The Star Beast Read online

  “John Thomas!” his mother called out sharply. “You’ll do no such thing!”

  “Mother, you had better keep out of this, too. I was just going to say…”

  “You’re not to say anything. Your honor, he is…”

  “Order!” Greenberg interrupted. “None of this is binding. Let the lad speak.”

  “Thank you, sir. I was through, anyway. But I’ve got something to say to you, sir, too. Lummie is timid. I can handle him because he trusts me—but if you think I’m going to let a lot of strangers poke him and prod him and ask him silly questions and put him through mazes and things, you’d just better think again—because I won’t stand for it! Lummie is sick right now. He’s had more excitement than is good for him. The poor thing…”

  Lummox had waited for John Thomas longer than he liked because he was not sure where John Thomas had gone. He had seen him disappear in the crowd without being sure whether or not Johnnie had gone into the big house nearby. He had tried to sleep after he woke up the first time, but people had come poking around, and he had had to wake himself up repeatedly because his watchman circuit did not have much judgment. Not that he thought of it that way; he was merely aware that he had come to with his alarms jangling time after time.

  At last he decided that it was time he located John Thomas and went home. Figuratively, he tore up Betty’s orders; after all, Betty was not Johnnie.

  So he stepped up his hearing to “search” and tried to locate Johnnie. He listened for a long time, heard Betty’s voice several times—but he was not interested in Betty. He continued to listen.

  There was Johnnie now! He tuned out everything else and listened. He was in the big house all right. Hey! Johnnie sounded just the way he did when he had arguments with his mother. Lummox spread his hearing a little and tried to find out what was going on.

  They were talking about things he knew nothing about. But one thing was clear: somebody was being mean to Johnnie. His mother? Yes, be heard her once and he knew that she had the privilege of being mean to Johnnie, just as Johnnie could talk mean to him and it didn’t really matter. But there was somebody else…several others, and not a one of them had any such privilege.

  Lummox decided that it was time to act. He heaved to his feet.

  John Thomas got no farther in his peroration than “The poor thing…” There were screams and shouts from outside; everybody in court turned to look. The noises got rapidly closer and Mr. Greenberg was just going to send the bailiff to find out about it when suddenly it became unnecessary. The door to the courtroom bulged, then burst off its hinges. The front end of Lummox came in, tearing away part of the wall, and ending with him wearing the door frame as a collar. He opened his mouth. “Johnnie!” he piped.

  “Lummox!” cried his friend. “Stand still. Stay right where you are. Don’t move an inch!”

  Of all the faces in the room, that of Special Commissioner Greenberg presented the most interesting mixed expression.

  CHAPTER V

  A Matter of Viewpoint

  THE Right Honorable Mr. Kiku, Under Secretary for Spatial Affairs, opened a desk drawer and looked over his collection of pills. There was no longer any doubt; his stomach ulcer was acting up again. He selected one and turned wearily back to his tasks.

  He read an order from the departmental Bureau of Engineering grounding all Pelican-class interplanetary ships until certain modifications were accomplished. Mr. Kiku did not bother to study the attached engineering report, but signed approval, checked “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY” and dropped the papers in the outgoing basket. Engineering safety in space was the responsibility of BuEng; Kiku himself knew nothing of engineering and did not wish to; he would back up the decisions of his chief engineer, or fire him and get another one.

  But he realized glumly that the financial lords who owned the Pelican-class ships would soon be knocking the ear of the Secretary…and, shortly thereafter, the Secretary, out of his depth and embarrassed by the political power wielded by those fine gentlemen, would dump them in his lap.

  He was beginning to have his doubts about this new Secretary; he was not shaping up.

  The next item was for his information only and had been routed to him because of standing orders that anything concerning the Secretary must reach his desk, no matter how routine. This item appeared routine and unimportant: according to the synopsis an organization calling itself “The Friends of Lummox” and headed by a Mrs. Beulah Murgatroyd was demanding an audience with the Secretary of Spatial Affairs; they were being shunted to the Special Assistant Secretary (Public Relations).

