergeist?”

Dave smiled back. “No, he said it had been some sort of sea deity . . . Cit . . . Cthulhu, yes, that was it . . . I . . . say, are you all right, Pedro?”

A most extraordinary transformation had come over his friend’s face. The normal complacent visage of the erudite sophisticate had dissolved to reveal the expression of a terrified savage. So brief was it that Dave wasn’t sure what he’d seen. When at last the professor replied there was an undercurrent of seriousness and apprehension in his voice that was totally unlike him.

“What’s that, what’s that? Cthulhu, you say? That’s exactly the name he used? It’s not a common word. You’re certain of it?”

“Pretty much so, yes,” replied Dave. He was rather taken aback by his friend’s abrupt change. “Why so curious? You mean it really means something? I know, it’s a whale, or a large sea-turtle or something?”

A peculiar brightness was in Armendariz’ eyes. “You are considering a large marine animal, my friend? No, I am afraid you could not quite call it an animal.” His voice dropped and he spoke to himself in Spanish. Dave was fairly fluent, but only the rhythmic rise and fall of the professor’s voice identified it as some kind of prayer.

He glanced up suddenly, startling Dave yet again. An air of unquestioning authority now permeated his questions.

“This elderly friend of yours, this beachcomber. Did he ever happen to mention his home to you? His place of birth?”

“Well, yes. We talked now and then. Someplace back East. Massachusetts, I believe.”

This produced another unexpected reaction from Armendariz. He grinned. “Ah, Massachusetts, you say? What place?”

Dave was getting irritated. What did all this have to do with . . . ? “Oh, I think it was somewhere on the coast. He liked the sea. I don’t happen to recall the zip code!”

But the professor missed the sarcasm. He was deep in thoughts of his own. Dave knew the mood and politely refrained from breaking it. He was intensely curious, despite his irritation, to know the reason for his friend’s remarkable behavior of the past few minutes. At length Armendariz rose and walked to a rear portal.

“Rosa!”

Rosa Armendariz was a plump but still vivacious little woman. She had to stand on tiptoe to hear what her husband had to whisper to her, even though he bent over. Dave couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he noticed the way her eyes widened, and how she seemed momentarily transfixed the way her husband had a moment ago. She paused long enough to give Dave one unfathomable backwards glance before departing without as much as a hello.

“I suggest,” began Armendariz, “that you send Julie and the boy up here to stay with us for awhile, and come yourself as soon as you are able. At least until I can determine what can be done about this. If even half of what I suspect is true, you cannot remain in that place a moment longer.”

“Oh, come off it, Pedro! Stop trying to scare me with some crazy hocus-pocus! I hardly see the need for . . .”

Armendariz interrupted him with an almost bored fluttering of a hand. “Please, I have no time for arguing with you, David. I suggest this because I believe it is essential for your own welfare.”

“But the police . . .”

“Can think what they like. Their suppositions are of no consequence in this, believe me.”

“And yours are, I suppose?”

The professor was not upset. “Possibly. Possibly. If we are lucky. I must telephone some associates in Massachusetts . . . yes, that’s right . . . Yale and Miskatonic, both. I must have some information from librar-ies there . . . it will take time, and I do not like doing such things by phone. . . .”

“Why not have the material photocopied and sent out?”

Armendariz smiled. “It would take too long, my friend, and besides, these materials do not ‘photocopy.’ I need also the advice of a certain enthusiastic antiquarian . . . I pray he is at home. . . .”

“Look, I really just came for some advice, Pedro. If this is going to put you to a whole lot of trouble. . . .”

“I do not do this for you alone anymore, David. I will expect you here with your family by tomorrow morning at the latest. Now please be good enough to leave me for awhile. I have much to do. And David?”

“Yes?”

“It is better than you know that you came to me. Hasta la vista.”

His last view of Armendariz showed the professor scribbling furiously at his desk, a tattered old book in one hand and a rapidly rising pile of notes at the other.

         

They were gathered around the fireplace in the living room. Dave was striving futilely for a way to plug a crack in the Pacific’s floor. Julie was curled up on the couch transcribing recipes into her little card file. In the far hallway Flip was busy assaulting a coffee table with a large force of miniature dinosaurs.

There was a fourth personage present. General Lee, the mutated siamese, snuggled comfortably on a fat silk pillow between piles of geology texts.

Try as he would, Dave could not concentrate on engineering. Armendariz . . . why, he’d never seen Pedro act the way he had this afternoon! Ordinarily he was a pillar of calm, unruffled by the most outrageous happenings. Yet a few mild statements had upset him completely. At least he was interested, though. Was he! If he believed there might be something in all this talk of sea-monsters and such, well then . . .

His eyes wandered with his thoughts. They came to rest eventually on the light figure of General Lee. At which point Dave straightened in his chair, all thoughts of geosynclines and fault-prone strata gone.

The cat was no longer curled on its pillow. It stood instead before the heavy plank door. The hair on its back was stiff and erect, as was the peppered tail. Eyes abnormally wide, ears flattened back againt the sides of the head . . . everything in the animal’s stance was suggestive of fear and terror.

Julie broke his concentration.

“Uh, Dave . . . is there someone out front, do you think?”

Not moving a muscle, straining his hearing, he listened. Nothing. No wait, wasn’t that something, there? Yes, surely. A faint sucking sound, as of wet cloth being slapped lightly on cement. A mild, loathsome reverberation. It seemed perhaps to be . . . yes, it was clearly growing louder even as he listened.

Keeping his voice as level as possible so as not to startle Flip, he said to her, “Look at the cat.”

She did, and stifled a gasp. Her eyes went as wide as the cat’s.

A ponderous suction was now quite audible, carrying with it the suggestion of great weight. Every bristle on his body stiff as a quill, General Lee was slowly backing away from the door. The small fangs were bared and low sounds came from his throat that Dave would have thought impossible for a cat.

He stared likewise with dumb fascination at the solid oak door. It seemed to jiggle ever so slightly. His voice remained calm, almost divorced from the situation.

“Move quietly, Julie. Take Flip and try not to bump into anything, will you? We’re going to go down into the old wine cellar, you understand? Okay, now . . . move.”

She nodded and got up from the couch. The cards she had been laboring over slid to the floor. Dave walked to the center of the room and shifted aside the old throw rug to reveal a large square outline in the center of the floor, a single iron ring attached to one side of the outline. Flip mercifully kept quiet as Julie led him over. As lightly as possible, Dave lifted the ring. Below, a series of broad wooden steps appeared in the darkness. One day, Dave had planned to convert the old wine cellar into a playroom.

He cocked a nervous eye on the front door. It had begun to show an alarming bend inwards. He urged Julie and Flip down the old steps. The sliding, oozing sounds were now accompanied by a stench of stomach-turning intensity. He followed quickly, pausing only long enough to let a white streak, General Lee, dash down past him.

It was dark down in that cellar. One day he’d string electric lights. One day. Meanwhile the flashlight would have to do. Taking it from its convenient hook he switched it on. A small friendly path appeared in the blackness. After sweeping the entire room he settled on a small alcove behind a jumble of ancient shelving. A number of old burlap cement sacks showed there, brown against the mossy adobe. That was the side nearest the sea, and the stones dripped slightly. He gestured with the beam. Holding Flip tightly, Julie walked over and crawled back into the indicated recess. He then played his light over the spot but was unable to see her. Good. Giving the trap door a last glance he hurried over to join them. Damp as it was, the wall behind them was reassuring in its solidity. The heavy air, moist and thick as ink, closed around him like a straight-jacket. Beside his left leg he could feel the shivering body of General Lee. Together the four of them stared at the place where the trap was.

There was a muffled snapping and rending, followed by a tremendous crash. Dull crunching sounds followed, along with a definite groaning of the ancient floor-beams. Loud snaps and cracklings could be heard, interspersed with a bumping and sliding that somehow managed to convey with it an almost audible wetness. That horrible stink filtered down into the cellar, and Dave recognized it in the cloying dark. It was an odor he’d encountered often out on exploratory rigs. The odor of the deep, deep sea bottom.

Slowly, he became aware of a pain in his left shoulder. He saw that Julie was digging her free hand into his arm with such force she was drawing blood.

His attention was diverted by a short, high-pitched squeal from Flip. His eyes widened in horror as they located the reason.

The trap was being slowly opened.

Not lifted, but bent inwards, forced down on its metal hinges by some incredible pressure. Light from the still intact living room fixtures filtered in around the edges.

From this point on Dave was later able to remember what happened only vaguely. The human mind can stand only a measured dose of horror before reflexive defense mechanisms take over to protect one’s sanity.

A thing came slithering in over the splintered, tortured remains of the trap covering. It showed a dull green in the available light from the living room bulbs. A small thing, at first, shaped roughly like a paw . . . or was it a cable? A green cable. It moved down into the cellar with an obscene half-creeping, half-flowing motion. It was unmistakably searching for something. As it lengthened it grew until it filled the wide opening provided by the shattered door.

Dave never could give a coherent description of the thing. In color it was grayish-green, with here and there unhealthy-looking patches of some darker color. Impossibly, it gave the impression of being of variable consistency. Now it was like a syrup, now a gel, whether inside liquid or solid or some nauseating chemistry inbetween he would never know.

It reached the bottom of the steps and seemed to hesitate. Dave reminded himself that this was only a part of whatever monstrosity rested on the floor above, fishing for them. Then, slowly, it began to move again. Towards their little hiding place, their last refuge of sanity. He prayed silently to the others, not daring to whisper. Don’t scream. Whatever you do, think, feel, don’t scream. As though she had read his thoughts he noticed that Julie had placed her other hand tightly over Flip’s mouth. It wasn’t necessary. The boy had fainted.

He dimly recalled the distant voice of Martin Birch, screaming over his phone. “It’s all around the house!”

Staring with mesmerized revulsion at the horror he pressed himself against the moist wall, trying to become a part of the solid rock. The thing was poking among the burlap now, a large verdant worm. He knew with instant clarity that if the thing touched him he would start screaming at the top of his lungs. Scream and scream and never stop screaming, ever.

He was suddenly aware of a large black-and-white blur streaking past him. The strain had grown too much for General Lee. With a heart-rending yowl of desperation the poor animal took off like a shot for the one patch of clean visible light.

He never reached the second step. With whippet-like speed, the green thing enveloped the cat in mid-leap. It contracted, once. General Lee let out a shriek of such concentrated agony that Dave was forced to clap his hands to his ears. Julie fainted. The cat’s eyes popped out like buttons on a fat man’s vest. It hung limp in the green thing’s grasp, something more than merely life crushed out of its small body. Apparently something had been sated, because the long length of protoplasm withdrew, leaving a trail of malodorous slime behind it.

He retained consciousness only long enough to catch a brief glimpse of the Thing that towered into the sky above the shattered trap, blotting out the evening stars. Then he, too, fainted.

         

When he awoke he awoke screaming, expecting to see that horror gloating down at him. But the broken trap was clear and filled with a square of pure, uncontaminated daylight. He was aware of the dampness of his clothes, not all of which was due to his prolonged contact with the adobe. He woke Julie, stifling the incipient scream with his hand, and gestured upwards. When she saw the empty opening and the brilliant daylight drifting down she collapsed completely in his arms. They rested like that for some time before he forced himself to move.

Cautiously he peered over the upper edge of the trap, ready to duck back instantly. All that was in view was the wreckage of their living room. Helping Julie with Flip, who was still asleep, they stepped out into the daylight. Daylight because a great portion of the roof was missing, torn away like paper. The daylight made him less cautious. The sky shone down on three scarred lives.

“Carry Flip out to the car. We’ll come back later for what’s left . . . maybe.” She nodded numbly and guided the sleepy, now half-awake youngster out where the door had been. He seemed not to remember anything of the night past. Hopefully, his mind would never remind him.

Dave paused to examine the wreckage. The great wooden supportive beams were shattered like matchsticks. The huge black iron braces which had bound the door and windows to the thick adobe had been bent and peeled away like tinfoil. Some rubbing action had ground away much of the fronting adobe itself. On close inspection the rough section showed a clear, tacky slime. It smelled of bottom ooze.

In front of the house was a huge depression in the sand leading down towards the innocently curling surf. It was wholly familiar.

General Lee had gone the way of the Birches.

         

Dave had supposed his experience would be a surprise, not to mention a shock, to the professor. But when Pedro greeted him at his house that morning he only nodded knowingly and said, “You have seen.”

After Rosa had gently guided Julie and a mercifully ignorant Flip to the guest cottage, Dave joined his friend in the peace and reality of the den. The events of the night previous seemed fantastic and unreal. There was proof enough, however, in the professor’s face.

“Pedro, what in all the hells was it, and where did it come from?”

“Actually, David, I had intended not to tell you any more than you knew yesterday. People who become involved in such things are marked forever. But a little knowledge pales in comparison to the thing itself. I might tell you that it is also quite likely responsible for your errant oil. No, don’t interrupt. Listen . . . remember.

“Whether you believe what I am about to tell you or not is of no real importance. Your belief or disbelief cannot alter the truth one iota.”

“After last night there’s not a hell of a lot I wouldn’t believe. Go ahead.”

“So. Long ago the universe was rocked by a titanic struggle between two groups of powerful entities, one more or less beneficent, the other decidedly evil. The evil ones were defeated and put into various forms of exile or restraint. But the Great Old Ones have been away a long time and the bonds restraining these evil ones grow weaker. Some say the time for the return of these is near. They require human . . . and non-human . . . servants to properly prepare the way for their return. Always they are trying to break the holds placed on them so long ago.

“I have reason to believe that by re-occupying the de Lima abode, at this particular time, you have unwittingly aided in a scheme to let loose upon the world perhaps the most monstrous of these beings. That is one reason why I have dissuaded you from involving the police any more than you already have. Such things are not subject to the normal laws of time and space.”

“I see. Look, I’m not laughing. How did you find out about such, uh . . . things?”

“There are hints in certain forbidden and well-sequestered tomes, such as the De Vermis Mysteriis of Ludvig Prinn, and even worse, the Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Alhazred.”

Dave brightened suddenly. “Then those cultists on the Point . . . is that what you meant by ‘this particular time’?”

Armendariz nodded somberly. “For whatever reasons, they have been able to summon him from his house in great R’lyeh. I believe that this is in part responsible for the petroleum leakage that has stymied your best engineers. Though I fear its implications more than the fact.”

Dave hadn’t heard the last. “So that’s what happened to our divers! We thought it was unstable currents on the sea-floor. Great Heavens, Pedro, we’ve got to notify the army, we . . . !”

He stopped. The professor was shaking his head slowly.

“You have not listened carefully. He is not subject to natural law, as we know it. We must try and fight this horror on its own terms. I have received what I can only hope will be sufficient information from my contacts at Miskatonic and Yale Universities. But first, you must tell me everything you can remember about the content of those strange chantings that disturbed you. . . .”

For hours Dave struggled to recall the odd words, the peculiar timbred phrases which had disrupted his sleep those first nights in the aged adobe. With a little hypnotic coaxing from Pedro he and Julie were able to recall much more than they thought they’d heard. When the professor repeated the sounds back to him, Dave shivered. It was much like learning a language and then hearing it spoken by someone who knew the accent like a native.

“When do you want to . . . to do whatever it is you intend to do, Pedro?”

“As soon as possible. Time must not be wasted. With every night the chants grow stronger, the evil re-enforces itself. We must try to break the locks tonight, before the forging is complete.”

Dave gestured at the phone. “I don’t understand enough of this to offer any objections, Pedro, but don’t you think we ought to have some help?”

Armendariz considered. “Yes. No, I still think the type of ‘help’ you have in mind would be worse than useless, but it occurs to me that the members of the cult may possess more earthy forms of argument. I have a friend at the missile base . . . a Major Gomez. He will not believe, but he will come. Tonight, then.”

         

There was very little breeze to muffle the sounds of the leather on rock as Dave worked his way along the blocky promontory which bordered the north end of Cabrillo Cove. Despite the fact that it was too early for a pre-dawn fog, he felt damp. A glance to the left and right showed dim outlines of Gomez’s troops, spread out along the rocks to cut off any possible line of retreat. Nearby, the major was muttering angrily to himself and to anyone who cared to listen, heedless of the fact that the glow from the cultists’ fire was now quite visible.

“Damn foolishness! Pedro, if I didn’t owe you this favor I’d haul you in for observation myself! ‘Primal jelly’ indeed! There’d better be something to this cock-and-bull story of yours. If this gets out I’ll be the laughing stock of the base!”

“I can only hope,” Armendariz replied softly, “that ridicule is the worst that confronts us.”

Gomez snorted derisively, but said no more. They were close to a point where some caution was necessary. Here the sounds of that insidious chant sounded loud. They conveyed a perverse sensuality that invited rejection but refused it. Dave noticed that even the skeptical Gomez was swaying slightly to that suggestive rhythm. Only the professor seemed immune.

“That is the same wording you and Julie heard at nights? The same you at least repeated to me this afternoon?”

Dave could only nod mutely. The evil ululation, its throbbing subtleties, absorbed his complete attention. Below them, on a flat, open area of naked rock, the cultists swayed and danced in a jerking, writhing parody of something his deepest memories could but half guess at.

He stood, moving uncertainly to the insistence of that pulsating wail. Dimly, he perceived the others beginning to do likewise. A great feeling of loss mingled with exaltation came over him. He became aware that the professor was moving. With a great effort, he managed to turn his head.

Armendariz was carefully removing his clothing. As each item of apparel was removed the symbols and designs which had been painted on his body were revealed in the faint moonlight. Doubtless he’d drawn them himself, with Rosa filling in the areas he would be unable to reach. They seemed to merge into one another in a single swirling pattern of repellant appearance.

Completely devoid of anything to suggest he was a highly intelligent member of a high civilization, the professor stepped over the concealing rocks and walked out into full view of the cultists. Raising his eyes to the sky and spreading his arms like some impossibly tall wading bird, he began to declaim in a peculiarly artificial-sounding voice.

Staring in shock at the apparition which had shattered their chanting, the cultists stood frozen in place. Obviously they had been interrupted at a crucial point in their ritual. Only one among them, one who seemed faintly familiar to Dave, remained unaffected. He stood tall on the side of the fire. He was painted in a manner very similar to the professor, with the exception that the designs on his skin did not appear to have been painted on, but instead seemed to be etched or burned into the flesh!

