Part 1

The Miniature Menace

A THRILLING NOVELET

By Frank Belknap Long

_Condemned without trial for his refusal to open fire on an alien space-craft, Ralph Langford had to be free to investigate the strange menace from beyond the stars! For if the alien were an enemy, then it would be the most terrible enemy men had ever encountered._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Future combined with Science Fiction Stories May-June 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The sky was harsh with the flare of rocket jets when Captain Ralph Langford emerged from his deep space cruiser on the Mars City landing field. There was a girl standing alone at the far end of the field, and for a moment Langford thought it might be Joan, irrational as the thought was. Of course, Joan couldn't be here; he was to see her at the hospital. He started across the field, blinking in the glare, his eyes shining with a warm gratefulness to be home again; as he approached the solitary figure, he could see it was not Joan, though there was a resemblance. He was so engrossed that he didn't notice the tall, eagle-eyed young Patrol officer who came striding toward him, until he heard the man's voice.

"You're under arrest, sir!" the youth said, his hand whipping to his visor. "Commander Gurney's orders."

Langford looked up suddenly, then stiffened in belligerent protest. "Hold on, Lieutenant! You can't arrest me and march me off to jail like a common criminal. Commission regulations! How long have you worn those stripes, youngster?"

The youth's eyes were respectful, sympathetic; he did not appear to be offended. "I'm sorry, sir," he said firmly. "Commander Gurney went before the Commission and had you certified as irresponsible."

Langford flushed angrily. "So that's it," he grunted.

The Patrol officer hesitated. He had prepared what he intended to say, but the fame of the big man facing him had reached sunward to Mercury, and outward to Pluto's frozen tundras.

Langford's fist lashed out suddenly, catching the youth flush on the jaw, and crumpling him to his knees. The girl, who had been a silent witness up to now, gasped, then turned and ran like a frightened rabbit. Langford did not stop to apologize. Rumor had it that deep space officers bore charmed lives, but Langford knew as he broke into a run that his life hung by a thread that might at any moment turn crimson.

No part of the field was unguarded. If the guards had orders to withhold their fire he saw a desperate chance of outwitting them; but if they had orders to blast, his fate was already sealed. As he ran he had a vision of himself sinking down in a welter of blood and blackness, his ears deafened by the hollow chant of concussion weapons. He saw himself lying spread out on the landing field, the taste of death in his mouth, the air above him filled with a harsh, eerie crackling.

He ran faster, ran like a man bemazed, his eyes filled with dancing motes that kept cascading down both sides of his oxygen mask. He was a hundred feet from the ship when he became aware that a dozen armed guards had emerged from shadows at the edge of the field and were converging upon him.

Angry curses whipped through the night and the field seemed to tilt as the guards came racing toward him. Far off in the darkness a siren wailed.

Langford suddenly realized that he was becoming light-headed from too much oxygen intake; his head was filled with a dull roaring, and seemed to be expanding. It was filled with flashing lights as well as sound, and was leaving his shoulders as he ran.

He had a sudden impulse to laugh and shout, to whoop at how ridiculous it was. His head had left his shoulders and was spinning about in the air. But before he could grasp the tube which was flooding his brain with hilarity, armed guards were all about him, raising their weapons to cover him and shouting at him to raise his arms.

Unfortunately he couldn't seem to move his arms. When he made the effort he went plunging and skidding over the ramp with running figures on both sides of him. He was skating, cutting capers on ice. Fantastic and incredible capers. Then the ice was inside his skull, swelling up thick; his heels were together when the lights in his head went out.

* * * * *

When the lights came on again Langford found himself stumbling forward into a blank-walled room with a steady pressure at his back. At first he thought the room was a cell, but when his vision adjusted itself to the glare he saw that he was facing a seated man whose head seemed to be dancing in the air.

"Here he is, Commander!" a harsh voice said. "He blacked out, but that didn't stop him from putting up a terrific fight!"