  Mr. Kiku read no farther. Wes Robbins would kiss them to death and neither he nor the Secretary would be disturbed. He amused himself with the idea of punishing the Secretary by inflicting Mrs. Murgatroyd on him, but it was merely a passing fantasy; the Secretary’s time must be reserved for really important cornerstone-layings, not wasted on crackpot societies. Any organization calling itself “The Friends of This or That” always consisted of someone with an axe to grind, plus the usual assortment of prominent custard heads and professional stuffed shirts. But such groups could be a nuisance…therefore never grant them the Danegeld they demanded.

  He sent it to files and picked up a memorandum from BuEcon: a virus had got into the great yeast plant at St. Louis; the projection showed a possibility of protein shortage and more drastic rationing. Even starvation on Earth was no direct interest to Mr. Kiku. But he stared thoughtfully while the slide rule in his head worked a few figures, then he called as assistant. “Wong, have you seen BuEcon Ay0428?”

  “Uh, I believe so, boss. The St. Louis yeast thing?”

  “Yes. What have you done about it?”

  “Er, nothing. Not my pidgin, I believe.”

  “You believe, eh? Our out-stations are your business, aren’t they? Look over your shipping schedules for the next eighteen months, correlate with Ay0428, and project. You may have to buy Australian sheep…and actually get them into our possession. We can’t have our people going hungry because some moron in St Louis dropped his socks in a yeast vat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Kiku turned back to work. He realized unhappily that he had been too brusque with Wong. His present frame of mind, he knew, was not Wong’s fault, but that of Dr. Ftaeml.

  No, not Ftaeml’s fault…his own! He knew that he should not harbor race prejudice, not in this job. He was aware intellectually that he himself was relatively safe from persecution that could arise from differences of skin and hair and facial contour for the one reason that weird creatures such as Dr. Ftaeml had made the differences between breeds of men seem less important.

  Still, there it was…he hated Ftaeml’s very shadow. He could not help it.

  If the so-and-so would wear a turban, it would help…instead of walking around with those dirty snakes on his head wiggling like a can of worms. But oh no! the Rargyllians were proud of them. There was a suggestion in their manner that anyone without them was not quite human.

  Come now!… Ftaeml was a decent chap. He made a note to invite Ftaeml to dinner, not put it off any longer. After all, he would make certain of deep-hypnotic preparation; the dinner need not be difficult. But his ulcer gave a fresh twinge at the thought.

  Kiku did not hold it against the Rargyllian that he had dropped an impossible problem in the department’s tired lap; impossible problems were routine. It was just…well, why didn’t the monster get a haircut?

  The vision of the Chesterfieldian Dr. Ftaeml with a shingle cut, his scalp all lumps and bumps, enabled Mr. Kiku to smile; he resumed work feeling better. The next item was a brief of a field report…oh yes! Sergei Greenberg. Good boy, Sergei. He was reaching for his pen to approve the recommendation even before he had finished reading it.

  Instead of signing, he stared for almost half a second, then punched a button. “Files! Send up the full report of Mr. Greenberg’s field job, the one he got back from a few days ago.”

  “Do you have the re
ference number, sir?”

  “That intervention matter…you find it. Wait…it’s, uh, Rt0411, dated Saturday. I want it right now.”

  He had only time to dispose of half a dozen items when, seconds later, the delivery tube went thwong! and a tiny cylinder popped out on his desk. He stuck it into his reading machine and relaxed, with his right thumb resting on a pressure plate to control the speed with which the print fled across the screen.

  In less than seven minutes he had zipped through not only a full transcript of the trial but also Greenberg’s report of all else that had happened. Mr. Kiku could read at least two thousand words a minute with the aid of a machine; oral recordings and personal interviews he regarded as time wasters. But when the machine clicked off he decided on an oral report, He leaned to his interoffice communicator and flipped a switch. “Greenberg.”

  Greenberg looked up from his desk. “Howdy, boss.”

  “Come here, please.” He switched off without politenesses.

  Greenberg decided that the bossman’s stomach must be bothering him again. But it was too late to find some urgent business outside the departmental building; he hurried upstairs and reported with his usual cheery grin. “Howdy, Chief.”

