Bratton's Idea

by Manly Wade Wellman

Slowly the metal giant sat up in its bonds.

The bucket-head, with its vacant eyes now gleaming as yellow as Tom-Tom's, turned in that direction. Then, with unthinkable swiftness, the big metal body heaved itself erect, ripping free of the clamps that had been fastened upon it. Up rose two monstrous hands, like baseball gloves of jointed iron. There was a clashing, heavy-footed charge.

Sitting still as death, Gascon again recalled to mind what Tom-Tom had said, what he had heard at medical school.

Tom-Tom gave a prolonged yell, and threw up the gun to fire. The explosions rattled and rolled in the narrow confinement of the room. Bullets spattered the armor-plated breast of the oncoming giant. One knocked away a gleaming eye. The towering thing did not falter in its dash. Tom-Tom tried to spring down too late. The big hands flashed out, and had him.

Gascon, now daring to move, dragged the bench across the doorway. From a corner he caught up a heavy wrought-iron socket lever, as long as a walking stick and nearly as thick as his wrist. All the while he watched, over his shoulder, a battle that was not all one-sided.

After his final effort to command the newly animated giant, Tom-Tom had not made a sound. He concentrated on freeing himself from the grip that had fastened upon him. Both his wooden hands clutched a single finger, strained against it. Gascon saw, almost as in a ridiculous dream, that immense finger bending backward, backward, and tearing from its socket. But the other fingers kept their hold. They laid Tom-Tom on the floor, a great slab of a foot pinned him there. The two metal hands began to pluck him to pieces, and to throw the pieces away.

First an arm in a plaid sleeve flew across the room—an arm ripped from Tom-Tom's little sleeve, an arm that still writhed and wriggled, its fingers opening and closing. It fell among the wheels that still turned, jamming them. Sparks sprang up with a grating rattle. Then a flame of blueness. Gascon turned his back toward the doorway that he had blocked with the bench, to see the thing out.

With a wanton fury, the victorious ogre of metal had shredded Tom-Tom's body, hurling the pieces in all directions. To one side, the machinery was putting forth more flame and more. The blaze licked up the wall. The giant straightened his body at last, holding in one paw the detached head of its victim. The jaws of Tom-Tom snapped and moved, as though he was trying to speak.

"Look this way!" roared Gascon at the top of his voice.

The creature heard him. Its head swiveled doorward. It stared with one gleaming eye and one empty black socket. Gascon brandished the socket lever over his head, as though in challenge, then turned and sprang over the bench into the dark corridor.