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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jimsy and the Monsters, by Walt Sheldon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Jimsy and the Monsters
+
+Author: Walt Sheldon
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31716]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMSY AND THE MONSTERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Katherine Ward and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Science fiction, in collaboration with the idea-men and
+  technicians of Hollywood, has been responsible for many horrors,
+  dating back to "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "The Lost World."
+  But Hollywood has created one real-life horror that tops all
+  creations of fantasy--the child star. In this story we at last see
+  such a brat meet Things from Alien Space.
+
+
+
+
+jimsy and the monsters
+
+by ... Walt Sheldon
+
+  Hollywood could handle just about anything--until Mildume's
+  machine brought in two real aliens.
+
+
+Mr. Maximilian Untz regarded the monsters with a critical eye. Script
+girls, cameramen, sometimes even stars quailed under Mr. Untz's
+critical eye--but not these monsters. The first had a globelike head
+and several spidery legs. The second was willowy and long-clawed. The
+third was covered with hair. The prop department had outdone itself.
+
+"Get Jimsy," said Mr. Untz, snapping his fingers.
+
+A young earnest assistant producer with a crew cut turned and relayed
+the summons. "Jimsy--Jimsy LaRoche!" Down the line of cables and
+cameras it went. _Jimsy_ ... _Jimsy_....
+
+A few moments later, from behind the wall flat where he had been
+playing canasta with the electricians, emerged Jimsy LaRoche, the
+eleven-year-old sensation. He took his time. He wore powder-blue
+slacks and a sports shirt and his golden hair was carefully ringleted.
+He was frowning. He had been interrupted with a meld of a hundred and
+twenty.
+
+"Okay, so what is it now?" he said, coming up to Mr. Untz.
+
+Mr. Untz turned and glared down at the youth. Jimsy returned the
+glare. There was a sort of cold war between Mr. Untz and Master Jimsy
+LaRoche, the sort you could almost hear hotting up. Mr. Untz pointed
+to the monsters. "Look, Jimsy. Look at them. What do you think?" He
+watched the boy's expression carefully.
+
+Jimsy said, "To use one of your own expressions, Max--_pfui_. They
+wouldn't scare a mouse." And then Jimsy shrugged and walked away.
+
+Mr. Untz turned to his assistant. "Harold," he said in an injured
+tone. "You saw it. You heard it. You see what I've got to put up
+with."
+
+"Sure," said Harold Potter sympathetically. He had mixed feelings
+toward Mr. Untz. He admired the producer's occasional flashes of
+genius, he deplored his more frequent flashes of stupidity. On the
+whole, however, he regarded himself as being on Mr. Untz's side in the
+war between Mr. Untz and the world and Hollywood. He knew Mr. Untz's
+main trouble.
+
+Some years ago Maximilian Untz had been brought to Hollywood heralded
+as Vienna's greatest producer of musicals. So far he had been assigned
+to westerns, detectives, documentaries, a fantasy of the future--but
+no musicals. And now it was a psychological thriller. Jimsy played the
+killer as a boy and there was to be a dream sequence, a nightmare full
+of monsters. Mr. Untz was determined it should be the most terrifying
+dream sequence ever filmed.
+
+Only up to now he wasn't doing so good.
+
+"I would give," said Mr. Untz to Harold Potter, "my right eye for
+some _really_ horrible monsters." He gestured at the world in
+general. "Think of it, Harold. We got atom bombs and B-29's, both
+vitamins and airplanes, and stuff to cure you of everything from
+broken legs to dropsy. A whole world of modern science--but nobody
+can make a fake monster. It looks anything but fake and wouldn't scare
+an eleven-year-old boy."
+
+"It's a thought," agreed Harold Potter. He had a feeling for things
+scientific; he had taken a B.S. in college but had drifted into
+photography and thence into movie production. He had a wife and a
+spaniel and a collection of pipes and a house in Santa Monica with a
+workshop basement.
+
+"I got to do some thinking," Mr. Untz said. "I believe I will change
+my clothes and take a shower. Come along to the cottage, Harold."
