The Haunted Earth

Chapter Seventeen

Riding the escalator down the Poogai's long debarking tube into the largest terminal on the maseni home world, Tesserax said, "Oh, dear! I forgot to warn you about the Protector."

Jessie said, "Who?"

Tesserax slapped the top of his hairless, bulbous head and said, "Oh, damnation and thunderpunt! I really should have remembered it. It's all quite traumatic if you aren't expecting it — and even if you are." He looked anxiously ahead at the rapidly approaching terminal entrance, and he said, "Now don't be alarmed, sir, when it charges at you with all those sharpened teeth and claws."

"Teeth and claws?" Helena said.

"Teeth and claws?" Jessie said, clutching Helena's arm and.wondering if they should turn around and fight the traffic the whole way to the top of the moving stairs.

"Protector?" Brutus asked. "What's the matter with this toothy son of a bitch, anyhow?"

"The Protectors are one of our more colorful racial myths," the alien said. "There's one of them at every space port. You see, in the early days of maseni space travel—"

But the steps had run out, and they were forced through the door by a crush of other Poogai passengers on the escalator behind them. They walked into the arrivals hall before Tesserax could tell them anything more.

The arrivals hall was a masterpiece of aesthetic engineering, fully five hundred feet on a side, the walls cut by enormous windows shaped like the windows in an Earth cathedral and soaring from the floor to a point just a few feet short of the lofty ceiling, some hundred feet overhead. Thick, transparent pillars supported the massive, luminescent arches which held up the domed ceiling. All of this was more than mere supportive architecture. The windows, just like cathedral windows, were made of thousands of bits of colored glass cemented together to form abstract patterns which cast eerie images across the great, white floor. The transparent pillars and the luminescent white arches high over them were carved with hundreds of small figures, maseni flesh-and-blooders as well as maseni supernaturals: one great, panoramic, twisting, twining bas-relief that took the breath away and made one think the pillars were moving, the arches shimmering and twisting with the strivings of thousands of little living beings….

"The Protector—" Jessie began, not having forgotten the warning about teeth and claws despite the beauty that had taken his breath away.

However, before he could finish what he had been about to ask Tesserax, a huge, dark-winged monstrosity, which had been perched on one of the high arches, leapt away from its glowing white rafter and dropped toward them like a stone, screaming at the top of its voice, like an aircraft plunging toward file earth….

"Good God!" Jessie said, having forgotten altogether that Pritchard Robot had proven God was no good. He stepped backward into the passengers who were crowding into the terminal behind him.

"Never fear," Tesserax said. "It's a terrifying experience, but the thing won't harm you."

The beast was fully as large as an elephant, but much meaner looking, craggier than any pachyderm, with a great head much like that of an enraged lion and a mouth that took up half of its fluttercar-sized skull. With one bite, it could devour all of them, with nothing left sticking between its gravestone teeth. Its eyes were a pair of dinnerplate red discs without any pupil delineation, and they appeared to be focused directly on Jessie and Helena. The monster's wings flapped open, to slightly break its fall, though it still plummeted at them too fast for comfort. In the last second before it would be on them, it extended two telephone-pole legs tipped with talons as long as pitchfork tines and as thick as fat winter icicles. And then—

— it slammed into an invisible barrier five feet above their heads, flopped around as if in its death throes.

"The Protector," Tesserax said.

They were directly beneath the beast as it regained its senses, and now it turned its red eyes straight upon them, looking even meaner from this vantage point. It began to claw at the barrier with its big talons; it hissed at them, showing row on row of razored teeth and a tongue tipped with what appeared to be a steel barb.

The other passengers from the Poogai passed them, with hardly a glance at the thunder monster apparently lying on thin air only a few feet overhead.

"In the early days of maseni space travel," Tesserax continued, peering into the vicious red eyes glaring down at them, "our people encountered a murderous alien race somewhat superior to our own. A galactic war ensued, and we were nearly defeated. The enemy, a race much like your mythical centaurs but far more violent, drove us to our home world and then landed here to claim complete victory and to exterminate our people. Strangely, however, none of these aliens could remain on the surface of our home world for more than a few minutes; they died in the most terrible agony. At first, it was thought that some bacterium or some trace gas in the home world atmosphere was extremely toxic to these invaders. But when they donned space suits and used special tanked air from their own world, they still crumpled up and died when they set foot on our soil. Only one of them lasted long at all, and he managed to hold on for eight long hours, raving about horrendous steel claws that were ripping up his insides — and great mad, red eyes staring relentlessly down at him, dark wings, many teeth…. Nothing more than the lunatic rantings of a creature driven mad by pain. However, over the thousands of years since then, the myth of the Protectors has grown and been nourished by the simpler people. Grown and nourished, in fact, until, now, we really have them."

The Protector screamed and clawed the invisible shield more furiously than ever.

"But what was the real cause of those alien's deaths?" Jessie asked.

"We never have learned that," Tesserax said. "Currently, the most popular theory is that the solar and gravitational fields of our home world were in some way peculiarly deadly to this single alien race. As you've seen, many other races come and go, and are not bothered by the invisible killer. Something in the physiology of those centaurs made them highly susceptible to our geography, perhaps."

"They lost the war, in the end?" Brutus asked.

"Of course," Tesserax said. "We exterminated them."

The Protector stood on its four powerful legs and began to jump up and down on the invisible shield, screaming, spitting, flailing at the air with its barbed tongue.

"Does he attack everyone who comes to your world?" the detective asked, watching for a crack in a barrier he couldn't see to begin with.

"Well, it doesn't have much choice," Tesserax said. "It has to fulfill its mythical role, after all. It must attempt to destroy any alien which sets foot on maseni soil, since the myth doesn't specify that it should attack only hostile aliens. There are three hundred Protectors, one in every spaceport on the planet, relentlessly bashing their brains out on these power shields that we've had to erect to contain them."

"Don't they ever learn that it's no use? Don't they understand that the barrier's there all the time?" Helena asked.

"Oh, I suppose they learned that scores of years ago. But they can't help themselves. The myth says attack: they attack."

"Poor dears," Helena said.

"Dumb sons of bitches," Brutus said.

Tesserax said, "Oh, I wouldn't feel any pity for them. The myth doesn't specify any intelligence in a Protector, merely an ability to spot and destroy an alien. They really can't think; they're rather mindless constructs. No need to be sorry for their lot." He looked away from the monster overhead and said, "Shall we go through customs and get out of here, so it can go back to its roost? It's not harmful, but it does make a fearful screeching sound that gets on the nerves of the terminal employees."

Five minutes later, having passed through customs without opening their luggage, they boarded a fluttercar limousine which was waiting for them outside the terminal. The passenger compartment of the car consisted of two extremely comfortable bench seats which faced each other across a good two yards of leg room. Tesserax and the hell hound sat at opposite ends of the front-facing bench, while Jessie and Helena sat close together on the rear-facing seat.

A maseni robot, efficient and well maintained, loaded their bags into the spacious trunk, slipped into the driver's niche where a front seat would have been in a manually steered vehicle, and connected itself to the control leads which dangled from the instrumentless dashboard: acceleration, brakes, steering, turn signals, and systems monitors. He pulled them away into a heavy flow of traffic and quickly accelerated above two hundred miles an hour….

"We're all very pleased that you've chosen to participate, my friend," the maseni said. "We believe that your refreshingly alien viewpoint may tear this case wide open."