It was the very first time Dave had seen Joshua Whipple with his clothes off.

The old man did not halt his sing-song, but the tone in which he chanted altered noticeably. Despite his ignorance of the strange-sounding syllables they forced Dave and the others to recoil in terror. The very modulation, the phrasing, was horrifying. That voice demanded all attention, dominating even the obscene green statue that stood to one side of the fire.

Undaunted, the professor instantly modified his own speech in response. Now it was the turn of the cultists to draw back in fear. They scrambled pathetically about the fire. A faint flicker of concern showed in old Whipple’s eyes and he began to chant in deadly earnest.

Dave felt mildly dizzy. He tried to take a step backwards and found he couldn’t move. He was tied to that chant and this spot until events played themselves out. Idly he noticed that both the cultists and Gomez’ troops were in a similar state. Neither Armendariz nor Whipple seemed affected.

But what was this? It was far too early for the morning fog to be coming in, but a definite mist had gathered around the Point. It obscured vision for all but a short distance around. Perspective became terribly distorted and Dave found he could no longer properly judge distance. He couldn’t even see the soldiers, who were lined up a short distance behind his position. His feet seemed divorced from the basalt beneath. This hardly seemed a normal fog. It had a peculiar tingle to it. Besides, it was almost black in color.

As the voices of Whipple and the professor rose yet higher, Dave thought he could begin to make out shapes again. Something there, in the fog, near the water . . .

He became aware of screaming all around him and realized in surprise that he was one of the screamers. Something began to giggle at the back of his skull. It wouldn’t go away.

As Whipple’s now quavering tone reached an impossible pitch, the object took on a definite form. It towered over the now vulnerable Point, its face . . . if such it could be called . . . a mass of writhing tentacles, its shape saurian with translucid wings flapping as it staggered forth trailing phosphorus in its wake. Dave recognized the smell . . . the same smell he’d breathed that awful night in the wine cellar. Maniacal laughter resounded in his skull as he clapped pale trembling hands upon his throbbing temples and screamed because he could not go mad.

A great claw hovered over the Point and the fire shrank away from it in terror. One cultist went mad on the spot. Another fell to his belly and began to make low, crooning sounds deep in his throat. Another uttered a series of high, yelping cries and threw himself over the side of the cliff to smash on the rocks below.

The great corruption-encrusted claw wavered uncertainly over the two vocal combatants, drifting uncertainly from one to the other. The professor’s voice rose to the very limit of endurance and Whipple seemed to shrink in on himself as a thunderous, rolling cry of “CTHULHU IA VGLNN!” split the tension-charged mist.

The claw moved. It swayed and dipped and finally clutched . . . the scarred form of Whipple! An unhallowed shriek of damnation issued from Whipple’s twisted lips as the claw wrung forth his soul while the great form slipped into the foaming ocean. A wall of water coursed over the Point nearly drowning Dave in its onslaught. The receding riptide sucked his heels from under him and left Dave shivering, drenched, prostrate and staring up into the stars now whirling, a midnight carousel in his consciousness converging, concentric, into oblivion’s compassion.

         

Something refused to stop shaking him. Dimly, he tried to wish it away, but it refused to leave. Blinking painfully . . . his eyes seemed to ache . . . he rolled over, to stare into the haggard face of Major Gomez, framed in the delicious cream-blue of a Pacific sky. He sat up abruptly. How had he gotten such a terrific headache? Then he remembered, and wished he hadn’t.

“Where’s the professor?” he said suddenly.

Gomez jerked his head and Dave turned to see a pale bent form huddled under an army blanket. It was sitting by the edge of the southern cliff and staring out to sea. Dave turned back to the major.

“He’s alive then. All right?”

“Yes to the first. As to the second,” he shrugged. “Why not ask him yourself. I must see to my men and to the assembling of these . . . people.”

Dave rose and walked over to the motionless figure. He noticed the soldiers were gathering up the remaining cultists and herding them down the slope towards waiting trucks. Rather urgently, too. The rough handling was partly the result of the soldiers’ refusal to look where they were going. They showed a tendency to cast quick glances back at the peaceful ocean. The cult members themselves were far too dazed to offer even perfunctory resistance.

“Pedro?”

The professor turned his face to Dave. It was frighteningly pale.

Dave sat down beside him. “Well, you did it.”

“Yes, yes . . . whatever it was, I have done. I did not think I was strong enough, David. Knowing exactly the right words helped. Whipple was stronger, actually, but at the crucial moment he lost control.”

They sat silently for some time, watching the waves roll in from Asia.

“I suppose this means the oil will stop leaking now?”

At this Armendariz smiled, then began to laugh. He laughed until the tears ran down his face and his side began to pain him, laughed so that Dave feared for his friend’s sanity. But it was honest laughter.

“Forgive me, Dave. Your remark struck me as humorous. I needed the release badly. Yes, I do not doubt that your precious petroleum will be safe for now. Though I have heard disturbing things about what the Creoles have been doing down in the back country of Louisiana. And there is another thing. Look!”

Dave followed the pointing arm down, down to the floor of the little cove, down past the jack-straw rubble of the house of the unfortunate Martin Birch, over the low sand dunes, to see that where had stood the ranch home of Rodrigo de Lima there was now only a sparkling smooth expanse of white Pacific sand.

The Whisperers

Richard A. Lupoff

The so-called editorial office of Millbrook High School’s student paper would never have been mistaken for the city room of the San Francisco Chronicle, or even, to stick closer to home . . . the Marin Independent-Journal. A cardboard sign with hand-lettered copy was taped to the frosted glass; it said “Millbrook Hi-Life,” and inside the musty room, wrestled a decade ago from a protesting language teacher, half a dozen battered desks crowded into an area suitable for half that number.

Karen Robertson sat behind the biggest of those desks. On its battered composition top stood a plastic sign announcing Karen’s position, Editor-in-Chief, and on a rolling table beside the desk a battle-fatigued electric typewriter, its once bright paint-job suffering severely from the chips and fades.

Mario Cipolla and Annie Epstein sat in straight-backed chairs opposite Karen. All three were seniors at Millbrook High; another half a year and they would have their diplomas and be off for a final carefree summer before they started college. They’d been friends and schoolmates for a long time, but fall would see them scattered to Cal across the bay in Berkeley, to the local College of Marin in nearby Kentfield, to USC nearly half a thousand miles due south.

But now, on this miserable Friday afternoon in January, with the northern California sky a sodden, depressing gray and a steady thrum of chilling rain descending, they clustered around Karen’s desk discussing the assignment that Annie and Mario would head out on that evening.

“Nobody gets interviews with the Whisperers,” Karen said. “Are you really sure you can get in there, Annie?”

Annie shook back her long, rust-red hair. “My father says it’s all set. We’ll go in for the soundcheck, then get our interview, and we have backstage passes for tonight’s show.”

Mario nodded his support of Annie. Almost unconsciously he dug a couple of fingers past the felt-tipped pen in his shirt pocket and reassured himself that the precious stage-door pass was still there. It was a small cloth square with two words, The Whisperers, in stylized lettering and the words Winterland, San Francisco and the date rubber-stamped beneath in special ink that would fluoresce beneath a special light.

He had an attache case with a miniature cassette recorder in it, along with his pad and pencils. Annie had her camera around her neck—he’d hardly ever seen her without it—and a gadget bag beside her chair, with extra lenses and film. He knew that flash equipment was verboten on-stage, and that Annie, like the professional rock photographers, had learned to use ultra-fast films and wide apertures to capture their images by available stage lighting.

“I am a little nervous about the interview,” Mario said. “You know, the Whisperers have had those big hit singles, ’Daemonium’ and ’Erich Zann,’ and I’ve seen them on television and all, but—” he shrugged.

“I’ve met lots of musicians,” Annie replied. “Daddy’s always bringing them up to the house to use the swimming pool or taking me to shows and introducing me to them. Most of them are perfectly ordinary people, and very nice.”

Neither Mario nor Karen responded.

“Well,” Annie resumed, “some of them are a little bit odd.”

“I’ll bet.” Mario smoothed his medium-long hair. “The stories about weird carrying on, and drugs, and breaking up hotel rooms.” He paused. “And groupies. They must all be strange people.”

Annie said “No, they’re not. At least not most of them. Not the ones I’ve met, and I’ve met practically every artist on the Dagon label, and a lot of others, that Daddy’s friends introduced me to—Elektra, London, Epic.”

Mario began to pick up his case with the recorder. He got to his feet and headed for the corner of the newspaper office, reached for his quilted downie jacket and rain-hood.

“Yeah, well, let’s get going. We’ll be going against the traffic but it’s still going to be rush hour, especially in the city.”

“Good luck!” Karen called after them. “Get a good story. We’ll scoop everybody.”

Mario and Annie headed down the hall, toward the front door of the school. It was after four o’clock, and by this time of day—especially by this time of Friday—Millbrook High was pretty nearly deserted.

They signed the late-exit book at the front door, headed down the steps hand-in-hand and sprinted across the front yard toward the student parking lot where Annie left the little Volvo 1800E that her father had given her for her senior present. She and Mario weren’t exactly sweethearts—they’d both had dates with plenty of other kids, and had never got into the heavy senior scene—at least with each other—but they’d gone to parties and dances and generally hung around together ever since junior high. That was a long time.

Annie unlocked the door on the driver’s side of the 1800. She looked across its sleek, rain-beaded roof at Mario. “Would you rather drive us into the city?”

He grinned. “Really, I would. I always feel kind of—strange—when a girl drives. You know?”

Annie said. “That’s pretty old-fashioned, Mario.” But she walked around the car’s long hood and handed him the keys, waiting for him to climb into the driver’s seat and reach across to unlock the passenger door for her. She settled into the leather bucket seat, fumbled in her gadget bag and came up with a pair of phototropic Jerry Garcia glasses. She settled them on her nose. In the gloomy wet afternoon they were as clear as plain ground glass.

Mario clicked on the engine and eased the Volvo’s floor-shift into its smooth and powerful lower gear. He rolled it out of the parking lot, braked for the stop sign at the street, then headed onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and upshifted, cruising through the light traffic and the steady rain toward the freeway.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Annie doing something with her hands in the car’s map compartment. “You looking for something?”

“Do you know the Whisperers’ music?’

“Their singles.”

“Well, here.” Annie pulled a tape cartridge from the map drawer and slapped it into the Volvo’s Bendix tape system. “This is their new album. It’s called Chthulhu. Daddy brought it home for me. It’s a promo advance copy; the album won’t be out till next week. They’re supposed to push it on this tour.”

Mario shook his head and at the same time pulled around a big Oldsmobile station wagon that was filling a lane and a half of Sir Francis. “Grocery shopping,” he grumbled to himself.

The sound of water softly lapping at—what, a pier, the prow of a small boat?—came from the car’s quad mini-Bozak speakers. Slowly the sound rose, and rising with it and through it came the indescribable theremin-like wail of an Arp synthesizer, then a deep, bass throbbing. At first Mario thought it was a drum, but when it changed pitch he realized that it was a pounding Fender bass.

“That’s—I know that,” Mario said.

Now the vocal entered, the unearthly multi-tracked female voice that he had heard so often before.

“That’s ‘Styx River Boatman’, “ he said. “I’ve heard that plenty of times.”

“Right. It’s the lead track on Chthulhu. The single’s been out for a month. Now they hit with the album and the tour. They ought to go gold on both of them. The single’s already charted with a bullet and—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Annie.”

“Oh. It’s music business shop talk. Daddy always talks about his work and most of our friends are in the business. What I mean is, the Whisperers are going to be the biggest group around by the end of the year.”

Mario made a sound something like hmmf. He dropped the thread of conversation, let the music fill his ears while he kept his eyes carefully on his driving. He’d banged a fender on the family Apollo last fall and still hadn’t heard the last of it. Most of the other kids in his class had cars of their own, or at least got to use their parents’ cars, and here he was riding on buses or begging rides.

The boulevard curved around and he took a ramp that ran from it onto the freeway. He dropped the Volvo into third, then down into second when he saw the traffic on the freeway. There was a break between a Plymouth Duster and a blue-flecked wide-open dune buggy—must be somebody headed home from Stinson Beach—and Mario had the 1800 onto the freeway, across into the center lane and accelerating in the space of a quadrophonic synthesizer howl.

“Very nice,” Annie applauded.

“Listen,” Mario said, “we better do a good job on this. You’re sure this is the only interview they’re giving on this gig?”

“Yep.”

He shook his head. “I’d just expect Wasserman to get it then, or Phil Elwood from the Examiner.”

The freeway wound and swooped through the hills between Mill Valley and Sausalito, plunged through the twin tunnels and slanted down the long grade toward the Golden Gate Bridge. To their right, the green wintry hills were bathed in ghostly shreds of fog that had worked their way in from the Pacific and through the Marin valleys. To their left, the bay was a dismal sheet of water, its surface pocked with a million impacts a minute.

“They’re only doing it as a favor to Daddy,” Annie called him back from his revery. “I told you that.”

“Oh—well. I’m just surprised, that’s all. If they wouldn’t do it for the dailies, you know, I thought they’d give an interview to somebody from Rolling Stone, you know. Ben Fong-Torres or somebody, and Jim Marshall would shoot it or Annie Liebovitz. Or they could have that guy from Ramparts and Michael Gazaris could shoot it. Did you see those shots he got of Jagger last time the Stones played?”

Mario missed Annie’s answer as he braked for the toll plaza at the northern end of the bridge. He put the 1800 into first and pulled away from the gate, settled for a steady 45 as they cut through the raindrops. Not yet five o’clock, yet the sun was gone, the sky a gray approaching black, the bridge illuminated only by the ghastly glare of its pink-orange high-intensity lamps.

They crossed the bridge without further conversation, the only sounds those of the tape system working its way from track to track of the Whisperers’ new album and of the car’s progress through the frigid rain: the drops drumming on the hood and roof of the Volvo, the beat-swish, beat-swish of the wipers, the shush of the car’s four new Pirelli radials on the wet asphalt of the roadway.

The Friday commuter traffic was heavier now, snarled and made more dense than normal by the steady rainfall. Mario swung the Volvo around the lazy curve from the bridge onto Doyle Drive, all but overwhelmed by the sheer massive numbers of the cars and commuter buses moving in the opposite direction. He made his way past the neo-corinthian Palace of Fine Arts, down ugly Lombard Street with its neon motels and grimy gasoline stations, and turned onto Fillmore.

A line of cars stopped him at the traffic light at Union Street. From the seat beside him Annie asked if he could see the dingy little store they’d just passed. Mario looked back. “What, that button shop?”

“Know what used to be there?”

Mario shook his head.

“That was the original Matrix. Daddy says that he took me there when I was a little girl. I can hardly remember it. All of the bands played there back in the beginning. The Airplane, the Doors, the Warlocks, the New Riders. That was back in Flower Power times.”

“That little place?” Mario cast a last glance over his shoulder, then followed a Porsche 914 as it pulled across Union. The Porsche dived into a parking space and Mario gunned the 1800 uphill in second. “How could they make a living playing in a joint like that?”

“I could never understand that either. Daddy says they lived on peace and love and holiness.”

“Yeah. Just like the Whisperers, right? Or do they have a different trip going?”

“They sure do. They’re making plenty. Daddy says they got a recording advance from Dagon and they’re cleaning up on their tours and TV gigs. There was no such thing as rock on TV back in the old days, Daddy says, unless you could get on Ed Sullivan’s show like Elvis or the Beatles.”

Mario said “Who’s Ed Sullivan?”

Annie said “I think he was something like Dick Clark, I’m not sure.”

“Yeah.”

The Whisperers’ new album Chthulhu wound up with a typically weird, heavy number with odd words about somebody called the Reanimator. Annie pulled the cartridge from the Bendix unit and replaced it with the Whisperers’ first album, Anubis.

The classic white apartment buildings of Pacific Heights gradually gave way to crumbling tenements as Fillmore Street changed from a high-price, old-line neighborhood into a grimy ghetto street. “Places like this give me the creeps,” Mario grumbled. He held the wheel with one hand and checked his door latch with the other.

Annie said nothing.

“Look,” Mario went on nervously, “you really know so much more about the whole music business than I do, I’m not so sure about this interview, Annie.”

She shook her head, her reddish hair swinging into the edge of Mario’s field of vision. “You don’t have enough confidence, Mario. I always read your stuff, and we’ve done stories together before. Don’t worry, relax, you’ll do fine.”

He found a parking place next to a boarded-up, deserted church on Sutter Street, and backed the Volvo into it. “I hope the car’ll be safe here,” he said, reaching behind the bucket seats for his cassette recorder in its attache case.

“It’ll be safe, Mario.”

“I don’t know. A nice car in a neighborhood like this, maybe we should put it in the Miyako.”

Annie ignored the suggestion. She hoisted her gadget bag onto her shoulder and climbed out of the car.

They walked together past a row of Japanese restaurants catering to visiting Asian businessmen and tourists and people arriving early for the show at Winterland. Mario looked at his watch. “We can get some dinner after we do the interview, then go back for the show afterwards.”

Annie agreed.

They walked up Post to Steiner Street, then continued past the corner to the stage door of the cavernous concert hall. Mario rapped on the door with a fifty-cent piece, the echo of the metallic clash sounding off the concrete walls and sidewalk. “Will your dad be here, Annie?”

“He said he might come over for the show,” she answered, shaking her head, “but he was stuck in a meeting all day. At least he told me this morning that he expected to be. So we should just go ahead.”

“Okay.”

The stage door, a heavy sheet of iron rivetted onto creaking hinges, swung open slowly and a hostile face glowered out at them.

“Uh—the Whisperers are expecting us,” Mario muttered.

“Show’s sold out,” the doorman growled.

“Um—no, uh. We—”

The doorman slammed the heavy iron door shut.

Mario looked at Annie forlornly, then remembered. He unzipped the front of his waterproof jacket, fished his backstage pass out and held it in front of him. Annie grinned and hefted her heavy gadget bag to show where she’d stuck her own pass to its side.

Mario rapped on the iron again. After a few seconds the door creaked open and the doorman’s face, more hostile than ever, appeared once more. Mario shoved his pass forward so the doorman could see it.