+
+"Okay," said Harold. He never liked to say yes for fear of being
+tagged a yes-man. Anyway, he enjoyed relaxing in the office-cottage
+while Mr. Untz showered and changed, which Mr. Untz did some three or
+four times a day. When he got there Mr. Untz disappeared into the
+dressing-room and Harold picked up a magazine.
+
+There was a knock on the door.
+
+Harold got up and crossed the soft cream-colored carpet and opened the
+door and saw a goat-like person.
+
+"Yes?" said Harold.
+
+"Mildume," said the goat-like person. "Dr. John Mildume. Don't ask a
+lot of questions about how I got in. Had a hard enough time as it was.
+Fortunately I have several relatives connected with the studio. That's
+how I heard of your problem as a matter of fact."
+
+"My problem?" said Harold.
+
+Dr. Mildume pushed right in. He was no more than five feet five but
+had a normal sized head. It was domelike. Wisps of tarnished white
+hair curled about his ears and crown. He had an out-thrust underjaw
+with a small white beard on its prow. He was dressed in moderately
+shabby tweeds. He moved across the room in an energetic hopping walk
+and took the place on the sofa Harold had vacated.
+
+"Now, then, Mr. Untz," he said, "the first thing we must do is come to
+terms."
+
+"Just a minute," said Harold. "I'm Mr. Untz's assistant, Harold
+Potter. Mr. Untz is in the shower. Was he expecting you?"
+
+Dr. Mildume blinked. "No, not exactly. But he can't afford _not_ to
+see me. I know all about it."
+
+"All about what?" asked Harold.
+
+"The beasts," the doctor said.
+
+"The _which_?"
+
+"Beasts, Potter," snapped the goat-like man. "The nightmare monsters.
+Get with it, lad. And what is a dream sequence without them? Ha!"
+
+"Uh--yes," said Harold a little uncertainly.
+
+Mildume's finger shot out. "You fellows understand that I'm no
+dreamy-eyed impractical scientist. Let's face it--it takes money to
+carry on experiments like mine. Good old-fashioned money. I'll need at
+least ten thousand dollars."
+
+Harold raised his eyebrows. "Just what, Dr. Mildume, do you propose to
+give us for ten thousand dollars?"
+
+"Beasts," said Mildume. "_Real_ monsters."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Harold. He began to work out strategies in
+his mind. Maybe he could casually walk over to the phone and pick it
+up quickly and call the studio police. Maybe he could get the jump on
+this madman before he pulled a knife. The thing to do was to humor him
+meanwhile....
+
+Dr. Mildume said, "I will not deal with underlings. I demand to see
+Mr. Untz himself."
+
+"Well," said Harold, "you understand that Mr. Untz is a busy man. It's
+my job to check propositions people have for him. Suppose you tell me
+about these beasts of yours."
+
+Mildume shrugged. "Doubt if you'll understand it any better than Untz
+will. But it's no more complicated than television when you boil it
+right down. You're familiar, I take it, with the basic principle of
+television?"
+
+"Oh, sure," said Harold, brightening. "Keep things moving. Have a
+master of ceremonies who keeps jumping in and out of the act. Give
+something away to the audience, if possible, to make them feel ashamed
+not to tune in."
+
+"No, no, no, no, _no_!" said Mildume. "I mean the technical
+principles. A photo-electric beam scans the subject, translates light
+and dark into electrical impulses, which eventually alter a cathode
+ray played upon a fluorescent screen. Hence, the image. You grasp that
+roughly, I take it?"
+
+"Roughly," said Harold.
+
+"Well," continued Mildume, "just as spots of light and dark are the
+building blocks of an image, so sub-atomic particles are the building
+blocks of matter. Once we recognize this the teleportation theory
+becomes relatively simple. There are engineering difficulties, of
+course.
+
+"We must go back to Faraday's three laws of electrolysis--and
+Chadwick's establishment in nineteen thirty-one of the fact that
+radiation is merely the movement of particles of proton mass without
+proton charge. Neutrons, you see. Also that atomic weights are close
+integers, when hydrogen is one point zero zero eight. Thus I use
+hydrogen as a basis. Simple, isn't it?"