Langford had no recollection of putting up a fight, but the guard's jaw was bruised and swollen, which seemed to indicate that a struggle had taken place. A massive desk swam into view and the head of the seated man settled down on his shoulders.

Langford blinked. Facing him in the cold light was the supreme commander of the Solar Patrol, a thin, hollow-cheeked man of fifty whose eyes behind narrowed lids glittered as cold as glass.

Commander Gurney's immobility was not unlike the roll of thunder in a vacuum. There was sound and fury to it, and yet not a muscle of his face moved as he dismissed the guard with a curt nod, and waited for the massive door behind Langford to clang shut.

The instant silence settled down over the room Commander Gurney came to life. "You're under arrest, Langford," he said, quietly. "If you've anything to say in your own defense you'd better start talking. I can spare you--" the patrol commander glanced at his wrist watch--"Exactly twenty minutes."

"Good enough!" Langford grunted. All the muscles of his gaunt face seemed to pull together as he seated himself. For an instant he remained motionless, his eyes troubled and angry, as if he could not quite accept the fact that he had been deprived of his command by the irate man opposite him.

The two men who sat facing each other in the cold light were sharply divergent types. Langford was a man of enormous strength and a temper that was just a little dangerous when it got out of control. He had never once failed in his duty and the inner discipline which he had imposed on himself showed in his features, which were as tight as a drum. But beneath his rough exterior Langford concealed the sensitive imagination of a poet, and an immense kindliness which sometimes overflowed in strange ways, embarrassing him more than he cared to admit.

Commander Gurney had never experienced such embarrassment; he had imposed his will on the Solar Patrol by becoming an absolute slave to efficiency at considerable detriment to his health. There was something rapacious and hornetlike about him, something ceaselessly alert. Now he sat regarding Langford with a stinging contempt in his stare, poised for the attack, his harsh features mirroring his thoughts like an encephalograph. "Well?" he prodded.

Langford wet his dry lips. Reaching inside his resplendent uniform, he removed a small, shining object which he set down at the edge of his superior's desk. "They shot this out at us when I ordered them to stand by for boarding," he said. "It was contained in a small, translucent capsule which I picked up with a magnetic trawl. It's just a model in miniature, but take a good look at it, sir; would you care to make the acquaintance of a creature like that in the flesh?"

Commander Gurney's eyes widened and his mouth twitched slightly. "In the name of all that's unholy, Langford, what _is_ it?" he muttered.

Langford shook his head. "I wish I knew, sir. It looks quite a bit like a praying mantis. A little, metallic praying mantis six inches tall. But it doesn't behave like one!"

* * * * *

The statuette on Gurney's desk seemed chillingly lifelike in the cold light. It had been fashioned with flawless craftsmanship; its upraised forelimbs were leaf green, its abdomen salmon pink, and its gauzy wings shone with a dull, metallic luster as Langford turned it carefully about.

Gurney couldn't help noticing, with a little shudder, that its mouth-parts consisted of a cutting mandible, and a long, coiled membrane like the ligula of a honeybee. Huge, compound eyes occupied the upper half of the metal insect's face.

Gurney's hand had gone out, and was about to close on the little statue; but something in Langford's stare made him change his mind. As his hand whipped back he fastened his gaze on Langford's face with the ire of a peevish child denied access to a jampot.

"What in blazes has that to do with your failure to obey orders?" he demanded, with explosive vehemence. "That ship must have used an interstellar space-warp drive to appear out of nowhere in the middle of the Asteroid Belt. And you deliberately let it slip away from you!"

Langford shut his eyes before replying. He saw again the myriad stars of space, the dull red disk of Mars and the far-off gleam of the great outer planets. He saw the luminous hull of the alien ship looming up out of the void. An instant before, the viewpane had been filled with a sprinkling of very distant stars with a faint nebulosity behind them. The ship had appeared with the suddenness of an image forming on a screen, out of the dark matrix of empty space.