The doorman stopped, gazed unimpressed at the backstage pass and said, “Show’s not for four hours. That doesn’t get you into the soundcheck.” He started to close the door again but it stopped at Mario’s heavy hiking boot—the kind that all the kids at Millbrook High were wearing this year. The doorman’s expression turned from one of general hostility to personal rage. “Say—”

“The Whisperers are expecting us. It was all set up by Dagon Records. You’d better check on it. They’ll be pretty upset when they find out, otherwise.”

The doorman grumbled incoherently, then said “I’ll go ask their manager Bart Starke about it. You better be straight with me or it’s no backstage, I don’t care about any passes. And take your foot out of my door before I cut it off.”

Mario reluctantly withdrew his boot. The door slammed shut. Mario turned toward Annie. “Nice fellow. I wonder why he hates me?”

“He doesn’t hate you.” Annie smiled at him. Mario could see the rain beading up on her forehead and the edges of her hair that extended beyond the nylon hood of her jacket. In the ghastly light of a billboard lamp advertising the Whisperers’ forthcoming album, the only light on this side of the Winterland auditorium, the rainwater puddled and ran like icy perspiration.

“He doesn’t hate you,” she repeated. “That’s just old Gooley the doorman. He’d have a thousand gate-crashers or groupies or assorted rip-offs in here every night if he didn’t come on a little bit heavy, Mario.”

“Hmmph.”

They stood in the chilling rain waiting for Gooley’s return. After a while the iron door creaked open for the third time. Gooley looked a little less hostile and angry than he had before. He made a gesture with his hand and Annie and Mario stepped over a low iron bulkhead that separated the dingily painted floor inside the doorway from the littered gray cement outside.

“Starke says okay.” Gooley gestured over his shoulder, toward a short narrow staircase that led up to a half-elevated platform level.

A heavyset middle-aged man was standing on the platform. His jowly face was ringed with a fringe of graying hair. He wore a rumpled gray tweed jacket and baggy brown flannel pants. He smiled thinly at Mario and Annie.

“You the kids from the school paper?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m Bart Starke. Hal Epstein from Dagon said you were all right.”

“Mr. Epstein is my father,” Annie said.

Starke repeated his smile, more thinly than ever. “Yeah. Look, my kids are just starting their soundcheck. You go make yourselves comfy and you can talk to Johnny and Olly after.” He jerked a thumb toward a wooden door.

Mario and Annie crossed the room toward the new door. Mario leaned his head toward Annie’s and hissed, “Johnny and Olly?”

“The Whisperers,” she answered softly. “Johnny Kendrick and Olivia Oldham, didn’t you do your homework, Mario?”

“Oh, okay.” He put his hand on the tarnished brass knob and pushed the wooden panel ahead of them. “Sure. I just never thought of Olivia Oldham as Olly, that’s all.”

Inside the big auditorium they made their way to the first bank of ancient, patched seats that flanked the dance floor. Annie tossed a quick look around the cavernous room, studied the stage for a few seconds and then busied herself over her gadget bag. Mario put down his attache case and settled into a dust-soaked cushion, then turned his own gaze to the stage that rose as tall as a man at the end of the auditorium.

The Whisperers were already in their places while sound technicians and lighting crew scuttered around them, checking cables, setting monitor speakers, aligning spots. The workers to a man wore battered blue jeans and soiled tee shirts, unconscious parodies, Mario thought, of an ancient Marlon Brando screen image.

The only musical instrument visible on the stage was Johnny Kendrick’s white Arp synthesizer; the synthesizer, and two mikes atop their chromium stands, a gigantic sound console at one side of the stage and a towering bank of Acoustic 12-inch and 18-inch speaker cabinets under Ampeg V6c amp tops.

“Hey, don’t they work with a full band?” Mario asked Annie.

She shook her head, pulling her attention away from the camera gear she’d been assembling. “Just them. All the rest is on tape—all the other instruments and the effects.” She turned back to the 135 mm lens she’d been screwing onto her Nikon F2 body for ultra-long closeups.

Mario said “But—isn’t that—I don’t know, not quite—uh, ethical or something? I mean, this isn’t a discotheque.”

“Perfectly normal. Pink Floyd travelled with taped effects for years. First artist ever to go all out was Todd Rundgren—”

“Uhg!”

“Well anyway, he did a whole set right in this room with a whole band on tape. Just Runt and a guitar and a deck.”

“Hmph!”

The technicians sifted away from the stage. Mario saw Annie slip away from the plush seats, glide out onto the middle of the gymnasium-sized dance floor to take some long shots of the Whisperers; tonight she’d use her backstage pass to get into the wings or onto the edge of the stage itself for live shots.

Johnny Kendrick was standing behind the Arp keyboard, Olivia Oldham at her mike at center stage. They started playing and singing their newest single. Mario looked at Johnny for a moment: he was dressed in a black satin stage outfit with crimson flashing. A heavy textured gold chain hung around his neck, with a huge clear jewel flashing red beneath the spots.

His hair was long, hanging in straight, glossy black planes on either side of his dark, serious face. He wore a dark moustache. Omar Sharif, Mario thought, made up to look like a satanic priest. He reached instinctively to finger a set of rosary beads he’d thrown in a garbage pail five years earlier. He turned his gaze to Annie Epstein.

The auditorium was in nearly total darkness, the only light in the great room the reflection of the stage lights and the spots that blazed from the balcony lighting booth. The stage lighting cycled through dazzling white, orange, red, green, blue and back to white.

Annie was pointing her Minolta light meter at the Whisperers, barely visible expressions of annoyance and distraction chasing each other across her round, animated face with each alteration in the lighting. In her bulky quilted jacket and ragged jeans, with her wire-rimmed glasses and rain-frizzed hair she looked like the underground comic book hippie chick Pudge.

Mario left the dusty plush seats and moved out onto the big dance floor himself. He turned back to face the stage; from this distance the elevation of the platform mattered only a little, and he could see the Whisperers without the distortion that would annoy a front-row listener and watcher.

They’d cut their first number short—no need to run though all of it at a soundcheck—and Olivia had turned her back to the “audience,” to walk to Johnny’s Arp and lean over it, conferring with him. After a little while the two musicians nodded their heads in agreement on some point and Olivia walked away from the synthesizer and back to her microphone. She made a small gesture with her left hand and a low eerie sound began to filter through the giant speaker banks behind the stage. It was the unearthly lead-in to another Whisperers’ number.

Mario watched Olivia Oldham: she was a complete contrast to Kendrick. Where his hair was like jet, hers was a glistening blonde that picked up each color in turn from the glaring lights; under the white glare it looked as pale as Johnny Winter’s. Her face was thin and pale; when she smiled or sang Mario could see the play of every tendon and muscle in her face and her throat. When she gestured—she had a peculiar, fascinating way of holding her fingers as if she were grasping some invisible line for support—he could almost feel her touching him.

He shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The stage lights were off for the moment, and the Whisperers were bathed in separate spotlights: Johnny Kendrick in a deep blue that emphasized his satanic appearance; Olivia Oldham in an almost tangible deluge of red that made her platinum hair, her pale, thin face, her billowing white dress a montage of crimson textures.

Almost involuntarily, Mario sat down, cross-legged on the hard wooden floor.

He’d heard all of the Whisperers’ music before: their singles on the radio for the past year and a half since they’d appeared out of dusty midwestern obscurity, their two released albums Anubis and Nightshade the past few nights at home as he prepared for the big interview, the new Chthulhu in the Volvo 1800 on the way to Winterland today. But he’d never heard them before like this.

He watched the Whisperers on the stage. Under those lights, he thought, and with the auditorium itself in almost total darkness, the Whisperers could hardly know there was anyone present beside their technical crew. Yet the way they moved, looked, and sang. . . .

It was almost as if Mario were being carried away on some sort of astral journey, carried away by two creatures of some sort of—preternatural essences, of darkness and of light, pure distillates of yin and of yang, elemental embodiments of the male and female principles of being.

The colors cycled, the dark Kendrick and the pale Olivia were transformed from orange to red to green to blue; the eerie sounds coming from the big Ampeg/Acoustic towers seemed to whisper to him personally. He could almost understand what the Whisperers were saying to him, almost feel Olivia Oldham’s tremulous, needing touch—

“You’re not on something are you, kid?”

Mario flinched away from the heavy hand that was shaking him roughly by one shoulder. He blinked his eyes and saw that Johnny Kendrick and Olivia Oldham were gone from the stage; the house lights were on and half a dozen casually dressed technicians were rechecking every piece of equipment.

Turning, Mario saw the jowly face of Barton Starke peering into his face. Starke looked annoyed. He was chewing a fat brown cigar, or at least the last inch or so that remained of one. Mario blinked up at him and grunted in confusion. He pressed both his hands on the floor and started to stand up.

“I said, you on something, kid?”

Mario shook his head. “N-no sir. I was just, ah . . .”

“Yeah,” Starke nodded. “You got carried away with the music. All right, I don’t want nobody coming around here stoned out on anything, you know? The customers are bad enough, but that’s not my problem. You want that interview, you better get backstage now and do it before my kids go take their nap before the show.” He jerked his hand toward the door that led from the auditorium to the backstage area where they’d first entered the building.

Mario rubbed his hands over his own face, picked up his attache case with the cassette equipment in it and started for the door. He was starting to get back together now. He could see that Annie had picked up her gadget bag and was a few paces ahead of him. He caught up to her as they reached the door and stepped through it directly behind her, Starke following at his heels.

He stumbled through the door, through the cold, drab room he’d been in earlier, up the stairway where he’d first seen Barton Starke. There was still a slight ringing in Mario’s ears—surely the after-effect of the overwhelming loudspeakers in the auditorium—and his eyes had apparently not returned altogether to normal after that odd visual experience.

Annie Epstein seemed to have gone off somewhere, maybe to change lenses or load a fresh roll of tri-X. Mario stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back but he didn’t see anyone—not Starke, not the doorman Gooley, not any of the stage hands or technicians.

He put his hand on the doorknob and went through into another room. It was dimly lighted—he couldn’t tell whether there were recessed electric bulbs somewhere or whether the light came entirely from the candles that stood on low shelves. The room seemed to be furnished in dark plush, ancient black velvet cushions and maroon drapes.

There was an odor in the air—something musty, yet somehow sweet. He turned to look back at the door but it seemed to have receded, or else Mario had unconsciously advanced to the middle of the room. He looked down and saw that he was standing in the center of a dark, heavily patterned carpet. He tried to follow the pattern with his eyes: it wove tortuously, seemed almost to present an objective picture of—something. But he couldn’t quite make out what it was, not in the dimness, the wavering illumination of the dark room.

There was a sound of swishing draperies and he saw a pale figure standing beside one of the candles. It was Olivia Oldham; in the flickering candlelight she looked slimmer than ever, and far more pale. Her hair looked almost pure white, and to Mario she seemed, for an instant, not to be the very young woman she had seemed on the stage.

For the first time he could see her eyes clearly: they were pale, too, like everything else about her. He couldn’t tell what color they were: a pale, pale blue, or perhaps a whitened golden tint that picked up flickers of candlelight and gleamed at him across the room.

Olivia Oldham said “Hi.”

The single syllable, softly uttered, struck Mario like an electric shock. He hadn’t expected her to speak, somehow: as absurd as that seemed even to him. She had seemed like a creature from some other plane of existence. To hear her commonplace greeting was more astounding than it would have been to see her slowly fade into invisibility.

She crossed the room toward him and put her hand out as if for him to take it.

“You’re Mr. Cipolla? Please make yourself comfortable. Would you like anything? A cup of tea?” She gestured, and beside one of the candles where Mario could not imagine not noticing it, there was a plain tray with a pot and cups. He barely managed to croak an affirmative response.

Olivia’s voice was—somehow soft and low like a whisper, yet plentifully clear to him. Mario found himself sitting on a plush velvet bench. He felt somehow clumsy and inadequate.

Olivia Oldham, unbelievably fragile-seeming, sat beside him, a cup in her hands. Mario looked into her eyes. They were golden. He realized suddenly that she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, that he was—he felt himself turning crimson and hot.

He fumbled for his notebook, his recorder. “Uh—there’s—Annie said her father had—”

“Annie went with John Kendrick.” Olivia sipped at her cup, raised her eyes to look up at him as she did. “To get some shots in better light. Brighter light, that is.”

“Uh.” Mario tried a sip of the tea himself. He’d heard stories of the strange backstage scenes at places like this, of the dangers and the temptations. He looked at Olivia. She seemed completely at home in this dim, plush room, her white gown almost floating about her like the soft wavering fins of some delicate tropical fish. Mario’s head felt light, his body seemed to tingle. He took another sip of the hot orange tea.

Outside, he reminded himself, the world was going on. He was here to do an interview for his school paper, Olivia Oldham was a singer, half of the Whisperers, that was all. And not forty feet away, outside this place, San Francisco was going about its rainy Friday night routine: late commuters still heading for the bridge to Marin, tourists from Omaha and from Osaka riding up and down the city’s hills on cable cars, freaks from Berkeley and what was left of Haight cueing up right now at the front door of Winterland—

He snapped his head up and looked at Olivia Oldham. “Uh—where’s—uh—where did you start, um . . .” If only he could get the interview going, get back in control of the situation somehow. But Olivia seemed to be making that peculiar gesture with her fingers, and Mario found it harder and harder to move.

She took the cup from his hands, put it back on the shelf. She stood before him and drew him up to his feet.

“Uh, I meant to ask you . . .” he plowed doggedly on, trying to clear his head. If he could get some fresh air. It was so stuffy in this room, the peculiar odor in here. He looked at Olivia, and couldn’t tell whether she was very tiny or whether she towered over him, whether the room itself was crowding in or retreating to monstrous dimensions.

“Oh,” he tried once more, “the, ah, the Whisperers—”

She smiled at him and nodded encouragingly.

“Ah, you have unusual material. I mean, ah, why do you write songs about such, ah, morbid topics? Like, ah, your new album. What does Chthulhu mean? Doesn’t it have something to do with ah, some old ah—?”

“Yes,” she nodded, “it is an old tradition. Very old. You might even call it an old religion. Those who know of the Elder Gods. Those who would open the way once more.”

“But why the Whisperers? I mean if it’s a religion—”

“A religion that was suppressed a million years ago. A religion that existed only in secret places, only in isolated villages. A religion that was discovered and secretly attacked again and nearly wiped out fifty years ago. You can read of it, you can find it all in the works of the Providence writer.”

“But—but—” Mario stammered.

“But now,” Olivia went on, “now we have the way. Tonight you will see. Tonight you will see four thousand young people swaying and chanting with us, moving in the ritual steps, calling back the Elder Gods, worshipping, worshipping.”

Her thin hand holding his seemed to be made of iron, strong and resistless; she seemed to tower above his head, her eyes gleaming; her white flowing dress seeming to flutter and whirl with a life of its own, as if it were not mere cloth, but a sentient thing.

“But why do you tell me this? Won’t you be destroyed again? I’ll write about you, we’ll print it. Annie’s photos—”

Her shrill laughter cut into his voice, and from behind him there came more laughter, deeper. He whirled and saw Johnny Kendrick standing, the candlelight reflecting from the black satin of his suit and the red of its flashing, of the great jewel that hung from its filigreed chain. Beside Kendrick stood Annie, her face blankly expressionless.

“Four thousand people,” Kendrick said softly. “Four thousand young people, full of the vital energy needed to feed the beast, to summon the opener, to bring back the Elder Gods.

“We let you come so there would be a record of this great night. Use your best words, boy.” He turned to Annie. “Use your best skill, girl. Tonight is a night that will live forever. And in coming days, as the mighty sounds of Chthulhu music drive from millions of speakers, drive through millions of brains, the mighty one will hear. He will rise. The Elder Gods will return.”

Kendrick stepped to the door, opened it, snapped “Starke! Send that nuisance Gooley for some food for us. Get enough for our guests. We have to be considerate of the powers of the press!”

He laughed, and slammed the door shut.

Lights! Camera! Shub-Niggurath!

Richard A. Lupoff

One of the more glamorous towns in Starrett is called—now don’t be surprised—Hollywood. You’ll remember that there was the first Hollywoodland, later shortened to Hollywood, back on earth. Later came the famous Hollywood-on-the-moon, where they were able to get such fabulous scenic and lighting effects and where the light gravity made it easy to use heavy equipment.

In time the builders and managers of Starrett, that giant tincan world that plies its wares in the interstellar deeps, deemed it wise to carry on the tradition. Hence, Starrett’s own Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

You’ve probably heard about Starrett, but just in case you haven’t, here’s how that artificial world survives. It’s so big there’s a complete eco-system (and a complete economy!) inside Starrett’s massive shell. Thus, as Starrett travels from star to star and visits planet after planet, it functions something like a high-tech gypsy camp.

The space-folk who live in Starrett buy at this world and sell at that. They sometimes carry passengers between remote solar systems. They provide varied forms of entertainment for the mud-hoppers (a.k.a. rubes) who shuttle up from planetside for a special treat.

And they produce some of the biggest money-making shows in the known galaxy.

         

Even if you’re thoroughly familiar with Starrett, it’s less than likely that you’ve ever heard of Dinganzicht, another artificial space-habitat that didn’t travel as widely as Starrett. Not by a long-shot. In fact, Dinganzicht hardly travelled at all, except in the somewhat diffuse astronomical sense. That is, Dinganzicht was associated with the trinary star system Fornax 1382. As Fornax 1382 moved relative to other nearby objects (and, in the ultimate view, as the universe continued to expand) Dinganzicht moved along with it. But that doesn’t mean much on the local scale.

Fornax 1382 consisted of 1382 Alpha, a red giant star; 1382 Beta, a green dwarf; and 1382 Gamma, a medium-size, yellowish main-sequence star not very unlike Sol. These three stars were sometimes known as the cosmic traffic light, or as the sherbet triplets Cherry, Lime, and Lemon.

Dinganzicht was a large construct. It had been positioned to remain stationary in the gravitational nexus of Cherry, Lime, and Lemon. As the three stellar members of Fornax 1382 wove their complex orbital net around Dinganzicht, Dinganzichters could peer out through the viewports of their hollow metallic world and see an endlessly changing light-show. Cherry would rise and Lemon set, or Lemon would rise as Lime set, and so on. The combination of colored sunlights might produce a bright orange effect one day, a lurid chartreuse another, a truly glorious magenta another.

Dinganzicht was probably the worst place in the universe to live if you were color-blind. Not because you would suffer any particular harm from living there. Just because you’d miss so damned much natural spectacle.