  “Morning. I’ve been reading your intervention report.”

  “So?”

  “How old are you, Greenberg?”

  “Eh? Thirty-seven.”

  “Hmm. What is your present rank?”

  “Sir? Diplomatic officer second class…acting first.” What the deuce? Uncle Henry knew the answers…he probably knew what size shoes he wore.

  “Old enough to have sense,” Kiku mused. “Rank enough to be assigned as ambassador…or executive deputy to a politically-appointed ambassador. Sergei, how come you are so confounded stupid?”

  Greenberg’s jaw muscles clamped but he said nothing.

  “Well?”

  “Sir,” Greenberg answered icily, “you are older and more experienced than I am. May I ask why you are so confounded rude?”

  Mr. Kiku’s mouth twitched but he did not smile. “A fair question. My psychiatrist tells me that it is because I am an anarchist in the wrong job. Now sit down and we’ll discuss why you are so thick-headed. Cigarettes in the chair arm.” Greenberg sat down, discovered that he did not have a light, and asked for one.

  “I don’t smoke,” answered Kiku. “I thought those were the self-striking kind. Aren’t they?”

  “Oh. So they are.” Greenberg lit up.

  “See? You don’t use your eyes and ears. Sergei, once that beast talked, you should have postponed the hearing until we knew all about him.”

  “Mmmm… I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so! Son, your subconscious alarms should have been clanging like a bed alarm on Monday morning. As it is, you let the implications be sprung on you when you thought the trial was over. And by a girl, a mere child. I’m glad I don’t read the papers; I’ll bet they had fun.”

  Greenberg blushed. He did read the papers.

  “Then when she had you tangled up like a rangtangtoo trying to find its own feet, instead of facing her challenge and meeting it… Meeting it how? By adjourning, of course, and ordering the investigation you should have ordered to start with, you…”

  “But I did order it.”

  “Don’t interrupt me; I want you browned on both sides. Then you proceeded to hand down a decision the like of which has not been seen since Solomon ordered the baby sawed in half. What mail-order law school did you attend?”

  “Harvard,” Greenberg answered sullenly.

  “Hmm… Well, I shouldn’t be too harsh on you; you’re handicapped. But by the seventy-seven seven-sided gods of the Sarvanchil, what did you do next? First you deny a petition from the local government itself to destroy this brute in the interest of public safety…then you reverse yourself, grant the prayer and tell them to kill him…subject only to routine approval of this department. All in ten minutes. Exeunt omnes, laughing. Son, I don’t mind you making a fool of yourself, but must you include the department?”

  “Boss,” Greenberg said humbly, “I made a mistake. When I saw the mistake, I did the only thing I could do; I reversed myself. The beast really is dangerous and there are no proper facilities for confining it in Westville. If it had not been beyond my power, I would have ordered it destroyed at once, without referring back for the department’s approval…for your approval.”

  “Hummph!”

  “You weren’t sitting where I was, sir. You didn’t see that solid wall bulge in. You didn’t see the destruction.”

  “I’m not impressed. Did you ever see a city that had been flattened by a fusion bomb? What does one courthouse wall matter?…probably some thieving contractor didn’t beef it up.”

  “But, boss, you should have seen the cage he broke out of first. Steel I-beams, welded. He tore them like straw.”

  “I recall that you inspected him in that cage. Why didn’t you see to it that he was confined so that he couldn’t get out?”

  “Huh? Why, it’s no business of the department to provide jails.”

  “Son, a factor concerning in any way anything from ‘Out There’ is the very personal business of this department. You know that. Once you know it awake and asleep, clear down to your toes, you’ll begin to trot through a perfunctory routine, like an honorary chairman sampling soup in a charity hospital. You were supposed to be there with your nose twitching and your ears quivering, on the lookout for ‘special situations.’ You flubbed. Now tell me about this beast. I read the report, I saw his picture. But I don’t feel him.”

