Part 1

THE LITTLE MONSTERS COME

By RAY CUMMINGS

Desperately seeking escape from their own tortured chunk of hell, they needed a specimen from this great and gracious world they planned to steal. But swamp-roving, 'gator-fighting Allen Nixon wasn't the type to be cut up alive!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

There was absolutely nothing wrong or weird about the Florida Everglades at night. At least, not to Allen Nixon. He sat alone in the stern of a flat-bottomed rowboat paddling calmly, albeit soundlessly, with one small oar. The moon was down and the tall old pines were so many black rips and tears in the star-studded gown of the sky. The stars themselves dropped their fiery pin-points in the glassy surface of the winding bayou. The tangled banks, where sometimes the cypress branches dipped heavy and sodden into the water, were shadowed blurs so that the bayou was a twisted ribbon between them.

Nothing strange. Nothing unusual. Certainly not to Allen Nixon. Twenty-four years ago he had been born here, only a score or so miles north at the fringes of the great swamp, where a little Seminole village stood beside a bayou just like this. There his white father had loved and married his Indian mother; there he had lived and gone to the Mission School and then, in his 'teens, to the High School up in Jacksonville. Now he and his younger brother Ralph, with their parents dead, were running a small farm their father had left them. It was back at the mouth of the bayou, where the Gulf lapped in the starlight on the sandspits, and the tangled wire-grass was alive at night with the croaking of the marsh-hens. Ralph had not wanted to come out tonight. He was tired, perhaps lazy. He said he would have the four 'gators skinned by the time Allen got back at midnight; and he'd help with whatever others Allen brought in. Perhaps he would, but more likely he wouldn't.

So Allen Nixon, with the moon down, was paddling up into the silent twistings of the bayou alone. He was a tall, lean fellow, lanky like his father, with muscles hardened by a lifetime of the work of the backwoods. He was bareheaded; his sleek, straight, dead-black hair glistened in the starlight. His grey flannel shirt was open at a muscular throat. He sat erect, with his legs, clad in dark trousers and worn leather puttees, stretched out to the shotgun, knife and hatchet that lay in the bottom of the rowboat. The faint night-breeze fanned his rugged face, bronzed by the hot Florida sun and swarthy with the Seminole heritage.

Now he was rounding a sharp curve in the bayou, and the breeze was more squarely in his face than ever. That was good. No scent of him could blow forward to reach any 'gator that might have surfaced on the starlit stretch ahead. Two was all he hoped for tonight, and then he would head back. Quietly he shipped his oar and adjusted a small electric torch on a band around his forehead. Then with its pencil-point of light sweeping the bayou ahead of him, again he started paddling. Even more silently, this time, so that there was no drip from the blade as he skillfully raised it, no least murmur of splash as he brought it forward and dipped it again. An alligator, lying quiet with only a tip of nose and eyes at the surface, is more alert, more ready to scurry away than a mouse.

There was in Nixon's mind nothing but intentness to see the two little pin-points of fire in the bayou surface, two among the many that were reflected stars, yet he would see the difference, the spacing, a little greener, more glowing fire which would mark them as the eyes of a drowsing 'gator. He was thinking only that he would get two as soon as he could and get back to Ralph. That would make ten altogether this moon--ten salted skins, enough to be worth a trip to the market in Pensacola.

* * * * *

What he did not know was that in the shadows of the bayou bank up ahead strange little shapes were cautiously moving. Living things that did not belong here; that had never been here before.

The night sounds of the lush woods were blended into a voice which Nixon had heard all his life, so that now he was never aware that he was hearing it. A 'gator would hear it too--the slither of a rattler; the flip of a fish or a water moccasin; a marsh-hen croaking; or an owl's hoot--and the steady blend of the voices of a million million insects. And that was all that could be heard, for the strange dark little shapes, along the bank at the next bend, moved very cautiously, quite soundlessly--little things moving upright. They were only a few inches tall. Once they stood in a group as though communicating. One of them carried a tiny light, but its glow was less than a firefly's.