         

Considering the number of inhabited worlds in the galaxy—and that number was increasing all the time, by the way—there was a limitless market for the wares peddled by Starrett and a number of similar interstellar gypsy camps. The space-folk might have just kept producing copies of existing productions and selling ’em to new customers, but that would have reduced their art to mere commerce. They insisted on continuing to turn out new productions all the time.

The three biggest studios in Hollywood-between-the-Stars were 30th Century-Bioid, Universal-Interdimensional, and Asahi-Kirin-Toyo. Running a distant fourth was an outfit modestly known as Colossal Galactic Productions, or Colicprods for short. Colicprods was headed by one Tarquin Armbruster IV, nee Isidore Stickplaster, a nervous, balding, cigar-chomping man of middle years, much given to stodgy, old-fashioned dress. For instance, when the current arbiters of Hollywood-between-the-Stars fashion dictated wing-collared shirts and striped cravats, dark jackets, bowlers and brollies—Tarquin Armbruster could be seen in fluorescent tights and turquoise helmet, a style that had disappeared from the studios and watering-holes of Hollywood hours and hours ago.

It didn’t help Tarquin’s jumpiness any that Colicprods was in bad financial trouble at the moment. The chief-of-production for the studio was a statuesque individual who had been born Pamela Rose Tremayne but who insisted on being known professionally as Golda Abromowitz. Golda differed from most Starretteers, who were almost unanimously of earth-human ancestry. Golda too was human, but was of Formalhautian origin. She had immigrated to Starrett when it was visiting her home world of Formalhaut VIII. But you could hardly tell her from a native Starretteer, except that she was seven feet tall and had brilliant metallic-green skin.

In an era of specialization, Dinganzicht was one of the most successful of specialized worlds. There were planets devoted largely or exclusively to agriculture. There were others that concentrated on heavy industry, fine manufacturing, artistic creation, or prayer. (Of the latter, Reverend Jimmy Joe Jeeter—that was the name of the planet, yes, Reverend Jimmy Joe Jeeter—was the best known example.)

Dinganzicht specialized in science and technology.

The whole world, with only minimal support systems to provide such necessities as food, was a complex of laboratories, research facilities, and testing grounds. There were a great many independent organizations in Dinganzicht, and each of them managed to earn its way by developing useful devices that the Dinganzichters could sell to the rest of the galaxy.

There was, for instance, the Edison/Tsiolkovsky Corporation, whose most successful product was the famous rollaway cat impellor. There was the Vieux Carre Cast-Iron Products Company A.G., from whose laboratory had emerged the hypospace drive that permitted Starrett and worlds like it to move from star to star in such short periods of time. There was Z. Z. Zachary and Associates, who had developed the matter duplicator, that invention that has caused such happiness and plenty—and such bizarre headaches!—for users throughout the galaxy.

And there was Macrotech Associates.

Oy, was there ever Macrotech Associates!

Macrotech Associates had some of the best minds in Dinganzicht—or any other world, for that matter!—at its disposal. Well, and it might have been simpler in the long run if it hadn’t!

         

Right at this moment there was a terrible argument going on in Tarquin Armbruster’s office, a modest little room patterned on the onetime private audience chamber of Tarquin’s favorite historical figure, the Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. Tarquin was hosting the meeting himself, lighting a series of fat black cigars imported from La Habana Otra Vez, pouring little glasses of Puerto Mas Rican rum for himself and his guests, and sweating up a storm despite the carefully controlled temperature and humidity.

Also present were Gort Swiggert, a representative of the studio comptroller’s office, wearing his harlequin outfit of red and black; Golda Abromowitz, swathed as usual in a thick, bushy coverall of synthetic polar bear fur; and Martin van Buren MacTavish. MacTavish was a screenwriter, just about the best in the industry. He wore a highland kilt, tam o’shanter, and sporran. Perched on one hairy knee was his portable word-processor. It was slightly smaller than an immy, and if you don’t know what an immy is you’ve never really played marbles.

Every time Gort Swiggert gave Tarquin Armbruster a bit of financial news, the red parallelograms on his outfit glowed. Armbruster sweated, lit or re-lit a cigar, and gulped rum. The financial picture was lousy.

Golda Abromowitz peered out of her furs and said, “I know this picture will be a box office boff. It’ll save Colossal Galactic. But it has to be done right. There’s no other way. We can’t survive putting on shows for the Saturday night blast-in circuit. This has to be top quality.”

Tarquin Armbruster wiped away a freshet of perspiration. “But a horror movie, Golda? A big-budget, risk-it-all-on-one-throw horror movie?”

Golda turned her head to the side. “Tell him, Martin.”

Martin van Buren MacTavish had been concentrating on his word-processor. In addition to storing, revising, and outputting the text that was fed into it, the word-processor could function as a video game, a holotape playback unit, a music-synthesizer capable of piping out any composition in the known history of melody (or of composing new selections to MacTavish’s specifications), or an emergency cook-stove.

“Huh?” Martin said.

“I want you to tell Tarkie about the project,” Golda prompted.

“Oh.” MacTavish fiddled with the word-processor a little more, then clicked it off and slipped it into his sporran. “We had the girls in market research get us up a few figures, jefe, and they say that a really hot horror holoflik could sell on no fewer than twenty-kay worlds. Maybe as many as thirty-kay. We—”

Armbruster cut him off. “What about it, Swiggert?” He pulled at his cigar, tossed back a swig of rum. “You seen their figures?”

Swiggert nodded. “They look pretty convincing.” The red parallelograms on his outfit faded to dull ochre and the black ones glowed. The bright glow of black diamonds produced an eerie effect all its own.

“Huh,” grunted Tarquin Armbruster IV. “And what do you have in mind? You going to bring back one of those lurching monsters from the old days?”

MacTavish slipped one hand inside his sporran and fumbled his word-processor back to life. The machine had a Braille output plate, and although MacTavish was not blind, he had taught himself to read Braille with one sensitive thumb.

“I want to do a story called The Dunwich Horror,” he said.

         

Even though the matter-duplicator had been invented in Dinganzicht, in the electrotechnology division of Macrotech Associates Ell Tee Dee, there were no matter-duplicators allowed in Dinganzicht. There had been a bunch of them at first, and they had of course been hugely useful. But they’d made so much trouble that they had been banned.

Here’s one small example.

Lurleen Luria was a religious fanatic, possibly the only one ever in Dinganzicht. She had invented a religion based on the notion that one should eat only pimentos and think only of the number eight. She had a tough time winning converts to her way of thinking. Yet, she was convinced that if everybody would just adopt her faith, her diet, and her pattern of thought, there would be universal brother- (and/or sister-) hood, happiness and tranquility in the world.

Well, Lurleen thought to herself, if I’m the only one who understands that my religion is the one key to salvation, there would be universal salvation if everybody were just like me.

She took to inviting people over to her place and walking them through a matter-duplicator input bin disguised as a hallway. She’d already set her matter-duplicator, using herself as the model specs, so the organs, cells, even molecules of her guests were broken down into separate atoms and reassembled into new Lurleen Lurias. Who did, naturally, agree with the original Lurleen’s dietary, intellectual, and religious notions.

They finally tracked down Lurleen and put her out of business (but not before a dozen security troopers got turned into new Lurleen Lurias). They never did get all the new Lurleens turned back into their original selves, though. What a mess!

When they tried to round up and dismantle all the matter-duplicators in Dinganzicht, the argument was made that the sane, innocent, and responsible users of the machines were being punished along with the (relatively few) crazy, guilty, or irresponsible ones like Lurleen Luria. But nobody could figure out a way to keep matter-duplicators only in the “right” hands.

One of the problems of getting rid of the things was this: If somebody owned one, and a friend of his or hers also owned one, they could dismantle the second duper, run it through the first, and reassemble the sections. Then they’d have not two of the gadgets, but three. And shortly, if they chose, four, five, or any number.

Well, they got ’em rounded up finally, but it was a tough job. In a bigger place than Dinganzicht, or a less organized one, it would have proved impossible.

That was a while ago, however. The current problem at Macrotech Associates grew out of the current hot research project in the electrotechnology division, the same outfit that had ginned up the matter duplicator.

The current hot research project was the instant communicator.

This was an attempt to tackle a problem that had first appeared with the development of space travel. Back in the days when everybody had lived on one planet, radio-spectrum communication was plenty fast enough. At one time, in fact, folks had thought that light waves, radio waves and the like worked instantaneously. In time they found out that they did take time to propagate, but cripes, they could circle the planet in an eighth of a second, so who cared?

But when you got up to interplanetary distances, you were talking about minutes, then hours, to send “Hi, mom, we’re number one,” and get back “That’s a good boy, don’t forget to eat your supper.”

And once you got up to the interstellar scale, it could take years.

So Macrotech Associates, electrotechnology division, had an important project to work on.

The brains that were working on the project were those of a bright young fellow named Alexander Ulianov and a brilliant young woman named Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu.

Alex and Amy were making good progress, too. But the top brass at Macrotech Associates (as well as the general management of Dinganzicht) were keeping damned close watch over the project. They remembered matter-duplicators—did they ever!—and the whole Lurleen Luria fiasco.

In fact, there was a little colony of identical Lurleen Lurias still living. They had been sequestered. Nobody knew which was the original (guilty) Lurleen and which her innocent victims. They were kept comfortable in a little compound where they were growing old together, happily living on pimentos and thinking of the number eight, while scientists from the psychotechnology division of Macrotech Associates happily studied them.

No, nobody wanted another matter-duplicator fiasco, and there was a good deal of nervousness about the implications of Alexander Ulianov and Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu’s work.

         

Tarquin Armbruster IV was more inclined to do a swashbuckler about pirates on the Spanish Main, or maybe even a Biblical epic than a horror movie. Then again, he had a fondness for westerns, too. But Golda Abromowitz and Martin van Buren MacTavish had the support of Gort Swiggert, and what the comptroller had to say carried a lot of weight with Tark.

He told ’em to go ahead.

MacTavish had an easy time turning The Dunwich Horror into a screenplay. It was one of the best stories of an old New England author who had more often relied on atmosphere than events to make his stories work, but this one was unusual for him. It was graphic, full of plot and events, and it had a couple of scenes in it that were real sockdolligers.

There was a big shambling guy in it named Wilbur Whateley. Wilbur went around in a baggy overcoat, summer and winter, like a flasher. And about two-thirds of the way through the story Wilbur’s overcoat gets opened and the audience sees what’s inside, and is it ever something! Wow!

Wilbur has a brother, too, who isn’t seen until the grand climax of the yarn, and if you think Wilbur was something to make strong men retch, wait ‘til you see his twin!

In fact, that was the biggest problem that Golda Abromowitz had with The Dunwich Horror.

Marty MacTavish and his wonderful word-processor turned out a good script in record time. Casting went well, too. Golda was able to get Nefertiti Logan, current holder of the “this season’s blonde” title, to play the exotic albino Lavinia Whateley. For contrast, she hired the raven-tressed, flashing-eyed Gaza de Lure II to portray Sally Sawyer.

The male lead, the role of Professor Henry Armitage, she gave to a piece of beefcake called Rock Quartz. Rock used to stand in front of mirrors most of the time when he wasn’t actually on camera, and when he was on-camera, he treated the lens like a mirror, too. The effect on audiences was devastating.

Curtis Whateley—he of the undecayed branch of the Whateleys—was played by Roscoe Inelegante. Roscoe Inelegante wasn’t exactly the actor’s real name, but nobody quite knew what his real name was, and word had passed in Hollywood-between-the-Stars that it wasn’t wise to try and find out.

But who would play the Whateley boys, Wilbur and his fraternal twin?

There didn’t seem to be anyone in Hollywood quite capable of handling the roles.

Golda might get an actor to portray Wilbur-with-his-overcoat-on. Somebody like Karlos Karch who had already parlayed a set of grotesque features and a growling, animalistic manner into a substantial career as a holocinematic maniac, brute, and general heavy.

But even Karch (who was, off-screen, a sweet-natured and gentle man, faithful husband and doting father) couldn’t handle Wilbur-with-his-coat-off.

Martin van Buren MacTavish had turned up the original text describing Wilbur, and it was a doozie! Tentacles, mouths, fur, rudimentary eyes set in pinkish, ciliated orbits, a trunk with purple annular markings, ridgy-veined pads. . . .

The beautiful Golda Abromowitz nearly lost her lunch when Marty showed her the text.

They tried outfitting Karlos Karch with a cyborged rubber suit. It worked fairly well, and was totally disgusting to the eye.

The strangest thing, though, was this: Nefertiti Logan, Gaza de Lure II, and even Golda Abromowitz herself, found Karlos Karch a total turn-on when he wore his Wilbur Whateley suit. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell any of the men associated with the project the reason.

Even Karlos wasn’t sure, but he and Martin van Buren MacTavish spent a long session with a bottle of Puerto Mas Rican rum filched from Tarquin Armbruster’s private stock, and devised a theory. Nefertiti, Gaza, and Golda were all fantasizing, they decided, as to what it might be like to have an experience with all of those weird squirming tentacles and mouths and eyes and hair and ridgy-veined pads.

Karlos and Marty asked Gaza on the set the next day, but she just smiled dreamily and said, “Karlos, why don’t you put on your rubber suit and we’ll try your theory out.”

But Karlos didn’t go for that, so nobody ever really knew.

Anyway, things were going kind of poorly on the set by now. The Wilbur Whateley suit was less than satisfactory, and as for the role of Wilbur’s brother, that was a complete conundrum. Marty MacTavish had turned up the original specs for Wilbur’s brother, given in the words of a character in the original story. The story, by the way, was long since out of copyright, which was one of the brighter points in the day of both Tarquin Armbruster and Gort Swiggert in his harlequin suit.

Wilbur’s brother was “Bigger’n a barn . . . all made o’ squirmin’ ropes . . . great bulgin’ eyes all over it . . . ten or twenty mouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, all a-tossin’ and openin’ an’ shuttin’ . . . all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings . . . an’ Gawd in Heaven—that haff face on top!”

Well, they tried computer animation and they got some very interesting effects but they didn’t get Wilbur’s brother.

And they tried miniature models but they didn’t work.

And they tried a full-size mock-up but it looked more like Happy the Humbug than it did a monster cross-breed between human and giant alien.

Now it happened that just about at the point when The Dunwich Horror was in danger of winding up totally on the scrap-heap—and Tarquin Armbruster IV, Golda Abromowitz, and Colossal Galactic Productions along with it—Starrett was approaching the triple star Fornax 1382.

Tarquin Armbruster IV and Golda Abromowitz decided that their last hope was to get some help from the superscientific shizzes in Dinganzicht. After all, any world that can produce the rollaway cat impellor should be able to provide a big boost to Colossal Galactic Productions.

Tarquin and Golda climbed aboard the ultralite shuttle Clare Winger Harris. They could have left Starrett from a port near Hollywood, but they were in a hurry and it was quicker to zip across the hollow middle of Starrett and exit on the antipodal side. Quite near the island of Kaspak, as a matter of fact.

To reach Kaspak Portal, the Harris passed smack through the null-g point in the geometric center of Starrett.

The null-g point and the ultra-low-g zone surrounding it were the homes of a number of fascinating species of life, both animal and vegetable. There was null-g lichen, for instance. There were floating blobs of water that hosted perfectly globular fishes of various colors. There were several species of footless birds that spent their entire lives in the air, never coming to earth (as it were), not even to lay their eggs or to build nests (which they did in the null-g lichen.)

One interesting aspect of this null-g lichen was the complex, free-form network of neural-like filament that spread throughout the stuff. It had been theorized that consciousness and intelligence, rather than being a discrete attribute developed by any particular species as the result of an evolutionary imperative, was actually an inescapable concomitant of any signaling network of sufficient size and complexity.

And the null-g lichen that floated in the center of Starrett was big enough, and the network of signal-conducting, neural-like fibres it contained was complex enough, to come in well over the critical line.

It might not be altogether inaccurate to characterize Starrett’s null-g lichen as . . . smart moss!

And here was the ultralite shuttle Clare Winger Harris, flittering upward from Hollywood, containing one fat, bald, sweaty-browed, cigar-chomping, rum-swigging studio head named Tarquin Armbruster IV; and one seven-foot-tall, elegant, metallic-green, polar-bear-fur-covered production chief called Golda Abromowitz.

And what did Tarquin and Golda have on their minds as their shuttle penetrated the wispy outer edges of the null-g lichen that drifted in the center of Starrett?

Why, nothing other than the peculiar physical attributes of the wonderful Whateley brothers. You know, all those tentacles and suckers and half-formed eyes and writhing ropes and stovepipe legs and Gawd in Heaven that half face on top!

         

Now meet P. H. “Biff” Connaught.

Biff Connaught was head of security for Macrotech Associates. A red-faced, gray-haired, middle-aged fellow, Biff had been up and down the corporate ladder in his day. He now held a responsible but not very glamorous position, the chief advantage of which was the chance it provided for Biff to live out his fantasies.

In his youth, Biff had wanted to be a policeman complete with uniform, badge and gun. He didn’t know quite why that job appealed to him. If he’d been a more insightful person, he might have detected a certain flaw in his own psyche, a gnawing sense of inadequacy, of psychic impotence, which he could overcome by placing himself in a position of psychological dominance and authority.

By the time Biff was of age, he was able to live out his wishes by becoming a cop.

How he came to leave the official police force is another story. But having done so, he moved into private security work, rose by diligent application from uniformed rent-a-bull to plain-clothes, and ultimately to head of security for Macrotech. He had, by this time, realized that the power of the plainclothes chief of security was even greater than that of the uniformed harness bulls he commanded.

Besides, Biff was issued a most impressive badge that he kept in a pocket-case ready for flashing. And he carried an old-fashioned snubnose revolver under his armpit; the snubnose had been purchased in an antique shop on Mirzam Beta IV. Biff personally restored it to working order and hand-loaded ammunition for it.

Top management at Macrotech Associates was very worried about Alex Ulianov and Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu’s research project on instantaneous communication.

On the face of it, it should be a boon to interstellar civilization. After all, the hypospace drive developed by Macrotech’s competitor Vieux Carre Cast-Iron Products A.G. had been a positive gift from heaven. Prior to the availability of hypospace, nobody had been able to travel any faster than the speed of light. In fact, travel had been limited to a pace asymptotically approaching light-speed. Four-plus years from Sol to Centaurus, four hundred thousand (except that nobody bothered to try it) from Centaurus to Yggdrasill.