Jessie said, "Where are we going — into those mountains?" He indicated a range of snow-capped peaks that flanked the rushing fluttercar, needling the leaden sky a great distance west of them, beyond the flat grass plains that now lay all around.

"That's correct, my friend," Tesserax said. He was speaking in his own language now; and whereas his form of address in English was "sir", now it had become "my friend" in translation. Jessie, Brutus and Helena had all taken speed-teach hypno lessons in the maseni tongue on the way from Earth and, in two short days, had absorbed enough to speak it well. "Those mountains are among the highest on our world and are called the Gilorelamans, which is an Old Tongue word that means 'Home of the Gods'."

"That's where the beast has been marauding?" Helena asked. She leaned toward the window and stared at the rugged slopes, and she thought that was just the sort of place for some invisible gargantuan to play havoc with an unsuspecting populace. The mountains looked remote, more alien than anything she had yet seen on this world though, in actual fact, they did not look that much different from mountain ranges back on Earth.

"Yes, up there, my friend," Tesserax said. "The beast has slaughtered nearly five hundred flesh-and-blooders and more than four hundred maseni supernaturals, all residents of the Gilorelamans."

The robot chauffeur made several turns onto smaller freeways and, in time, took them close to the foothills that lay around the greater peaks. They started the climb on a two-lane road that was closely framed by black-boled, white-leafed trees that swayed in the wind like fragile dancers, now and then bending to canopy the road with a frothy lace of snowy leaves.

They were more than an hour into the foothills when a car passed them doing quite a bit more than their sedate hundred miles an hour. It forced them toward the burm, horn blaring, then whipped over a rise and was out of sight.

"You have highway crazies here, too," Jessie said.

When they topped the hill over which the car had gone, they found that it had turned and was barreling back at them, on the wrong side of the highway.

The robot wheeled the car into the other lane.

The unknown driver countered, turned back to his proper lane and came at them at full speed.

"He'll kill us all!" Helena cried.

The robot jerked their limousine violently back into their own lane and narrowly avoided a collision.

As the other car flashed by, Jessie thought he saw a middle-aged, bald, red-faced man looking over at them and laughing. "Was that an Earthman?" he asked Galiotor Tesserax.

"I think—" the maseni began.

The red-faced man in the car roared past them again, slued back and forth on the road in front of them, disappeared over another hillock.

"It was a human being," Helena said. "Is that how our scientists behave when they come here to study maseni society?"

When they crested the next rise, the stranger, as before, had turned and was roaring back at them, blowing his horn and weaving from side to side of the narrow road.

"I can't watch," Helena said.

"I wish I had a dish of bourbon," the hell hound moaned. The stranger weaved past them, somehow avoiding a collision, was gone, his horn fading, gradually, until they could no longer hear it at all.

"I think that wasn't a real Earthman," Tesserax said. "I believe that was one of our more recent myth figures."

"You maseni have a myth figure that looks like an Earthman?" Jessie asked, watching pebbly gray lids slide down and lift off the deepset yellow eyes.

"Yes, my friend," Tesserax said. He fluffed his orange robes. "We maseni are incapable of becoming intoxicated, as you may know. Indeed, your own race is somewhat unique in that respect, compared to all the races we have thus far encountered. Certainly, we have drugs that make us — as you might say 'high'. But we are always in command of our senses, perfectly rational and able to exercise as good judgment as before taking drugs. It fascinates our people that your race can become so mindlessly drunk. The fact that tens of thousands are killed every year on your highways by drunken drivers has sparked the imagination of the maseni people. A Drunken Driver is a rather mysterious, inexplicable creature to us. And, in the past few years, a new myth has arisen to explain accidents on our own highways."

"The myth of the Drunken Driver?" Jessie asked, not quite able to get that one down.

"Yes," Tesserax said. "Enough superstitious people have taken up belief in the marauding Drunken Driver who haunts our home world highways that, in fact, he has come to exist. Fortunately, though he's a recent supernatural, laws have been passed to keep him from killing anyone. He may only careen around, frightening people — as you just saw."

For a while, everyone was silent, digesting this. Then the detective said, "I didn't realize that diplomatic and social relations between our two races could give rise to new superstitions."

"Oh, yes, my friend. It's surprising there are no new Earth-born myths based on things your people have picked up from our culture."

Jessie said, "Is it possible that this marauding behemoth in the mountains is such a new myth?"

Tesserax shook his large head. "It's unlikely. We've run computer depth studies of new trends in maseni society, and we found nothing that could account for this murderous mountain giant."

"Still…"

"I don't want to cloud your fresh perspective," the maseni said. "But I truly believe you'd be wasting time in following up that possibility."

The black-boled, white-leafed trees grew thicker at the sides of the road, and the hills grew steeper and the clouds gradually came down like heavy blankets onto a bed. They drove on toward Gilorelamans Inn, an ancient hotel on the slopes of the high peaks, which would serve as their base of operations until the case was closed.

Chapter Eighteen

Gilorelamans Inn lay on the lush green lower slopes of the largest peak in the whole range, Piotimkin. It was as far down the rocky mountain as it could get without moving into the foothills, but the view from its grounds was staggering, no matter which direction one looked. Behind were the snow forests and then the bare granite cliffs and finally, high above, the snowfields themselves. On the other three sides one could view vast panoramas of lower lands: hills, hillocks, sparse woods, plains and robot-tended fields.

The inn was pleasing to the eye. It was made from the wood of the conifers which had replaced the black-boled trees as the land rose and the temperature dropped. Its roof had three peaks and two steep valleys between and was shingled with slabs of wood stained black by sap and tar. The windows were deepset and flanked by wooden shutters, reflecting the late afternoon sun and the moving clouds that raced across the sky. Not a single daub of paint marred the inn's natural beauty.

The two-lane road fed directly into the inn's drive, and their robot chauffeur brought them right around the spouting fountain to the front door, which was fully ten feet high and six wide, graced by a shining coppery knob and knocker, each so large it seemed a man would need two hands to grasp them.

"It's lovely," Helena said. "It must be very old."

"The whole place is a mythical establishment," Tes-serax said. "It dates back centuries. And because it is mythical, it remains constant, unweathered, untouched by decay."

As they got out of their limousine, the big front door of the rustic inn swung outward with a great deal of groaning and creaking, successfully attracting everyone's attention. A maseni in black robes came out to greet them. He glided forth, his tentacle hands folded against his chest in such a manner that he suggested a mandarin emperor of another Earth age. He bowed to them, twice to Helena, and said, "Welcome to Gilorelamans Inn."

"Thank you," Helena said.

The mandarin said, "My name is Tooner Hogar, and I am pleased to serve you. Have you your own service robot, or shall I summon someone to retrieve your baggage?"

"We have our own mechanical," Tesserax said.

"Very well," Hogar said. "When you are ready, please come straight to the desk inside. I'll be waiting."

He bowed again. And glided inside.

"I don't like that one," Brutus said.

"He was sweet," Helena disagreed.

"He was slick, that's all," the hound growled.

"Slick, indeed," Tesserax said. "Tooner Hogar is also known, in maseni mythology, as Hogar the Poisoner."

"Poisoner?" Jessie asked.

"Poisoner of Gods," Tesserax elaborated.

"I thought he looked too slick," Brutus said.

"Tell us more," Helena said, as their robot began to lift their suitcases from the limousine trunk.