Langford leaned forward, a desperate urgency in his stare. "Mere alienage doesn't justify the crime of murder, sir!" he said. "Attacking an alien race without weighing the outcome would have been an act of criminal folly, charged with great danger to ourselves."

Commander Gurney shook his head in angry disagreement. "Just how would you define murder, Langford?" he demanded. "If a highly intelligent buzzsaw came at you would you bare your throat?"

Langford ignored the question. "Violence breeds violence, sir," he said, with patient insistence. "Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose the inhabitants of another planet attacked you without giving you a chance to prove your friendliness?"

Langford's eyes held a dogged conviction. "Remember, sir--to issue a warning is an act of forbearance. No reasonable man could mistake a warning for an aggressive act. If their weapons are superior to ours, or they are superior to us in other, truly terrifying ways, they proved their friendliness by warning us. Would you have had me attack their ship without studying that warning?"

Gurney's eyes had returned to the statue. He seemed fascinated by the glitter of its folded wings. He had a sudden vision of the metal insect spreading its wings and taking off with a low, horrible droning.

Suddenly there was a dull throbbing in the Patrol commander's temples. A frightful dread took possession of him, so that he could hardly breathe; in his mind's gaze he saw a vast, stationary plain that seemed to hang suspended in midair above a fiery sea. Sweeping straight toward him, dark against the glow, were hundreds of flying mantis shapes with their arms upraised in the glow.

Gurney shuddered and gripped the arms of his chair. He transfixed Langford with an accusing stare. "Man, if you'd engaged them in open combat we'd at least know where we stand! We could have put the entire patrol on the alert. Now they've given us the slip and may show up anywhere, armed with weapons that could wipe out civilization overnight."

"I chose what I believed to be the lesser of two evils, sir," Langford said, stepping closer to the desk. His eyes rested briefly on the metal insect; then they returned to Gurney's face.

"There were two metal insects in that capsule, sir. I'm going to show you exactly what happened to the one I experimented with."

* * * * *

Langford's forefinger whipped out as he spoke, striking the little statue sharply on its folded wing membranes. For an instant nothing happened; then, with appalling suddenness, the metal insect came to life. It spread its wings and ascended straight up into the air.

Gurney leapt to his feet with a startled cry. As he did so the flying insect's wings blurred and another pair of wings came into view behind them. The wings were shadowy at first, but they quickly solidified, taking on a glittering sheen. Preying arms sprouted from them. Then, even more quickly, a big-eyed head and a writhing, salmon-pink abdomen.

The instant the second shape became a complete insect it whipped away from its parent image with a furious buzzing. As Gurney stared up in horror the original insect gave off eight more buzzing replicas of itself. They darted swiftly up toward the ceiling and circled furiously about, their wings gleaming in the cold light.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light. The flying replicas vanished and the original insect thudded to the floor. For an instant the little horror squirmed; then lay motionless.

"It's playing possum!" Langford said.

Langford advanced as he spoke and raised his foot. The instant he started to bring his heel down the metal insect shivered convulsively, lifted its huge eyes and stared up at him.

Then an incredible thing happened. There was no need for him to crush the insect; methodically and with cold deliberation it began to _dismember itself_, tearing off its wings with its own sharp claws, and ripping its abdomen to shreds. After a moment, it lay still.

Langford turned and stared soberly at Gurney. "If _we_ wanted to warn _them_ we could send them a little mechanical man, complete in every detail armed with miniature weapons. They've simply sent us a replica of themselves, a model in miniature. It's so unbelievably complex that we could learn nothing by subjecting it to mechanical tests. But we don't have to know what makes it tick.

"They've warned us that they can multiply by fission, so rapidly that they could overrun the Earth in a few hours; they've also warned us that if they find themselves facing impossible odds, they won't hesitate to destroy themselves."

Commander Gurney had returned to his desk and stood facing Langford, his face as grim as death. "I quite agree," he said. "That was--an ugly warning. Langford, letting that ship get away was worse than treasonable. Your twenty minutes are up!"