+
+Harold frowned. "Wait a minute. What's this you're talking
+about--_teleportation_? You mean a way of moving matter through space,
+just as television moves an image through space?"
+
+"Well, not precisely," said Mildume. "It's more a duplication of
+matter. My Mildume beam--really another expression of the quanta or
+light energy absorbed by atoms--scans and analyzes matter. The wave
+variations are retranslated into form, or formulae, at a distant
+point--the receiving point."
+
+Harold lowered one eyebrow. "And this really works?"
+
+"Of course," said Mildume. "Oh, it's still crude. It doesn't work all
+the time. It works only along vast distances. I won't announce it
+until I perfect it further. Meanwhile I need more money to carry
+on and when, through certain relatives, I heard of Mr. Untz's
+problem--well, it was simply too much to resist. You see, I've
+managed to teleport a couple of frightful monsters from somewhere
+out of space. I was wondering what on earth to do with them."
+
+"Where--where are they?" asked Harold.
+
+"In my back yard," said Dr. Mildume.
+
+At that point Mr. Maximilian Untz abruptly reappeared. He smelled of
+lotion and he was now dressed in a relatively conservative gabardine
+of forest green with a lavender shirt and a black knitted tie.
+
+"Hello," he said. He looked at Mildume. "So who is this?"
+
+"He says he has monsters for the dream sequence in his back yard,"
+explained Harold. "_Real_ ones."
+
+"Look," said Mr. Untz, "kindly ask the gentleman to get lost, will
+you, Harold?"
+
+"No, wait," Harold said. "He may have something. He explained some of
+it to me. It sounds almost possible. We can't lose much by taking a
+look."
+
+"Only a few thousand dollars a minute," said Mr. Untz.
+
+"_Bah--money!_" said Dr. Mildume. "Which reminds me--these monsters of
+mine are going to cost you. Let's have that understood, right now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Untz's eyebrows went up. This kind of talk he understood. He
+reached into the side pocket of the gabardine for his cigarette case.
+He kept a separate gold case in each suit.
+
+"_Yeeeeow!_" said Mr. Untz.
+
+His hand came out of the pocket with a small green snake in it.
+
+"Drop it! Stand back!" said Harold, being cool.
+
+"Don't worry about it," said Dr. Mildume in a calmer voice. He was
+blinking mildly at the snake. "It's merely an ordinary species of
+garden snake, sometimes erroneously called garter snake. Curious it
+should be there."
+
+Harold looked at Dr. Mildume sharply. "This teleportation of yours
+wouldn't have anything to do with it by any chance?"
+
+"Of course not," snapped Mildume.
+
+"_I_ know how it got here!" said Mr. Untz, his jowls trembling. He had
+already dropped the snake. "A certain child star whose initials are
+Jimsy LaRoche! Last week he gives me a hotfoot. Monday a wet
+seat--soaked newspapers in my chair under one thin dry one. Yesterday
+a big frog in my shower. I should take that brat over my knee and
+spank him to his face!"
+
+"Mm--ah--of course," said Dr. Mildume without much interest in the
+topic. "Shall we go to inspect the monsters now?"
+
+Mr. Untz thought it over, only long enough to keep himself within the
+time limits of a Man of Decision. Then he said, "Okay, so we'll go
+now."
+
+They passed Jimsy LaRoche on the way out. He was drinking pineapple
+juice and sitting with his tutor, studying his lines. He smirked as
+Mr. Untz passed. Mr. Untz scowled back but didn't say anything. In
+Jovian silence he led the way to his car.
+
+It turned out to be a longer ride than they had expected. Dr. Mildume
+lived in Twenty-nine Palms and, as Mr. Untz explained it, this was too
+short for an airplane and too long for an automobile. Mr. Untz was
+not in his best humor when they stopped before Dr. Mildume's stucco
+and tile-roof house.
