Desperately seeking escape from their own
tortured chunk of hell, they needed a specimen
from this great and gracious world they planned
to steal. But swamp-roving, 'gator-fighting
Allen Nixon wasn't the type to be cut up alive!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was absolutely nothing wrong or weird about the Florida
Everglades at night. At least, not to Allen Nixon. He sat alone in the
stern of a flat-bottomed rowboat paddling calmly, albeit soundlessly,
with one small oar. The moon was down and the tall old pines were so
many black rips and tears in the star-studded gown of the sky. The
stars themselves dropped their fiery pin-points in the glassy surface
of the winding bayou. The tangled banks, where sometimes the cypress
branches dipped heavy and sodden into the water, were shadowed blurs so
that the bayou was a twisted ribbon between them.
Nothing strange. Nothing unusual. Certainly not to Allen Nixon.
Twenty-four years ago he had been born here, only a score or so miles
north at the fringes of the great swamp, where a little Seminole
village stood beside a bayou just like this. There his white father had
loved and married his Indian mother; there he had lived and gone to
the Mission School and then, in his 'teens, to the High School up in
Jacksonville. Now he and his younger brother Ralph, with their parents
dead, were running a small farm their father had left them. It was back
at the mouth of the bayou, where the Gulf lapped in the starlight on
the sandspits, and the tangled wire-grass was alive at night with the
croaking of the marsh-hens. Ralph had not wanted to come out tonight.
He was tired, perhaps lazy. He said he would have the four 'gators
skinned by the time Allen got back at midnight; and he'd help with
whatever others Allen brought in. Perhaps he would, but more likely he
wouldn't.
So Allen Nixon, with the moon down, was paddling up into the silent
twistings of the bayou alone. He was a tall, lean fellow, lanky like
his father, with muscles hardened by a lifetime of the work of the
backwoods. He was bareheaded; his sleek, straight, dead-black hair
glistened in the starlight. His grey flannel shirt was open at a
muscular throat. He sat erect, with his legs, clad in dark trousers and
worn leather puttees, stretched out to the shotgun, knife and hatchet
that lay in the bottom of the rowboat. The faint night-breeze fanned
his rugged face, bronzed by the hot Florida sun and swarthy with the
Seminole heritage.
Now he was rounding a sharp curve in the bayou, and the breeze was
more squarely in his face than ever. That was good. No scent of him
could blow forward to reach any 'gator that might have surfaced on
the starlit stretch ahead. Two was all he hoped for tonight, and
then he would head back. Quietly he shipped his oar and adjusted a
small electric torch on a band around his forehead. Then with its
pencil-point of light sweeping the bayou ahead of him, again he started
paddling. Even more silently, this time, so that there was no drip from
the blade as he skillfully raised it, no least murmur of splash as he
brought it forward and dipped it again. An alligator, lying quiet with
only a tip of nose and eyes at the surface, is more alert, more ready
to scurry away than a mouse.
There was in Nixon's mind nothing but intentness to see the two little
pin-points of fire in the bayou surface, two among the many that were
reflected stars, yet he would see the difference, the spacing, a little
greener, more glowing fire which would mark them as the eyes of a
drowsing 'gator. He was thinking only that he would get two as soon as
he could and get back to Ralph. That would make ten altogether this
moon--ten salted skins, enough to be worth a trip to the market in
Pensacola.
* * * * *
What he did not know was that in the shadows of the bayou bank up ahead
strange little shapes were cautiously moving. Living things that did
not belong here; that had never been here before.
The night sounds of the lush woods were blended into a voice which
Nixon had heard all his life, so that now he was never aware that he
was hearing it. A 'gator would hear it too--the slither of a rattler;
the flip of a fish or a water moccasin; a marsh-hen croaking; or an
owl's hoot--and the steady blend of the voices of a million million
insects. And that was all that could be heard, for the strange dark
little shapes, along the bank at the next bend, moved very cautiously,
quite soundlessly--little things moving upright. They were only a few
inches tall. Once they stood in a group as though communicating. One of
them carried a tiny light, but its glow was less than a firefly's.
