Episode Three: The Spider Strikes: A series of giant spider attacks perplex Science Investigator Gwen Montgomery and her new partner, Ray Murdock.
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The Spider Strikes
Sunday, Jan. 22, 1956, Philadelphia
Racing up the stairs to the lab, Science Investigator Gwen Montgomery could have screamed herself blue in the face—but from the message on her wrist-radio, her partner was in no shape to listen.
You had to be the big strong man and keep me “safe” didn’t you, Ray? Reaching the second floor, she stopped, approached Crane Electronics’ main lab stealthily, and cracked open the door.
Her partner, Ray Murdock, lay stiff and unmoving on a toppled oscilloscope, two of the company’s top engineers lying beside him. The room around them was a shambles of demolished equipment and broken glass. Gwen scrutinized it from the doorway, automatic in hand, hoping she could shoot before the thief turned his paralysis ray on her.
A harsh scrape drew her attention to the window. A spider, four feet across, crouched on a worktable, clutching a box of Crane’s new transistors against its belly with its middle legs.
Gwen fired three shots, fast and accurate, heard them ricochet off the spider’s carapace. It smashed glass from the pane before it, then leapt into the darkness. Gwen raced up to the window, saw the spider appear under a streetlight, vanish into darkness, then reappear in a pair of headlights as a car engine revved up. The trunk light came on and she saw the spider climb inside.
It was too far to hit, but she emptied the clip anyway. The car sped away, its license plate hidden by darkness.
“Damn and double damn.” She took Ray’s pulse; it was there, but like the earlier victims, he was stiff as a board. Pulling back her sleeves, she called Arnold on her wrist radio. “Gwen? How’d the plan work?”
“Ray improvised.” Gwen fumbled a pack of Lucky Strikes from her purse and put one to her lips. “He’s paralyzed, so are two of Crane’s people. It’s not a raygun, it’s a kaijin.
“Our thief has trained himself a pet mutant.”
Wednesday
The highball was the first booze Steve had tasted in six weeks. Since Matt was buying, Steve ordered a second. “So, you found Tommy’s trail, Matt? Like you said in your letter?”
“Have you thought about my job offer?” Matt Powell puffed his pipe alight; he was heavier and better dressed than when they’d served in Korea, but his black shag smelled just as horrible. “I’m telling you, underground housing is the wave of the future; between the kaijin and the spacemen, it’s the only way anyone can feel safe. Good pay, Mary knows lots of girls—”
“Buddy, I haven’t met a broad worth spending time with—” Well, not more than one night. “—since I was in Boston during the Invasion. And you know how that turned out.”
“You can’t expect to find a good woman the way you live. Drifting town to town, hunting your brother, brawling—” Steve started to protest. “I heard about that fracas with the Nazi at the bus station.”
“Someone had to remind that jerk his side lost. Pushing that old Jew around—” Steve remembered the old man’s terrified expression and his fists clenched. “You know I hate bullies. The orphanage, reform school, Sgt. Duffy—”
“You’ve just got a chip on your shoulder. Most short guys do.”
“The hell I do! Duffy had it coming, slapping that bar girl around. As for the job—” Steve shook his head. “Tommy’s all I got, Matt. Our folks are gone, Aunt Sally died when that dinosaur attacked New York—”
“You said he never wrote after the orphanage stuck you in reform school, not even to tell you the Goulds had adopted him. And in the four years since New America, you haven’t heard from him, haven’t found a trace—what if everyone’s right and he’s hiding in Moscow?”
“If I hadn’t gotten myself sent to reform school, if I’d still been at the orphanage when the Goulds came by—”
“You’d have what, spotted they were spies? You can’t blame yourself.”
“The hell I can’t. My kid brother, my responsibility.” And I failed. I couldn’t stop Dr. Verdugo using Tommy and the other kids for guinea pigs, I couldn’t stop Commies from adopting him.
Matt sighed, then glanced around quickly for listeners. Everyone in the bar was still glued to Zane Grey Theater on the bar television. “1953, right after I got myself off the blacklist, I met another ex-Communist, Frank Cable. I made him understand we weren’t giving the government any names it didn’t already have and he was able to get himself cleared.
“I ran into him again a couple of months back. Turned out the FBI were a lot tougher on him because he knew the Goulds.” Steve froze. “He doesn’t know where Tommy is, but he remembers him; if you talk, maybe you’ll spot some sort of clue. It’s not much—”
“It’s the best lead I’ve ever had. Where do I find Cable?”
“He’s night watchman at Phelps Electronics’ warehouse. He has the place to himself—says he won’t meet you in public, he’s still worried the FBI watches him.” Matt puffed on his meerschaum for a second. “To explain your interest, I had to tell him you’re really Steve Forrest.”
“Will he tell anyone? If the G-Men know, they’ll watch me like a hawk to see if I lead them to Tommy.” And if they convict him of helping the Goulds, it’s the chair.
“Don’t worry, Frank doesn’t want anyone connecting him with the Goulds either.”
“Thanks, pal.” Steve shook Matt’s hand. “You just paid me back for Korea.”