"According to the earliest maseni myths, these mountains are the homes of all our gods. And this particular inn, overseen by Tooner Hogar — Hogar the Poisoner — is the prime meeting place of the gods. Here, the Great Ones can gather to make deals, strike bargains — or merely celebrate some godly holiday. The inn is neutral ground, where one god is powerless to lift his hand against another."

"But Hogar is not so powerless?" Jessie asked.

"You catch on fast," Tesserax said.

"I've dealt with so many punks, in my time," the detective said, "that I'm usually able to see through them."

Tesserax said, "According to the old myths, though the gods could not directly harm each other while in the inn, they often hired Hogar to do their dirty work. Hogar preferred to kill with any of a hundred exotic poisons. Many gods passed away forever, under Hogar's hand. Others who were hardier died only temporarily and rose to live again."

The robot had taken a collapsible power cart from the trunk and had loaded all their luggage on its flat bed.

"We'll get our rooms, now," Tesserax said. "But be warned: do not eat or drink anything which has been prepared by Tooner Hogar."

"Surely the law doesn't permit him to poison any more," Helena said.

"You're right," the maseni said. "He may only poison those gods who are powerful enough to rise and live again. But, by law, he is allowed to slip certain irritants to others, in place of the poisons he once dispensed. For example, he might offer you an apple which, though not poisoned, is spiked with nausea-inducers or potent laxatives. The law restrains him, but it does not, of course, utterly refuse his urges."

"But what will we eat?" Jessie asked.

"Our robot has brought along cooking facilities and supplies," Tesserax said. "For the duration of our stay here, we will consume only what he has prepared for us." Tesserax extended an arm toward the open door of the hotel and said, "My friends, shall we go in?"

The lobby of the Gilorelamans Inn was large, as were most maseni rooms, at least two hundred feet long and a hundred and fifty wide, yet the place had a cozy atmosphere. This was achieved, for the most part, by the use of the dark, naturally stained wood which constituted the walls and the parquet ceiling. The floor was covered with a thick maroon carpet, and the sofas and easy chairs which filled the lounging areas were a matching wine color. Natural wood pillars thrust up toward the roof thirty feet overhead, and crystal chandeliers lighted the room well enough for one to read but not so well that there was the kind of dazzling glare one associated with modern Earth hotels.

When the maseni built an inn for the gods, in their myths, they expressed a bit of taste.

They crossed the room to the desk, where Tooner Hogar waited for them, smiling and nodding, his hands still folded against his chest, his tentacles intertwined.

"We are so pleased to have these distinguished Earth-men visit us at the Gilorelamans Inn," Hogar said. He pushed two things across the counter to them, a register book and a dish of mints. "Would you each sign in, please? And do take some complimentary candies."

Jessie signed the book but avoided the mints.

"No candies?" Hogar asked, smiling gently, amber eyes glittering.

"Well, actually — no, thank you," the detective said.

"Miss?" Hogar said, offering her the dish.

She refused, picked up the pen and signed both Brutus's and her own name to the register. When she looked up, she saw that Hogar seemed to be hurt by her rejection of the candies and, being Helena, she said, "Well, you see, I just had dinner, and I haven't any room for anything else just now."

Hogar frowned and stared more closely at the mints. "They aren't dusty, are they? Sometimes, in an old mythical place like this, the dust settles. If I don't keep changing the mints every day they get all grimy."

"It isn't that," Helena said. "The mints are fine. As I said, I've already eaten—"

"Here, then," the alien innkeeper said, shoving the dish into her hands. "You take them and have them later on, in your room, compliments of the house." He smiled at her: greasily.

"I couldn't—"

"I insist," the maseni myth figure said.

"Thank you," she said. She took the mints, holding the dish as if it were a time bomb.

Tesserax signed the register and got their room keys. "No need to send a porter with us," he told Hogar. "We have our own mechanical to get the bags, and well find the room ourselves."

They followed the robot as it wheeled the luggage cart to the elevators which, Tesserax explained, were physical additions to the myth structure, since no elevators had existed when the Gilorelamans Inn was first imagined.

The second floor ambience was much like that of the first floor, though the carpeting here was a deep, cool green. Jessie, Helena and the hell hound had a two-bedroom suite at the far end of the long, main corridor, while Tesserax's room was right next door. The drawing room of the suite was exquisite, with golden tapestries and heavy velvet-like draperies, comfortable furniture, an indoor fountain where three maseni myth figures spouted water onto one another's heads. Like all maseni rooms, this was a large one, far larger than they required, with a fourteen-foot ceiling of alternating squares of dark and light wood in a stunning parquet. The bedrooms were identical, spacious, and lavishly appointed.

"I think I like this place!" Helena said, flopping down on a bed that was ten feet long and seven wide.

Tesserax showed them where the baths were. "These, too, are additions, realities intrude on the original make-believe. But what good are myths if they aren't useful? And how useful would a hotel be, these days, without bathrooms?"

"True enough," Jessie said.

As they stepped out of the third bath and back into the drawing room, a knock sounded on the door.

"Come in," Tesserax said.

Tooner Hogar entered, bearing a wicker basket full of fruit, all wrapped in plastic. "Compliments of the house," he said, smiling slickly and handing the basket to Jessie.

"I — uh — well, thank you," the detective said.

"Try one of those," the innkeeper said, pointing to a large red fruit that looked like a combination between an Earth apple and an Earth raspberry, purple and nubbly.

"Well, maybe later," Jessie said.

"Perhaps the lady would like something," Hogar said, as Helena came out of the bedroom to see what was going on.

"What might I like?" she asked, stepping closer to see.

Hogar reached out and tore the sheet of plastic wrap from the gift basket and, bowing slightly toward Helena, he said, "Some home world fruit, dear lady. This is a marvelous collection. I believe you will find each piece delicious, fresh and clean."

"I don't know if I should eat any alien—"

"Oh," Hogar said, "you will find our home world fruit perfectly compatible with your digestive system. Haven't you eaten any imports, back on your own world?"

Helena said, "No, I—"

Hogar plucked the raspberry-apple from the basket, rubbed it against one sleeve to polish it, and held it toward her. "Here. Eat, eat! There is nothing to be afraid of!"

Before she could find some new way to refuse the poisoner's gift, their conversation was interrupted by a booming laugh so loud it shook the walls and hurt their ears. Immediately following this came a crashing sound that slammed through the hotel like an explosion in its foundations.

"What in the world—" Helena began.

"It's Pearlamon and Gonius, at it again!" Hogar the Poisoner said. He put the raspberry-apple back in the basket, turned and hurried into the main hall, his robes fluttering behind him.

"Who are Pearlamon and Gonius?" Jessie asked Tesserax.

"Two gods," the alien said.

They followed Hogar into the corridor and saw the source of the thumping racket that was still going on. In the middle of the hall, half-way back toward the elevators, two huge maseni males, dressed in little loincloths and headbands, were wrestling, tossing each other into the walls, lacking and punching and twisting ears, battering noses and pulling hair and biting necks.

"Maseni gods are a lively sort," Tesserax explained. "They always have to be up to something. Wrestling, boxing, engaging in relay races, drinking and singing…"

"Well, anyway," Jessie said, "it's not going to get dull around here."

Chapter Nineteen

That same night, Jessie woke in the dark bedroom and found something soft and warm filling his mouth. For a moment, he suspected someone was trying to jam a pillow down his throat, but when he came fully awake, he realized the truth. He and Helena had gone to sleep while lying on their sides, facing each other; in the hours since, he had slid toward the foot of the bed, and now he held one of her delectable, round breasts in his mouth. Or part of one of her breasts, anyway. It was difficult, if not impossible, he knew, to hold all of one of Helena's breasts in his mouth.