+
+Mildume directed them immediately to a walled-in patio in the rear of
+the place. A shed-roof covered one side of the patio and under it were
+racks of equipment. Harold recognized banks of relays, power
+amplifiers, oscillographs and some other familiar devices. There were
+also some strange ones.
+
+Mildume waved his long fingers at all of it. "My teleportation set-up
+is entirely too bulky so far for practical use, as you can see."
+
+"Nph," said Mr. Untz, eyeing it. During the drive Dr. Mildume and
+Harold had explained more to him about teleportation and the monsters
+and he was more doubtful than ever about the whole thing. "So let's
+see the monsters," he said now. "Time is fleeing."
+
+Mildume went in his hopping step across the patio to a huge tarpaulin
+that covered something square and bulky. He worried the tarpaulin
+away. Two steel cages stood there.
+
+"Sacred carp!" said Mr. Untz.
+
+Two _somethings_ were in the steel cages.
+
+They were both iridescent greenish-gray in color, they had globular
+bodies, no discernible heads and eyes on stalks growing from their
+bodies. Three eyes apiece. If they _were_ eyes--anyway, they looked
+like eyes. Sweeping fibrillae came down to the ground and seemed to
+serve as feet. Great saw-toothed red gashes in the middle of each body
+might have been mouths.
+
+"They're--they're _real_. They're _alive_!" said Harold Potter
+hoarsely. That was the thing about them. They had the elusive quality
+of life about them--and of course they were thus infinitely more
+terrifying than the prop department's fake monsters.
+
+"They're alive all right," said Dr. Mildume chattily. "Took me quite a
+bit of experimenting to discover what to feed them. They like
+glass--broken glass. They're evidently a silicon rather than a carbon
+form of life."
+
+"This I'll buy," said Mr. Untz, still staring.
+
+"Of course," said Mildume. "I knew you would. They will cost you
+exactly ten thousand dollars per day. Per twenty-four hour period."
+
+"Profiteer--burglar!" said Mr. Untz, glaring at Mildume.
+
+Mildume shrugged.
+
+There was an abrupt, high-pitched squeak. Harold stared at the
+monsters. The smaller one was quivering.
+
+"They do that when they're angry," Dr. Mildume said. "Some sort of
+skin vibration. This smaller one here seems to take the initiative in
+things. Must be a male. Unless there's female dominance, as in birds
+of prey, wherever these things come from. I've--uh--been unable to
+ascertain which is which, if any."
+
+Mr. Untz frowned suddenly. "Look--just how dangerous are these
+things?"
+
+"Don't know _exactly_," said Dr. Mildume. "A pigeon got too near the
+cages the other day. They seemed to enjoy it. Although, as I say,
+their staple appears to be silicon forms. I carelessly set a Weston
+analyzer too near them the other day and they had it for lunch."
+
+"If they're too dangerous ..." began Mr. Untz.
+
+"What if they are?" said Mildume. "You make pictures with wild lions
+and tigers and alligators, don't you? Seems to me you can find a way.
+I don't recommend letting them out of the cage however."
+
+Mr. Untz nodded and said, "Well, maybe we can get Etienne Flaubert to
+do something with them. He's the animal trainer we call on. Anyway
+Untz always figures something out. Only that's why I like musicals
+better. There isn't so much to figure out and you can play Victor
+Herbert backwards and get new tunes out of him. So anyway, we'll get a
+truck and get these monsters to the studio right away."
+
+It was arranged. It was arranged with utmost secrecy too. There were
+other studios, after all, and in spite of their wealth of creative
+talent it was easier to steal an idea than cook up a new one. Atom
+bomb secrecy descended upon the Crusader Pictures lot and most
+especially upon Sound Stage Six, where the dream sequence for the
+psychological thriller, "Jolt!" was being filmed.
+
+Even Jimsy LaRoche, the star of the picture, was excluded from the big
+barn-like stage. Mr. Untz prepared to get his first stock shots of the
+beasts.
