Sweet Tooth by Robert F. Young (popular books to read txt) 📖

three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The acrid odor they give off while 'feasting' probably arises from a substance analogous to our gastric juices which their heat-resistant stomachs supply to accomplish 'digestion,' only in this case 'digestion' consists primarily in melting down the metal they consume and in isolating its waste matter, after which the pure metal is reprocessed into 'body tissue' and the waste matter is thrown off in the form of slag. I think we might go so far as to call them a couple of animate open hearths."

Dexter had turned around in the front seat and was looking at the colonel admiringly. "I think you've hit the nail right on the head, sir," he said.

General Longcombe was scowling. "We're here to survey the situation, Colonel, not to jump to conclusions." He addressed the back of Jeremiah's weather-beaten neck. "I trust we'll have no trouble finding suitable accommodations in Sugardale, sheriff."

"Mrs. Creasy'll be glad to put you up at the Inn, if that's what you mean," Jeremiah said.

Mrs. Creasy was more than glad. Indeed, from the way she looked at the two officers and the NCO through her thicket of hair, you would have thought they were the first roomers she'd had in months, discounting the cockroaches, of course.

The general said petulantly, "Let's get down to business, Colonel. I want an armored company brought up immediately, and I want the fallen-star area put off limits at once. Have the sheriff show you where it is." He turned to Sergeant Wilkins. "Sergeant, get on the phone as soon as the colonel gets off it, and arrange for my personal Cadillac to be delivered here first thing."

After phoning his paper, Dexter headed for the dining room and sat down beside General Longcombe. "Anything new on the VEMs, General?" he asked.

General Longcombe sighed. There were shadows under his eyes, and his cheeks showed signs of sagging. "They're still in circulation. Scared the wits out of a couple of teenagers and ate their hot-rod. We've got them under constant surveillance, of course, and what with all the underbrush they trample it's easy enough to track them. But we can't stop them. They eat our gas grenades and our fragmentation grenades, and they're impervious to our tank killers and our antitank mines. A small A-bomb would take care of them nicely, but even assuming there's an area around here large enough and isolated enough to permit us to use an A-bomb, there's no way of herding them into it."

"It just so happens that there is such an area," Jeremiah Smith said. "Tillson Valley—about ten miles south of here. You'd have to vacate Old Man Tillson, of course, but he'd be glad to go if you made it worth his while. He hasn't grown a thing but weeds anyway since he got his pension. Just sits around all day and sucks up beer."

"But there's still no way of getting the VEMs out there," General Longcombe objected.

"Tell me, general," Dexter said, "have they eaten any of your jeeps or trucks or personnel carriers?"

General Longcombe shook his head. "They've had plenty of opportunity to, too."

"I have a theory," Dexter said.

The look that promptly settled on General Longcombe's face made no bones about what he thought of presumptuous young reporters with theories. Colonel Mortby, however, was considerably less biased. "It won't do any harm to listen to what he's got to say, sir," he pointed out, "and it may even do some good. It'll be at least a day before the ship is excavated and even then we may not know any more about the sort of life forms we're dealing with than we do now."

Dexter needed no further invitation. "I think it's pretty clear by now," he began, "that our two visitors from Planet X aren't attracted by metal in just any old form at all, but by metal in the form of new, or nearly new, automobiles. This strongly suggests that their landing was unpremeditated, because if it had been premeditated they would have come down in a section of the country where such metallic concoctions are in plentiful supply—near a city or a large town, or close to a heavily traveled throughway.

"But what is it about these new cars of ours that they find so irresistible? Let's try an analogy. Suppose that one of us has gone into a bakery to buy a birthday cake and that money is no object. Which cake is he most likely to buy? The answer is obvious: the one with the most visual appeal. To return to our visitors from Planet X. Suppose that all their lives they've been eating metal in various but uninspired ingot forms—the metallic equivalents, let's say, of beans and bread and hominy grits. Now suppose they find their way to another planet where visual appeal in metallic creation is a major occupation, and suppose that shortly after disembarking from their spaceship they come upon a new convertible. Wouldn't they react in the same way we would react if all our lives our diet had been confined to beans and bread and hominy grits and we traveled to another planet, disembarked and came upon a delicious birthday cake just begging to be eaten? Wouldn't they make pigs of themselves and start looking for more cakes?"

"But if it's the ornate nature of our late-model cars that attracts them, why did they eat the staff car?" Colonel Mortby asked. "And why did they eat the teenager's hot rod, and our gas and fragmentation grenades?"

"I suggest," Dexter said, "that they ate the staff car because at the moment there weren't any other cars immediately available. As for the teenager's hot rod, I imagine it was loaded down with enough chrome accessories to sink a battleship. And as for the grenades—your men threw them at them first, did they not?"

Colonel Mortby nodded. "I see what you mean. Sort of like throwing candy to a baby. I'll buy your theory, Mr. Foote."

"And now, if I may," Dexter continued, "I'd like to propose a means of getting rid of our unwanted visitors from Planet X."

General Longcombe sighed. "Very well, Mr. Foote. Go on."

"You mentioned earlier, sir, that there was no way of herding the VEMs into an isolated area. However, I think there is a way. Suppose we were to remove all of the automobiles from the vicinity with the exception of one, and suppose we were to park that one in the middle of Tillson Valley as bait, with a remote-controlled A-bomb underneath it?"

