THE ATTACKING MEDUSA.
"That sure must be a big one from the size of the cloud!" said Smith,
as he urged the tractor forward to where the huge medusa was attacking
the house.
"Ay tank we ban gone have one hal of a fight purty quick," said Ole,
loosening the lid of a case of hand grenades.
Smith stopped our tank about a hundred feet from the house. Then we all
got out and stepped behind it, using it for a breastworks. Ole tore
the lid off his case of grenades, took one out, and setting the timer,
hurled it with an expert overhand throw so it exploded just above
the top of the cloud. The sound it made was barely audible above the
terrific roaring of the giant medusa.
A group of squirming, twisting tentacles reached out at us from the
cloud mass as if in reprisal, but I burned them off with the torch.
Smith seized the shotgun and fired six charges into the portion of the
cloud where he thought the disklike body of the monster was located,
and Corporal Hansen continued his bombardment with hand grenades. But
neither seemed to have any effect on the medusa.
"If the damned thing would only get mad and chase us," shouted Smith,
"we could lure it away with the tank."
"Perhaps I can make it mad with the torch," I said, and started toward
the house.
But Smith seized my arm.
"Hold on there," he said. "Do you want to commit suicide? One jolt from
the batteries of that thing and I reckon you'll be through for keeps.
Besides, you might set the house afire."
By this time Ole had used up his box of grenades. Instead of getting
more, he dragged out the machine gun and began assembling it.
"Damn' grenades don't work so gude," he said, "but I bet you dis baby
will give it hal."
I handed the torch to Smith, and, reloading the pump gun, began a
bombardment of the upper part of the cloud. I doubt whether it had
much effect on the huge medusa, but it was all that I could do, and it
relieved my feelings somewhat, for I was badly worried. We had found
nobody about the place, and, for all we knew, Sue and her parents had
already been killed by the monster. It might merely be lingering to
absorb their bodies through its tentacles before leaving. There was
no way of communicating with them if they were alive, because of the
terrific roaring sound made by the attacking medusa.
I was reloading the gun for the third time, and Ole had just finished
assembling his machine gun, when the sound made by the monster suddenly
changed. At first I thought the professor had succeeded in burning
it, causing it to shriek, but this sound was not a shriek. It was
not exactly like a howl, but sounded more like a moan--a groaning,
unearthly sound so loud that it nearly split my eardrums.
Petrified into inactivity for a moment by this new development, the
three of us stood spellbound, watching for the creature's next move.
There was a terrific agitation which lasted for some time, accompanied
by the unearthly moaning and groaning in ever increasing crescendo.
From time to time we could see the ends of writhing tentacles
projecting beyond the periphery of the cloud mass, squirming as if the
creature were in horrible agony.
"Ay tank dot teeng ban purty damn sick," said Ole, coolly loading his
machine gun. "What say we give him some more hal?"
"Wait, Ole," I said. "Something has happened that we don't know
anything about."
* * * * *
Scarcely had I spoken ere the writhing and groaning of the monster
suddenly ceased and the cloud around it began slowly to dissolve.
Then, to my intense relief, I heard the voice of Professor Davis.
"Dick! Smith! Don't do any more shooting. The thing is dead, and we are
all safe in the house."
As the cloud dissolved it revealed a most astounding and hideous
spectacle. Sprawled over the roof, and almost completely hiding it,
was the limp, sagging body of the medusa. It lay there like an immense
slimy silver-gray pancake with frilled edges, its tentacles trailing
limply to the ground in all directions. The body was fully thirty feet
in diameter, and the tentacles were at least thirty-five feet long.
The professor opened the door of his laboratory. In his hand was a pair
of scissors. He snipped off an end of one of the tentacles which hung
in front of the door--then gingerly touched it with his fingertip. It
remained motionless. He touched another tentacle, and it did not move.
Then he pushed them all aside and leaped out, running toward us and
shouting like a schoolboy:
"Eureka! I've found it! I've found it!"
"Found what?" I asked.
"Dick, my boy," he said, "I've found a cure for this festering disease
with which Green's comet inoculated our planet. I've found a sure way
to destroy the invaders."
"How?"
"The very thing that I used in the first place to make the tentacles
relax--prussic acid," he replied. "Prussic acid or some of its
derivatives will do the trick. Come in, all of you. I must call
Washington. I'll have the boys bring the ammunition into my laboratory,
where we can prepare it for our part in the war of extermination. Here
I've been experimenting day and night, searching for the product that
would be lethal to the medusa; and, like the man who searched the world
over and then found the four-leaf clover in his own back yard, I had
but to reach out my hand and grasp it."
With his scissors the professor snipped the remaining tentacles from
before the door. Then he held it open for us to enter.
Sue and her mother were waiting there to greet us, and were as relieved
to know that I was still alive as I was to learn that they had escaped
death. They both shed tears of joy, and I must confess that, as I
kissed them, my own eyes were moist.
The professor put in his call for Washington, and the imperturbable
Wong brought tea.
"After you and Smith left," the professor told me, "I was busy in my
laboratory, when Sievers, one of the farm hands, came rushing in,
shouting that a big cloud was coming toward the house. I went out to
observe it, and one look through my binoculars convinced me that it was
a flying medusa. I told Sievers to bring the other two men into the
house at once, and that all of them should bring their rubber boots and
raincoats from their quarters.
"As swiftly as possible we closed every window and door, and started
a fire in the furnace and one in the grate in the living room. Then I
distributed rubber gloves--luckily I have a good supply on hand at all
times for laboratory work. In the meantime Sue primed and lighted the
two blowtorches for me, and we had two of the portable oxy-acetylene
outfits for use, one on the first floor and one on the second.