  “Well, it’s a non-balancing multipedal type, eight legs and about seven feet high at the dorsal, ridge. It’s…”

  Kiku sat up straight. “Eight legs? Hands?”

  “Hands? No.”

  “Manipulative organs of any sort? A modified foot?”

  “None, chief…if there had been, I would have ordered a full-scale investigation at once. The feet are about the size of nail kegs, and as dainty. Why?”

  “Never mind. Another matter. Go on.”

  “The impression is something like a rhinoceros, something like a triceratops, though the articulation is unlike anything native to this planet. ‘Lummox’ his young master calls him and the name fits. It’s a rather engaging beast, but stupid. That’s the danger; it’s so big and powerful that it is likely to hurt people through clumsiness and stupidity. It does talk, but about as well as a four-year-old child…in fact it sounds as if it had swallowed a baby girl.”

  “Why stupid? I note that its master with the history-book name claims that it is bright.”

  Greenberg smiled. “He is prejudiced. I talked with it, boss. It’s stupid.”

  “I can’t see that you have established that. Assuming that an e.-t. is stupid because he can’t speak our language well is like assuming that an Italian is illiterate because he speaks broken English. A non-sequitur.”

  “But look, boss, no hands. Maximum intelligence lower than monkeys. Maybe as high as a dog. Though not likely.”

  “Well, I’ll concede that you are orthodox in xenological theory, but that is all. Some day that assumption is going to rise up and slap the classic xenist in the face. We’ll find a civilization that doesn’t need to pick at things with patty-paws, evolved beyond it.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “No. Where is this ‘Lummox’ now?”

  Greenberg looked flustered. “Boss, this report I am about to make is now in the microfilm lab. It should be on your desk any minute.”

  “Okay, so you were on the ball—this time. Let’s have it.”

  “I got chummy with the local judge and asked him to keep me advised. Of course they couldn’t throw this critter into the local Bastille; in fact they did not have anything strong enough to hold him…so they had learned, the hard way. And nothing could be built in a hurry that would be strong enough…believe me, that cage he crushed out of was strong. But the local police chief got a brain storm; they
had an empty reservoir with sides about thirty feet high, reinforced concrete…part of the fire system. So they built a ramp and herded him down into it, then removed the ramp. It looked like a good dodge; the creature isn’t built for jumping.”

  “Sounds okay.”

  “Yes, but that isn’t all. Judge O’Farrell told me that the chief of police was so jittery that he decided not to wait for departmental okay; he went ahead with the execution.

  “What?”

  “Let me finish. He did not tell anybody—but accidentally-on-purpose the intake valve was opened that night and the reservoir filled up. In the morning there was Lummox, on the bottom. So Chief Dreiser assumed that his ‘accident’ had been successful and that he had drowned the beast.”

  “So?”

  “It did not bother Lummox at all. He had been under water several hours, but when the water drained off, he woke up, stood up, and said, ‘Good morning.’”

  “Amphibious, probably. What steps have you taken to put a stop to this high-handedness?”

  “Just a second, sir. Dreiser knew that firearms and explosives were useless…you saw the transcript…at least of power safe enough to use inside a town. So he tried poison. Knowing nothing about the creature, he used half a dozen sorts in quantities sufficient for a regiment and concealed in several kinds of food.”

  “Well?”

  “Lummox gobbled them all. They didn’t even make him sleepy; in fact it seemed to stimulate his appetite, for the next thing he did was to eat the intake valve and the reservoir started to fill up again. They had to shut it off from the pumping station.”

  Kiku snickered. “I’m beginning to like this Lummox. Did you say he ate the valve? What was it made of?”

  “I don’t know. The usual alloy, I suppose.”

  “Hmm…seems to like a bit of roughage in its diet. Perhaps it has a craw like a bird.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “What did the Chief do next?”

  “Nothing as yet. I asked O’Farrell to impress on Dreiser that he was likely to end up in a penal colony thirty light-years from Westville if he persisted in bucking the department. So he is waiting and trying to figure out his problem. His latest notion is to cast Lummox in concrete and let him die at his own convenience. But O’Farrell put the nix on that one—inhumane.”