"Right. Keep your men back at a safe distance from now on. I want no more casualties."
*
Straut cursed his luck as he hung up the phone. Margrave was ready to relieve him, after he had exercised every precaution. He had to do something fast, before this opportunity for promotion slipped out of his hands.
He looked at Major Greer. "I’m neutralizing this thing once and for all. There’ll be no more men killed."
Lieberman stood up. "General! I must protest any attack against this—"
Straut whirled. "I’m handling this, Professor. I don’t know who let you in here or why—but I’ll make the decisions. I’m stopping this man-killer before it comes out of its nest, maybe gets into that village beyond the woods. There are four thousand civilians there. It’s my job to protect them." He jerked his head at Greer, strode out of the room.
Lieberman followed, pleading. "The creature has shown no signs of aggressiveness, General Straut—"
"With two men dead?"
"You should have kept them back—"
"Oh, it was my fault, was it?" Straut stared at Lieberman with cold fury. This civilian pushed his way in here, then had the infernal gall to accuse him, Brigadier General Straut, of causing the death of his own men. If he had the fellow in uniform for five minutes....
"You’re not well, General. That fall—"
"Keep out of my way, Professor," Straut said. He turned and went on down the stairs. The present foul-up could ruin his career; and now this egghead interference....
With Greer at his side, Straut moved out to the edge of the field.
"All right, Major. Open up with your .50 calibers."
Greer called a command and a staccato rattle started up. The smell of cordite and the blue haze of gunsmoke—this was more like it. He was in command here.
Lieberman came up to Straut. "General, I appeal to you in the name of science. Hold off a little longer; at least until we learn what the message is about."
"Get back from the firing line, Professor." Straut turned his back on the civilian, raised the glasses to observe the effect of the recoilless rifle. There was a tremendous smack of displaced air, and a thunderous boom as the explosive shell struck. Straut saw the gray shape jump, the raised lid waver. Dust rose from about it. There was no other effect.
"Keep firing, Greer," Straut snapped, almost with a feeling of triumph. The thing was impervious to artillery; now who was going to say it was no threat?
"How about the mortars, sir?" Greer said. "We can drop a few rounds right inside it."
"All right, try that before the lid drops."
And what we’ll try next, I don’t know, he thought.
*
The mortar fired with a muffled thud. Straut watched tensely. Five seconds later, the object erupted in a gout of pale pink debris. The lid rocked, pinkish fluid running down its opalescent surface. A second burst, and a third. A great fragment of the menacing claw hung from the branch of a tree a hundred feet from the ship.
Straut grabbed up the phone. "Cease fire!"
Lieberman stared in horror at the carnage.
The telephone rang. Straut picked it up.
"General Straut," he said. His voice was firm. He had put an end to the threat.
"Straut, we’ve broken the message," General Margrave said excitedly. "It’s the damnedest thing I ever...."
Straut wanted to interrupt, announce his victory, but Margrave was droning on.
"... strange sort of reasoning, but there was a certain analogy. In any event, I’m assured the translation is accurate. Here’s how it reads in English...."
Straut listened. Then he carefully placed the receiver back on the hook.
Lieberman stared at him.
"What did it say?"
Straut cleared his throat. He turned and looked at Lieberman for a long moment before answering.
"It said, 'Please take good care of my little girl.'
The Jovian Jest
by Lilith Lorraine
There came to our pigmy planet a radiant wanderer with a message—and a jest—from the vasty universe.
Consternation reigned in Elsnore village when the Nameless Thing was discovered in Farmer Burns’ corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space, reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the soft sand scarcely more than a few inches.
By the time the first group of newspapermen and scientists had reached the farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The Thing was growing!
Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had already built a picket fence around his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatly refused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touching of the object. His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly clung to the theory that possession is nine points in law.
*
It was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day after the fall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth. His colleagues crowded around him as he pointed out this peculiarity, and soon they discovered another factor—pulsation!
Larger than a small balloon, and gradually, almost imperceptibly expanding, with its viscid transparency shot through with opalescent lights, the Thing lay there in the deepening twilight and palpably shivered. As darkness descended, a sort of hellish radiance began to ooze from it. I say hellish, because there is no other word to describe that spectral, sulphurous emanation.
As the hangers-on around the pickets shudderingly shrank away from the weird light that was streaming out to them and tinting their faces with a ghastly, greenish pallor, Farmer Burns’ small boy, moved by some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He picked up a good-sized stone and flung it straight at the nameless mass!
*
Instead of veering off and falling to the ground as from an impact with metal, the stone sank right through the surface of the Thing as into a pool of protoplastic slime. When it reached the central core of the object, a more abundant life suddenly leaped and pulsed from center to circumference. Visible waves of sentient color circled round the solid stone. Stabbing swords of light leaped forth from them, piercing the stone, crumbling it, absorbing it. When it was gone, only a red spot, like a bloodshot eye, throbbed eerily where it had been.
Before the now thoroughly mystified crowd had time to remark upon this inexplicable disintegration, a more horrible manifestation occurred. The Thing, as though thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusual fare, was putting forth a tentacle. Right from the top of the shivering globe it pushed, sluggishly weaving and prescient of doom. Wavering, it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally it shot straight outward swift as a rattler’s strike!
Before the closely packed crowd could give room for escape, it had circled the neck of the nearest bystander, Bill Jones, a cattleman, and jerked him, writhing and screaming, into the reddish core. Stupefied with soul-chilling terror, with their mass-consciousness practically annihilated before a deed with which their minds could make no association, the crowd could only gasp in sobbing unison and await the outcome.
*
The absorption of the stone had taught them what to expect,