Now Nixon saw, out in the center of this stretch of the bayou, the two green dots that were a 'gator's eyes, and his face relaxed a little with the flicker of a smile of satisfaction. His light swept the water, reached the eyes and clung, so that the stupid 'gator just lay there and stared, with the light dazzling him. His brain, not much bigger than a pea buried in the pulpy mass within his big flat head, held no thought of danger.

The twin reptile-eyes were perhaps fifty yards away when Nixon first saw them. Now he paddled more slowly, with the rowboat gliding forward soundless as a floating leaf. The grip of his right hand down by the blade of the oar-paddle tightened.

The twin eyes there among the stars on the shining water, held motionless. Presently they were only fifteen or twenty feet away, just to the right now of the uptilted empty bow of the little rowboat. Nixon stopped paddling. Slowly he rested the oar in the bottom of the boat and picked up his shotgun.

At about eight feet, Nixon fired both barrels almost together with a great crashing roar. A hundred yards ahead of him, where the bayou made its bend, there was consternation and terror among the tiny upright shapes gathered there on the soggy bank--a terror that made them scurry with tiny cries; and then, when seemingly they were not hurt by the burst of light and the vast roar, made them stand peering in wonderment at this gigantic drama out there on the water.

Nixon knew nothing of that. He was intent only on the splash where his shot had gone; and he saw that this 'gator did not sink, but was lunging away, off to the right, toward the bank. A big one, he had seen that by the spacing of the eyes and now by the water slick and the splashing as it floundered toward shore. Then he was after it, paddling with all the power of his arms as he bent forward, until in the shallows near the bank, where the mortally wounded reptile was now aimlessly floundering, he came almost on top of it.

In an instant more he was over the rowboat's side, waist deep in the water. There was a thrill to this, the lunging of his hands to grip the writhing, slimy, brainless adversary by the foreleg, threshing ashore with it as skillfully he avoided the snapping jaws, and dangerous swishing tail. An eight foot 'gator. Good enough. Its head was an oozing mass of pulp where his shot had blown into it. Panting, he hauled it onto the soggy bank, darted back to the rowboat for his hatchet; then he had hacked into the base of the reptile's spine where the tail began, cutting into it so that the threshing stopped and the big green-black adversary lay only quivering.

Ralph would be pleased. Now if he could get another one as big as this, and then row back home--

* * * * *

Nixon's thoughts suddenly went blank so that he stood over the dead 'gator with his jaw sagging in amazement. He had jerked off his headband with the light-torch when he jumped overboard from the rowboat, but there was enough starlight here for him to see the tiny upright thing. It was in a silvery patch beside a line of brush back from the water. A thing in the shape of a man. Hardly that; but it was upright, oblong with a head and a width of tiny shoulder. It stood divided at the bottom like two legs and there were two arms. A thing only a few inches high. The starlight showed it to be brown-black. Then suddenly Nixon's gasp of astonishment made him suck in his breath as he blankly stared. The tiny thing seemed to be wearing clothes....

To Nixon in those seconds, there was a blur of his mind when he wasn't thinking, just staring as though this were something not to be explained, something which didn't have to be explained because it wasn't real, just a conjuring of his own imagination, a trick of his vision. His hand went with a puzzled gesture to brush his eyes. He blinked. One tiny, six-inch man-shape?

Abruptly he saw that the brush here seemed alive with them. They were moving now. They emitted tiny squeaks that could have been words; shouted commands to each other. But up here in the starlight of Nixon's six foot height, the sounds were like the voices of excited insects.

Adversaries? There was no such idea in Nixon's mind, those first blank seconds. Then suddenly, with a tiny hissing flash, a thread of violet light stabbed up at him. It struck one of his dangling hands with a hot little flash of tingle like the shock of a weak electric current. Then he saw where it came from--an edge of a patch of wire-grass. Three of the brown-black figures were dragging a tiny wheeled thing. A weapon. It was hardly bigger than Nixon's hand. Its nozzle slanted upward and spat another tiny violet flash. Then at his feet he felt something hit against the bottom of his leather puttee. One of the shapes was trying to climb up his leg. He could feel the weight of it on his shoe. A surprising weight, as though the six-inch thing were made of lead.