He was reaching for the communication disk on the far side of his desk when Langford reached inside his uniform for the second time. When the big man withdrew his hand he was clasping an automatic pistol.

Gurney took a swift step backward, his eyes widening in alarm. "So the guards forgot to search you!"

"I'm afraid they did, sir!" Langford said, quietly. "Sit down. I'm going to ask a small favor. A port clearance permit, signed and sealed by you; if you give me your word you won't move until I've cleared the port I won't tie you up."

Gurney sat down and stared at the young space officer in scornful mockery. "Suppose I refuse to promise anything. Would you blast me down in cold blood?"

Langford hesitated. His jaw tightened and a candid defiance came into his stare. "No!" he said.

"Then if you're not prepared to murder me you haven't got what it takes to exact a promise!" Gurney said.

Langford shook his head. "That's sheer sophistry," he pointed out. "I've just laid my cards on the table. If you take advantage of my good faith you'll be hitting below the belt. You see, sir, there's something I've _got_ to do; if I fail I'll come back and give myself up."

For a moment not a muscle of Gurney's face moved. Then he shrugged and glanced at his wrist watch. "I'll sit perfectly still for exactly fifteen minutes, Langford," he said. "That should give you sufficient time to clear the port."

His eyes narrowed to steely slits. "_But heaven help you when I move!_"

"Fair enough!" Langford said.

Ten minutes later the Patrol captain was climbing into a small jet plane at the edge of the spaceport. Far to the east the skyline of Mars City rose above the horizon like a glittering copper penny swimming in a nebulous haze. A penny flipped in desperation that had miraculously come heads.

Part of the wonder he felt was due to his knowledge that he would soon be flying straight through the penny toward a tall white building he would have braved the sun to scale.

2

A grave-faced physician met Langford at the end of the corridor and beckoned him into a small white-walled room. The physician was not talkative; he didn't need to be. The girl who sat under the bright lamps with her eyes swathed in bandages told Langford all he cared to know.

Her lips were smiling and she held out her arms as her husband came into the room. Langford went up to her, and kissed her tenderly on the cheek, his big, awkward hands caressing her hair that lay in a tumbled dark mass on her shoulders.

She had tried to keep back the tears, but they came now, so that her body quivered with the intensity of her emotion. "I'm going to see, darling!" she whispered; "I know I'm going to see again. I wouldn't let them remove the bandages until you came."

"Sure you are!" Langford said, gruffly. "And you'll have better sight than ever before! Both kinds of sight, just as you had before!"

"I was afraid you might be hurt, darling!" Joan Langford whispered, running her forefinger down his wet cheek as she held his head close. "I used the other sight that makes me so different, and terrifies people much more than it should!"

"You should not have done that!" Langford said, scowling; "I was in no real danger!"

"You were being hunted like a criminal!"

She turned her head toward Dr. Crendon as she spoke. The physician looked away, feeling her gaze on him through the bandages.

"The law of compensation, child," he said, gently. "Mutants are clairvoyant; their vision is piercingly sharp where vision matters most. When nature confers a priceless gift she sometimes withdraws a lesser one; no one knows why, not even the biologists." He smiled, "There I go, personifying the impersonal again. Perhaps ordinary sight will someday be vestigial in all of us."

Langford glanced up. The physician was pressing his finger to his lips and gesturing toward the door. Langford got quickly to his feet. A chill wind seemed to blow into the room, driving all the warmth from his mind.

Just outside the door Dr. Crendon turned and spoke in a cautious whisper. "I haven't given up hope!" he said. "But the chances are not too good, we don't know why, but mutants have defective vision from birth even when their eyes are normal."

Langford nodded, "I know that, doctor!"

The physician's voice became gentler. "We know so little about mutants. Fifty thousand of them in the world, perhaps--born too early or too late! An inward vision that can pierce the barriers of sense and see to the heart of things. And an outward vision that's defective, faltering, almost a blind man's vision. Clairvoyance and failing sight--it just doesn't make sense."