He relaxed when he realized no one was trying to smother him. He would have been perfectly content to remain like that, nipple on his tongue, until morning, had he not heard the sound that — he realized upon hearing it once more — had originally awakened him: a moan.

He tensed, staring into the darkness.

Silence.

Imagination?

Then it came again, a low and agonized cry that originated either in the drawing room of the suite or from the corridor beyond. It cut across his spine like an ice pick and ended his sleepy satisfaction. He let go of Helena's breast and drew gently away from her, sat up and listened for the sound to come again.

It did: louder, more drawn out, more agonized than ever, like the cry of a man who knew he was rapidly dying….

Jessie slid out of bed, felt around on the floor and found his robe, put it on and belted it tightly around the waist. His narcotics dart gun was on the dresser, and he managed to pick it up, check that the magazine was in place and slip it in a robe pocket without waking anyone. He walked quietly into the drawing room and stood there in the darkness, waiting.

Again: moaning.

Now, he realized that the injured party — whoever or whatever it was — was in the corridor beyond the drawing room. Moving quickly across the room, he pulled the door open and looked into the dimly lit hallway. One of the gods lay there, in front of the door, sprawled on his back, his hefty arms thrown out at his sides, his legs spread like two lifeless hunks of dark blubber. His tentacles wriggled senselessly as he groaned.

Jessie bent over the prostrate giant and looked into the amber eyes. "What's the matter?"

"I've been done in," the god said.

"Poisoned?"

"Ah, that dastardly Hogar!" the god said, and he moaned twice as loudly as before. "He'll do anything for a price."

"What can I do to help you?" Jessie asked.

The tentacles wriggled more quickly than ever. "Nothing. Nothing at all! I have been dealt a foul intestinal blow, and I must succumb. But don't fear, my friend. I know who paid the dastardly Hogar, and I will seek revenge in my next life! It was Pearlamon, that odorous piece of godflesh, that pretender to true divinity!"

"What's going on here?" Helena asked. She had come, nude, from the bedroom and stood in the doorway, blinking her eyes.

Brutus appeared at her side and said, "Skullduggery."

"Exactly!" the god roared. "I had consumed but a cup of broth when the convulsions took me. I staggered this far and collapsed, seeking help. Now I am all but paralyzed, and I know help cannot be obtained. I die, I die!" Down the hall, Tesserax's door opened, and the maseni official came swaying toward them, nodding his bulbous head. "What's wrong with you, Gonius?"

"What appears wrong with me?" the god moaned. "I am the victim of those I took to be my friends. Trusting, I was stabbed in the back, taken sore advantage of, used, discarded, betrayed!"

"Does he always talk so goddamned much?" Brutus asked. "If he does, no wonder someone poisoned him."

"Oh, woe, woe!" Gonius cried, thrashing about as the poison seeped deeper into him.

"Pay, him no mind," Tesserax said. "He'll rise again, once he's dead, and he'll be poisoned again, too."

"Heartless mortal," Gonius said.

Tesserax leaned over the god and said, "How often have you been poisoned by Hogar?"

"At least ten thousand times!" the giant cried. "Is that not proof of this man's awful villainy?"

"It is, indeed," Tesserax said. "And it's also proof that we need not shed any tears or hold any concern over you."

"What a cruel world it has become," Gonius said, "when a god's own creatures care not for him."

"Poor, poor dear," Helena said, reaching out to touch the god's smooth, waxy face.

But she was too late with her sympathy, for Gonius gasped and shuddered one last time, died swiftly after decrying the state of the world.

"His body's fading away," Jessie observed.

Slowly, the great hulk was taking on an obvious transparent tone, the green carpet vaguely visible through it.

"In a few minutes," Tesserax said, "it will be gone altogether. In the morning, however, Gonius will be back at the breakfast table, screaming at Pearlamon and Hogar. It's rather a tedious cycle."

The body winked out of existence.

"Well, I suppose there's nothing more we can do," Jessie said.

"Get your sleep," Tesserax said. "Tomorrow, we begin questioning some locals about this beast we seek."

On the way back to their bedroom, Helena said, "Now I'm wide awake."

"I know just what you need," Jessie said. In the bedroom, he removed his robe. "A sedative."

Helena grinned and sat on the bed, reached to fluff the pillows, and found a note. "What's this?" she asked, picking it up. "It's a note to you," she answered, without waiting for him.

"A note? On my pillow? What's it say?" ^:

She read: "Mr. Jessie Blake — Beware all things maseni. Do not stir in cauldrons that do not concern you. If you persist at this, you will be the next victim of the beast." She flipped the piece of paper over and looked at the other side, which was blank. "That's it," she said.

* * *

Tesserax finished reading the note and blinked his yellow eyes as if he might be able to make the writing disappear. "Well, obviously," he said at last, "some supernatural creature came into your bedroom while you were in the hall watching Gonius die. Perhaps it phased through the wall, or pryed open a window…. Clearly, however the note was planted, the maseni supernatural community does not want you to work on this case."

Jessie said, "Gonius was a diversion, then?"

"Probably."

"We'll question him."

"My friend, he would only lie. There appears to be enough at stake to justify lying and even more. Besides, supernaturals who were once gods make the worst subjects for interrogations. They've got a natural superiority complex that makes them insufferably rude."

"But what are we going to do about this?" Helena asked. "Look, Tessie, we have been nearly illegally bitten by vampires and werewolves, momentarily terrorized by a Shambler, paralyzed by a sorcerer — and now we have to worry about being crushed to death by this mountain monster of yours. I will not—"

"Be calm, please," Tesserax said. "I have told you that the monster destroyed supernaturals as well as flesh-and-blooders. The people who wrote this not do not control it; indeed, they may be its next victims. They are bluffing, trying to frighten you off."

"I just don't know," Helena said.

"Believe me, my friend," Tesserax said, patting her bare shoulder with six limpid tentacles. "What I say is true. Besides, maseni supernaturals would never break the law; especially, they would never kill anyone. Except for this new beast, of course. But on our world, supernaturals have lived in harmony with flesh-and-blooders for so many centuries that we have no unapproved interracial violence."

"Well…."

"You know I'm right," the maseni said. "Now, let's all get some sleep and forget this ugly incident."

"It won't be easy," Jessie said. He took the note back and read it through again. "I've never before been threatened by a giant, barrel-footed monster."

"When I spoke to my brood brother, Galiotor Fils, the day we left Earth," the alien said, "he informed me that you had taken on his case for more than money. Indeed, he felt that money was the least of your interests in finding how I had died. He said that you were bored, weary of your day-to-day investigative routine, and that you were desperate for something challenging, something exciting."

"Your brood brother talks too much," Brutus said. "I should have given him an ass full of teeth, like I threatened."

"We've had plenty of excitement already," Helena said.

"Ah, I know you won't back out on me," Tesserax said. "None of you is a coward. And, besides, you don't get paid one thin tenth of a credit if you don't follow through on this."

"Maybe I'll give you an ass full of teeth," the hell hound said, lowering his head and opening his mouth.

Tesserax brushed nervously at his lipless mouth and looked at the rows of white teeth that Brutus displayed for his benefit. He said, "Surely, my friend, you jest!"

Brutus snarled.

Jessie said, "There are things more important than money, Tesserax."