Nixon was stooping to reach down when a tiny projectile hit him in the face. It stung, with a scratching little stab of pain. Then others came. It was like a handful of peas being thrown at him. All in a few seconds while Nixon had stood blankly staring with incredulous amazement, what seemed hundreds of the tiny shapes were around him. Attacking him. With anything normal, Nixon could think quickly. A 'gator's jaws closing on his arm, simple enough to know what to do. But now suddenly his emotion at this weird attack was only one of puzzled anger. He stooped swiftly, seized the tiny figure that was at his ankle. It screamed as his hand closed over it, a thin, high-pitched squeaking cry. But it was blood-curdling--so nearly human in its frenzied, agonized sound. As he raised it up, still it was screaming. A heavy little thing, heavy as though it were of metal. And it was solid, so solid that his squeezing fingers could have held a leaden figure.

For an instant Nixon held the screaming little thing up and stared at it; and the starlight showed him the contorted features of its tiny bluish face, its flailing arms. Then he flung it out over the bayou. There was a little splash. The screaming stopped as the figure sank like a stone. Now abruptly, the dazed incredulous astonishment of Nixon dropped from him, and a stab of fear came; fear and a surge of anger as he realized that this attack was reality. He staggered back from the rain of tiny missiles pelting him, and another flash of the tiny wheeled gun. The ground here was black now with the lunging, milling little shapes. His first backward step trod on two or three of them, mashed their solid, heavy little bodies into the soggy ground of the bayou bank.

As he staggered, there must have been a tree root that caught his heel. At the same instant, a pellet struck his eye; and as his arm flung up and he stumbled over the root, suddenly he fell backward to the soggy sand. It was enough for the alert little figures. Their cry of triumph sounded as they pounced upon him, swarming over him. A hundred? It could have been more. Scores of scrambling things. Perhaps, small though they were, each of them weighed a pound. A hundred pounds of treading steps and jabbing arms were in an instant upon the fallen Nixon. He felt himself really frightened now, a fear that he had never felt before, no matter what the antagonist, fear engendered by the strangeness of it, the unknown.

* * * * *

Nixon tried to get up, but the sheer weight of the swarming little adversaries seemed pinning him down. Now they were on his throat, on his face. Tiny things jabbed at his eyes, so that his hands flailed in a frenzy, plucking them away. But then there were others. He found himself rolling, mashing them. But he couldn't mash them, he could only shove them into the ground....

Damned persistent, wildly reckless little things. A sweep of his arm knock a dozen of them away. Some screamed. But always there were more.... Why didn't he get to his feet? Get up now! Knock them off! Get up! He found himself partly up, with the scrambling shapes cascading off him; but he was dizzy, his vision blurred. Another stab of the tiny weapon came. It struck him on the forehead, a hot stinging, tingling flash. For an instant it clung, with a wave of dizziness from it flooding Nixon so that he fell back, kicking, writhing.... They were tramping over his face now. Then he realized that one of them was pounding with something heavy at his temple, a rhythmic pounding.... _Thump_.... _Thump_.... He tried to strike at it.... But now he knew that he couldn't focus.... The pounding stopped. Of course. He had knocked the damned thing off.... _Thump_.... _Thump_.... Another had started it again, every little blow making Nixon's head shudder, his senses reel and fade, so that now a dull blurred blackness was coming.... Those cursed, tiny little blows at his temple.

Suddenly, strange in Nixon's thoughts there was the vision of himself, a monstrous fallen, wounded giant. Bewildered, dazed, helpless, with a man standing on the great expanse of his face; a man who was pounding with a crowbar against the softness of the giant's temple.... You could fight a 'gator. Sure. You could fight a man your own size. Or several of them maybe, with your fingers itching to get at their throats and strangle them.... But there were these jabbing, swarming things by the hundreds....

