Vandals of the Void
By ROBERT WILSON
The Void had spawned these hell-creatures
of destruction, had sown them deep within
Earth's soil. And now Earth was reaping a
whirlwind of death—weapons futile against
the immortal conquerors from another space.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Art Douglas saw one of the very first of them, found and brought in by two drivers from the huge steel burrowing worm which was at that time conducting the sub-crust explorations many miles below the rolling Kansas prairies. Why the men should have brought the discovery to an organization such as the Interplanetary Research Institute, was something not quite clear to Art. They must have known, he reflected bitterly, how utterly bogged down the Institute was, how close to absolute disintegration, from inability to work or progress, and the resultant effect on the morale of the highly trained scientists who made up its staff.
But the weird organism which lay before him on the laboratory bench dispelled all such thoughts immediately. His imaginative, yet scientific brain leaped to meet the challenge and the Interplanetary Research Institute became only a workshop full of tools, ready for his use.
It was only natural that he should first assume that the creature-plants were probably native to the level at which they had been found, and that this was their natural environment. How terribly wrong this was to prove! Of the terrible menace in the thing before him, Douglas could not dream; although he could plainly see its potentialities. For it had been found boring through solid rock.
It seemed to have been designed for just that. Its form was that of spiral screw, about a foot long, tapering from a diameter of about an inch at one end, to four inches at the other. In color it was a dull blue-black, the surface fine textured and smooth, and steely hard. Its strength was of steel also, for it was constantly whipping about, trying to fasten its three needle sharp jaws, which were located at the smaller end, in anything it might find. One of the men who brought it had suffered a frightful gash in the forearm before they had learned that this could be avoided by picking it up at the larger end. The creature could not quite achieve the feat of bending itself double.
Art found that once it had hooked those fierce jaws into anything, it started boring and could not be torn loose. However, it would bore only upward! When laid on a flat table, it merely writhed about, looking for some object above it. He held a thick piece of board over it. The head had bored through in a few seconds, but when he turned the board over, it backed out hastily, and flopped to the table again, where it resumed its endless searching, searching for something, anything overhead, in which it could fasten its tenuous grip.