Episode 03 The Little Gray Men

  Preston Lost fired. Time froze. He did not really hear the sharp, stingingly loud report of the broomhandle Mauser, nor the high-pitched, sibilant scream, half a snake hiss and half a crow call, of the monster in the forefront of the flock.

  Preston could not really see circle of the jungle trees framing his view, nor the smoldering volcano cone above that, nor the strange skies beyond. He did not see the shape of the narrow, naked-winged pteranodon in the lead. He did not really see its slender, bony face, nor its elongated crest, nor its hideous saber-sharp beak.

  Instead, he saw its right eye. He saw nothing but the eye.

  He saw its right eye explode in blood and vitreous humor, as an exit wound, large as a softball, erupted from the narrow skull. The corpse fell at the same rate as its dive, so there was no change in its motion.

  But his vision had already moved to the next of the twelve monsters. Two shots. The first missed. The second drove in through the roof of its mouth as it opened its maw in a scream. The bullet shattered its beak and pallet and skull.

  Then the third. The head bobbed unexpectedly, so he missed. He centered his aim on the ribs of the narrow chest and sent two bullets through its heart.

  Fourth. He struck it in the left eye. Fifth. Struck on the spot where the snaky neck joined the collarbone, and blew the head clean off, so that it went spinning in a spray of blood off into the air, a grotesque boomerang of black, green and slate-blue flesh. Sixth. Another miss, but luckily he struck the shoulder joint, causing one wing to collapse.

  Seven and eight passed through wing membrane, making small puncture holes, but the ninth shot drilled a monster directly through the heart, and blood gushed from its narrow beak.

  Only one bullet left. Seven pteranodons were dead in mid-swoop, and five more were screaming hideous, breathless screams like the hissing of gigantic snakes. His glance swept the six incoming targets, looking to see where his remaining bullet could be best spent.

  But the flying lizards had snapped their wings open like parachutes, slowing their fall. Perhaps they had been startled by the thunder of gunfire. Perhaps they were too stupid, their brains too primitive, to be startled. But now the five survivors were tearing at the flesh of the ones who had been shot. They raked their brother's wing membranes with savage claws.

  Like sharks maddened by the scent of blood, the pteranodons fought each other in midair over the scraps of each other's flesh.

  Apparently a gaping head wound or a hole in the chest did not slay these unnatural brutes instantly. They clung to life with the cold fury of lizards. The wounded fought back with mindless vigor, insensible of pain or shock. Even the headless body, by some reflex in its nerves, raked its claws wildly when it was struck.

  Then the foremost of the unwounded landed on the body of the plesiosaur, which was still floating in the agitated water, and began to tear gobbets out of the body with its sword-length beak, hissing and cawing hideously. Two more of the sky monsters saw, and grew jealous, and landed, and began bickering.

  The pteranodons circled each other with mincing, delicate steps, bobbing their long, bony heads up and down menacingly, and croaking baleful croaks.

  The body of the corpse trembled and stirred. The plesiosaur was not fully dead after all. Its jaw was broken and pale blood gushed from its neck and dripped from its teeth, but now it brought its upper fangs neatly down on the quarreling pteranodons, catching two of them on teeth as sharp as spears. One pteranodon was cut nearly in half, but it had the same tenacious, unthinking ferocity and vitality as the sea monster, and so it reared up against its tormentor and drove its vicious beak directly into the dying plesiosaur's eye.

  The sea monster reared back its head, whistling and screaming. The other flying lizards, instead of retreating into the air, launched themselves at the exposed neck with manic bloodlust, croaking and cawing.

  Two other of the unwounded pteranodons dove and splashed into the water, ripping at the wounded body of a third pteranodon, the one Preston had shot through the shoulder joint.

  The boiling water made their narrow bodies turn red and begin to blister, but the horrors were not deterred. Their sole response to pain was to attack ever more avidly whatever was in reach.

  So these three were splashing and stabbing and scraping each other with talons, when a gush of water erupted from beneath.

  Into view rose a creature larger than a swordfish, with a beaked mouth even longer, and rows of teeth like shark teeth. It had fins and vertical flukes like a shark, not horizontal like a dolphin. But it worked its fins with a paddling, doglike stroke, nothing like the graceful motions of a fish.

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  The plesiosaur was the size of a submarine, while the pteranodons were closer in size to a hang-glider. This newcomer was roughly the size of a pony.

  From books, he recognized this new horror. This was an ichthyosaurus.

  A pteranodon as it beat its wings and launched itself into the air, struggling to rise. The fishlike lizard reared up. The massive shark-toothed jaws closed over the flying monster's midriff. The pteranodon was not smaller than the lake monster, but it was lighter. Its hollow bones cracked and bent like soda straws. The ichthyosaurus uttered a chilling trumpet of triumph before it dove, carrying the struggling pteranodon down and down. The other fights continued unabated.

  Preston had been frozen with horror, but only for a moment. These did not act like beasts from his own world. Few creatures attacked their own kind, and rarely did predator eat predator. Scavengers usually held back and waited for wounded prey to die.