Once the engineers at Vieux Carre developed hypospace drive, and the company’s sales force marketed it, all of that changed. Little exploring ships—and later, big colonizing ships—and still later, roving traders and interstellar gypsy camps like Starrett, Weinbaum, and Zealia Reed—could go anywhere in the galaxy in a tiny fraction of the time it would have taken at mere light-speed.

Hypospace wasn’t exactly a faster-than-light drive. It didn’t involve tachyons or anything like that. Nor did it involve the fourth dimension, or those famous (but, alas, apparently nonexistent) “wormholes” in space. What the Vieux Carre hypospace drive did, in effect, was let you cut across space-time vectors and re-emerge into normal space wherever you wanted. It still took time to make the trip, but it didn’t take anywhere near as long as it would have in normal space.

Kind of like this. If you were sitting in a house on the surface of a planet—say, in the city of Xnmp’pr on Houdini III—and you could sort of anchor yourself to one spot while the globe spun beneath you at a thousand miles per hour or so, you’d get the effect of traveling at a thousand miles per hour without actually moving at all.

If you added all of the vectored motions going on around you—the rotation of Houdini III, the orbital motion of the planet around its sun, the movement of that sun within its local star-group, the motion of that group relative to the rest of the galaxy, the spin of the whole galactic disc, the motion of the galaxy within its local galactic cluster, and so on up the scale—you could accumulate a terrific amount of speed.

That’s what the Vieux Carre drive did for you. And it yielded the effect, if not the literal actuality, of faster-than-light.

But it still wasn’t instantaneous.

Now then, while hypospace drive had been a vast blessing, matter-duplicators had been, let’s say, a mixed blessing at best.

The folks in the executive suite at Macrotech Associates wanted to make damned sure that instantaneous communication, if it ever happened, was put to only beneficial use.

They were also concerned that it bring a nice fat profit to Macrotech. Unlike the matter-duplicator, which had yielded a modest profit to Z. Z. Zachary and Associates, but quickly ceased to do so once people caught on to the trick of using matter duplicators to make more matter duplicators. It was sure as hell cheaper than buying ’em from Z. Z. Zachary.

So P. H. “Biff” Connaught was called to the executive suite of the Macrotech headquarters palace and presented with the problem of keeping Alex and Amy and their glittery project under control. Along with Biff, the top dogs also summoned Cyndora Vexmann, the head of Macrotech’s psychotechnology division. They figured Cyndora might have some pretty good suggestions to make.

         

The little shuttle-ship Clare Winger Harris penetrated the null-g zone in the center of Starrett. As the ship moved through the region it pierced the cloudlike body of lichen that had mutated and evolved in the peculiar conditions that obtain in the very center of a hollow world.

The ship’s passage through the lichen caused a wave-field to ripple through the lichen, making a sound, a barely audible sound. If you’d been there you might have described it as a kind of brushing, swishing, crackling noise. You might have reproduced it, at least approximately, by making a soft ch’ch’ch’ch sound with the middle of your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth, the tip of your tongue pointed toward the backs of your top-front teeth, and your lips slightly pursed.

Try that and exhale through your mouth softly, and you’ll get something close to the sound.

The lichen had never had a name, but if you want to call it something (other than “lichen,” of course), you might as well call it “Ch-ch-ch.”

Inside the Clare Winger Harris, Tarquin Armbruster IV was sitting at the pilot’s post, chewing a black Nueva Cubana Magnifico and sweating bullets. Golda Abromowitz was bent over a copy of Martin van Buren MacTavish’s script for The Dunwich Horror, trying to figure out a way to portray the Whateley brothers and save the production (and Colossal Galactic into the bargain).

Ch-ch-ch was minding its own business, keeping its resident birds, insects, ponds, fishes and small reptiles happy.

Suddenly Ch-ch-ch felt itself punctured. It was a hell of a shock, although it probably didn’t exactly hurt Ch-ch-ch. Can you apply the concept of pain to a null-g lichen? Even to an intelligent one?

Probably not.

In a fleeting moment the Harris was gone. Ch-ch-ch, being fairly amorphous in composition, slowly drifted back together and resumed its commonplace little life.

But a chunk of Ch-ch-ch got itself hooked on the outer skin of the shuttle, and was carried away from its parent.

Responding to the local gravity of the shuttle this new body of lichen spread itself thinly over the skin of the ship.

Inside the Harris, Tarquin Armbruster IV chomped down on his Nueva Cubana Magnifico and grunted. To Golda Abromowitz he said, “Hey, I never noticed before, this little ship even has tinted glass in the viewplates. Not bad! Maybe we should try a space adventure.”

“Too old hat. Forget it.” Golda didn’t even look up from MacTavish’s Dunwich Horror script.

The intelligent lichen spread almost invisibly thin over the shuttle was having all sorts of interesting new experiences. Gravity. Inertia. Weight. Kinesis. Thought.

Above all, thought.

Ch-ch-ch had been exposed to the mental activity, such as it was, of the many small creatures that lived within its spongelike channels and protuberances. But now, Ch-ch-ch Junior was picking up the mental emanations of Tarquin and Golda.

Junior was absolutely flabbergasted. Dazzled, amazed, strangely pleased by the sensation of thought and mental imagery. And flabbergasted.

         

“You understand why you can’t know anything about your work,” Cyndora Vexmann purred.

“No, we really don’t,” Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu replied. She shot a glance at Al Ulianov; he nodded in response. She was to speak for the two of them.

Cyndora smiled. “Place yourselves in the company’s shoes. The operative precedent—I was briefed by legal, of course—goes back to the old Disney versus Sony case. You remember that.”

“No, we really don’t,” Amy replied.

Cyndora heaved a sigh. “It had to do with videotape recorders. I don’t suppose you remember those, or even heard of them.”

Al Ulianov said, “I think I remember learning something about them in a history course. I think they were phased out in favor of wax gramophone cylinders. Or was it the other way around?”

“What it had to do with,” Cyndora said, “was providing the public with technology they could use to duplicate copyrighted tapes. Disney held a lot of valuable copyrights. Once people had video recorders, they could make copies of their own. Either capture broadcast material or duplicate existing tapes. Disney wanted to restrict the public to play-only technology.”

“Huh! What happened?” Amy leaned forward in her chair. “I never heard of the case.”

“What happened was, Disney won in court but it was too late to stop the recorder business. There were already millions of the things around. So they won the battle but lost the war.”

Amy exchanged another glance with her partner. “What does all this have to do with us?”

“I’ll tell you what, you little creeps!” That was Biff Connaught speaking, as you probably figured. Biff didn’t purr. He growled sometimes, and roared occasionally, but he did not purr.

“I’ll tell you what,” Biff repeated. “We know what you’re up to! Instantaneous communication!”

“Of course,” Amy agreed. “It’s in our reports. It’s in our funding requests. You’re some detective, Biff, to figure that out! Next you’ll tell us that you’ve discovered what the P. H. in your name stands for.”

“Never mind my name! Biff will do, you—” The last few syllables of Biff’s speech trailed away. He glared at Amy. “Come to think of it, it’s Captain Connaught to you. As head of security I’m equivalent to police captain in grade.”

“Come on, Alex.” Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu placed her hand on Alex Ulianov’s wrist. “We don’t have to put up with this.”

Cyndora Vexmann stopped them. “Dr. Al-Khnemu. Dr. Ulianov. Please accept my apology on behalf of Macrotech Associates. Captain Connaught here meant no harm. He’s just an unlettered ruffian.” She turned toward Connaught. “Please, Biff, either learn to treat people decently or limit yourself to dealing with trespassers and petty thieves.”

Biff managed to flush beneath his walnut-colored complexion. “Uck! I guess I . . .” Again his words trailed away.

“What top management is concerned about,” Cyndora turned back toward Amy and Alex, “is that your work will get out of corporate control. And once the secret is out—well, you know how hard it is to enforce things like patents and copyrights over interstellar distances.”

“Indeed. But—what do you have in mind?”

Cyndora smiled her most disarming smile. “We just can’t afford to have information leaking out about your work. And, to be totally candid, we can’t afford to have you know about your work, either. That goes back to the old video recorder case, too. Technicians were working for companies, trying to concoct security devices for broadcasters. Then they’d go home and design boxes to unscramble scrambled signals, crack the very codes they themselves had devised. Oh, it was really something!”

“You still haven’t told us what you want to do. Or what you want us to do.”

Cyndora shot a glance at Biff Connaught. She said, “Amy, Alex, all we want to do is lock up Macrotech’s proprietary information. When you go home from work, we want you to leave everything behind you. Have a good time. Enjoy yourselves. Go null-g swimming, listen to good music, imbibe your favorite euphorics, do whatever you please.

“But we don’t want you to do anything about instantaneous communication. Not talk or even think about it. Not—even—know—about—it!”

Amy laughed, a single, grunt-like laugh. “And how are we supposed to do that? It sounds like the famous club where the initiation test was to stand in the corner for five minutes and not think of a polar bear.”

Cyndora stood up and walked a few steps, so that she stood before Amy and Alex, facing them, a broad window stretching horizontally behind her.

Through it, Amy could see the rolling, concave landscape of Dinganzicht. Linden trees, elms and willows dotted the green vista outside the Macrotech building compound. In the distance, before the rising hills faded into a misted vista, a narrow stream purled over a rocky course. Jumping fish splashed every now and then.

A small brown bear bent patiently at the edge of the water, waiting for dinner to make itself available.

Cyndora Vexmann said, “You’ll just forget all about instantaneous communication when you leave work each evening, and remember it again when you come back in each morning.”

“And how will we do that?”

“Ah, that’s where Biff-o boy over there finally showed a little intelligence. He came to me. And I devised a simple little scheme. We just give you each a couple of key words. We set up a mental compartmentalization for the instant-com project, and we lock it off from the rest of your mind. When you come to work, we speak one key word, the lock opens, and you have complete access to the proprietary data. When it’s time to go home after work, we just speak the other key word, and—click!—the door goes shut, the lock snaps closed, and you don’t have to worry anything about your work until tomorrow. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Amy and Alex exchanged glances.

“I’m not so sure it is,” Amy said. “I don’t like the idea of you or Biff-o or anybody else tampering with my mind. And I’m sure Alex feels the same way.”

Alex nodded. “Sure do.”

Cyndora shook her head slowly. “I don’t blame you for feeling that way. I wouldn’t want anybody tampering with my mind either. But this has been used time after time. It works perfectly, and it doesn’t interfere with your free will or your recollections in any way.”

She smiled winsomely.

Amy said, “Except?”

Cyndora shot a glance at Biff, then said, “Except what? What do you mean?”

“I mean, there has to be an except, or you wouldn’t bother with all this.”

“Oh.” Cyndora gave Amy a very sincere look, turned and did the same to Alexander Ulianov. “Well, except you can’t remember what you’re working on. Actually, we usually give people a little cover story. People feel uncomfortable not knowing what they do all day, and if they’re not allowed to know what it is, we give them something else to think they’ve been working on.”

She shifted her position uncomfortably. “For instance, we might work out a little cover story for you two, for you and Alex here, that you were working on, say, a whole new generation of ultra-high-tech food processors. You see? You’d actually believe it yourselves, in your off-duty hours. You could tell that to your friends and they’d believe it. Only, when you got to work each morning, thinking you were going to work on the new food-processor line, why, Biff or I or someone else would be waiting, and we’d just say the key words, and you’d remember all about the instant com project.”

Alex Ulianov said, “I wonder how many people are already working that way. Amy, you know Zipper Dornbauer down at the lab? He always says he’s working on an advanced pastry wisk product. But Macrotech doesn’t make pastry wisks. I’ve wondered about that. And Magda di Gazzioli in advanced projects says she’s reformulating basic cold Crayola wax formulas. She’s really enthusiastic about the project, always talks about it down at the corner saloon. But Macrotech doesn’t make crayons.”

Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu had been paying close attention to Alex’s words. Now she turned angrily back toward Biff and Cyndora. Before she could speak, Biff stood up.

The stupid, somewhat cloddish features on Biff Connaught’s face assumed a more animated character than they usually showed. (Which, admittedly, was not very animated at that.)

Biff said, “Pope Innocent the Sixth.”

Cyndora Vexmann took a step backward and stood beside Connaught. They watched with slitted eyes.

Alexander Ulianov rose from his chair. He seemed for a fleeting moment totally unaware of the presence of Biff and Cyndora, seemed almost unaware of his surroundings. He looked at Amy Al-Khnemu and said, “Hey, look at the hour! We’d better get to work or we’ll be in bad trouble! Those new infravibratory food-processors have to hit the market in time for Escoffier’s Birthday!”

Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu looked at her wrist chrono-tempo-meter and gasped. “You’re right! Let’s go!” She looked around and raised one hand to her face in surprise. “Captain Connaught! Dr. Vexmann! What—?”

“Don’t worry about anything, lady,” Biff grunted. “You and your pal got to get to work on your instant commo gadget.”

“Instant commo?” Puzzlement spread on Amy’s face. “What are you talking about? We’re assigned to the new food-processor line.”

Connaught laughed. “Right. But listen to this.” He chuckled, then almost whispered, “Vera Hruba Ralston!”

Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov both looked stunned. But the shock lasted only for a moment. Each of them seemed to stagger, to regain control and then Ulianov said, “Hey, look at the hour! We’d better get to work or we’ll be in bad trouble! Those new instantaneous communicators have to hit the market in time for Marconi’s Birthday!”

Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu looked at her wrist chrono-tempo-meter and gasped. “You’re right! Let’s go!” She looked around and raised one hand to her face in surprise. “Captain Connaught! Dr. Vexmann! What—?”

“Don’t worry about anything, lady,” Biff grunted. “You and your pal got to get to work on your new food processor.”

“Food processor?” Puzzlement spread on Amy’s face. “What are you talking about? We’re assigned to the new instantaneous communicator line.”

Connaught laughed. “That’s right, I made a little mistake. Well, you two superbrains go about your superscientific work, hey? It’s too much for me, I’m just a simple old cop trying to make a living. Ain’t that right, Dr. Vexmann?”

Cyndora said, “That’s right, Biff-o.”

Amy and Alex left the office and headed for their lab. Almost before the door had hissed shut behind them, Biff Connaught’s office sounded with the mingled laughter of a man and a woman.

         

While these events were transpiring in the offices and laboratories of the Macrotech Associates Ell Tee Dee complex in Dinganzicht, and while the little shuttle Clare Winger Harris was bearing studio head Tarquin Armbruster IV and production chief Golda Abramowitz toward the triple sun Fornax 1382, events were continuing to move within Starrett.

In the city of New Chicago, for example, trade was brisk at Olde Doctor Christmas’s Booke & Brownie Shoppe. The proprietor, Will Lux, was having one of his best seasons ever.

In the Starrettian metropolis of Bombay VII on the western shore of the Muschelkalk Sea, Ponnemperuna’s Pet Emporium had just closed for the day. Business in the pet trade was also excellent, and the Ponnemperuna family, Mohandis, Jitendra, and their beloved daughter Chitarhi, were preparing to sit down to a savoury dinner of dhal, curry, and ancient Bombay style bread.

In the state of Floridalso, it was spring training season for the baseball clubs from “up north” (whatever that term might mean in a tincan world like Starrett). The New St. Louis Browns were training in the village of Bahia Mar, and the sensation of the camp was a fabulously talented kid catcher. The kid was knocking the cover off the ball, he had a rifle for an arm, and the way he moved behind the plate, you’d think he had oiled machines for knees.

What was most remarkable about him was this. He wore his catcher’s mask all the time, behind the plate, up at bat, in the locker room—everywhere! Nobody on the club had seen his face, and it was rumored that he had been hideously scarred in an accident, so nobody tried to peek. Who cared, as long as he could perform the way he did?

He wouldn’t even give his name, but since they needed to call him something, he asked for a roster of long-retired New St. Louis Browns players. And since he was a catcher, the kid took the name of a mug who had once played in a single game for the club. “Joe Nieman Junior, that’s my name,” he told the manager. “You can just call me Joe.”

The manager said, “Keep playing like that and I’ll call you anything you like!”

And in Hollywood-between-the-Stars, they were still working on The Dunwich Horror, pending the return of Tarquin Armbruster and Golda Abramowitz with some new technology for the sequences involving the Whateley monsters.

One of the nice things about Starrett was its size—this was a big tincan world! Out at the Colossal Galactic property they had built a complete New England village to provide scenery and background and sets for The Dunwich Horror. There were already rolling hillsides and green farmlands; it was a perfect place to make the flik.

Martin van Buren MacTavish had left behind a final (or nearly final) script when he went with Tarquin Armbruster and Golda Abramowitz to the shuttleport. He saw them off on the Clare Winger Harris, then returned to “Dunwich” at Colossal Galactic.

Golda Abramowitz had appointed a director and the director had hired a special effects crew, a camera crew, a set-decoration crew, a costumer, and all of the rest of the people necessary for the production.

Gaza de Lure, Nefertiti Logan, Rock Quartz, Roscoe Inelegante and Karlos Koch were all rehearsed in their roles, and shooting had actually begun, under the careful supervision and control of the director Golda Abramowitz had left in charge. That was Josephine Anne Jones, whose directorial credits included such successes as Pirates of the Plains, The Haunted Garage, and one X-rated hit (she did this one under a pseudonym, and you will please not tell anyone!), The Garden of Shamballah.

She had even worked from a Martin MacTavish script before, Marty’s early effort Betelgeuse Beach Party, a flik billed as “the universe’s first outer-space surfer spectacular.” The flik made money for years, selling over and over and over again wherever Starrett happened to visit.

At the very moment that Tarquin Armbruster and Golda Abramowitz, travelling in the Clare Winger Harris, hove into sight of Fornax 1382 and exclaimed with pleasure at the lighting effects that the triple glare of Lemon, Lime, and Cherry produced inside their shuttle ship . . . at this very moment, the day’s shooting was about to begin on the set of The Dunwich Horror.

The scene they were shooting at Colossal Galactic that day was #237k on the master scene list. Josephine Anne Jones was present dressed in puttees, cravat, beret, and long cigarette holder. (She was a traditionalist; she even wore a monocle tied to the end of a ribbon, but never screwed it into her eye in public; she hadn’t mastered that trick and it embarrassed her to make the effort and fail.)