"Joan makes sense," Langford said. "If she were stone blind I'd still worship her."

Dr. Crendon held his hands straight out before him and looked down at them. "I did my best," he said, simply. "There were slight peculiarities of structure in the choroid but I'm sure that the new cornea will adjust. It's the retina itself, the innermost nervous tunic of the eye, that I'm worried about."

He paused, then went on quickly: "A mutant's retina is hypersensitive. It responds to light in a peculiar way and has a tendency to distort images. But that distortion vanishes when the mind becomes really active."

Langford looked at him. "Just what are you trying to tell me?"

"I'm not sure I know!" There were little puckers between Crendon's eyes. "Put it this way. If she doesn't brood too much, if she leads an active life and has complete confidence in her inner vision, her sight may improve. I think the failure of a mutant's sight may be partly due to--well, a kind of fear. Mutants feel cut off from 'normal' humanity--whatever that may be--and are tempted to use their inner vision as a means of escape. And when they do that the outer vision dims to the vanishing point."

"Then you think--"

"Make her feel that she can be of assistance to you in every moment of your waking life. Give her some important task to perform. Keep her with you, lad, as much as you can. She's missed you these many months. Make her realize you can't get along without her."

* * * * *

Langford's eyes held a dawning wonder; he seemed like a man from whom an immense weight had been lifted. "I was just about to tell you that I need her inward vision," he said. "Not only the eyes you've done your best to restore, but her powers of clairvoyance."

"You mean that?"

"Why should I lie to you, doctor?"

For the second time Crendon smiled. "No reason, I suppose. But I thought you might be deceiving yourself by pretending you needed her when you didn't. You've been under something of a strain."

It was Langford's turn to smile. "You don't know the half of it."

"Oh, yes I do! She saw you crossing the skyport with scanner beams trained on you; she saw you playing hide and seek with annihilation. I had to give her a sedative injection to quiet her."

Langford did not move. Something in Crendon's face told him he was not expected to say anything.

"So that makes me an accessory!" Crendon said, the smile still on his lips. "Her vision went blank when I decided she'd seen enough for her own peace of mind."

He nodded. "I didn't know whether you managed to escape or not; it kept me on the tetherhooks until you showed up in my office twenty minutes ago. I've always liked you, Langford; I flatter myself I know an honest man when I see one."

His hand went out and tightened on Langford's palm. "Come on, now! We've got to remove those bandages before she reads my thoughts, and knows how scared I get when I operate. Mutants know what humbugs we all are, Langford; they can see all the flaws in us, and if they can still trust us and believe in us despite that, they must be the forerunners of a new humanity in more ways than we dream!"

If Joan Langford had eavesdropped, using her strange sight, she gave no sign when her husband returned to her side. The conversation in the corridor had taken him from her for the barest instant, but that instant had seemed like an eternity to Langford and the inner vision of his wife.

For how could 'time' be measured in minutes or hours by a woman wearing a blindfold, shut away in the dark, and waiting a verdict that could cause the future to slough away into chill gulfs? And how could 'time' have any meaning when the stars faded out of the sky and a sunset gun boomed farewell to the joys of the physical world? And to one who loved and hoped--could 'time' be measured by the moving hands of a clock?

Quickly Langford's fingers interlocked with those of his wife. "This is it, darling!" he said.

Crendon's fingers fumbled a little as he turned Joan's head gently from the light and began to unwind the bandages.

"Don't open your eyes until I've removed the gauze pads," he warned. "And don't look directly at the light. At first you may not see at all; you must be prepared for that."

* * * * *

Crendon hated himself for his sternness, but experience had taught him that it was best to arouse a faint antagonism in his patients; it prevented them from regarding him as a miracle worker. He wanted them to face reality with courage, for healing depended on many things and was often a matter of blind, fanatical trust.

"Now then!" he said.

As he spoke he raised the last fold of the bandage, and carefully removed the small, moist pads beneath, one from each eye. He straightened, his back to the light.