"But how would they know that the bait was there?"

"Through association," Dexter said. "All of the automobiles they've consumed thus far were in operation shortly before they began to eat them, so by now they must have established an unconscious relationship between the sound of the motors and the taste of the metal. Therefore, if we keep the bait idling and set up a P.A. system to amplify the sound, eventually they'll hear it, their mouths will salivate and they'll come running."

General Longcombe offered no comment He appeared to be deep in thought.

"My car is in West Virginia," Colonel Mortby said.

"My car was eaten," Dexter said.

General Longcombe opened his mouth. "My car—" he began.

Sergeant Wilkins entered the room and saluted smartly. "The general's Cadillac has just arrived, sir," he said.

Old man Tillson co-operated readily enough, once he was assured that he would be indemnified not only for his ramshackle house but for the young mountain of beer bottles that stood in his back yard, and the command post was moved forthwith to the lip of the valley. Jeremiah Smith was allowed to go along as an observer, and Dexter was accorded a similar favor. By evening, everything was in place. The colonel's Cadillac, parked in the valley's center, had something of the aspect of a chrome-bedizened lamb resting on an altar of crab grass, buttercups and mustard weeds. Surrounding it were half a dozen floodlights, suspended over it was a microphone, standing next to it was a pole supporting three P.A. speakers, and located several hundred feet away was a TV camera. Beyond this impressive display, Old Man Tillson's homestead could be discerned, and beyond the homestead rose his mountainous collection of beer bottles.

Colonel Mortby came out of the command-post tent and walked over to where Dexter and Jeremiah were standing, looking down into the valley. He handed each of them a pair of cobalt-blue glasses. "If you watch the blast, make sure you wear these," he said, raising his voice above the amplified purring of the Cadillac's motor. "You'll be glad to hear that the two VEMs are already on their way, Mr. Foote—our walkie-talkie squad just called in. However, the creatures move so slowly that they probably won't be here before dawn."

Dexter came out of a brown study. "One thing still bugs me," he said. "Why should two members of a race of extraterrestrials technically intelligent enough to build spaceships behave like a pair of gluttonous savages the minute they land on another planet?"

"But you explained that," Jeremiah pointed out. "They just can't resist eating American automobiles."

"I'm afraid I got carried away by my analogy. Civilized beings simply don't go running across the countryside the minute they land, and start grabbing up everything that strikes their eye. They make contact with the authorities first, and then they go running across the countryside and start grabbing up everything that strikes their eye."

Colonel Mortby grinned. "You've got a good point there, Mr. Foote. Well, I'm going to see if I can't grab forty winks or so—it's been a trying day."

"Me too," Jeremiah said, heading for his model A.

Left alone, Dexter wedged a flashlight in the fork of a little tree, sat down in its dim radiance, got out pen and notebook, and began his article. The Solid Cheese Cadillac, he wrote, by Dexter Foote....

Dawn found him dozing over page 16. "There they are!" someone shouted, jerking him awake. "The filthy fiends!"

The "someone" was General Longcombe. Joining him, Dexter saw the two VEMs. They were moving relentlessly across the valley floor toward the helpless Cadillac. Jeremiah came up, rubbing his eyes. Colonel Mortby could be discerned through the entrance of the command-post tent, leaning over a technician's shoulder.

The two VEMs reached the Cadillac and began licking off the chrome with their long, tong-like tongues. General Longcombe went wild. He waved his arms. "Monsters!" he screamed, "I'll blow you to Kingdom Come personally!" and stomped into the tent.

Dexter and Jeremiah started to put on their cobalt-blue glasses. Abruptly thunder sounded, and a shadow darkened the land. Looking skyward, Dexter saw it—

The ship. The saucer. Whichever word you cared to apply to it. But whichever noun you chose, you had to prefix it with the adjective "gigantic," for the ventral hatch alone, which had just yawned open, was large enough to accommodate the Sugardale Methodist Church.

In the command-post tent, the general, as yet unaware of the UFO's presence, was giving the countdown in an anguished voice. "Two—"

In the valley, the two VEMs were trying vainly to extricate themselves from a huge metallic net that had dropped over them.

"One—"

On the lip of the valley, Dexter Foote was grappling with an insight.

"Zero—"

Pfft!...

"It wasn't a dud after all," General Longcombe said. "They cancelled out the chain-reaction with some kind of a ray. I wonder...." He shook his head wistfully. "What a weapon, though."

He and Colonel Mortby and the tech were standing by the chrome-stripped carcass of the Cadillac. Dexter and Jeremiah had just come up. "My theory turned out to be a little bit off-center," Dexter said. "You see, I overlooked the possibility that our children aren't necessarily the only galactic small fry who run away from home and get themselves in Dutch. My birthday-cake analogy still holds true, but I would have done better to have compared our late-model automobiles to appetizing candy bars, or Easter baskets filled with jelly beans and chocolate chickens."

The general regarded him blankly. "I'm afraid I don't follow you at all, Mr. Foote."

"Did you ever turn a pair of hungry kids loose in a candy store, sir?"

Understanding came into General Longcombe's eyes then, and he turned and gazed sadly at his chromeless Cadillac. "I wonder if they have castor oil on Planet X," he said.

"I bet they have its equivalent," grinned Dexter Foote.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sweet Tooth, by Robert F. Young