Martin van Buren MacTavish was also present, script-book in hand. He had not been pleased with his relationship with Josephine during Betelgeuse Beach Party and he was not happy to have her as director for The Dunwich Horror.

They were shooting indoors. The scene took place inside the Miskatonic University library. Karlos Karch, as Wilbur Whateley, was decked out in fright-wig, putty nose, plenty of paint and distorters for his face, and even temporarily modified hands. He wore a slouch hat pulled down over his forehead. It was a triumph of costume and camera angle: it would give the illusion that Wilbur’s face was hidden from view while actually affording the audience a thorough examination of Wilbur’s frightening and distorted features.

And Wilbur, naturally, wore his customary ankle-length overcoat.

Gaza de Lure, as Sally Sawyer, had been written into a new task, that of managing librarian for Miskatonic U.

Gaza was a throwback to an old earth type of beauty. She was slim and fragile looking—she couldn’t have weighed more than four kilograms and she was barely 1.6 meters tall. She had softly flowing, pale blonde hair and eyes of a deep yet brilliant emerald hue that were famous on a gross of planets.

One holoflik historian had traced through prints of ancient fliks and stills from even more ancient ones, and had found an amazing prototype or avatar of Gaza, an ancient toodee film actress named Veronica Lake. If you can’t find a holo of Gaza de Lure, see if you can turn up a toodee print of Veronica Lake or one of her films (that’s what they were called, films or sometimes ((I don’t know why)) “moompichas”) and you’ll see what this is all about. Be prepared to fall in love.

Well, there they were on the set. Wilbur Whateley (Karlos Karch) shambled up to the checkout desk.

Sally Sawyer (Gaza de Lure) greeted him. Her face showed an amalgam of horror, fear and disgust.

Wilbur, in his strange, guttural tones, spoke to Sally. “There is a book I must have. It is a very rare, very old book.”

Although Karlos in his natural speech was a most articulate and pleasant-spoken man, he adopted a very different voice as Wilbur Whateley. It was a combination gasp, hiss, and guttural groan.

“The author of the book is a mad arab named Abdul. Abdul al-Hazred.”

The multisense receptors on the flik camera picked up a foetid odor of ancient alienness as Wilbur spoke.

“I know the book you mean, sir,” Sally said. “I’m afraid it can’t be taken out of the library. If you would like to use it here, we have a special room with armed guards, heavy locks, thickly armored walls, where you may be permitted to use the book for a limited period of tiktox.”

“That will do,” Wilbur hissed. “That will have to do. Please show me to the locked chamber. Please get the book for me at once.”

The camera showed Wilbur’s hairy, distorted hands writhing as with a life of their own.

Josephine Jones yelled, “Cut!”

The set-lights dimmed back, the camera ground to a halt. “That looks pretty good.” Josephine gestured to the camera op. “Let’s take a quick peek at what we’ve got.”

Even before she could see the rush, Marty MacTavish was standing before her, jumping up and down. “It isn’t right!” MacTavish yelled. “You changed the dialog! You’re wrecking my script again, just like you did on Betelgeuse Beach Party!”

“I’m in charge here,” Josephine Jones said. “Keep quiet or I’ll bar you from the set, MacTavish.”

“You can’t do this to me! I’ll talk to Golda about this! I’ll talk to Tarquin! I’ll blow the lid off The Garden of—”

“Shut up!” Josephine hissed. “Mention that topic once more and I swear, I’ll get a contract and have you killed. I mean it, MacTavish. I’ll do what I say.”

Marty backed up a step. He burst into a cold sweat. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

Josephine Jones merely nodded. She stood up and said, “Okay, everybody. Tea break, then 237b. Nobody leave the set please.”

After tea they started on 237b. That was the scene of Wilbur trying to smuggle the book out of the Miskatonic library by concealing it under his overcoat. Being Wilbur Whateley, he’d have his hands free because he could hang onto the book with some of those tentacles and other bizarre appendages he possessed.

Josephine Jones settled in her director’s chair, ordered the actors to their places, uttered the time-honored cry: “Lights! Camera! Action!”

Martin van Buren MacTavish, standing behind Josephine, danced up and down in anxiety, clutching his master copy of the script.

Karlos Karch came shambling out of the shadows, out of the dim corridor that led from the circulation desk to the locked and guarded rare book room.

As Karlos passed by the circulation desk, the voice of an extra came from off-camera. “Stop that man! He’s stealing a book!”

Gaza de Lure hit a button and an iron gate (this was Marty’s invention and he was proud of it) clanged into place, blocking Karlos’ exit from the room.

         

Lemon and Lime were at the opposite ends of the sky, Lemon just rising and Lime just setting, with Cherry directly overhead as the Clare Winger Harris spiraled down toward a landing in Dinganzicht. The artificial world’s landing portal was opened and the shuttle entered neatly.

Within a matter of minutes, Tarquin Armbruster IV and Golda Abramowitz were greeted by a marketing representative from Macrotech Associates, and within a matter of minutes after that a conference was taking place between Tarquin, Golda, and a team of Macrotech sales and engineering people, in a plush office within the Macrotech complex.

Back in a service hangar, the shuttle ship Harris had been racked and fueled and was being held for its owners’ return.

Some of the service techs and space jockeys who worked in the hangar noticed that the Harris had a thin coating over most of its surface, a peculiarly textured greenish gunk that looked almost like an ultrathin layer of sponge. But, what the hey, the owners hadn’t requested a scrub-up, just a top-off of the fuel tanks. And what they asked for was what they got.

Ch-ch-ch Junior was left pretty much to itself. It still had the thoughts that it had picked up from Tarquin and Golda to ponder, and although Junior had been alive for a fairly lengthy period of time—and although it was a remarkably intelligent bit of vegetation—Junior was still very new at this consciousness business, and was having quite a time for itself trying to deal with all of the perceptions and thoughts to which it had rather suddenly fallen heir.

So, since nobody had bothered it any—hey, nobody had much noticed it!—Junior just hung onto the Clare Winger Harris and pondered.

Golda and Tarquin, over at Macrotech, had pretty well sketched in their problem for the marketing and engineering folks. The Macrotech people invited them to have lunch in the executive dining room, but Golda, who was of somewhat proletarian attitudes, insisted on buying her own lunch in the employees’ cafeteria.

Now you have to pay close attention at this point, because something very remarkable happened. Something that couldn’t have been planned. It makes you wonder about the workings of chance, and whether they are altogether blind. Hmm.

Here’s what happened.

Golda and Tarquin were seated with some Macrotech honchos at a small table, eating a cold salad.

Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov were sitting nearby, also eating a cold salad.

Golda and Tarquin were talking about the movie business.

Amy and Alex were talking about high-tech food processors, having been “Pope Innocent the Sixthed” as they left their communications lab at lunch time.

At precisely the same moment during the meal, both Amy and Golda found it necessary to answer a call of nature. Both of them repaired to the facility. While there they struck up a casual conversation.

Amy told Golda that she was working with Dr. Ulianov on a new line of food-processors.

Golda expressed only polite interest.

Then Golda told Amy that she was working for Mr. Armbruster of Colossal Galactic Studios, that she was production chief and they were planning a big-budget horror movie.

Amy allowed as how she was interested in movies herself when she wasn’t designing food processors. Especially old movies.

Golda allowed as how she shared that interest. She was, in fact, probably the greatest Formalhautian film historian alive.

Amy responded with enthusiasm, reeling off the names of her favorite old-time films, directors, writers, and actors.

Golda responded with her own favorites. Now, would you like to know the names of Golda Abramowitz’s favorite real-old-time movie actresses? You would? Good! Here they come:

Sara Algood.

Verree Teasdale.

Butterfly McQueen.

Anna May Wong.

Jane Darwell.

Dorothy Gish.

Lupe Velez.

Lynn Bari.

Carmen Miranda.

Vera Hruba Ralston.

Bingo!

No sooner had Golda mentioned Vera Hruba Ralston, the star of such memorable fliks as The Lady and the Monster, Storm Over Lisbon, and Murder in the Music Hall, than Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu underwent a sudden, slight but noticeable, transition. Her face seemed to sag for an instant, before resuming an expression almost—but not quite—exactly the same that it had shown before the mention of Vera Hruba Ralston.

Not for nothing was Golda Abramowitz regarded as one of the brightest talents in the entire flixbiz. She was knowledgeable, she was intelligent, she was talented, and she was perceptive. Wow, was she ever perceptive!

That fleeting change in Amy Al-Khnemu’s expression, that momentary sag of the jaw muscles, that instant of disorientation in her eyes, would have gone unnoticed by almost anyone not carefully looking for such signs. But they didn’t get past Golda Abramowitz. She took hold of Amy’s hands.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I am.” Amy blushed. “Look, I’ve really enjoyed our little chat, I’m happy we met. Maybe we can get together for a mild intoxicant after work. But right now I have to get back to the instant commo project with Alex.”

Did you catch that? Golda Abramowitz sure as hell did. “What instant commo project?”

Amy shook her head. She pulled her hands free of Golda’s. “Look, I have to make a living. I’m working on an instant communicator for Macrotech.” She checked the time. “I do have to get back to work.”

“Now just hold on. There’s something very strange here.”

Amy might have been inclined to push past Golda and just stalk away, but she thought better of that. After all, Golda Abromowitz was a seven-foot-tall Formalhautian. You didn’t just brush past her. No you did not.

Golda and Amy sat down on a cushioned sofa there in the ladies’ lounge, and before coffee could cool back at their respective tables, they had unravelled the whole scheme that Biff Connaught and Cyndora Vexmann had so skillfully and ruthlessly woven.

The one thing that they could not unravel was the key word that set Alex and Amy up to think they were working on food processors. But even that part of the Macrotech scheme was shortly to fail—and in an equally unlikely and farfetched manner.

         

Dig it:

As Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Golda Abramowitz sat in the lounge working out the details of the key word security scheme, Tarquin Armbruster IV and his hosts were still seated in the cafeteria, sipping coffee, smoking cigars, and carrying on a conversation consisting of just the type of small talk that such new business acquaintances would indulge in under the circumstances.

One of the Macrotech executives remarked on Tark’s classical name.

Armbruster explained that he was descended from ancient old earth Roman nobility. He was one of a family that had produced Roman senators, Italian doges, and Catholic popes. Among his illustrious ancestors, Tarquin mentioned—yes, you guessed it!

And just as Tarquin Armbruster IV spoke those portentous words, Pope Innocent the Sixth, Golda and Amy hove into earshot.

Again Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu’s face sagged for the barest instant.

Golda hissed, “Quick, Amy! What’s your project?”

“Uh—high tech food processors. But—”

“Vera Hruba Ralston!”

“Instant communication.”

“Amy, that’s it! Grab your partner. You two and Tarkie and I have got to have a private conference, fast!”

Mere hours later, Tarquin Armbruster IV, Golda Abramowitz, Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu, and Alexander Ulianov were aboard the Clare Winger Harris and that little ship was making its way from Dinganzicht back to Starrett and Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

It had taken some doing to hire Al-Khnemu and Ulianov away from Macrotech Associates. Basically, Tarquin Armbruster had offered them fat pay checks, full support for their research projects, and a major participation in any product they developed in behalf of Colossal Galactic.

Getting them away from Dinganzicht, physically, had been an equal challenge. Macrotech didn’t want to let them go. There was no legal way the corporation could stop Amy and Alex from leaving, but they used every bit of moral suasion, economic arm twisting, and psychological pressure available.

Biff Connaught even tried pulling a gun, believe it or not. But when Amy threatened to blurt out the real meaning of the “P. H.” in P. H. “Biff” Connaught with her dying breath, Biff subsided.

Cyndora Vexmann tried some of her hypnotic-conditioning type manipulation, but Amy and Alex were on their guard against that and Cyndora couldn’t bring it off.

There was even a squabble at the Dinganzicht portal about customs and astrogation clearances, but Tarquin Armbruster had the right combination of nerve and smarts to get them through that.

So here was the Clare Winger Harris shussing merrily along, the yellow, cerise, and green of Fornax 1382 behind it, the metallic shape of Starrett looming in its radar-telescope, and its four occupants chatting in the cabin while the shuttle coasted along.

Amy and Alex mainly listened; for all their engineering know-how and scientific prowess, they felt themselves to be planetbound rubes in the presence of these members of the interstellar set.

“I don’t really understand, Tarquin, why you’re so interested in this instantaneous communication project. Are you planning to give up flix for the commo business?”

Tarquin peered through the space telescope at Starrett. He turned and relit a soggy, half-smoked Havana Perfecto. “Darling, let me tell you something. Golda dear, you are a wonderful production chief, you know all about old movies and all about new flix. You are terrific at your job plus having the prettiest green skin and white fur of anybody I know, Golda.”

Golda flushed blue (that’s how Formalhautians blush or flush). “We were going to Dinganzicht for some help with the special effects. With the Whateley twins. That isn’t what we got.”

“Darling,” Tarquin said, “what we got here, I tell you, is worth thirty yukky monsters. No, thirty thousand.”

“I know you really mean that, Tarquin. You always start sounding like a character out of Yiddish theater when you’re sincere, which isn’t often.”

“Golda, you can say such a thing to me, to Tarquin Armbruster IV?”

“But what good will a super space telegraph do Colossal Galactic?”

“Golda sweetheart, listen to an old man what has seen it all, things that would make you blush like cobalt. Golda, when we make a show, like Suicide Ranch, starring Buck Longabaugh, may he rest in peace poor Buck. How many times did we sell Suicide Ranch, to how many planets, do you remember? And for how much gelt?”

“That one I know, Tark. We’ve sold it a hundred eleven times. The flik made production costs on the sixty-third sale, total nut on the ninety-sixth. Now it’s a nice little money-maker.”

Tarquin drew on his Perfecto, blew a perfect smoke ring, and winked in the direction of Amy and Alexander. “And by the time we finish selling Suicide Ranch, Golda sweetheart, how many times do you think we can sell it? A hundred fifty? Two hundred? Before it’s too old and creaky and we got to put it on the art-house circuit which pays, may my worst enemies make only art-house fliks, practically nothing?”

“I guess about two hundred.”

“But if we didn’t have to wait for Starrett to visit each world? If we could send holo images like the old teewee pix, only instantly not at light speed, darling? If we could offer, say, The Dunwich Horror all at once to everybody while it’s brand new? If we could make for it a galaxy-wide simultaneous premiere with spotlasers and celebrities on every civilized planet in the galaxy—how many times could we sell it then? Hah?”

Golda opened her lips to answer, but before she could get a syllable out, Tarquin continued.

“Don’t interrupt your elders, darling. Think of me, an old man. Soon I’ll be dead and gone, so let me talk please while I can. Thousands of planets we could sell to, thousands. What will we make from The Dunwich Horror I’ll tell you, Golda, a fortune. A positive fortune. That’s why I hired these two bigdomes, you should pardon my bluntness Dr. Al-Khnemu, Dr. Ulianov.

“So!” Tarquin leaned back in his chair and grinned. “What do you think of that, hey?”

         

Ch-ch-ch Junior found itself back inside Starrett and felt a pleasant sensation that it might have known as the warmth of homecoming, had it ever heard of such a thing. The little ship Clare Winger Harris entered Starrett via Kaspak Portal and then skimmed its way across the center of the tincan toward Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

En route, the shuttle zipped through the null-g zone and bits of Ch-ch-ch Junior were scraped off, reattaching themselves to Ch-ch-ch Senior, transferring their recollections with them. Simultaneously, bits of Ch-ch-ch Senior adhered to the rough surface of the Harris (said roughness consisting of Junior!) and remained with the ship as it dropped toward the wall of the world.

The Harris made berth at Hollywood-between-the-Stars, midway between Mix Mes and Lugosi Lagoon. Tarquin Armbruster IV and Golda Abramowitz, Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov, set out for Tarquin’s office to talk business. They didn’t even look back as they moved away from the Harris. They didn’t see the translucently thin, greenish coating slide from the shuttle and begin to slither across the ground.

They didn’t see the greenish stuff, that initially resembled nothing more than a cloudlet of thin, blowing dust moving across a drought-parched swamp-bed.

Ch-ch-ch Junior felt itself picking up the mental emanations of the numerous carpenters and technicians, lighting operators and camerapersons, costumers, directors, assistant directors, makeup men and women, set movers, sound-effects operators, musicians, holo mixers, scent-and-taste sprayers, animal handlers, animals, actors, extras, and hangers-on who populated the Colossal Galactic lot.

Bits of what looked like dust, blowing in what seemed an otherwise unpredictable, even undetectable, breeze, moved here and there around the lot.

One wisp of dust swirled through the Miskatonic University library set, then swirled away and rejoined a larger cloudlet of the oddly greenish stuff.

On the set, Josephine Jones consulted her chronotempometer and yelled peremptorily, “Time! Places, please!”

Gaza de Lure as Sally Sawyer set herself behind the old-fashioned New England librarian’s desk.

Karlos Karch, long overcoat hanging to his high-shoed ankles, took position at the cast-iron door. He faced back toward Gaza, a look of desperation on his distorted, almost acromegalous features.

Gaza threw her hands in the air and screamed.

Karlos lurched toward her.

Gaza screamed again and pointed toward Karch and the cast-iron gate.

Josephine Jones signaled directions.

Cameras rolled.

Gaza leaped across her desk and headed away from Karlos, toward the dark alcove that represented the opening to the library’s vault. She disappeared through the alcove and out of camera range.

Karlos Karch halted in puzzlement.

Josephine Jones yelled, “Cut! Cut! What the hell’s the matter with Gaza? What’s her blocking? Doesn’t anybody here know anything?”

Karch turned back to face Josephine. His eyes widened in horror. The sight that he beheld, moving toward the set, was one that had been seen before by the human imagination, first by the strange scrivener of College Hill in the city of Providence on old earth. It was a sight that had been reproduced in the imaginations of the generations of readers who perused the prose of that scrivener.

It was a vision that had challenged—and defied!—the pens, brushes, and hands of generations of illustrators and sculptors who had attempted to render in ink, oil, or clay the vision as the gaunt dreamer had described it.

It was Wilbur Whateley’s unnamed fraternal twin, the twin who had resembled old Lavinia Whateley’s alien mate more nearly than he did the pitiful albino Lavinia!

Karlos Karch’s voice rang out. That voice which had chilled myriads of thrill-seekers, armies of audiences who had come, over the years, to associate the very name Karlos Karch with shuddering, chilling, paralyzing fear and revulsion.