There was in Nixon's fading mind at last only the damnable realization of those tiny rhythmic blows at his temple, each just that small concussion of his brain, another and another until his senses fully faded and he was swept off into the dark, empty, soundless abyss of unconsciousness....

II

It was like the roaring of a waterfall. You could lie near it on the grassy sward and maybe there would be a little last fading sunlight of the day to warm you. And your belly could be empty with a gnawing pain, but that was all right because there was the smell of food cooking and soon you would have it full. A warrior returned from the hunt, had his women to cook for him....

The phantasmagoria of Nixon's returning consciousness as he listened to the roaring of the falling water seemed made up of queer things out of his Indian heritage. But another part of his brain told him that was absurd--told him that he was lying on something hard, with the feel of sweat bathing his skin, and pain that slowly was becoming apparent stabbing at him from scores of tiny wounds on his hands, his face, his neck.

Then suddenly Nixon knew that he had opened his eyes. He lay staring, puzzled, with a blurred scene resolving into outlines that he could distinguish, but not understand. He was lying on his back, gazing upward at what seemed a vaulted, shining metal ceiling close over his head. It was sharply curved, two or three feet above him, as though now he were lying in a shining, glowing vault. With returning strength he tried to sit up, but could not. And then he realized that he was shackled. He could see what looked like finely woven, white metallic ropes. They wrapped his arms and legs together.

The waterfall was partly the roaring of weakness in his head; but that seemed subsiding now and there was only a faintly throbbing hum somewhere near him. A hum like a dynamo, or at least some sort of mechanism. Turning his head, he saw that on one side of him the concave metal wall had a row of small bullseye windows. They were spaced about a foot apart, each the size of his fist. And in each of them there was the vision of a black abyss of sky, with white blazing stars.

Again he tried to sit up. He could bend a little at the waist, and he was able to get one elbow under him and his head up so that it was nearly to the ribbed ceiling. At once, from the other side of him, away from the bullseye windows, there was a faint, hurried scurrying of little footsteps.

A voice said, "Careful, giant!"

And another voice said, "Will he hear us, Tork?" It was a softer voice. Less harsh. English! But queerly slurred, carefully spoken. And the voices were tiny, strangely thin, of a pitch totally different from anything Nixon ever had heard.

"Tork, will he hear us? He is recovered now. Will he hear us? Oh, Tork, what will he try to do?" The English words drifted off into a language totally strange, unintelligible.

* * * * *

Nixon saw the two little figures. One was taller, wider than the other; the big one six inches, the other at least an inch less. They were standing on the white metal of the floor, down by his thigh. And now he realized that he was stretched out in the small interior of a metal cylinder, lying on a floor that crossed the middle of it, so that he was stretched the length of its top half. It was about a ten-foot length, and six feet wide. It left a space beside him. Little metal railings a few inches high ran along the floor, dividing it into tiny enclosures. A mechanism room; another where supplies seemed to be stored; another which had what seemed furniture in it. All in miniature. All peopled with tiny figures that had stopped their tasks, and were staring at him now in awe and fear.

"Speak, giant! Can you hear us?"

"I hear you," Nixon said. His voice rumbled, reverberating in the close confines of the curved metal walls. The sound startled the little figures down there at the floor. They peered up, tense, apprehensive. Two or three scurried away; and now Nixon saw that there were several holes along the floor where tiny ladder stairs led downward to some space beneath. Several of the frightened little figures started down the ladders and then stopped, peering up again.

"We can kill you," the figure called Tork said. He was still standing fairly close beside the great curve of Nixon's prone body, with the smaller figure beside him. Both of them were wary. Nixon could see it. They stood ready to dart away, not knowing what this trapped, bound monster might be able to do. "You do not wish that we should kill you?"

