"I'll tell you later. How's the patient?"
"Doing fine. Seems to have recovered completely."
"How many of the tadpoles came out with me?"
"About six. We're keeping them in the same low-oxygen atmosphere as the creature itself. We're going to study them. We figure that if they're parasites—"
"They're not parasites. I finally came to a conclusion about them. They're the young."
"What?"
"The young. If you take good care of them, they'll eventually grow to be as big as the mother-monster you've got in the ship."
"Good God, where will we keep them?"
"That's your worry. Maybe you'd better expand that zoo you're preparing. What you'll do for money to feed them, though, I don't know."
"But what—"
"The trouble with that monster—its `illness'—was merely that it was gravid."
"Gravid?"
"That means pregnant," exclaimed Jerry.
"I know what it means." The Captain flushed. "Look, do we have to have these kids in here while we discuss this?"
"Why not? They're a doctor's children. They know what it's all about. They've seen calves and other animals being born."
"Lots of times," said Martia.
"Confined as it was on the ship, your beast couldn't get the exercise it needed. And the young couldn't get themselves born."
"But that was the digestive tract you went down—"
"What of it? Are all animals born the same way? Ask the average kid where a baby grows, and he'll tell you that it's in the stomach."
"Some kids are dopes," said Jerry.
"They wouldn't be in this case. What better place to get a chance at the food the mother eats, in all stages from raw to completely digested? All that beast needed to give birth was a little exercise. You gave it some from the outside, but not enough. I finished the job by injecting some of its own digestive fluid into the flesh. That caused a pretty little reaction."
The Captain scratched his head. "Doctor, you did a good job. How would you like to take care of that beast permanently? I could recommend you—"
"To go down inside that monster again? No, thanks. From now on, I treat nothing but small monsters. Sheep, cows—and human beings."
There was a pounding of feet in the hallway. Then the door swung in, violently. Flashbulbs that gave invisible light began to pop with inaudible bursts of high-frequency sound. Cameras pointed menacingly at him and sent his image winging to Earth and far-off planets. Reporters began to fire their questions.
"My God," he muttered wearily, "who let these animals in here? They're worse than the ones I met inside the blue pool."
"Be nice to them, dear," chided Maida gently. "They're turning you into a great man."
Then Maida and Jerry and Martia grouped themselves around him, and the cameras caught them too. The proud look on their faces was something to see. And he realized that he was glad for their sake.
Opportunity had knocked, and when he had opened the door to it, it had proved to be an exacting guest. Still, he hadn't been a bad host—not a bad host at all, he thought. And slowly his features relaxed into a tired and immediately famous grin.
ROBERT BLOCH
Daybroke
With indignation Bob Bloch denies a libeclass="underline" "It is not true that I am a monster! I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in my desk drawer." Heart he has (no matter whose); he also has wit and insight. And if sometimes what he has to tell us is monstrous (witness his recent shuddery suspense novel Psycho, or, for that matter, the following), it is not that he exaggerates a picture, but only that his perceptions are so clear. Almost any writer could have conceived the setting he describes below, but only Robert Bloch could have made it into—
Up in the sky the warheads whirled, and the thunder of their passing shook the mountain.
Deep in his vaulted sanctuary he sat, godlike and inscrutable, marking neither the sparrow's nor the missile's fall. There was no need to leave his shelter to stare down at the city.
He knew what was happening—had known ever since early in the evening when the television flickered and died. An announcer in the holy white garb of the healing arts had been delivering an important message about the world's most popular laxative—the one most people preferred, the one four out of five doctors used them-selves. Midway in his praise of this amazing new medical discovery he had paused and advised the audience to stand by for a special bulletin.
But the bulletin never came; instead the screen went blank and the thunder boomed.
All night long the mountain trembled, and the seated man trembled too; not with anticipation but with realization. He had expected this, of course, and that was why he was here. Others had talked about it for years; there had been wild rumors and solemn warnings and much muttering in taverns. But the rumor-mongers and the warning-sounders and the tavern-mutterers had made no move. They had stayed in the city and he alone had fled.
Some of them, he knew, had stayed to stave off the inevitable end as best they could, and these he saluted for their courage. Others had attempted to ignore the future, and these he detested for their blindness. And all of them he pitied.
For he had realized, long ago, that courage was not enough and that ignorance was no salvation. Wise words and foolish words are one—they will not halt the storm. And when the storm approaches, it is best to flee.
So he had prepared for himself this mountain retreat, high over the city, and here he was safe; would be safe for years to come. Other men of equal wealth could have done the same, but they were too wise or too foolish to face reality. So while they spread their rumors and sounded their warnings and muttered in their cups, he built his sanctuary; lead-guarded, amply provisioned, and stocked with every need for years to come, including even a generous supply of the world's most popular laxative.
Dawn came at last and the echoes of the thunder died, and he went to a special, shielded place where he could sight his spyglass at the city. He stared and he squinted, but there was nothing to be seen—nothing but swirling clouds that billowed blackly and rolled redly across the hazed horizon.
Then he knew that he must go down to the city if he wanted to find out, and made due preparations.
There was a special suit to wear, a cunning seamless garment of insulated cloth and lead, difficult and costly to obtain. It was a top secret suit; the kind only Pentagon generals possess. They cannot procure them for their wives, and they must steal them for their mistresses. But he had one. He donned it now.
An elevated platform aided his descent to the base of the mountain, and there his car was waiting. He drove out, the shielded doors closing automatically behind hint, and. started for the city. Through the eyepiece of his insulated helmet he stared out at a yellowish fog, and he drove slowly, even though he encountered no traffic nor any sign of life.
After a time the fog lifted, and he could see the countryside. Yellow trees and yellow grass stood stiffly silhouetted against a yellow sky in which great clouds writhed and whirled.
Van Gogh's work, he told himself, knowing it was a lie. For no artist's hand had smashed the windows of the farmhouses, peeled the paint from the sides of the barns, or squeezed the warm breath from the herds huddling in the fields, standing fright-frozen but dead.
He drove along to the broad arterial leading to the city; an arterial which ordinarily swarmed with the multi-colored corpuscles of motor vehicles. But there were no cars moving today, not in this artery.
Not until he neared the suburbs did he see them, and then he rounded a curve and was halfway upon the vanguard before he panicked and halted in a ditch.