Now Nixon saw, out in the center of this stretch of the bayou, the two
green dots that were a 'gator's eyes, and his face relaxed a little
with the flicker of a smile of satisfaction. His light swept the water,
reached the eyes and clung, so that the stupid 'gator just lay there
and stared, with the light dazzling him. His brain, not much bigger
than a pea buried in the pulpy mass within his big flat head, held no
thought of danger.
The twin reptile-eyes were perhaps fifty yards away when Nixon first
saw them. Now he paddled more slowly, with the rowboat gliding forward
soundless as a floating leaf. The grip of his right hand down by the
blade of the oar-paddle tightened.
The twin eyes there among the stars on the shining water, held
motionless. Presently they were only fifteen or twenty feet away, just
to the right now of the uptilted empty bow of the little rowboat. Nixon
stopped paddling. Slowly he rested the oar in the bottom of the boat
and picked up his shotgun.
At about eight feet, Nixon fired both barrels almost together with a
great crashing roar. A hundred yards ahead of him, where the bayou made
its bend, there was consternation and terror among the tiny upright
shapes gathered there on the soggy bank--a terror that made them scurry
with tiny cries; and then, when seemingly they were not hurt by the
burst of light and the vast roar, made them stand peering in wonderment
at this gigantic drama out there on the water.
Nixon knew nothing of that. He was intent only on the splash where
his shot had gone; and he saw that this 'gator did not sink, but was
lunging away, off to the right, toward the bank. A big one, he had
seen that by the spacing of the eyes and now by the water slick and
the splashing as it floundered toward shore. Then he was after it,
paddling with all the power of his arms as he bent forward, until in
the shallows near the bank, where the mortally wounded reptile was now
aimlessly floundering, he came almost on top of it.
In an instant more he was over the rowboat's side, waist deep in the
water. There was a thrill to this, the lunging of his hands to grip
the writhing, slimy, brainless adversary by the foreleg, threshing
ashore with it as skillfully he avoided the snapping jaws, and
dangerous swishing tail. An eight foot 'gator. Good enough. Its head
was an oozing mass of pulp where his shot had blown into it. Panting,
he hauled it onto the soggy bank, darted back to the rowboat for his
hatchet; then he had hacked into the base of the reptile's spine where
the tail began, cutting into it so that the threshing stopped and the
big green-black adversary lay only quivering.
Ralph would be pleased. Now if he could get another one as big as this,
and then row back home--
* * * * *
Nixon's thoughts suddenly went blank so that he stood over the dead
'gator with his jaw sagging in amazement. He had jerked off his
headband with the light-torch when he jumped overboard from the
rowboat, but there was enough starlight here for him to see the tiny
upright thing. It was in a silvery patch beside a line of brush back
from the water. A thing in the shape of a man. Hardly that; but it was
upright, oblong with a head and a width of tiny shoulder. It stood
divided at the bottom like two legs and there were two arms. A thing
only a few inches high. The starlight showed it to be brown-black. Then
suddenly Nixon's gasp of astonishment made him suck in his breath as he
blankly stared. The tiny thing seemed to be wearing clothes....
To Nixon in those seconds, there was a blur of his mind when he
wasn't thinking, just staring as though this were something not to
be explained, something which didn't have to be explained because it
wasn't real, just a conjuring of his own imagination, a trick of his
vision. His hand went with a puzzled gesture to brush his eyes. He
blinked. One tiny, six-inch man-shape?
Abruptly he saw that the brush here seemed alive with them. They were
moving now. They emitted tiny squeaks that could have been words;
shouted commands to each other. But up here in the starlight of Nixon's
six foot height, the sounds were like the voices of excited insects.
Adversaries? There was no such idea in Nixon's mind, those first blank
seconds. Then suddenly, with a tiny hissing flash, a thread of violet
light stabbed up at him. It struck one of his dangling hands with a hot
little flash of tingle like the shock of a weak electric current. Then
he saw where it came from--an edge of a patch of wire-grass. Three of
the brown-black figures were dragging a tiny wheeled thing. A weapon.
It was hardly bigger than Nixon's hand. Its nozzle slanted upward and
spat another tiny violet flash. Then at his feet he felt something hit
against the bottom of his leather puttee. One of the shapes was trying
to climb up his leg. He could feel the weight of it on his shoe. A
surprising weight, as though the six-inch thing were made of lead.