"No," Nixon said. "I sure don't." He said it wryly. He tried to smile. Kill him? These little creatures? Incredible, him lying here in this vaulted, tomb-like interior, with tiny things that could talk; things who had scientific weapons and intelligence to handle them.

"You did try to kill me," Nixon added abruptly. "I remember it now. You--what shall I call you--Tork?"

"Tork, yes," the taller figure said. "And this with me here is Nona. We did not want to kill you--"

"Oh, you didn't?" Nixon's temper always sprang readily. He could feel his hands suddenly tingle. It was absurd that this tiny creature should speak so calmly of killing him. Why if he had his hands loose, he could seize the damned little thing, squeeze it until it screamed....

Unconsciously Nixon was straining at the metal ropes, with the muscles under his bronzed skin taut as he held his breath, pulling and straining. The metal posts bent inward a little with the pull; but the ropes held.... It was a moment of horrible tenseness for his captors. He could see it as he slowly strained, exerting all his strength until the sweat poured out on his forehead and he was panting. A tense horrible moment, while Tork and Nona stood with their tiny bluish faces turned upward, with glowing little eyes staring. Then Tork's face wrinkled into a grotesque smile as he saw Nixon's body relax. The crucial test had come and passed. They could hold this giant.

Tork said quietly, "There is a blood-tube in your throat. I could climb up there and plunge what you call a sword into it."

Nixon had heard of the jugular vein, of course. A sword, as Tork would wield it, would be only a needle. But, even so, it could have been stabbed into his jugular while he was unconscious and he might have bled to death. Or it could be stabbed into his eyes, blinding him....

"All right," Nixon said. "It's hard to realize--I reckon I'm beginning to understand now--"

"That we have an intelligence like your own," Tork finished. "What are you called? You have a name? Is it not so that all Earth people are named?"

"Nixon," he said. "Allen Nixon. Look here--what the devil is all this? Who are you? You've got me here in some sort of thing--"

"Our Spaceship," Tork said. "We came to Earth to get you."

"Get me? Came to Earth?"

But of course! These little creatures, so grotesquely in a sort of human mould, couldn't belong on Earth. Nixon stared out again through the tiny bullseyes beside him at the starry abyss of the heavens. A spaceship, and he and his captors were no longer on Earth now, but hurtling out somewhere among the stars. Allen Nixon, Floridian backwoodsman, was far from a scientist. But he had read a great deal. Atomic bombs. Rockets to the Moon. That sort of thing was no longer a fantasy. Fantasy or not, he had to accept it now.

"You came to Earth--to get me?" he repeated.

"Well, not exactly you," Tork said. "We came for one of you Earth giants. We landed--a place where there would not be many of you. And then you came...."

* * * * *

Strange facts, which now Nixon's tiny captors were telling him. They had come from a small world, in that belt of asteroids which lies beyond Mars. A world which in their language was called something that sounded like Orana. And they called themselves Orites--a little civilization of them huddled on a bleak, rocky world.

This Tork--his counterpart, in our human civilization, would be a man. And the smaller figure here with him, a woman. Two sexes. But among the Orites, they were in the minority, for most of the young born to them, were neuter. And these they called Gorts. Like a slave class, who grew to maturity trained for work, for servitude. Creatures of a much lower intelligence, each trained from the beginning to some simple, standardized task.

Nixon, as he listened, could identify the Gorts, here among the groups of tiny figures within the miniature railed enclosures on the spaceship floor. A hundred or more of them had come up from underneath now, reassured that the giant was helpless. There was one area down beyond Nixon's feet where a group of some thirty of them were bending over a long trough that was high as their knees. They seemed to be eating. They were about Tork's six-inch size, these Gorts. But broader, more squarely solid-looking. Their heads were round, shining like polished leaden balls, with grey-blue faces, square-cut in a grotesque human mould. Their garments, some grey, others of a brownish-black, seemed stiff and jointed like a coat of mail.

"Well, you've got me," Nixon said. "You're taking me now to your world?"

"Yes, that is it," Tork agreed.

"Why? What for? And you talk English--how is that?"