But never, never in a career that had spanned both decades and light-years had Karch delivered a line the way he uttered these words:

“Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face—that haff face on top of it . . . that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an no chin, like the Whateleys . . . an octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing with a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looks like Wizard Whateley only it’s yards and yards acrost . . . !”

And the thing, the nameless monstrosity that lurched and oozed through the bars of the cast-iron door, responded! “Ygnaiih . . . ygnaiih . . . thflthkh’ngha . . . Yog-Sothoth! Y’bthnk . . . h’ehyen’grkdl’lh!”

The monster billowed and bulged, swelling to engulf almost the entire set. Karlos Karch, screaming hideously, was engulfed, disappearing utterly beneath the tentacles, claws, gullets, eyes, fangs, speckles, tympanum-like disks, and indescribably horrifying miscellaneous organs of Ch-ch-ch Junior.

Josephine Jones bolted from her director’s chair, leaped to one camera operator after another, commanding each of them frantically to keep rolling, keep rolling, whatever might happen and at whatever cost to life, limb or expensive studio-owned equipment—keep rolling!

Only when the shooting was over and a degree of calm—a very small degree of calm, it should be noted—had returned to the set, were the cameras finally shut off.

There now assembled the cast and crew of The Dunwich Horror.

Karlos Karch, still in full Wilbur Whateley makeup and costume, sat as best he could in a prop library chair. Opposite him, quite indistinguishable except in size from its former horrifying appearance, sat Wilbur’s twin brother, Ch-ch-ch Junior. Somehow, among Junior’s apparently limitless powers of self-shaping and coloration, was the ability to expand or contract itself to any desired density or size. Junior was now precisely the same size (although not the same shape) as Karlos Karch.

Martin van Buren MacTavish, the copy of the Dunwich Horror script literally shredded in his hands, paced back and forth, unable to keep a seat. “It’s great!” Martin kept repeating. “It’s great! It’s stupendous! It wasn’t what I wrote, but we can work around it! It’s the most gloriously gross and terrifying scene ever filmed, taped, crystalled or acted live! Oh, even the old boy himself would have loved it. He would have loved it!

“You splendid old monster, however the hell you managed that, I love you!”

And Martin van Buren MacTavish ran to the most hideous monster in the history of Colossal Galactic or any of the studios in any of the Hollywoods in history and gave it a mighty hug and a resounding kiss smack in the center of one of its most disgusting (but undescribable) organs.

         

Two weeks later (Starrett standard calendar) The Dunwich Horror was finished.

Two months later the Al-Khnemu/Ulianov Instantaneous Communicator was put on sale by Colossal Galactic Enterprises Unlimited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Colossal Galactic Studios.

The first big promotion carried out through the new communications system was the initial release of the Colossal Galactic production of The Dunwich Horror, starring Karlos Karch, Gaza de Lure, Nefertiti Logan and, making its holofliks debut, the newest and greatest horror star in history, billed (for obvious reasons) as the protege of the veteran Karch—Ch-ch-ch Junior.

The Dunwich Horror opened simultaneously on 4,888 planets. It had the largest single-performance audience of any production in the history of the galaxy, and was the biggest money-maker as well.

         

There was a huge party of celebration on the Galactic lot. Junior, of course, was wildly lionized. Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov floated about, bemused. Gaza de Lure made a pass at Karlos Karch who brushed her off and carried a plate of hors d’oeuvres to share with his wife of some twenty-six years.

There was hardly a lull in the course of the party, but at one point the noise level and frenetic activity did lessen a bit. It was at this point that Golda Abramowitz used her towering green-skinned presence to beat a path to the side of the cheerfully gloating Tarquin Armbruster IV.

“Tarquin,” Golda asked sweetly, “now that The Dunwich Horror has made us one of the biggest fortunes in the history of the universe—”

“Us?” Tarquin interrupted her. “Us? What’s this us business? I own Colossal Galactic, darling, don’t forget.”

“All right,” Golda went on undaunted. “Now that you own one of the biggest fortunes in the history of the universe, scattered over some 4,888 planets . . . tell me, Tarkie, how are you going to collect it?”

Tarquin Armbruster IV blanched.

In fact, there was a way. But that was another matter, and the telling of it is another story.

Saucers from Yaddith

Robert M. Price

I

Oh, I’ve little doubt that you will believe me, Mr. Turrow. And I suspect most of your readers will give my story credence as well. But to be perfectly frank, no reputable newspaper would listen to the first five words of my tale. Only a tabloid such as yours would even give it a second look. Now please do not misunderstand me, sir, I am no less grateful to you for this opportunity, but we are both adults, are we not? We both know how little commercial journalism need have to do with truth. So even if you do not believe me, it is all the same. I can scarcely believe it myself. Perhaps it will take on a greater air of reality if I speak of it and get it out in the air between us, eh Mr. Turrow? Discussing something always seems to . . . Well, yes, I will get on with it.

I suppose one must place the beginning of the affair back merely a few weeks ago. My circle, ever dedicated to the expansion of its horizons, had applied itself with diligence to the study of this and that field of arcane knowledge. How well I can recall how old Elkhart, the artist among us, had experimented with Tibetan Mandalas. His canvases were damnably suggestive of questions beyond mortal imagination to frame, much less to answer. Our prolonged meditation on these windows to deeper recesses of the mind finally served but to increase our Faustian thirst to know what lay beyond.

Preus, ever the religious seeker himself, suggested that our grail of ultimate knowledge was obtainable only through certain doctrines and rites suppressed over the centuries by church authorities. In fact it was for the discovery and exposition of such gnostical fantasies that Preus himself had been first expelled from divinity school, then actually excommunicated, many years before. But all of us had noticed only too readily the gleam one catches in the eye of the fanatic. It seemed an unspoken consensus that whatever hidden truths might lie down the paths Preus had trod, we would as soon pass them by. Expanding reality was one thing, after all, but leaving it behind was quite another.

If Preus’ proposal was received with a distinct coolness, Barlow’s urgings to follow him into what he called the “lefthanded path” of Tantric mysticism were dispatched with all the speed that politeness allowed. For none of us was willing to throw over his inherited moral codes for the questionable pursuits which seemed so completely to have enthralled our friend. Seeing our reluctance, he quickly added that of course he only knew of such practices from his reading.

Finally there was St. Joshua, whose philosophical views ran toward the mundane. An adherent of Russell, Ayer, and the positivists, he was merely tolerant of the rest of us, I suspect.

The group was, as you can see, heterogeneous, companions kept together by old school ties and overlapping interests here and there. All of us did share a thirst for knowledge, as well as an ache of frustration since none of us was any closer to our goal of enlightenment. At last I myself broached a suggestion.

I had of late taken keen interest in the mind-expanding potential of certain drugs. The writings of Huxley about mescaline had intrigued me no little, and it was this avenue down which I would have our group turn. All seemed willing at least to consider it, if yet concerned to know what precautions might be taken for safety’s sake. Such concerns were, of course, my own as well, and I assured my companions that I would attempt, as far as I might, to chart our probable course before we embarked in earnest. The conversation soon turned down other avenues. It seemed to me that the others felt only mild interest in my proposal, certainly nothing to compare with the excitement that I had begun to feel. Eventually the meeting adjourned, and I hurried home, lost in thought.

I decided I had best seek the advice of physicians. But given the controversial nature of our envisioned experiment, I would have to take especial care in choosing doctors whose confidence I could trust. At length I obtained the names of two local authorities. Their contributions to the medical journals implied that they might be sympathetic to the kind of exercise we were considering. In fact, as I read between the lines, I saw, or imagined I saw, reason to believe that one doctor had already tried such experiments himself. His allusions were so vague, yet so suggestive! Alas, this man, a Dr. Martin Rhadamanthus, was currently traveling abroad. His offices at the medical college where he taught were somewhat evasive as to either the exact location or the duration of his sabbatical journeys. This I could well understand, however irksome the fact, since few professions are so harrowing and tiresome as his. He must need his solitude as much as he desired it.

The other specialist I had chosen was not a teacher but an active practitioner, Dr. Phineas Whitmore by name. At length I succeeded in making an appointment with him. It was to be a simple physical examination, on the pretext that I feared I was evidencing initial signs of a particular nervous condition in which the doctor was known to specialize. Given his wide reputation, it was not surprising that the first available opening was yet two weeks away. I was assured that two weeks was in truth an unusually brief time to wait, and that normally one waited months to see Dr. Whitmore. I was appropriately, and genuinely, expansive in my thanks and hung up. Two weeks! Short enough by any usual reckoning, to be sure. Yet the thirst for knowledge which possessed me was now so consuming—and all the more since now a concrete possibility for its satisfaction seemed within reach—that two weeks seemed like as many years!

Before one week was out, I was ready to act impetuously. I would take a modicum of the drug myself, come what may. After all, Huxley and others had tried it, and with what risk? Surely, I had been overcautious up to this point, and would be merely foolish, even cowardly, to delay further. The very night of these deliberations witnessed my first experiment with the drug. I was charged with a sense of expectancy and, I do not mind admitting, a good deal of anxious apprehension.

Having taken a small dose I settled myself in a well-stuffed armchair, placed so as to face the large picture-window. My thinking was that visual stimulation might serve as a catalyst for the perceptual transformation I expected. And I was not disappointed. As Huxley had predicted, ordinary objects soon began to take on a kind of extraordinary aspect. They seemed to gain new depth and then to shine forth in hues only distantly akin to their mundane colors—somehow more vivid and brilliant. At the same time, all seemed fairly translucent, as if made of precious stones. Though I had read several descriptions of this very experience, both in scientific journals and in the accounts of the mystics, none of my studies could have prepared me for the indescribable beauty of this panorama! How the most common things might be utterly transfigured!

Next I began to notice the auditory effects. Did I hear a subtle whistling or whirring? It sounded mechanical, yet musical. This sound was positively unearthly. In fact, it is puzzling that though I can recall it distinctly, I can in no wise imagine how to convey it by humming or whistling.

No sooner had the weird tones begun to sound than my attention was drawn to an indefinable disturbance of the air, just above the trees which divided my lot from the adjacent property. It was something like the sight of autumn leaves caught up for a few seconds in a whirlwind. Yet as far as I could see, nothing was being propelled in the wind. And, strictly speaking, there was no wind. As I said, it looked to be a disturbance, a spinning in the air itself. This motion centered about an expanse several yards across. I dimly recall wondering what natural phenomenon it might be that was so metamorphosized in my affected perception.

In less time than it has taken to describe my vague impressions, the spinning had commenced moving in my direction. I felt that I might be in danger, but that given my present mental disorientation, this might be simply another hallucination. Being now able to view the uncanny phenomenon more clearly, I observed that the spinning seemed confined to a ring. Though the motion seemed rapid, incredibly rapid, it was not particularly violent or forceful. What might it be like at the center, I wondered?

So help me, with the thought itself, my perspective changed so that for the briefest instant I seemed actually to occupy the center of the whirling. I could see my house, my window, even my chair, but the chair was empty! Yet all these observations occupied but a moment until the scene changed yet again. Now I seemed to be lying prone atop a platform of some material and design quite unknown to me. The haunting sound was still discernible, but much more faintly now, and muffled in tone. At first I saw nothing, yet I did not fear any harm had been done to my sight, for such misty radiance was apparent as one “sees” in a darkened room. It was not the absolute blackness of space, the dark and complete oblivion of the blind.

A few moments passed in this manner, and I began to wonder if perhaps my metabolism had somehow dampened the effect of the drug so that I would remain under the present, rather mundane, hallucination for the duration of the experiment. But I need have feared no such eventuality, for soon two shapes began to take form in the darkness, almost as if the dusk itself were gathering into a tangible aspect. As the outlines grew more and more distinct, my heart raced. For now, certainly, I was beginning to get what I had bargained for! Here were apparitions from beyond waking reality, albeit drug-conjured wraiths from the depths of my own mind. As tall as a man they were, the two creatures, yet anthropomorphic in no other respect at all. If I must employ the categories to which we are accustomed, let me say they were perhaps . . . insectoid. Even to designate them so is radically misleading, but let me not linger upon the point lest I rob my tale of whatever plausibility remains.

It was inevitably futile for me to try to discern the expressions that crossed faces of so alien a mien, but some intuition told me that the monsters were as startled by my appearance as I was by theirs. If anything, they seemed more agitated. As strange as it may sound, I did not feel particularly alarmed. After all, I reasoned, this is my hallucination. It seemed to me as if I were the host, and they, the figments of my supercharged imagination, were my guests.

For some period of indeterminable length, I passed into an all-but-oblivious state. During this time, I had but the faintest sensations of what went on around me, or better, within me. In retrospect I would compare it to reports I had read of how a man under the influence of some drugs will gain a heightened sensitivity to his own heart-rate and autonomic nerve functions. Yet that was not quite what I experienced in that pit of leaden torpor. Rather I felt that somehow I was being probed, even, yes, dissected and reconstructed; that parts of me were being removed and replaced, as one might adjust the parts of an automobile engine and replace its fuels and lubricants. Yet all these are but loose analogies that ill-approximate my sensations. I seem to remember reflecting through the clouds of near-unconsciousness whether this were what it felt like to die. Perhaps so, for just then I lapsed into thorough oblivion.

II

When I came to myself, I noticed with a profound sense of relief that I was still in my chair, and had scarcely even shifted position. I was, I confess, a bit surprised that fully the whole night had passed. I had commenced my experiment an hour or two before sunset, and now the sun was just about to rise. Yet I had anticipated the possibility that my time perception might be affected, so I was not disturbed. I seemed otherwise to be quite unaffected. My only discomfort was my impatient and childish desire to tell someone, anyone, of my adventures of the night just past. The club would not meet again till the first of the month, and I had a week to wait before my appointment with Dr. Whitmore. How to contain my enthusiasm in the meantime? I was almost grateful to have the usual round of banal chores to occupy me for a few hours each day, and somehow I passed the week without exploding with my secret. How difficult it was, though, to pretend interest in the simpleminded matters I must discuss with my everyday acquaintances. How I wished to tell even them of my forbidden journeys into inner space, and of those weird denizens of my own subconscious! But I did not care to risk the odd stares and whispered remarks such words would prompt if spoken to the wrong people.

Finally the day came for me to call upon Dr. Whitmore. As I sat vacantly leafing through one of the old books left on the waiting room table, I wondered how well I would be able to maintain the pretense of a nervous ailment. Could I keep it up long enough to detect some hint on Dr. Whitmore’s part of his openness to discuss my hallucinatory experiences? The initial experiment had not been repeated, for the odd though illusory physical sensations I had undergone caused me to put off further attempts pending the physical examination for which I was now waiting. Indeed, what had originally served simply as the pretext for my visit was now a matter of real interest to me. I seemed in good, at least passable health, but mightn’t the drug have had unexpected side effects? I would soon find out, as the door now opened, revealing the receptionist, dressed in a uniform so crisply white it almost seemed to shine. Responding to the call of my name, I rose and followed her down the hall to one of the examination rooms, where I would wait (but a moment, she assured me) for the doctor.

In surprisingly few moments, Dr. Whitmore himself arrived. He was a man of medium height, somewhat stooped, and bearing a bit of a paunch. Just past middle age, his hair and beard were well-grayed, but the lines of his face seemed to reflect more care than age. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and I began to lie as convincingly as I could about my invented symptoms. I spoke in generalities, and hoped I had the skill to phrase my data so it would sound more like the description of personal experiences than a list of textbook symptoms. Fortunately, he seemed satisfied after only a few questions, and began the tests. Some time later, I lay on the examination table waiting for him to return with a chart containing the results. Finally, Whitmore returned, still scanning the sheet as he stepped into the room. I sat up attentively and waited for him to show the mild puzzlement that all doctors evidence when their various probes yield nothing to justify the patient’s complaints.

Sure enough, nothing seemed wrong with me physically. I was relieved at this news, but anxious, trying to hit upon a diplomatic way to reveal the true concern of my visit, to procure his advice, perhaps even his supervision, for further experiments by myself and my friends. But then he spoke again. It seemed that the only ailment here was a typographical failure on my previous medical records. According to the files I had supplied him, my blood was listed as Type O, whereas the bloodwork he himself had done on me showed it to be Type A. Had I not noticed this error myself? If so, why had I not had it corrected before now? It would certainly have caused some dangerous mischief had an accident rendered me unconscious and in need of a transfusion. But I was too overcome to answer him. I could only think back with frozen horror to the peculiar physical sensations of my . . . hallucination? For until now my blood had been Type O!

III

It was with some puzzlement that Whitmore dismissed me, as might well be imagined, since my dumbfounded stupor seemed scarcely warranted by his mild rebuke. If I suffered further symptoms of my (pretended) malady, I was to let him know, but otherwise he could suggest nothing. How I longed more than ever to confide in the doctor—yet how impossible that had now become! Whatever his disposition regarding drug experimentation, Whitmore was after all an alienist and could hardly be expected to do other than take my fabulous tale as evidence of paranoid delusion on my part. And, indeed, might it not be? But, no, taking a moment to regain my composure after leaving the building, I satisfied myself that my memory and my sanity were alike intact. My blood type had formerly been as the records indicated, just as surely as it was now otherwise. Somehow the impossible had happened. Just how, I could not guess. Still less could I imagine what connection my hallucinatory experiment might have with the change, though certainly connection there was. And with this thought there rose anew in my soul the thrill of hope. Traumatic it had been, but was not the present mystery proof enough that somehow I had been right? Did I not hold at least the seeds that might yet blossom into that full occult knowledge that the club had sought, up till now, in vain? No doubt I did, and not even the instincts of foreboding caution which now stirred could make me pause.

With two weeks yet remaining before the next scheduled meeting of our circle, I considered two alternatives. It would be simple enough, of course, to call around and gather my colleagues for a special session. God, given what I might tell them, none of them would mind! Yet at this point there would actually be little to tell. There was but the bare experience itself, which still confounded me (though it had come to frighten me less since there seemed to be no damage to my health). My tale would cause no small stir, to be sure, but I felt I must be able to make it more intelligible, if I was to assure the circle that my course of investigation should be their own. I hoped I need not face further revelations alone.

