William Tenn - Of Men And Monsters

Here and there, high among the rods, where a horizontal crossed a vertical, there was a small, semitransparent cube at the junction point. The light was sharply reflected from these cubes, making it difficult to look at them steadily, but some of them had strange shadows flickering inside them. Did the shadows have anything to do with a weapon they might be able to use?

Eric found it was impossible to stare upward very long; he looked back at Walter to see how the chief scout was progressing. Not well: the man’s face was almost purple with the overseasoned mixture of effort and fear. His feet were beginning to splay; his knees were folding forward and down. He wouldn’t make it.

Taking a deep breath, Eric flung himself away from the relative safety of the rod and leaped across the floor. By the time he reached Walter, the man had almost collapsed. He grabbed Eric’s arm with both hands—his eyes were tightly shut by now—and would have pulled him down if fright had not so thoroughly loosened his muscles.

“The wall—” he babbled. “Give it up—let’s get back to the wall!”

“Easy,” Eric said. “Easy, Walter. We’re almost there.”

He guided the Weapon-Seeker the last few paces to the rod. Walter held on to the upright post as desperately as Eric had and fought for breath. It was no simple thing for a human being to leave the wall in Monster territory.

Fortunately, there were plenty of upright rods in this structure. They weren’t thick, but they were solid: they would give the feeling of cover and at least the semblance of cover to all the men in the expedition. But he and Walter would have to distribute them down the rows of rods—no point in having too many men grouped around any one post. And they’d be dealing with panic-stricken lunatics who would tend to hang on as if for life itself to the first solid things they encountered.

Roy came across next. He had a hard time, but he didn’t do nearly as badly as Walter. It was obvious that the younger the man, the more resilient he was psychologically, and the more capable of taking the shattering experience of negotiating open Monster territory. They guided Roy to a rod: he wound himself around it for a dozen tortured breaths before coming to and taking a look up, down, forward, backward.

The rest of the expedition came over in groups of three. They had their hands full with men who slumped to the floor and wound themselves up in tight little balls of refusal, with men whose eyes suddenly rolled up in their heads and who wandered jerkily off in this direction or in that, with men who started to run away and who would bite and kick and gouge when they were caught. But fully half of the men made it across by themselves.

When they had been distributed, one or two men to each upright post climbing above their heads into emptiness, Eric, Roy and Walter discussed the next move with Arthur.

“I think we’ll stay here for a while and take a break for a meal,” the Organizer decided. “Do you agree? I think we should. We’ll wait till everybody calms down and comes back to normal. Meanwhile, do you three feel like going on ahead arid taking a look at what we’ve got coming up? How many more open spaces—you know, problems we might be facing—anything that looks like a weapon—whatever strikes you as a good idea.”

Eric and Roy followed Walter to the last row of standing rods. They shaded their eyes and stared across a long empty stretch of floor—to where there was another rod-like structure, very much like the one they were in.

“What do you think those shiny cubes are?” Eric asked, pointing. Here and there, high in the other structure, were semitransparent boxes just like the ones above them. A few contained liquid shadows.

“I don’t know,” Walter admitted. “But I intend to find out. They’re what I noticed when I passed this way before. They look as if they might be useful. Only, how will we get up to them? Think a spry man might climb up one of these rods?”

Eric and Roy considered the height and the lack of handholds. They both shook their heads. The Weapon-Seeker nodded ruefully.

“Then there’s only one thing to do. We go on until we find a structure low enough to climb. Monster furniture comes in all kinds of different sizes. We’ll find a low one with some shiny boxes close to the floor. And we’ll find other stuff, too. In this place, I have a real strong feel—”

“Hold it!” Eric grabbed his arm. “Listen! Do you hear it?”

The short, heavy man, listened anxiously for a moment, then shook his head. “Not a thing. What do you hear?”

But Roy had also tensed at Eric’s warning and leaned forward alertly. “Something’s coming this way. It’s not much of a sound yet, mostly vibration. You can feel it with your feet.”

The Weapon-Seeker listened again. This time he nodded rapidly. “Monsters. And more than one.” He whirled to face the expedition, strung out at the bases of the rods behind them. Pointing his forefinger straight up in the air, he rotated one hand rapidly over his head. This, the most fearful alarm of all to any band, had to be given silently. It meant: “ Monsters are upon us—up there—look out!”

No reaction from the others, and the three of them groaned to themselves. The members of the expedition were stuffing food into their mouths, taking swallows out of canteens, chatting together in low, friendly voices. No one was bothering to watch the scouts.

What a bunch, Eric raged hopelessly. Baby warriors, his uncle, Thomas the Trap-Smasher, would have called them.

The rumbling noises were getting louder. Walter made up his mind to dispense with expedition security precautions. “You damn fools!” he yelled. “ Monsters! Don’t you hear them?”

That got a reaction. Every man leaped to his feet, knapsacks and canteens rolling away. White faces turned rapidly in their direction, looked off to examine the brilliantly lit spaces above.

Eric slapped the backs of the two scouts on either side of him. “Let’s get out of here,” he said urgently. This was traditionally an every-man-for-himself situation among the peoples of the burrows. He pointed across the floor to the other rod-like structure. “There! They’ll be after the bulk of the men in this one. Let’s go!”

Without waiting for a reply, he darted out into the open. From the corners of his eyes, he was conscious as he ran of huge gray Monsters materializing out of the whiteness on all sides. Those things could move fast when they wanted to! And in relative silence, too—the floor was vibrating no more than it had this morning when the creature watching them had walked away.

He ran fast, forcing every bit of speed out of his legs, not at all aware now of the openness of the space he was on. The only thought in his mind concerned the Monsters all about him. Would he be stepped on? When? Would he feel it when it happened—or would it be over too fast?

A moment before he reached the other set of rods, somebody passed him and leaped into hiding among the posts of the structure. Roy the Runner, starting late, had the legs to make up for lost time. Then Eric was there too, cowering behind a rod. He watched Walter the Weapon Seeker stumble the last couple of paces and fall gasping two rods away from him.

But the rest of the expedition was in trouble. The men scrambled about, mindlessly, shrieking, inside the rod structure they had quit. Five Monsters now stood around it in silence, making any escape to the outside almost impossible.

The Monsters had known where the expedition lay hidden—they had made directly for it. And they were doing something in an organized fashion. What?

Eric strained his eyes to see, but the movements of the gray bodies were unfamiliar and unclear. Suddenly, from each one of them, a long green rope dropped to the floor. The ropes seemed almost alive: as they lay on the floor they quivered and bits of darker color slid up and down their coils.