"It suddenly grew so dark outside that we were forced to turn on
the lights. I knew then that the monster had settled on the roof to
begin its attack. Stationing Sievers and the other two men on the
second floor, two to manage the acetylene outfit, and one to use the
blowtorch, I remained on the first floor with my wife and daughter,
Nora the cook, and Wong. Mrs. Davis and Nora stayed in the center of
the living room, Sue guarding them with a blowtorch, while Wong and I
patrolled the lower floors with the portable acetylene outfit." The
professor paused for breath.
* * * * *
"Almost immediately," he resumed, "the long, deadly tentacles began
worming themselves in around doors and windows and through keyholes.
Wong and I were busy, hurrying from one place to another and burning
them off, and I could tell from the sounds upstairs that the men
stationed there were equally busy.
"Although the roaring of the monster made it difficult for us to
distinguish what was going on outside, I faintly heard your shots
and the explosions of the grenades. Sue had turned the radio on to
top volume so I might hear the latest reports while working in my
laboratory, and it added its raucous notes to the bedlam of sounds.
"Most of the announcements had to do with the war against the medusæ,
and one of them was being made just at an instant when I was looking
into the drawing-room to see how the ladies were getting along. It
stated that a nurseryman near Plano, Illinois, had reported that a
number of stalk medusæ which had grown in a grove of cherry laurel at
his nursery had collapsed as if dead, and were beginning to give off a
most abominable odor.
"The statement of this fact set me to thinking. I remembered that
prussic acid had apparently paralyzed the tentacles on which I first
experimented. Prussic, or as it is technically known, hydrocyanic acid,
is present in the cherry laurel in considerable quantities. In this
case it was evident that the acid had not only paralyzed but killed the
medusæ.
"Leaving Wong to patrol alone for a few moments, I rushed into my
laboratory. Unfortunately, my supply of prussic acid was reduced to
about a minim--not enough even to begin with. Then I remembered that
most of the cyanides have similar toxic effects to those of hydrocyanic
acid; and I was well supplied with potassium cyanide, which I use for
dispatching insects. The next question was, how to poison the medusa
with potassium cyanide.
"I finally decided to try shooting it through the crystals. Accordingly
I removed the shot loads from two shells and replaced them with
potassium cyanide. Each shell held nearly a half ounce of the crystals.
Wadding and crimping them once more, I loaded my shotgun with them.
Then I saturated a handkerchief with a neutralizing solution, making an
emergency gas mask, and went to the door of the laboratory. I cocked
both barrels, opened the door a little way, and pushing the gun out,
muzzle upward, discharged them both. I instantly jerked the door shut,
expecting a hundred tentacles to dart after me, but not one appeared.
Then I heard the struggles and groans of the monster and knew that my
shot had told.
"After the medusa had ceased to groan and writhe, I was reasonably
certain that it was dead. I did not, however, know whether or not life
still remained in the tentacles. So I snipped one off and investigated.
You know the rest."
At this point the telephone rang, and the professor communicated his
important tidings to the Secretary of War.
That afternoon was a rather busy one for all of us. We treated
machine gun bullets with potassium cyanide solution, and dropped the
crystals into shotgun shells. We coated hand grenades with potassium
cyanide mixed with a flour and water paste. Then we began our war of
extermination.
The machine gun, we soon found, was the most efficient weapon. After we
had exhausted our other munitions, we left the shooting to the skillful
corporal, while we performed the disagreeable task of removing the
immense, stinking carcass of the giant medusa from the roof. We had to
cut it and drag it away in sections, and this nauseating work occupied
most of the afternoon.
* * * * *
It was soon learned that even in minute quantities prussic acid and
most of the cyanides were deadly to the medusæ. Their remarkable powers
of absorption and assimilation which made their rapid growth possible
acted for their destruction when the one poison that had proved so
deadly to them was introduced.
It was found that if a single attached tentacle of a stalk medusa were
touched with a small quantity of potassium cyanide or prussic acid
solution, the entire animal would be poisoned fatally in less than ten
minutes.
Airplanes armed with machine guns, the bullets of which were coated
with potassium cyanide or other prussic acid derivatives, applied over
a thin coating of wax to prevent any chemical action, cruised the skies
in search of the flying medusæ, and brought them down by the hundreds.
Such products as oil of cherry laurel, technical oil of bitter almonds,
and other commercial products containing prussic acid, were found
efficient as coatings for bullets. Firearms of all sorts were pressed
into use, the one requisite being that some form of the proper poison
could be procured for coating the projectiles.
Closely following on the heels of the first day's prussic acid warfare,
a new problem presented itself. The bodies of the dead monsters seemed
to putrefy almost as rapidly as they had been able to grow, and not
only contaminated the air with a horrible odor, but constituted a
menace to public health.
It was Professor Davis who suggested that they be used to fertilize the
ground which they had so lately despoiled not only of organic life but
of many of its life-maintaining elements. In the country this was done
chiefly by cutting them up with sharp disk harrows, then plowing them
under.
More than a year passed before the medusæ were no longer counted a
menace, but in two years it was generally believed that they had been
totally exterminated.
* * * * *
As I write the final page of this strange chronicle I am seated at the
edge of a certain clover field--the field beside which I was lying in
the mottled shade of the hackberry tree nearly three years ago, while
Sue wove a garland of clover blossoms--the field which I later saw
denuded of all life save the hideous, tentacled stalk medusæ.
Above us towers a gaunt specter--the only visible reminder of that
terrible scourge that visited the earth three years ago. The dead
hackberry still extends its naked limbs heavenward, but now as if in
thanksgiving for the vengeance that has been consummated.
The bees are humming busily in the fragrant clover once more. The mail
plane is winging its swift way, undisturbed, to the airport. And Sue,
my wife, is weaving a garland of clover blossoms.
THE END.