+
+There were gasps and much popping of eyebrows when Dr. Mildume--who
+had come along as technical adviser--removed the tarpaulins from the
+cages. The cameramen, the grips, the electricians, the sound men--all
+stared unbelievingly. The script girl grabbed Mr. Untz's hand and dug
+her fingernails into it. The makeup stylist clutched the lapels of his
+mauve jacket and fainted.
+
+"Nothing to be afraid of," Mr. Untz said to everybody. He was sort of
+convincing himself too. "Dr. Mildume here knows all about the
+monsters. He's got everything under control. So tell everybody about
+them, Doctor."
+
+Mildume nodded, bobbing his short white beard. He thrust his hands
+into his tweed jacket, looked all around for a moment, then said, "I
+don't know exactly where the monsters are from. I had my Q-beam
+pointed into space, and I was focussing it, intending to put it on
+Mars at the time of proper conjunction. All very complicated. However
+the beam must have worked prematurely. These monsters began to form in
+the hydrogen chamber."
+
+Several of the listeners looked at other listeners with unmistakable
+doubt. Unruffled, Dr. Mildume went on, "Now, we can make certain rough
+assumptions from the form and structure of these monsters. You will
+notice that except for their appendages they are globularly formed.
+Any engineer can tell you that the arch and hemisphere sustain the
+greatest weight for their mass.
+
+"We may concede that they come from a planet of very strong gravity.
+Their skin, for instance, is tough and rigid compared with ours. They
+have difficulty staying rooted to earth--often a simple multipod
+movement will send them bouncing to the top of the cage. There is one
+other factor--the smaller of these creatures seems the more
+dominant--suggesting that on their home planet smaller beings are more
+agile and therefore better able to take care of themselves."
+
+"There, you see?" interrupted Mr. Untz, slipping into a pause. "That's
+all there is to it. So now let us please get down to business."
+
+So they got down to business. And it was not easy business,
+photographing these monsters. Keeping the cage wires out of focus
+required a critical distance for each lens but whenever a camera came
+too near a fibrilla would shoot forward--at the glass, no doubt--and
+scare the wits out of the cameramen.
+
+The shorter lenses got too much of the surrounding area into the
+picture. The crew tried and tried. One technician muttered darkly that
+the organization contract didn't cover this sort of thing. Mr. Untz
+pleaded and cajoled and heckled and moved about and tried to keep
+things going. Somehow, anyhow.
+
+Eddie Tamoto, the chief cameraman, finally came up to him and said,
+"It's no use, Max. These cages simply don't allow us to do anything.
+Why don't we put them in the cages they use for jungle pictures?
+They're big and camouflaged, and the mesh size is right."
+
+"So maybe we'll have to do that," said Mr. Untz.
+
+Dr. Mildume dipped his head. "I don't know. I'd like to see these
+other cages first."
+
+"Look," said Mr. Untz. "Don't worry about it. If they hold lions they
+will hold your whatever-you-call-thems. I'll get the animal trainer,
+Flaubert, to stand by. He practically talks to animals--except horses,
+which is his hard luck."
+
+The jungle cages were duly summoned and so was Etienne Flaubert of the
+Golden West Animal Education Studios on Sunset Boulevard. While they
+waited Mr. Untz stood aside with Harold Potter. He mopped his brow--he
+gestured at the whole group. "This," he said, "is the story of my
+life."
+
+"It is?" asked Harold.
+
+Mr. Untz nodded. "Me, I am an expert on musicals. Musicals I can do
+with my left hand. But ever since I am in Hollywood I do everything
+_but_ a musical. And always something gets fouled up. Always there is
+trouble. You will not believe this, Harold, but I am an unhappy man."
+
+"I believe it," said Harold.
+
+Mr. Untz looked at him sharply and said, "You don't have to believe it
+so quickly. You could give me a chance to explain."
+
+"Look," said Harold--now being truly interested and forgetting some of
+the first principles of buttering-up one's boss, "take the scientific
+attitude. Everything is _relative_."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Untz, "In Hollywood everything is relatives, believe
+me."