“For dragging me through three miles of snow with slopies on our trail?” Matt shook his head as he handed Steve a paperback of One Lonely Night, with a direction-covered sheet of notepaper sticking out of it. “It’s off Engineer’s Row, the street near the Eckert-Mauchly computer company. Give the book back when you come over for Mary’s pot roast, just don’t let her know I read Spillane.”
“A-OK,.” Steve stuffed the book in his pocked and picked up his fedora. He loved reading. Get lost in a Mike Hammer adventure, or Heinlein’s gritty “space realism” and he could forget about Tommy, about his empty wallet, about everything, at least for a while.
With a goodbye to Matt, he headed off to meet Cable.
“No, Tommy never mentioned you.” Frank Cable flashed his light down the dark concrete aisle between the high metal shelves to his left, checked the aisle to the right, moved on. “If I didn’t owe Matt a favor—”
“America’s got bigger problems than Commies these days, remember? The blacklist’s over, Ike’s talking a world defense threat with Khruschev and Chou—”
“The Goulds planned to dump plutonium in water supplies all over the country, mutate everyone.” Cable’s deepset eyes suddenly flared, putting life in his sagging face. “Nobody’s going to forgive and forget that. Used to be I was proud to be a Red, proud—but not after I learned about New America.”
“Do you—do you think Tommy helped them, like the prosecution said?”
“Tommy was a genius, you know that.” Cable didn’t see Steve’s startled expression. “And he was serious about Communism, but he was 100 percent American. Loved hot rods, Batman comics, the Grand Canyon, Uncle Miltie—”
“So, he wasn’t in on it?”
“My guess is no. But he loved Art and Liesl, I don’t think he’d have tried to stop them.”
He was a kid. Nobody could expect him to, could they? “Did he leave the country after?”
“The family went to Moscow in ’49; he hated it. My guess is, he took it on the lam to the southwest, he fell in love with the desert after that Grand Canyon vacation. I know Party members who’d have hidden him, and with so many records destroyed in the Invasion, he could pretend to be—”
Cable shone the flashlight down the next aisle and a half-dozen points of light glinted back. Steve stared at the biggest spider he’d ever seen, unable to believe his eyes as it scuttled toward them, its front legs glowing a venomous green.
“Jesus!” Cable’s gun came up, firing at the spider’s head. Steve heard the bullets ricochet, shook off his horror and tugged Cable back, glancing around for anything he could swat the bug with. The spider’s foreleg thrust out, brushed Cable’s chest and engulfed him in a green glow. Steve’s body went numb and he collapsed, watching Cable, as rigid as a shop-window dummy, fall to the floor.
The glow died. The spider crawled into the dark, then came a crash, then more crashes, as if the spider were sweeping supplies off the shelf. Steve’s arm twitched, then he felt pins-and-needles run over his entire body until he almost cried out. He cautiously stretched his arm, pushed himself up and stood. Cable hadn’t moved; Steve shook him, but it didn’t help.
The smashing stopped. Steve tried to pry Cable’s flashlight and gun loose, but failed—then he heard faint, stealthy, human footsteps, nearly yelled a warning, then realized the spider might not be alone. Trained monsters? Crazier things happen these days.
He heard the spider’s staccato footsteps, followed by something bouncing along the floor, then a hiss and stink that made Steve stagger away fast, barely repressing a choking cough. The spider kept moving, then came a flash that lit up the entire building. As the light died, the spider stopped moving.
“It worked.” A woman’s voice, Southern, like Annabelle in the orphanage; a flashlight beam from the direction of her voice flung light past Cable’s body. Despite the stink, Steve moved closer, silently.
Something buzzed and crackled, then the spider’s footsteps began again. The woman gave an unladylike curse.
Steve lifted a small box of one of the shelves and stepped out into the long walkway between the right and left shelves. He made out the spider’s bulk in the flashlight, charging at the woman and hurled the box at its back. Glass shattered as the spider stopped and faced him. “Quick lady! Recharge the raygun!”
“I’m afraid it’s burned out!” The spider came on fast; Steve backed away, throwing another box in its face, which didn’t help. “I have a handmine, just stay out of its reach a second!”
“What if it’s got webs?” Steve retreated down the aisle, watching the spider climb over Cable in pursuit, it’s legs glowing green again.
“No webs, it’s a robot!” The flashlight beam wriggled side to side, then refocused on the spider. “Take cover!”
Something flew into the light and landed on the spider’s back. Steve saw the explosion a second before the sound and the shockwave hurled him away.
He lay stunned on the floor as a piece of something big and heavy flew through the light and struck his skull. Darkness descended.
Thursday
I hear they give you smokes in prison. Eleven hours after regaining consciousness, Steve stubbed out his last cigarette on the freshly painted wall of his jail cell. Guess I should look on the bright side, huh?
“He didn’t say nothing about being a science cop.” Steve heard the sergeant in charge of the cellblock, somewhere up the corridor, but the man’s next words were drowned out by wolf whistles and cat calls from the other cells.