"Yes," Helena said. "For instance: sex, contentment, peace of mind, freedom from insomnia, having two arms and legs, life in general, fame, fun, bubble baths and pillow fights."

Tesserax said, "If I were you, I'd also keep in mind the reaction of my fellow maseni if you should back out now."

"And what would that be?" Jessie asked.

"Well, I should guess, for a starter, they'd charge you with grave robbing and put out an omni-world bulletin for your arrests."

"Why a bulletin if you've already got us."

"I don't think we'd admit we already have you, my friend." Tesserax smiled, because he saw that, now, he had them over the proverbial barrel, no matter how shallow that proverb might be and how rotten the barrel.

"You couldn't hold us against our will," Jessie said. But he knew that was just so much bravado.

"That's just so much bravado," Tesserax said.

"Try us," Brutus growled.

The alien said, "Your people are only beginning to build a space travel system, at maseni direction. You'd have to leave here in a maseni ship. Do you seriously believe you could get tickets?"

Jessie threw the note on the dresser. "You win."

Tesserax beamed at each of them in turn. "Fine, fine. Well, shall we get some sleep so we're at least a bit fresh for the morning?" He turned and walked to the drawing room, then looked back and said, "Remember, if Hogar brings you anything for breakfast, don't eat it."

Chapter Twenty

The maseni hermit's name was Kinibobur Biks, and he was quite ordinary in appearance: seven feet tall like other maseni, with those startling amber eyes, bulbous forehead, waxy skin, flap of a nose, lipless mouth, tentacles for fingers…. He was, however, decidedly extraordinary so far as his choice of clothes was concerned. He wore a red and yellow, quilted woman's robe (which barely reached his first set of knees) and a pair of out-sized, fuzzy pink slippers, all imported from Earth.

"It gets damned cold, living in a cave," he told them, when he saw that they were staring at his slippers.

"I can imagine," Brutus said.

Biks said, "These keep my foot tentacles toasty warm." When they continued to stare, he got a bit defensive and, in a raised voice, he said, "And I think they're spiffy as all get out. Very stylish. Real class."

The way in which the hermit Kinibobur Biks had furnished his retreat, this cave, was also extraordinary. He had two rooms, separated by a wide archway, both very comfortably proportioned once you got through the foyer on your hands and knees. The first chamber contained a shape-changing sofa and chair, end tables, a battery-powered television, a self-contained power-pak stereo and pole lamp combination built in the shape of an Earth cow.

"A strange animal indeed," Kinibobur Biks explained. "We maseni have never seen any creatures like them. The cow silhouette has become all the rage in furniture, cookie cutters, ice cube trays — dozens of things."

Shortly, he realized that they were not staring at the stereo in admiration, but in disbelief, and he said, "Let me show you the rest of the place." It was an obvious maneuver to distract their attention from the furniture cow, but they followed him into the second room anyway.

This den contained a self-powered kitchen, including refrigerator, fusion disposal, oven, grill and pressure cooker. There were also several chairs and a table. The walls here were hung with full color, three-dimensional photographs of nude maseni females lying coyly on fur carpets and lush grass mats.

"A hermit gets hungry, like anyone else," Kinibobur Biks explained when he saw them staring at the elaborate self-powered kitchen. And when they congregated before the 3-D nudes, he said, rather plaintively, "And a hermit gets lonely, too, sometimes."

In the main room again, when they were all seated, Jessie said, "Mr. Kinibobur, why have you chosen to live in a cave, high in the mountains, as a hermit?"

The maseni crossed his thin, wax legs and popped a fuzzy slipper off his heel, swinging it from his foot tentacles as he spoke. "Modern maseni society is corrupt, depraved, cut through with greed and self-interest. The modern-day maseni thinks only of material objects, acquisitions, status symbols, creature comforts. He has forgotten his rugged individualism. He relies on gadgetry to serve him and has let his natural talents atrophy."

"But you've got plenty of gadgetry here," Jessie pointed out "You've got a modern apartment tucked away in a cave."

Kinibobur Biks sighed. "You're the first person to see through that excuse, sir, and I congratulate you for your powers of observation. In reality, I live here because I have fallen madly in love with an earth sprite who inhabits the center of the mountain."

"Earth sprite?" Helena asked.

The hermit's face became suffused with joy. "She's delightful, Miss. So svelte, so innocent, a child and yet a woman…. Anyway, she cannot leave the caverns, so I had to come to her. We met twenty years ago, when I went spelunking with some friends, and we've been lovers ever since. Sometimes, she calls to me — with voice as sweet as Coca Cola, and I go deeper into the mountains to be with her."

"I see," Jessie said.

"How lovely," Helena said.

Tesserax said, "Well, let's get off your personal life for a while, my friend, and discuss the events that transpired here exactly forty days ago."

"When the village was destroyed," the hermit said.

"That's correct."

"I was with Zemena at the time, you know. I didn't have any inkling what was going on."

"Zemena is this earth sprite?" Jessie asked.

"That's her, yes," Kinibobur Biks said. "She had called to me early in the day, and I went to be with her. We made passionate love in a basin of warm volcanic mud."

"Wonderful," Brutus growled.

"But you were the first to find the ruined village, were you not?" Tesserax inquired.

The hermit nodded, frowning. "Oh, it was a horrible sight! Bodies everywhere, crushed and torn, ripped as if by giant claws, limb smashed from limb. Blood in pools, enough to fill a lake. The houses were all demolished, tottering piles of debris, the stones crushed, the mortar powdered, the wood splintered and smouldering. Fluttercars lay in mangled heaps, and all the other artifacts of village life had shattered or run together in long streams of slag. Fires had raged and died; smoke still curled like a hateful mist through all that remained."

"You saw the tracks?" Jessie asked.

"Huge footprints," the hermit said. "It was those that made me turn and run for help."

"You saw no beast?"

"No. I was too late for that."

"Did you follow the tracks?"

"They faded out, led nowhere."

There was little more that Kinibobur Biks could tell them, but he was very good at describing the horror of the ruined village. Jessie had him run through that, in more detail, asking questions time and again, until there did not seem to be anything else they could gain from the hermit.

Outside the cave, on the narrow dirt path that led down to the road below and the charred sight of the blasted village, Jessie turned to Tesserax and said, "He was a strange one."

"We have many strange ones," Tesserax said. "Especially near these mountains. So much myth is centered here…. It's a crazy place. Recently, we have had Earth vampires here who have established a clinic to help their kind kick the blood habit, regardless of their myth requirements. We have had couvani, our race's werewolves, coming to a doctor here for electrolytic removal of excess hair. A group of the old gods have gotten together to worship the people that created them, even though they understand that the man-myth relationship is like your chicken and its egg. And just two weeks ago, we had the first recorded suicides of supernaturals in the history of our planet."

"Two supernatural creatures took their own lives?" Jessie asked as they drew toward the bottom of the path.

"That's right. They sat down facing each other and said a forbidden chant from one of the old books. They apparently synchronized their voices so well that they reached the last line precisely together and dissipated each other simultaneously."

Jessie said no more until they had reached the ruined village and stood in the shadows of the blasted walls that still thrust up here and there. He stared at the vista of scorched stone and charred wood, and he said, "I'd like to have a report on that, in detail."

Tesserax followed his gaze across the demolished town, and said, "On this? An analysis of the rubble?"

"No, no. Those suicides."

"Whatever for?"

'They might tie in."

"I doubt it very much," Tesserax said.

"Who's the detective around here?" Brutus asked the alien. "You?"