  He recovered himself. It would only be a moment before one of them noticed his tasty body clinging to this rocky atoll in the steaming lake water, or the thrashing of the dying plesiosaur sent a wave over him to boil him to death.

  He looked. The shore was actually not far off, and many mossy trees, laden with vines, bowed crooked branched overhead. It was slightly too far to leap to shore, slightly too high to grab a branch.

  A great wind stirred the branches then, and a white light shined from the sky. A vibration too low to hear with the ears throbbed in the teeth of Preston Lost. He looked upward. Now what?

  Solemn and silent as a ghost, a disk-shaped machine made of thick crystal hove into view, coming in low over the trees.

  It was a lens larger than a cargo plane, with no visible means of propulsion or lift. The main hull was a dark bluish ceramic or crystal or coated by a tightly-clinging layer of pale, translucent substance. The whole was glowing with a dull light that reminded him of the Cherenkov radiation found surrounding submerged atomic piles.

  The flying disk took position just above the boiling lake, and lowered itself.

  The pteranodons uttered shrill sounds and fled, the hale still clawing at the wounded as they did so.

  An ichthyosaur, perhaps the mate or hunting partner of the first one, was hanging just below the lake surface. It turned an expressionless eye toward the descending craft, worked its oddly shaped flukes, and dove toward darker depth.

  Preston Lost heard no noise with his ear as the flying disk came closer, but a vibration in his bones set his back teeth on edge. The outer shell looked as hard as diamond, but, even as he watched, it flowed in syrupy motions as if alive. Blisters or pillboxes of the blue hull became visible where the pale substance formed a dimple and pulled away.

  Small cones and black disks stood up from the blisters: they were telescopes or something of the sort. A jointed arm unfolded from the craft, elongated, and delicately dipped into the water. Thermometer? Sonar? Camera? There was no way to tell.

  The flying disk hung just above the spot where the corpse of the Plesiosaur was floating. Of Preston's rocketplane, there was no sign on the surface, except for a spreading pool of oil. She must have finished sinking while he concentrated on immediate threats.

  A pang of anger made him suck in air through clenched teeth. His magnificent plane! The years of work, the countless costs! This cruel world had swallowed the wonderful aerospace rocketplane. He blamed the flying disk, and whoever was aboard.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, the outer, semifluid shell of the vehicle rolled back again to expose round hatches ventral and dorsal. The hatches dilated. The interior shed a dull firefly glow.

  Hairless and naked gray-skinned men, no longer than children, emerged from the hatches one after another. They had no garments and no ornaments, but some wore belts or harnesses with pouches. Here they carried what looked like instruments fashioned, or perhaps grown, out of crystal, shell, or ceramic.

  There were over a dozen. They walked upright or crawled like spiders, with elbows and knees held high, palms and soles clinging to the hull. Those emerging from the bottom of the craft ignored gravity. They sauntered or trotted head-downward, affixed to the hull at if it were floor, and craned their necks to look at the lake waters approaching.

  They were close. He saw each detail. They had no external ears, and their eyes were black in sclera and iris, more than twice the size of human eyes. A double wrinkle between the eyes hinted at nostril slits; the mouth was a tiny, lipless bud. Albeit nude, they had no sign of genitalia or any sexual characteristics.

  The creatures moved with an eerie dignity in utter silence.

  Preston took the opportunity to disentangle his backpack from the knob of rock where he stood, and shrug his shoulders into the shoulder straps, tighten the belt. Next, he broke his rifle, thumbed the lever to eject the spent cartridges, and loaded two more of the heavy caliber bullets, and closed the weapon with a satisfying snap.

  His motion attracted attention. One of the naked figures drew itself upright and pointed a skinny nail-less finger at him. As one, the other gray men's head swiveled on their necks, and their overlarge and inky eyes narrowed. The stares were cold and incurious.

  None spoke aloud. One drew a lantern of shell from its harness, sent a rapid combination of colored flashes in through the glassy hull.

  At this signal, a larger hatch opened, and a score of taller hominids slid into view.

  These were elongated and lean men with blotchy skin, mottled yellow, brown and white. The smallest stood nine feet high, and had a nine inch long neck. These flexible necks gave the heads a clownish, balloonlike look, as the narrow faces swayed and bobbed high above the slim shoulders. The clownish look was emphasized by dark mottling beneath each cold eye, as tears on a pantomime doll. Their fingers were long and spidery, but their feet were long, thin pads of flesh with no sign of toes. Each had a plume or crest running from the peak of his skull and down his spine, Mohawk-style. Their aspect was docile and mournful.

  They wore knee-length brown leather coats painted to match their skin mottles.

  Each carried what looked like a harquebus: an overlong barrel of pale ivory with a heavy wooden stock. The lock and triggers were glass, not metal.

  An officer in yellow flourished a wooden blade whose edge was a line of sharpened obsidian. The harquebusiers unlimbered their weapons, and propped their barrels atop forked wands to open fire.

  Preston was quicker. The Holland & Holland roared like thunder.