“Oh, the error was perfectly understandable, I am sure. Good morning, Steve.” Accompanying the sergeant, a dark-haired woman flashed him a dazzling smile from behind her veil, as if she’d known him for years. “Sgt. Prohaska, please?”
She was a looker: Red dress, matching jacket, leather purse, pert black hat with a pearl pin and stockings, though the sneakers and the holstered gun on her hip didn’t match the ensemble. And he recognized the voice from the warehouse.
“He don’t look like much of a cop.” The balding man pulled the cell-door open with the hook on his left wrist.
“Funny, you don’t either.” Steve said. The flatfoot scowled as Steve adjusted his tie, strode past him and down the corridor with the woman. “So, what’s this about, lady? Who the hell are you? What was that robot? And did you see my hat back in that warehouse, the explosion must have knocked it off me…”
“My name is Gwendolyn Montgomery, TSC Science Investigator, and I owe you an apology.” She seemed completely unperturbed by the lewd suggestions following them down the hall. “I assumed you were Phelps’ employee, so I never imagined you’d be arrested as a suspect. I don’t know about your hat, but since I owe you my life, what would you say to lunch and coffee?”
Steve’s stomach rumbled. “Throw in a pack of cigarettes and its a deal.”
Thirty minutes later, Steve was digging into a thick steak at a small cafe near the college. The clean-cut students had stared at Steve, making him acutely aware he hadn’t shaved or showered and had a big goose egg on his forehead, but it was more than worth it for the big meal, the fresh pack of cigarettes, and hopefully some answers. “So? The robot?”
“A one-spider crimewave. Engineers Row has lost transistors, new-model vacuum tubes and last week a half-pound of platinum.” Gwen tasted her own steak, nodded approvingly; Steve had already finished his. “It’s paralyzed a dozen people, possibly permanently, including four cops outside the warehouse last night; we thought someone with a raygun, then a kaijin, but the victims have no bites and no venom in their blood. I brought an insecticide bomb and a handmine last night—”
“Magnetic grenade, right?” Steve finally remembered the name. “They used ‘em on those Venusian robots in Chicago last year.”
“Correct. Howard—Howard Phelps, Jr., that is—insisted the company’s experimental rifle would do a better job, but as you saw—”
“So, you just knew which building it would show up at?”
“Heavens no, we stationed police and agents in every target we had manpower to cover. We being the Technology and Science Commission’s Science Investigations branch.”
“You’re kidding.” Steve remembered reading about the commission in the occasional newspaper. “I thought the TSC just sat around stamping research permits.”
“We’re also authorized to investigate scientists who decide to work without a government license—and the technology thefts are a warning flag. Quite possibly the robot’s maker is building a bigger model, or some other unlicensed-—” Her wrist beeped. She pulled back her sleeve and Steve saw a bracelet with a half-dozen buttons and a small speaker. “Montgomery here.”
It’s a wrist-radio, like Dick Tracy! Steve couldn’t stop gawking at it.
“Get back to base,” a man’s voice barked. “Dunning’s taking over for Ray, you’ll—”
“I have an alternative solution, Palmer.” Her expression told Steve Gwen didn’t fancy working with Dunning.
“You can’t work without a man. Somebody has to handle the rough stuff, you shouldn’t have gone off last—”
“The man who saved my life last night is a Korean War veteran, and he’s willing and able to help me with the ‘rough stuff’ as you put it.” Steve concentrated on his coffee. “Unless you want Dunning to drop the blue bullet matter?”
“Of course not, but—alright, fine, take this guy on board.” A bit more talk, then Gwen turned off the bracelet and tidied her sleeve, smiling.
“Where’d you get that?” Steve asked. “And how’d you know I was in Korea?”
“You told the police, I read your file. The wrist-radios are government issue for us, the FBI, a couple of other agencies.” Gwen picked up her cigarette from the ashtray. “As you just heard, I have to have a male partner—”
“You handle yourself pretty good.”
“It’s TSC policy for the few Science Investigation branches that allow women agents at all. Dunning is not the sort of man a woman wants to be alone with, if you follow me—so to get Palmer off my back on this subject, I’d happily pay you a hundred a day to—”
“A c-note?” Steve choked on his coffee. I wouldn’t have to hop a freight west. I could buy a ticket, get a sleeping car berth… “What do I have to do?”
“Accompany me back to the warehouse while I look for clues to what the spider was after. Confronting it directly has proven too dangerous; I intend to find the man behind it instead. If we’re lucky, he knows how to cure the spider’s victims; if not, examining it may tell us—”
“Count me in,” Steve said. “I owe Cable—the guard last night—a big favor. Do I have time to get a shave first?”
“We’ll start work as soon as you finish eating, I’m afraid. And understand one thing—” She tossed a ten on the table to cover both meals and a generous tip. “Our association is strictly business. Don’t get any ideas.”
“Don’t worry, you’re way too classy for me.” Steve wiped his mouth with a napkin and lit another cigarette as he stood. “Last classy lady I met, I thought we really had something. Turns out me and class are like oil and water.”
He thought about telling Gwen that the lady had been the same doctor who’d won a medal for fighting the Devilfish, but she’d probably think he was bragging.
(continued on page 2)