Tesserax said, "Well, okay."

"In a short time, in the same area, you've experienced two unheard of events: supernatural suicides and this marauding beast. It would be stretching things a bit to call that coincidental. Coincidence is a word used by men who are too lazy to find real reasons."

"You'll have that report tonight," Tesserax said.

Chapter Twenty-One

The remainder of that day, they spoke with four other maseni who had been the first on the scene after one or the other of the two disasters, and all of these tended to repeat, in their own words, what the hermit Kinibobur Biks had said. The only major difference was that these witnesses lived in ordinary maseni houses and did not wear fuzzy, pink bedroom slippers.

Late in the afternoon, they met with subjects six and seven, their last witnesses for the day, and these, surprisingly, had something vital to offer. What they contributed was not, however, obvious. In fact, at the time, they seemed to add very little to Jessie's fund of knowledge. Later, thinking over the events of the day, he would connect their attitude to other bits and pieces, begin to build a crazy picture…

The last two witnesses were both supernaturals, one of them maseni in origin, the other born of Earth mythology. The maseni was a mist demon by the name of Yilio, a shapeless mass of vapor, blue-white and icy cold, that hung together despite the way it whirled and roiled upon itself. He had no face or mouth, but that did not keep him from speaking. His voice was a hissing whisper that made Jessie uncomfortable. Yilio's wife, an Earth-born female angel named Hannah, didn't seem to mind her mate's voice or the pervasive chill he brought to their small apartment in a town not more than half an hour from the Gilorelamans Inn. She sat with him hovering over and around her, now and then preening her neatly clipped, golden wings. She always had a smile on her face, a big smile when she listened to him talk.

The strangest thing about the couple was their eagerness to question Jessie, thereby turning the tables a bit. For every piece of data he got from them, he had to give back twice as much. They wanted to know everything: how an earth detective had gotten into the case; whether news of the new monster's existence had reached the general public on Earth; what the Pure Earthers were like. Several times, one or the other of them returned to a single, central question:

"If this crisis isn't solved, if the beast can't easily be contained and destroyed, and if the news of its existence is leaked back to Earth, what will this do to Earth-maseni relations?" Yilio asked it, this time.

Jessie regarded the mist demon, wishing it had a face where he might read expressions, guess thoughts. "The Pure Earthers will be upset, naturally."

"Is there any chance they could win converts, gain political power?" Hannah asked, brushing golden curls from her cherubic face.

"No," Jessie said.

"Not even an outside chance?" Hannah asked.

"The Pure Earthers are borderline Shockies. No one will take their agitating seriously, even if it were learned the maseni were having trouble with a murderous supernatural. The gates have been opened. It's too late to close them now. Relations with our supernatural brothers are too advanced for us to return to total ignorance of them." He looked at his notepad, found his place, and said, "Now, just two more questions…"

The remainder of that interview should have taken ten minutes. It lasted, instead, nearly half an hour, because Yilio and Hannah were not done with their own interrogation, still interested in the nature of the Pure Earth movement.

At the time, Jessie was bothered by their interruptions, but he assigned no special value to their questions. He thought that they were merely curious and talkative by nature. Later, he realized that their behaviour, their curiosity, was another thread in the rope of an explanation which he was slowly twining together.

Somewhat depressed that the day had, apparently, yielded so little, the quartet returned to the inn an hour before nightfall, piled out of their robot-driven limousine and went inside.

Hogar was waiting for them in the foyer. "Welcome back, honored visitors," he said. "Would you care for any home world salted seeds?" He held out a container full of little brown spheres.

They all declined. In no mood to humor anyone, they pressed past the poisoner toward the elevators. When they were within a few yards of the lifts, the doors on the nearest slid open, and one of the giant maseni gods, fully ten feet tall, staggered out and fell on his face, clutching his stomach and screaming at the top of his voice.

Jessie stepped around the god and punched the service button to call another lift. "Hello, Pearlamon," he said.

The oversized maseni myth figure rolled onto its back and looked up. "You're the detective? Arrest this Tooner Hogar! He has slipped me something in my milk, some dire concoction, some horrendous poison that is burning out my innards."

"You'll feel all right in a few minutes," Jessie said, disinterestedly, smiling fatuously. "You'll be dead."

"Nobody cares anymore!" Pearlamon yelled.

"That's right," Jessie said.

"That ruthless Gonius can do as he pleases, hire the murderous Hogar to poison me, and no one cares!"

Tesserax and the three Earth people crowded into the lift that popped open for them, and they ascended, leaving Pearlamon to his temporary death throes in the hotel lobby.

Two hours later, as they sat at a collapsible dining table in the main room of the suite, eating a dinner which the robot had prepared for them and tested for subtle poisons, Hogar brought a message for Tesserax. He knocked lightly at the door, and when the maseni answered, he handed him an olive-drab envelope. "This came for you by courier," Hogar said. "The courier is downstairs, having a drink on the house, so I thought I'd better bring this around myself."

Tesserax accepted the envelope and said, "Thank you," rather coldly, realizing that the courier would shortly be — if he weren't already — doubled up in the hotel bathroom with nausea or diarrhea.

"And," Hogar said, "in hopes that your important investigation has been proceeding as you would like it to, I have brought you a bottle of wine to celebrate."

Tesserax hesitated.

Hogar showed him the label. "A fine vintage."

Tesserax opted for the easiest course, took the bottle and said, "Thank you, Hogar."

"It's nothing, nothing at all," the poisoner said. "Drink hearty, now!"

Tesserax closed the door, dropped the unopened bottle into the nearest wastecan and returned to the table. He handed Jessie the envelope. "It's the report that you asked for — on the suicides of those two supernaturals."

Jessie put it on the table, beside his plate. "I'll read it later," he said, "after I've stewed over everything else we've got."

Later, after Tesserax had left and they were alone, Jessie reached for the report and held it in both hands, looking at it, not opening it yet, waiting to be sure it was time. He had a certain intuition about how to proceed on a case, when it was right to consider datum, what order one should string the clues together for maximum and swiftest solutions. Right now, he wasn't sure about the wisdom of reading the suicide report. He felt that he had not let other things jell enough, that it would only cloud his theories instead of clear them, at this point. Something else should be done first.

Helena said, "This has been an exciting case."

He looked up, across the table, and saw she'd removed her gown. Her heavy breasts thrust across her dirty plate, the nipples turgid. "It sure has," he agreed.

"Better than divorce jobs," Brutus agreed.

"On the other hand," Helena said, "it's been dull."

"Oh?" Jessie asked. "In what way?"

"If you have to ask, you've proven my point. With all that's been going on, we've not had much time for tumbling in the proverbial hay — or in anything, for that matter."

She stood up and slid one hand along her flat belly, to her tangle of dark pubic curls.

Jessie put the envelope down. He had known there was something else to do, first, before reading that report. He just hadn't been able to think what it was. Now he remembered as, jiggling, Helena walked toward him.

* * *

Everyone was asleep but Jessie. He sat up against the headboard of the huge bed, trying to enjoy the gentle lines of Helena's nude body as she lay outside the covers: slightly sagging breasts, deep insweep of waist, thrust of hip, undulating curves of thighs and calves and ankles…. But he couldn't keep his mind on her; his thoughts kept returning to the suicide report. When he found himself staring at her flat belly but thinking about the olive envelope, he knew it was time to read what Tesserax had given him. He had thought out all the other points.