Nixon was stooping to reach down when a tiny projectile hit him in the
face. It stung, with a scratching little stab of pain. Then others
came. It was like a handful of peas being thrown at him. All in a
few seconds while Nixon had stood blankly staring with incredulous
amazement, what seemed hundreds of the tiny shapes were around him.
Attacking him. With anything normal, Nixon could think quickly. A
'gator's jaws closing on his arm, simple enough to know what to do. But
now suddenly his emotion at this weird attack was only one of puzzled
anger. He stooped swiftly, seized the tiny figure that was at his
ankle. It screamed as his hand closed over it, a thin, high-pitched
squeaking cry. But it was blood-curdling--so nearly human in its
frenzied, agonized sound. As he raised it up, still it was screaming.
A heavy little thing, heavy as though it were of metal. And it was
solid, so solid that his squeezing fingers could have held a leaden
figure.
For an instant Nixon held the screaming little thing up and stared at
it; and the starlight showed him the contorted features of its tiny
bluish face, its flailing arms. Then he flung it out over the bayou.
There was a little splash. The screaming stopped as the figure sank
like a stone. Now abruptly, the dazed incredulous astonishment of Nixon
dropped from him, and a stab of fear came; fear and a surge of anger
as he realized that this attack was reality. He staggered back from
the rain of tiny missiles pelting him, and another flash of the tiny
wheeled gun. The ground here was black now with the lunging, milling
little shapes. His first backward step trod on two or three of them,
mashed their solid, heavy little bodies into the soggy ground of the
bayou bank.
As he staggered, there must have been a tree root that caught his heel.
At the same instant, a pellet struck his eye; and as his arm flung
up and he stumbled over the root, suddenly he fell backward to the
soggy sand. It was enough for the alert little figures. Their cry of
triumph sounded as they pounced upon him, swarming over him. A hundred?
It could have been more. Scores of scrambling things. Perhaps, small
though they were, each of them weighed a pound. A hundred pounds of
treading steps and jabbing arms were in an instant upon the fallen
Nixon. He felt himself really frightened now, a fear that he had never
felt before, no matter what the antagonist, fear engendered by the
strangeness of it, the unknown.
* * * * *
Nixon tried to get up, but the sheer weight of the swarming little
adversaries seemed pinning him down. Now they were on his throat, on
his face. Tiny things jabbed at his eyes, so that his hands flailed
in a frenzy, plucking them away. But then there were others. He found
himself rolling, mashing them. But he couldn't mash them, he could only
shove them into the ground....
Damned persistent, wildly reckless little things. A sweep of his arm
knock a dozen of them away. Some screamed. But always there were
more.... Why didn't he get to his feet? Get up now! Knock them off! Get
up! He found himself partly up, with the scrambling shapes cascading
off him; but he was dizzy, his vision blurred. Another stab of the
tiny weapon came. It struck him on the forehead, a hot stinging,
tingling flash. For an instant it clung, with a wave of dizziness from
it flooding Nixon so that he fell back, kicking, writhing.... They
were tramping over his face now. Then he realized that one of them was
pounding with something heavy at his temple, a rhythmic pounding....
_Thump_.... _Thump_.... He tried to strike at it.... But now he knew
that he couldn't focus.... The pounding stopped. Of course. He had
knocked the damned thing off.... _Thump_.... _Thump_.... Another had
started it again, every little blow making Nixon's head shudder,
his senses reel and fade, so that now a dull blurred blackness was
coming.... Those cursed, tiny little blows at his temple.
Suddenly, strange in Nixon's thoughts there was the vision of himself,
a monstrous fallen, wounded giant. Bewildered, dazed, helpless, with a
man standing on the great expanse of his face; a man who was pounding
with a crowbar against the softness of the giant's temple.... You could
fight a 'gator. Sure. You could fight a man your own size. Or several
of them maybe, with your fingers itching to get at their throats and
strangle them.... But there were these jabbing, swarming things by the
hundreds....
There was in Nixon's fading mind at last only the damnable realization
of those tiny rhythmic blows at his temple, each just that small
concussion of his brain, another and another until his senses fully
faded and he was swept off into the dark, empty, soundless abyss of
unconsciousness....