+
+"No, no--I wasn't referring to nepotism," said Harold. "I was thinking
+that you and many others, of course, prefer musicals. But there are
+vast other groups who prefer westerns, detectives, comedies or what
+have you. One man's meat is another's poison.
+
+"But nourishment stays the same in principle. The artistic demands
+still hold and a good picture is a picture, whatever its field. Now,
+if you, as a producer, can shift to the other fellow's viewpoint--find
+out why the thing that terrifies you amuses him--or vice versa."
+
+"Harold," said Mr. Untz, not without suspicion, "are you an assistant
+producer or a philosopher?"
+
+"Sometimes to be the one," sighed Harold, "you have to be the other."
+
+The big jungle cage arrived presently. While it was being set up
+another assistant came to Mr. Untz and said, "Jimsy LaRoche is
+outside, yelling to get in, Mr. Untz."
+
+Mr. Untz whirled on the assistant and said, "Tell that overpaid
+brat--who I personally didn't want in my picture in the first
+place--tell him in the second place the President of the United States
+could not get in here this afternoon. No, wait a minute, that wouldn't
+mean anything to him--he makes more money than the President. Just
+tell him no."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the assistant. He left.
+
+About then the animal trainer, Etienne Flaubert, was admitted. He
+walked right up to Mr. Untz. Flaubert was nearly seven feet tall. He
+had tremendous shoulders and none of it was coat padding. He had a
+chest one might have gone over Niagara Falls in. He had a huge golden
+beard. When he spoke it sounded like the bass viol section of the Los
+Angeles Symphony tuning up.
+
+He said to Mr. Untz, "Where are these monsters I hear about? I'd like
+to see the monster that isn't just a big kitty, like all the rest. Big
+kitties, that's all they are. You gotta know how to handle them."
+
+Mr. Untz led Flaubert to the cage and said, "There."
+
+Flaubert gasped. Then he steadied himself. The monsters had been
+maneuvered into the bigger cage by now--Dr. Mildume had enticed them
+with broken electric light bulbs and slammed the drop-doors behind
+them by a remote-control rope. They had finished their meal of glass.
+They were curled in a corner of the cage now, tentacles wrapped about
+each other, squeaking contentedly.
+
+Flaubert recovered a bit.
+
+"Kitties, just big kitties," he growled.
+
+Eddie Tamoto called, "Hey, Max, we'd like to get 'em in the center of
+the cage for a shot." He was gesturing from the camera boom seat.
+"Only moving around. You know--looking fierce."
+
+"Can you do it, Flaubert?" said Mr. Untz, turning to the big trainer.
+
+"Just big kitties," said Flaubert.
+
+He had brought his own whip and blank cartridge pistol. His assistant
+stood by with a .30-30 rifle. Dr. Mildume opened the door quickly and
+Flaubert slipped into the cage.
+
+"Okay--get set, everybody!" yelled Mr. Untz. People scurried. An
+attendant switched on the warning light and rocker arm that warned
+people outside of the stage not to barge in. "Quiet!" yelled Mr. Untz.
+"Quiet--_quiet_!" yelled several assistants. The order went down the
+line. Through channels.
+
+And there stood Etienne Flaubert, huge and more or less unafraid, in
+the middle of the cage. The monsters in the corner began slowly to
+uncoil their tentacles from about each other. Their eye-stalks rose
+and began to wave slowly. Their red saw-toothed mouths worked into
+pouts, gapes and grins.
+
+The smaller of the two suddenly shuddered all over. Its angry
+chirping noise shrilled through the sound stage. Its tough skin
+vibrated--blurred. It sprang suddenly to its multipods and charged
+Flaubert.
+
+Flaubert screamed an unholy scream. He threw the chair and the whip
+and the gun at the monster and dove from the exit. Dr. Mildume opened
+the cage door with his rope and Flaubert went through it--himself a
+blur. The monster, in his wake, slammed into the door and stayed
+there, trembling, still chirping its rage.
+
+"Hully gee, what kitties!" said Flaubert, pale and sweating.
+
+Mr. Untz groaned.
+
+"I got some of it!" yelled Eddie Tamoto from his camera. "It was
+terrific! But we need more!"
