The Monster Maker
he planned the meteor and the crash this way."Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far down, and the green eyes blazed. They stopped, together. "Oops!" Click said. "Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel _that_?"

Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!" They ran back. "Let's try it again." They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened. "Gravity should not act this way, Click."

"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that--it's Gunther! No wonder we fell so fast--we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up! Gunther'd do anything to--did I say _anything_?"

Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.

Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt the creatures at all.

"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"

Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out, as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him. Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a scene!"

"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"

"Use your gun."

"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase, eh, Click?"

"Yeah. Sure. _You_ enjoyed it, every moment of it."

"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"


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