He got up, slipped into his robe and went into the main drawing room, pulled the bedroom door shut and sat down at the dinner table which the robot had cleared. He tore open the envelope, separated twelve sheets of print and began to read.

When he was half finished with the report, Pearlamon or Gonius or one of the other gods staying on the second floor staggered out of his room, moaning loudly, cursing Hogar. Jessie ignored the hysterical cries for help, and they soon ceased. He kept reading. When he finished and considered what he had read in conjunction with what else he had heard and seen, he knew he had the answer. He knew what and why the murderous beast was….

Chapter Twenty-Two

Brutus returned with Tesserax, who closed the door and joined Jessie, Helena and the service robot at the table in the middle of the room. "Is it true — you know what the beast is?"

"Yes," Jessie said.

"And you know how to destroy it?"

"I believe so," the detective said. "I'll have a chance to prove that tonight. If I'm right, the beast knows we're here and it will be coming after us, before dawn."

Tesserax was unsettled by this revelation. He fluttered tentacles before his own mouth, smoothed his robes, patted the top of his head. "Well! Well, then we best unpack the EmRec." He turned to the service robot and gave that order.

"EmRec?" Jessie asked.

The service robot opened a large trunk which they had brought with them, pulled an airtight plastic seal away and activated the machine that waited inside.

"EmRec means 'Emergency Recording System'," Tesserax explained. "It's a device adapted especially for this case."

A four-foot-high robot, in maseni form, waddled out of the trunk, swiveled its head to look at each of them, and toddled to the only empty chair, dragged itself into the seat and said, "I'm ready."

"You'll notice how compact the EmRec is," Tesserax said. "It has only stumpy legs, stumpy arms, and no differentiating 'neck' between its head and body."

"Yeah," Brutus said. "It looks like a dwarf robot."

"This compact design, in addition to the thick armored plating that covers the EmRec's taping areas, makes it nearly indestructible. It can 'live' through one of the beast's attacks. If the rest of us should perish, it will have a record of our progress to pass on to the next team of investigators, so they need not start from scratch."

Helena said, "But why such an elaborate machine? Would a regular, micro-miniaturized, armored recorder have done as well, one that didn't walk and talk?"

"No," Tesserax said. "The EmRec not only records, but makes comments on the tapes about facial expressions and gestures — comments we won't hear, but which those who later listen to the tape might find valuable." Tesserax sat down and looked away from the EmRec. "Shall we get on with it, then? What is this beast that's killed so wantonly, Mr. Blake?"

Jessie cast one last glance at the stumpy EmRec, then began his detailed explanation. "You thought my alien viewpoint might give me a fresh enough slant to solve this puzzle where your best minds could not, and you were correct. The clues were obvious. Some of them, however, were things you were so accustomed to that you took them for granted. I didn't; they were unique things to me, and I employed them in seeking a solution."

"Excuse me," EmRec said.

Jessie looked at the metal dwarf. "Yes?"

"Would say your expression, there, was one of smug self-satisfaction or a more mild and simple pleasure at your supposed success? That is to say, can we assume your explanation is untainted by egotism, or is there a shading element of the ego involved?"

Tesserax said, "Some ego, clearly. But I believe Mr. Blake's facial expression was more simple satisfaction that smugness."

"Proceed," the EmRec said.

Jessie gathered his wits and said, "First of all there was your new myth figure — the Drunken Driver. I was aware that new myths are constantly generated, but not that cross-racial myths could spring up. From the moment I realized this possibility, I kept it in mind throughout the interviewing of other witnesses, in weighing everything I saw and heard. Your own people wouldn't have considered it particularly relevant. Next, I considered how rough the supernaturals have played to keep us from learning anything about this affair. It seemed to me that they were aware of a new myth, springing from maseni-human cultural interaction, but were desperate to keep its nature unknown for fear of losing something. When I talked with the mist demon Yilio and his angel wife Hannah, I suspected that what they feared was a law — or an Earth government partial to such a law — that would forbid marriage between maseni and human supernaturals. The only thing that could generate the demand for a law like that would be some calamitous result of interracial, supernatural breeding. In other words, if a maseni-human supernatural couple produced offspring that was dangerous, the Pure Earthers might get enough power, from public fear, to force through a law forbidding all interracial marriages."

Tesserax was impressed. "Then you think this beast is the offspring of the coupling of maseni and human supernaturals?"

"Excuse me," EmRec said. "Mr. Galiotor Tesserax, is that a look of awe on your face or merely one of surprise? It is difficult for me to give it a certain interpretation. I apologize for the interruption, but I think one of my sight circuits was jolted loose during shipment."

"It was surprise and awe," Tesserax said.

"Thank you. Proceed."

Jessie took a moment, recovered, and said, "Yes, your beast is the child of an interracial, supernatural marriage. And I believe I can explain why this marriage produced an insane myth creature, a killer. You'll remember our discussion of the Protector in the space port when we landed. You said some people felt that those invading aliens, centuries ago, had not been able to live on this planet because some quirk in its geography, in its natural magnetic forces, was deadly to them."

"I recall," Tesserax said.

"Isn't it also possible," the detective went on, "that the same quirk might affect the offspring of certain supernatural marriages. Mind you, I'm not saying that all Earth myths who couple with maseni myths will produce unruly monsters. But isn't it feasible that one particular maseni species, matched with one particular Earth species, could produce an insane child by reason of your world's magnetic make-up, whatever that may be?"

"Perfectly possible," Tesserax said.

"Gentlemen," the EmRec said, "I wonder—"

"It was awe, this time. No surprise, just awe," Tesserax said.

"Thank you," the dwarf robot said. "Proceed."

Jessie said, "Finally, the suicide report convinced me that I was on the right track. Two unprecedented incidents, so close together in time and space, seemed more than coincidental to me. I felt the suicides were somehow tied in with the marauding monster. Now, I believe that the couple who took their own lives were the parents of this killer plaguing your people. In horror at what they had unleashed, they took their own lives in a sort of warped atonement for the deaths of those people in the ruined villages." He picked up the suicide report, referred to it. "If the suicides were the parents of this monster, then its mother was Kekiopa, a little-known Carribbean storm goddess elemental worshipped by a small voodoo cult. And the father was a maseni myth figure, Ityitsil the Reptile Master."

"Fascinating," Tesserax said.

"EmRec," Brutus said, "you can describe me as awe-stricken, too."

"Proceed," EmRec said.

Tesserax said, "How do you propose to locate this beast, this cross-bred monster?"

"It will locate us," Jessie said. "Part of the myth of the storm goddess is that she knows what transpires in every nook and cranny where her breezes blow. If the child inherited this mythical omniscience, it has known about all our comings and goings today. It will seek and destroy us. It knows we're here, just as it knew to avoid those traps your people set for it in the past."

"But if it knows we're here," Tesserax said, "it also knows we might be able to destroy it. It knows that you've plumbed its secret."

"It can't know that," the detective said. "It can't, because its many breezes do not reach inside four walls; indoors, it has no powers of observation, no ears and eyes."

Helena said, "Then, if it's on its way, we should be looking for some way to deal with it."

Jessie smiled, started to speak, turned to EmRec and said, "Yes, my ego is showing. I am smugly satisfied with myself."

"I thought you were," EmRec said. "I already commented to that effect, on my inner tapes." It waved one stubby hand again. "Proceed."

Jessie said, "I cracked my mythology books and found out how to destroy, how to disintegrate the souls, of each of the monster's parents."

"But they're already dead," Tesserax said.

It was Helena who was smiling smugly now. "Yes, they are, Tessie. But what Jessie means is — if we go through the rituals for dissipating both the mother and the father, the combination ought to dissipate the child — the beast."

"Exactly," Jessie said. "Now, to destroy the storm goddess, one has only to repeat this voodoo chant—" he tapped an open book, " — and throw a few drops of fresh human blood into her winds. To dissipate a Reptile Master, one must merely repeat a certain maseni prayer and pierce him with a silver shaft."

"Therefore," Helena continued, "when we confront this beast, one of us will say the voodoo thing and throw blood into the wind, while someone else repeats the maseni prayer and fires a silver shaft into the creature's hide."

Tesserax got to his feet, patting the top of his head excitedly. "Two questions come to mind, straight off. First, where will we obtain this silver shaft, on such short notice?"

Jessie said, "I have a dip of silver narcotics darts which I use in my pistol on Earth when I know I might have to shoot werewolves as well as human beings. There's not enough silver in the darts to kill a supernatural like a werewolf, but it stings them badly and keeps them back. And, judging from what I've read of your Reptile Masters, a few silver pins should turn the dissipation trick."

"And what about the human blood?" Tesserax asked.

"The service robot operates a roboclinic out of one of these trunks he brought along, doesn't he?" the detective asked.

"Yes. On any dangerous mission, a roboclinic—"

Jessie interrupted: "We can have him take a blood sample from me, and I can throw that into the air."

"Will that be sufficient quantity of blood to meet the myth requirements?" the maseni asked.

"Yes, according to this UN text of mine."

Excitedly, Tesserax said, "Then we are ready for it — or nearly so! If it should come after us tonight—"

He was interrupted by a long, blood-curdling scream, a roaring, a thundering voice that shook the windows in their panes and made the mythical inn tremble violently on its mythical foundation.

"Already?" Tesserax asked.

Jessie said, "We had best move fast."

EmRec said, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but would you say that scream was merely one of rage — or was it touched by madness? I think maybe my audio receptors were jarred a bit, in transport, in addition to my scanners."

Chapter Twenty-Three

The home world's two large moons shone down on the detective, the woman, the hell hound, Tesserax, the service robot, EmRec, Hogar the Poisoner, and a couple of giant, loin-clothed maseni gods as the group gathered behind the inn, facing the dark snow forests on, the higher slopes of Piotimkin. The booming, inhuman voice came from that direction. Soon, the thing would appear.

"Anyone like a cookie?" Hogar asked. He passed a box of them around; the box came back to him, still full.

EmRec said, "Mr. Hogar, sir, is that some form of mad expectancy on your face, or do you suffer from indigestion?"

"Drop a bolt," Hogar snarled.

The stubby robot said, "I wouldn't have to ask if my sight circuits and interpretation nodes hadn't been badly jarred in transport."

"Strip your threads," Hogar said, meaner than before.

Now, from upslope, came the sound of the giant conifers splitting apart like tiny saplings to make way for the monster. Trees crashed down, colliding noisily with other trees. Frightened woodland animals called out and rushed forth into the open meadow that separated the inn from the trees.

"There!" Helena cried.

Something enormous reared out of the last of the pines. Trees fell before it, revealing it in the pale moonlight.

"Ugly bastard, isn't he?" Brutus asked.

A core of violent winds, churning like beater blades on a mixmaster, whipped the trees and tore up the meadow sod and hurled it skyward in fist-sized chunks. The animals that had run into the meadow now ran out again, screeching shrilly, bellowing in terror. At the center of the maelstrom lay the more concretized aspect of the beast: a thirty-foot lizard which looked much like its father but was twice as large as a Reptile Master and a thousand times meaner. It turned green eyes on them and ran a pebbled tongue over rows of sabrelike teeth, started lumbering in their direction. Each of its six feet left barrel-sized depressions in the earth.

"I can't interpret the monster's facial expressions at all," EmRec said. "And considering that its bellows really convey no meaning, I should really get something down here, I don't suppose one of you gentlemen is in the mood to assist?"

"Pop a rivet," Hogar snapped, still holding his big boxful of poisoned cookies.

"I didn't think you'd be in the mood," the metal dwarf said.

Helena had begun the voodoo chant, while Brutus began to read the maseni prayer that would help dissipate the father's heritage. Jessie held both the vial of blood and the narcotics dart pistol loaded with silver pins.

"Blood," Hogar said, sarcastically. "Everyone derides me. But I'll tell you one thing — poisoning is at least neat."

The gargantuan had crossed a third of the meadow and was picking up speed, bearing down on them with the determination of a wounded bear and the momentum of a freight train.

The maseni gods began to nonchalantly back away from the scene, their eyes wide in terror but not yet terrified enough to soil their godly reputations with a display of cowardice.

"Hurry with the chants!" Tesserax cried.

"That was raw fear," EmRec said, smugly. "That was the clearest expression of naked terror that I have ever seen, Mr. Galiotor."

Tesserax did not respond. Indeed, he had not even heard the dwarf, for his own loud screaming.

The earth shook with the dragon's approach. The force of the winds hit them and pasted their clothes tight against them; Tesserax's orange robes splashed out colorfully in his wake.

Jessie threw the blood into the wind as Helena finished her chant, then dropped to one knee and fired a dozen silver darts at the dragon's belly just as Brutus came to the final verse of the maseni prayer. The effect was quite dramatic. The charging beast jerked, staggered clumsily to the side, fell down and rolled past them, into the back of the inn. Mythical boards burst, and mythical windows shattered….

"It worked!" Tesserax cried.

"Elation," EmRec said. "Or is it surprise? It might even be relief of a sort…."

The dragon wailed and writhed, trying to regain its feet. But there was no use to its struggles. The winds around it had abated. Already it was becoming transparent, like a milk glass novelty in the pale moonlight.

A few minutes later, Tesserax said, "It's gone. We did it, Blake! Or, rather, you did it, my friend."

The animals, having fled to the far edges of the meadow, came slowly back toward the trees, now, sniffing the air where the beast had once walked.

"This calls for a celebration!" Hogar said. "Food, wine, candies and spices! All on the house, of course."

Pearlamon said, "I must admit, Mr. Blake, that many of us knew what the beast was. But we hoped to find a way to destroy it ourselves, without letting the secret out." He was munching on some peanuts which he had taken from a pouch in his loincloth, and his words were somewhat slurred. "But now that you and your brave companions—" He stopped, looked startled, dropped the peanuts and grabbed his throat. "Ach!" he said.

Hogar giggled.

"Ach, ach, ach," Pearlamon choked.

Jessie turned away from the god as he fell onto his back. To Brutus, the detective said, "You know, you were right when you said I had a latent fear of becoming a Shockie like my folks. I don't have that fear any more. If I can keep my perspective in the midst of this crazy gang, I know I can adjust to anything at all."

"I never was afraid of change or of danger or of crazy creatures," Helena said. "Excitement always makes me horny, that's all."

"Ah, hah!" EmRec said. "I recognized that expression. Boy oh boy! Your face was a mask of sheer lust." The metal dwarf looked at Jessie and said, "Oh, and yours too, yours too!" He paused. "Or maybe yours isn't lust Perhaps you're constipated? I have a faulty visual node here, and I can't tell for sure. Is it, maybe, a tick in your cheek? Or could it be… No. I think what it is, you have had a religious revelation, a miraculous… No, not that either. Your expression is more one of… Or is it? Well now…"