And so I decided upon the second alternative; I would use the remaining days to research as best I could the physiological marvel which had befallen me. I had little enough knowledge of medicine, but research into obscure byways was nothing new to me, and my brief study of the medical journals preparatory to my meeting with Dr. Whitmore had acquainted me with at least a few of the major periodicals in the field. With luck, I hoped to find some precedent or parallel to my own case. Whether connected to hallucinatory trance-states or no, had there been any reported cases of . . . how would it be designated . . . ? “Organic transposition”?

The day following my decision, I betook myself to the nearby university library and sought the help of the reference librarian. The self-assured competence of this fellow, a bespectacled graduate student in his late twenties, gave me hope that my search might at least be comprehensive if not fruitful. Yet under the guidance of the young man, I soon realized just how formidable was the task I had set myself. Truly the literature was vast and I hardly knew where to begin. It was difficult to make the subject of my interest adequately understood, but at length the young scholar grasped that I was concerned neither with organic degeneration due to inbreeding nor with ordinary deformation. Once he had some idea as to the goal of my curiosity he was, he said, inclined to discontinue the search. He was as good as certain that his indices and files of abstracts contained nothing on so outré a subject. However, an acquaintance of his was presently enrolled in the university’s medical school, and he would try to prevail upon him to make a few inquiries.

I was quite grateful for this kind gesture, doubtful though I was that aught could come of it. Still, I gave the student my address and ’phone so that I might be reached in the unlikely event that something should turn up. Needless to say, I was duly amazed when but a few days later the call came. My surprise, my shock, was increased a hundredfold as I recognized the name of my caller. The medical student had related my request to none other than the same Dr. Martin Rhadamanthus whom I had believed to be on sabbatical abroad. It seemed rather that he had stayed secluded in the area, isolated from most social and professional contacts, in order to pursue some special researches normally precluded by the demands of his teaching. Nonetheless, the student, some sort of teaching assistant or apprentice I gathered, had been able to approach him with my strange inquiry, and he had taken an interest in it.

I considered myself fortunate to have so aroused his curiosity on so idiosyncratic a matter, though at the time I simply credited it to the polite generosity of the true professional who feels bound to share what knowledge he has. Yet his very seclusion argued that such approachability was not his usual manner. If he had some personal interest in my case, I could not imagine its nature, nor did it then occur to me to do so.

At any rate, it seemed that Rhadamanthus’s own research had once led him on a path of tangential cross-references which disclosed material relevant to what I had, he said, ingeniously named “organic transpositions.” The account he had uncovered was contained in a seventeenth-century German work on, of all things, astronomy and astrology! It was entitled Die Geschichte Den Planeten, or History of the Planets, by a rather odd fellow named Eberhard Ketzer. He hailed from Schleswig-Holstein, and might have been a monk or perhaps a resident tutor in the Prussian court. No substantial biographical data had survived, save that derived from the book itself, to wit that Ketzer claimed, like Johannes Kepler, to have heard the “music of the spheres.” Only, unlike the more famous though equally eccentric Kepler, he had not liked what he had heard. Instead of the celestial harmony imagined by Dante and described by Kepler, Ketzer had ranted of a crashing cacophony as mad spheres rolled blindly on collision courses, veering crazily through overlapping planes and dimensions. The time must come, he said, when all would hear the screeching din, and when this time came, Doomsday, the final collision, would be at hand.

What had this lunacy to do with my quest? Simply that Ketzer had set down any curious reports that reached him if they seemed to his deranged mind to abet his theory, and the sheer strangeness of a report was liable to make it qualify. The particular account to which Dr. Rhadamanthus had reference was the story of two brothers in Westphalen who claimed to have had an unusual “meeting” on their way back from Vespers one evening. They said they had been accosted on the path by shining “angels of God” who caused them to go to sleep, but a sleep filled with strange dreams. And when they awoke, they swore that they had shared one dream which seemed to have come true. The angels had removed and exchanged members of both brothers’ bodies, so that each now possessed the hands and eyes of the other! They called on the village priest to bear witness that the odd change had in fact taken place. Their eyes, naturally, had been the same color from birth, so the hands must tell the story. Modern fingerprinting techniques would have made short work of the mystery, but an equally effective method was available. One brother was known to have lost a finger and the first joint of another in a recent woodworking mishap, yet this fellow’s hands were newly whole, while his dismayed brother now evidenced the other’s mutilation! The finger and joint were missing, with no sign of recent injury.

Of course, Rhadamanthus averred, the historical value of such tales was nil, the verification standards of oral folk tradition being what they always have been. If one cared to look for them, even more spectacular episodes were to be found in literature from the same period, ranging from rainfalls of blood to apparitions of the Virgin, and all were alike fanciful. But he mentioned this one since it did come closer than any actual medical case history to the sort of phenomenon which interested me. In fact, I might study the legend for myself if I wished, since he himself had run across it in the university library not very long ago.

I thanked the good doctor effulgently, hanging up only after the gross temerity (I admit) of asking whether I might contact him again. To my surprise he was most willing, should the need arise. Of course, I still had in mind my original motive of seeking his counsel on my drug research. I had by now concluded that Dr. Whitmore was quite innocent of the type of experience I had undergone. But fortune, I supposed, had guided me to the only remaining authority in this esoteric field.

Needless to say, I lost no time in returning to the library. The helpful fellow with whom I had previously spoken was not on duty, else I would have thanked him for his fruitful assistance. So I set to work locating the volume and securing a German to English dictionary. My study of the language lay many years in the past, and at any rate my merely conversational German would only get me started on what promised to be a difficult, rambling text.

Ketzer’s work had been reprinted only a decade or so ago in a prestigious series on the history of science. Gratified at this convenience, still I mused how odd a choice for inclusion in the series this tome of superstition seemed. The text was left untranslated, though modern type-face made it considerably easier to read than the original heavy black letter script would have been. And topical subdivisions were indicated by the editor’s italics. This device made it fairly easy to locate my passage. Once I had found it, it turned out not to be too difficult to decipher, since Rhadamanthus had already summarized its contents fairly closely over the ’phone. But I noticed here and there an interesting detail—obscurities that any casual reader would neglect, but which assumed singular importance to me.

It seemed that the two peasants had not described their supramundane visitors in any detail, perhaps because they could not. Rather they had called them “angels” because their arrival was signalled by the appearance of a “halo in the air”! I looked up the appropriate end note, but the annotator was at a loss to explain this detail. In the manner of all unimaginative commentators, he suggested textual corruption or a printing error in the original edition. I, however, knew differently, for had I not seen such a “halo,” or spinning circle, myself? Here it was, then; the same invisible craft containing visitors from . . . where? Great mysteries remained; indeed, I had glimpsed, as it were, only the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, there was naught else to do now but break the news of my discoveries to the group, whose next meeting was only days away.

IV

With old Elkhart’s late arrival, our number was complete. Expectant faces all turned in my direction, my companions in esoterica sat about the spacious study: Barlow, Preus, St. Joshua, Elkhart. As was our custom, we rotated our place of meeting every month with the result that we now assembled in Barlow’s home. Yet it was plain that I meant to take the lead this evening, and my demeanor gave me the aspect of host. Eagerly I recounted my experiment, my encounters with Drs. Whitmore and Rhadamanthus, and my research, occasionally doubling back to fill in a necessary detail or two. My friends were, as I had expected, quite astonished that things had proceeded so rapidly in the month gone by, when they had expected simply to hear whether I had secured any able supervisor, should any of us contemplate taking the drug. And here I had already taken it, without supervision, and with the most bizarre and unforeseen results! I half-suspected from the looks of one or two that they hardly knew whether to credit my strange tale.

Was I suggesting that the whole group embark on the voyage I had undertaken? Yes, I answered, I was, for did it not seem I had succeeded in making the first steps toward that goal of arcane knowledge that had so long eluded us? Further, I averred, I now felt sure that Rhadamanthus was our man, that he could be trusted to guide us and to take a scientific interest in our endeavors. With the group’s permission I would approach him candidly with our proposal. With this suggestion all seemed in accord save the religious fanatic Preus, who was suddenly having second thoughts. For despite his wild flirtations with unorthodox mysticisms, he remained very much the Puritan in his behavior. And he could not, he said, countenance the use of drugs. Preus was obdurate in the face of our attempts to convince him, allowing himself at length to be won over by the reasoning of St. Joshua and myself. We pointed out that we would be using the drug in an almost medicinal manner, to reawaken dormant sense functions that evolution had atrophied. Henceforth Preus was willing, however reluctantly, to go along.

The next step was to be mine as I sought Rhadamanthus’s help. We resolved to meet again the very next week, we hoped with the doctor added to our number. The rest of the evening seemed anticlimactic as we tried to discuss books read in the last month. And conversation would return again and again to my vision and its aftermath. Impatient expectancy had consumed us all: we were like children on Christmas Eve.

The following day I telephoned Dr. Rhadamanthus. Assuming I would reach only his answering service, I was unprepared to hear his own voice on the line. Incredibly, he was quite willing to interrupt his work for a visit that very afternoon. I could call on him at his home, a large brownstone adjacent to the university campus.

His residence was easily located, and I pressed upon the doorbell about 4 o’clock that afternoon. Rhadamanthus himself met me at the door, another surprise since I imagined he must leave such chores to servants in order to concentrate on his sabbatical studies. Once inside, I removed hat and coat, draping them on the bannister as my host indicated. I turned for my first good look at Dr. Rhadamanthus. He was a tall man, probably tending a bit to thinness, though his dressing gown obscured the details of his figure. His face, clean-shaven, had the almost fatherly aspect that serves doctors well in winning their patients’ confidences. Indeed, his manner seemed a bit too paternal, almost patronizing, as he welcomed me and bade me follow him into his study.

The room was large and well-lit, with bookcases lining every wall, though not to a uniform height, since the cases did not match, having most likely been acquired and added one by one over the years as needed. But if the room lacked symmetry, still it was neat, every book in place, with papers and journals neatly stacked. If Dr. Rhadamanthus had been engaged in scholarly labors this afternoon, there was nothing to show it.

Seated behind his desk, he folded his hands in his lap and broke the silence. “What is it you want of me? And . . . oh, did you find the Ketzer volume?” I felt slightly embarrassed at his first words. I had interrupted him, one imposition already, and was making ready to ask yet another favor. My intention, then, was obvious, so I reasoned I had best be as frank as he had been.

“Yes, Doctor, I have read it, and with much interest—more than you might guess, as a matter of fact. And to tell the truth, that is why I’ve taken the liberty to impose on your time in this fashion. Again, forgive me, but. . . .”

“But you yourself have had such an experience as that described by the two peasants long ago, have you not?”

“Why, yes! Yes, indeed I have, Doctor . . .” I stammered, considerably shocked by his prescience.

“Tell me, how did you bring about the . . . hallucination? Or did you? Did the experience perhaps come upon you uninvited?”

I replied that I had invited something by my use of the drug, but that I did not, could not have, expected the amazing physical aftermath of the experiment. Was it possible for mescaline to effect such a change in the body? Surely nothing I had read would lead one to think so, and it was hard to imagine.

“No, no, you are quite right; no mere drug of whatever kind could cause the change you have undergone. I see by your line of questioning that you did not read quite far enough in Ketzer. Yet I can see how you would miss it. The old astrologer’s work lacked much in the way of organization. What of the name ‘Yaddith’?” My blank stare was sufficient reply, and he continued. “Ketzer wrote in rather veiled fashion of certain distant realms, whether of outer or inner space he did not say, and I am no longer sure there is any ultimate difference. One of these realms he named ‘Yaddith,’ all the more remarkably for the difficulty of rendering this word in German, where as you know our ‘th’ sound is lacking.” I wondered momentarily how he would know how the word was pronounced. Had he independent information? “Such realms are sometimes opened to men, to those who can make themselves ready by various means.”

“But Doctor Rhadamanthus, surely not all those who have taken mescaline have experienced what I have experienced. If mere drug-taking were the key . . .” He waved his hand as if to brush aside my words like a cobweb.

“But you have prepared the ground by your various occult researches over the years, as have your friends, from what you tell me.”

Little more would he say, but he had said quite enough for me to puzzle over. If nothing else, it was obvious that from our first contact he had known far more than he told me. Indeed he seemed to know too much, about the mystery itself as well as my involvement with it. Perhaps this fact should have alarmed me, but instead it fueled the fire of my excitement. And with his last comment he had virtually asked my intended favor for me.

“Yes, Doctor, the members of the group have, as you say, prepared themselves, and now they are willing to join me in plumbing whatever truth may lie in this direction.” I outlined our plan to him, and he readily assented to supervise us, to my great relief. Time and place were set, and I departed, scarcely able to assimilate all I had heard that afternoon.

V

I had still not sorted things out completely when the six of us gathered at my home the next week. But I felt sure all would soon enough be clear to me—both the mystery of Rhadamanthus himself and the deeper truths I had spent so many years in pursuit of. As things turned out, I was right.

Our chairs were arranged in a circle in the very same room from which I had embarked on my strange pilgrimage only a month earlier. All of us were excited, Preus perhaps a bit more apprehensive than the rest, Barlow the more eager, but we were all ready to begin. Doctor Rhadamanthus had supplied each of us with our own dose of the drug, which we should all take together on signal, so to facilitate a collective and simultaneous experience. Rhadamanthus himself, of course, took no mescaline and sat outside the circle, his chair against one wall, where he had a clear view both of the group and of the picture window. This last was my suggestion. I reasoned that only so could we know how much of whatever transpired was internal and how much external reality. If someone who had not taken the drug saw any of the phenomena I had seen through that window, then we would know for certain whether the drug-induced mental state acted as “bait” for some beings more real than hallucinatory fantasies.

What I refrained from telling the doctor was that I, too, intended to observe what happened without benefit of the drug. I would but pretend to take it and see for myself what transpired. Would I still see what the others saw?

The moment came, and with it a flash of guilty panic. What might I have recklessly led my companions into? Well, no matter—they had taken the dose and I could only wait to see what followed. In a matter of minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, it began. The unearthly, sibilant whistling . . . did I see it? Yes! The very air began to spin in a huge ring, this time above our heads. Then it was no hallucination, whatever else it must be called. Would to God it had been! Dare I risk a glance over toward where Rhadamanthus was seated?

If he noticed, he would have to detect my subterfuge. Yet I supposed it did not really matter. I craned my neck to look, and . . . where but a moment before Rhadamanthus had sat in a posture of attentive concern, now there loomed one of the insectoid blasphemies I had seen in my vision last month! And this time I had taken no drug! God, I must rise and flee! But the strength had drained out of me, driven forth by the magnitude of my shock. As I felt myself fainting, I thought at least to turn back and catch a glimpse of my friends, but too late. Blackness swallowed me, this time the wholesome darkness of merciful unconsciousness.

         

When I came to myself, my first sight was of Rhadamanthus’s now empty chair. Dreading what I should next see, I pulled myself to my knees and turned around to face a nightmare more hideous than any bred by fevered sleep. For amid scattered chairs and smears of blood stood abomination. To describe the indescribable the mind grasps wildly at the most improbable comparisons. What I saw resembled the cross-linked cage of a child’s “jungle gym”; the revolting structure was a sagging composite of human limbs and trunks linked in a maze of insanity. Here a forearm ended at the wrist in another’s chest, there a head sprouted from the small of a back; eyes stared out singly from shoulders or hands! Worse yet, no seam or breakage of skin was visible; the staggering castle of flesh looked as if it had grown as I now saw it! Dear Savior, if I could but tear from my memory the sight of the tortured faces of Elkhart, Preus, and the others, growing now from thighs and abdomens, staring blindly from empty sockets, screaming silently from mouths without vocal chords!

Reason fled my mind, as it must when reason has fled the world. All I knew was that this quivering miscegenation must outrage nature no longer. I half-ran, half-staggered from the room, down the stairs, and onto the porch where lay stacked wood for the fireplace, and . . . my axe! All I did, I did under instinct’s dictates, pausing only later to contemplate my actions. Seizing the axe, I bounded back up into the room where the thing that had been my friends still tottered and flailed in agony. I determined that it should do so no longer. Poor Barlow, Preus, St. Joshua, Elkhart! They should have peace, even if the peace of everlasting oblivion! So I swung the axe, again and again, hewing and hacking with a fury I had not believed myself capable of. But of course it was the strength of the mad, for that is what I was in that moment. Screams filled the air, but I now realize they must have been mine.

         

(Sit down, Mr. Turrow! I assure you my bloodlust has quite spent itself! All I ask is that you listen to the rest.)

When I had finished, I and everything in the room were virtually afloat in blood. But at least nothing indicated that a short time before, the room had contained a structure of living flesh knitted somehow from four human bodies. Only pieces, small pieces, remained. Now I realize this to have been a mistake. For there is no longer any evidence of what really happened. One could prove no more than that a man went mad and butchered four men. But as I say, I was not thinking clearly then, not thinking at all. Nor was I when exhaustion bade me collapse on my bed in the next room.

The whole night I slumbered obliviously in the midst of that charnel house. When consciousness returned, so did the knowledge of what I had done. Perhaps all that saved me from final gibbering insanity was the detachment I felt, as if another had committed the atrocity, for as I have said, when I acted I was not myself. I sat up in bed and thought for quite some time. I resolved to complete two tasks that day, most likely to be my last day of freedom.

I dressed quickly, edged my way with tightly closed eyes through the next room, its air reeking of blood, and finally reached the door. Descending the stairs, I departed for the university library. I only hoped I might evade capture long enough to find some clue explaining the nightmare in which I now found myself.

Soon I had Ketzer’s nefarious History of the Planets open before me once again. Sure enough, just as Rhadamanthus (or whatever he had been) told me, there was the mention of “Yaddith,” and here was my answer, at least the beginning of it.

I replaced the book and left the campus, intent upon discharging my second errand, and that is when I came to see you, Mr. Turrow. My story must be aired, and from your paper’s reputation I judged you the only one likely to air it. And I hope that you will. Now I have done all I may do, and can only await my fate. Perhaps the police will find me, but, more likely, they will. For you see, Mr. Turrow, this is what I read: that when a way had been opened to that other realm, contacts could be made, and truth sought and found. But openings might also be made from the other side, as presumably had happened in the case of the two German brothers. And in either case, those from Yaddith were just as curious as we. They, no less than we, were—are—inclined to . . . shall we say experiment? And now I, the seeker for truth, find myself in the position of a laboratory animal who through carelessness has escaped, and I believe they will not be long in finding me.