Clifford Simak: Shadow Of Life

“I see,” said Lathrop, He tapped his fingers on the table top. Buster scurried to the other side, as far as he could get from the tapping fingers.

Lathrop shot a quick glance at Elmer. “Where does that leave us?”

“Just where we started,” Elmer said. “You’ve made Buster useless to me, but that is of little matter. Another robot can be sent me.”

“Maybe Buster will grow up again,” Lathrop suggested.

Elmer was in no mood for jokes. “You have the weapon,” he went on, “but that is worthless against me. With Buster gone, you have cheated yourself out of a quick death in case you refuse to have your memories replaced. But that is inconsequential, too. I can let you starve.”

“What a happy soul you are!” said Carter, dryly.

“I suppose I should say I regret the situation,” Elmer said. “But I don’t. You must understand I can’t let you go, In order that the Martian plan may go on, the knowledge you hold must never reach your race. For once your race knew the Martians were alive, they would find a way to ferret them out.”

“And,” suggested Lathrop, “the Evil Beings must continue to be something mystic, something not quite real, something for fools to believe in.”

Elmer was frank. “That is right. For if your people knew the truth they would take direct action. And that would be wrong. One cannot fight the Evil Ones, one can only hide.”

“How are you so sure?” snapped Carter.

“The Martians,” said Elmer, solemnly, “exhausted every other possibility. They proved there could be no other way.”

Lathrop chuckled in his corner. “There is one thing you have forgotten, Elmer.”

“What is that?”

“Harper,” said Lathrop. “What are you going to do about Harper?”

“Harper,” declared Elmer, “will leave here in a few days. He will never know what happened. Not even that you were here.”

“Oh, yes, he will,” said Lathrop. “I just talked to him. On my way to see you.”

Elmer writhed uneasily. “That’s impossible. Buster locked him in his room.”

“Locks,” declared Lathrop, “don’t mean a thing to Harper.”

Carter started at the tone of Lathrop’s voice. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Harper,” Lathrop started to say, “is a—” but a scream from the next room cut him short. A scream followed by the snickering of a blaster.

The two men sprang to their feet, stood in breathless silence. Elmer was a streak of fog flashing through the air.

“Come on!” yelled Lathrop. Together the two humans followed Elmer, who had faded through the door.

Starlight from the tall windows lit the other room with spangled light and shade. In it figures moved, unreal figures, like trick photography on a stereo vision screen.

Beside one of the windows stood a man, blaster at his hip. Advancing upon him, crouching like a beast of prey stalking food, was another man. The smell of burned flesh tainted the room as the blaster whispered.

Something had happened to the painting of “The Watchers.” It had swung on a pivot in its center, revealing behind it a cavern of blackness. Starlight was shattered by a glinting object that stood within the darkness.

The man who held the blaster was talking, talking in a baffled, ferocious, savage undertone, talking to the thing that advanced upon him, a rattle of words that had no meaning, half profanity, half pure terror, all bordering on madness.

“Alf!” shrieked Carter. But Alf didn’t seem to hear him, went on talking. The thing that stalked him, however, swung about, huddled for an indecisive instant.

“Lights!” yelled Lathrop. “Turn on those lights!”

He heard Carter fumbling in the darkness, hunting for the switch. Scarcely breathing, he stood and waited, the Martian weapon in his hand.

The man in the center of the room was shambling toward him now, but he knew he didn’t dare to shoot until the lights were on. He had to be sure what happened.

The switch clicked and Lathrop blinked in the sudden flood of light. Before him crouched Peter Harper, clothes ripped to smoldering ribbons, face half eaten away by the blaster, one arm gone — crouching as if to spring.

Lathrop snapped the weapon up, pressed the button. The blue radiance flamed out, bored into Peter Harper.

There was no shrinking this time. The spear of blue seemed to slam the man back on the floor and pin him there. He writhed and blurred and ran together. The clothes were gone, the eaten face, with the scraggly, pink whiskers disappeared. Instead came taloned claws and a face that had terrible eyes and a parrot beak. A thing that mewed and howled and yammered. A thing that struggled in vicious convulsions and melted — melted and stank.

Carter stared in horror, hand covering his nose. Lathrop released the pressure on the trip, held the gun alertly.

“One of the things from space,” he said, his voice tense and hard. “One of the Evil Beings.”

Alf staggered down the room, like a drunken man.

“I just climbed through the window,” he mumbled. “I just climbed through the window—”

“How did you get in here?” Carter yelled at him. “Elmer has the city screened.”

“The screen,” said Elmer’s thoughts, “works only one way. It keeps you in, it doesn’t keep you out.”

Carter turned his attention to the mess upon the floor, trying not to gag. “He wanted something,” he said. “He came for something.”

“He came because he was afraid,” Lathrop declared. “There is something here those races are afraid of. Something they had to get at and destroy.”

Alf grabbed at Carter’s arm. “Charlie,” he whimpered, “tell me if it’s true. Maybe I’m drunk. Maybe I got them D.T.’s again.”

Carter jerked away. “What’s the matter with you, Alf?” he snapped.

“The Purple Jug,” gasped Alf. “So help me, it’s the Purple Jug.” They saw it then.

The Purple Jug was the thing that had stood in the cavern back of “The Watchers.” It was the thing that had shattered the starlight.

It was a thing of beauty, of elegance and grace. A piece of art that snatched one’s breath away, that made a hurt rise in the throat and strangle one.

“It wasn’t like you said,” Alf accused Carter. “It wasn’t just a myth.”

Something flashed above the jug’s narrow lip, a silvery streak that struck fire with the light and soared like a burnished will-o’-the-wisp out into the room. Something that swelled and grew — grew until it was fist size and one could see it was a tiny space craft.

“One of the Martian ships!” yelled Lathrop. “One of them coming out of the subatomic!”

And as the last words fell from his lips, he stiffened, grew rigid with the knowledge that snapped into his brain.

“You’re quite right,” said Elmer. “The Purple Jug is the home of the Martian race. It contains the subatomic universe to which they fled.”

Lathrop glanced up, saw the shimmery blot that was Elmer up against the roof.

“Then the jug was what Harper wanted,” Carter said, his voice just a bit too calm, calm to keep the terror out.

The spaceship had settled on the floor, was rapidly expanding.

“Quick, Elmer,” urged Lathrop, “tell me how the Martians grew small.”

Elmer was silent.

“Buster said it was tied up with the fourth dimension,” Lathrop said. “I can’t figure what the fourth dimension has to do with it.”

Elmer still was silent, silent so long Lathrop thought he wasn’t going to speak. But finally his thoughts came, spaced and measured with care, precise: