Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition), April 1944 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BEAST | | 33 clear: Hither this game is played my way, or it’s played without me’—he stood up with a swift, gliding movement, his voice grim as he finished—“and I pity those who tackle Big Oaf without this arm of mine to hold him off. Well, what do you say?” Devlin was standing frowning at the floor. At last he looked up, a wan smile on his face. “You win, Pendrake. I don’t promise results, but I'll do my derndest. Our boys are good fellers at heart—and at least they'll know they’re dealing with a right guy. But now you'd better be on your way to Big Oaf. Yell loud if he starts anything.” “Any idea,” asked Pendrake, “what he wants me for?” ‘“Nary a one,” was the reply; and Pen- drake was halfway to the stockade before it occurred to him that he still didn’t know how these old West men had gotten to the Moon, and that he had forgotten to ask Devlin if the cave dwellers had had the wit to make plans to protect themselves from German retaliation for their depre- dations. So quickly had he become absorbed by the immediate danger, and forgetful of the greater, more remote one. Big Oaf crawled out of the door of his house, and stood up. “You took your time,” he growled. “I’m a sick man,” Pendrake explained, “and this Moon gravity makes it possible to walk where you’d be flat on your back on Earth. That beating your men handed me didn’t help any, either.” The monster’s answer was a grunt, and Pendrake stared at him cautiously. They were alone inside the stockade; and the effect was of isolation from the universe, a curious, empty feeling of being cut off in an unnatural world. He saw with a start that the creature’s piglike eyes were studying him. Big Oaf broke the silence: “I been here a long time, Pendrake, a long time. I was kinda dumb when I first came—like these other guys are; but my brain somehow grew up over the years, and now I got the sense to worry about things they never even think about, like those Germans f’r instance.” He paused, and looked at Pendrake. Pen- drake hesitated, said finally: “You’d better worry about them, and worry hard.” Big Oaf waved an apelike arm, and shrugged his massive shoulders. “I merely mentioned that as a f’r instance. J got my plans laid for those fellers. What I mean is, when you look at me, think of somebody who’s got a brain with sense in it like your own, and never mind the body. How about it, uh?” Pendrake blinked. The appeal was so un- expected, so remarkable in the picture it brought of a sensitive mind aware of its beastlike body, that he was touched in spite of himself. Then he remembered the five wives, and the two other women who had killed themselves. He said slowly: “What other worries have you got, Big Oaf?” It seemed to him, as he spoke the non- committal words that the barest hint of disappointment flickered over the hairy face. Then Big Oaf said: “IT was walkin’ along a trail on Earth, ’n’ all of a sudden I was here.” “What’s that!” @endrake gasped. Incredulous, his mind hurtled back over the ape man’s words, and again the shock came. It took him a long moment to grasp coherently that he had been told the secret of how these people had arrived on the Moon. Big Oaf was continuing: “It was the same with the others. ‘N’ from the way they describe it, they were coming down the same trail—that scares. me, Pendrake.”’ Pendrake frowned. “What do you mean?” ““There’s something down there on Earth, nothing you can see, but at this end you come out of a machine. Pendrake, we gotta shut that machine off somehow. We can’t live here, not knowing who or what’s gonna barge along that trail and through the machine.” “TIT see what you mean,” said Pendrake slowly. It was the calmness of his own words that shocked him this time. For he was quivering in every nerve, his whole body cold, then hot, then cold again. A machine— A machine that transported objects un- harmed—focused on a trail in the western United States, a machine through which an army could come and attack the Nazi strongholds on the Moon, capture an engine, everything— : With a start, Pendrake saw that the Neanderthal was glaring at him. The man had been sitting against the edge of the wooden platform on which the throne chair stood; now he leaned forward; the great muscles of his chest stood out like anchor ropes. comuiclbooks.€c©