+
+Then--simultaneously--there were several loud screams of alarm. Mr.
+Untz looked at the cage again. The smaller monster had found a crack,
+and was moving the cage door and squeezing through.
+
+"Harold!" shouted Mr. Untz. "_Do something!_"
+
+Harold stepped forward. "Back everybody," he said in his best calm
+voice. "Walk--do not run--to the nearest exit."
+
+The second monster was already vibrating across the cage and the
+smaller one was holding the door open for it. Dr. Mildume had tried to
+maneuver the control ropes to close the door again, but hadn't been
+able to work them--and now he had left his post.
+
+Harold pointed to the man with the rifle and said, "Fire!"
+
+The rifleman fired.
+
+Nothing--nothing at all happened. He fired several times more. The
+monsters didn't even jerk when the bullets hit them.
+
+"They're--they're impervious yet!" cried Mr. Untz.
+
+After that it was every man for himself.
+
+Moments later Harold found himself outside of the sound stage and on
+the studio street, bunched with the others and staring at the thick
+closed door. Nobody spoke. Everybody just thrummed silently with the
+knowledge that two alien monsters were in there, wreaking heaven knew
+what damage....
+
+And then, as they stared, the thick door began to open again. "It
+isn't locked!" breathed Mr. Untz. "Nobody remembered to lock it
+again!"
+
+A tentacle peeked out of the crack of the door.
+
+Everybody scattered a second time.
+
+Harold never remembered the order in which things happened amidst the
+confusion that followed. It seemed he and Mr. Untz ran blindly, side
+by side, down the studio street for awhile. It seemed all kinds of
+people were also running, in all kinds of directions.
+
+Bells were ringing--sirens blew--a blue studio police car took a
+corner on two wheels and barely missed them. Harold had a glimpse of
+uniformed men with drawn pistols.
+
+They ended up somehow at Mr. Untz's office-cottage. They went inside
+and Mr. Untz locked the door and slammed his back to it. He leaned
+there, panting. He said, "Trouble, trouble, trouble. I should have
+stayed in Vienna. And in Vienna I should have stood in bed."
+
+The door of the shower and dressing-room opened and Jimsy LaRoche came
+out. He had a number of snails in his out-stretched hand and he coolly
+kept them there, making no attempt to conceal his obvious purpose in
+the shower. He looked directly at Mr. Untz with his dark disconcerting
+eleven-year-old eyes and said, "Well, Max, what goof-off did you pull
+this time?"
+
+"_You!_" roared Mr. Untz, whirling and shooting a finger at the child
+star. A focusing point for all his troubles, at last. His jowls shook.
+"You, Jimsy LaRoche," he said, "are going to get your first old
+fashioned spanking on the bottom! From me, personally!" He advanced
+toward the boy, who backed away hastily.
+
+Jimsy began to look a little frightened.
+
+"Now wait a minute, Max," said Harold, stepping forward. "We've got
+enough _big_ monsters to think about without worrying about this
+_little_ monster too."
+
+Mr. Untz stared at Harold queerly. Suddenly he said, "Why didn't I
+think of it before?"
+
+"Think of what?" asked Harold.
+
+But Mr. Untz had already grabbed Jimsy LaRoche's hand and dragged him
+through the door.
+
+There were several reasons why Harold Potter did not immediately
+pursue. For one thing he stood there for several moments stupified
+with surprise. Then, when he did recover, he plunged forward and
+promptly tripped on the cream-colored carpet and fell flat on his
+face. He tripped again going over the step to the cottage door. He
+bumped into a studio policeman rounding the next corner. He snagged
+his coat on a fence picket going around the corner after that. But he
+kept Mr. Untz and the dragged youngster in sight.
+
+Eventually he came to the door of Sound Stage Six.
+
+Speaking from a police standpoint all laymen had disappeared. A ring
+of studio police and firemen, along with some policemen and detectives
+from the outside, had been drawn around the monsters and everybody and
+his brother was shooting off pistols and rifles at them. With no
+result, of course. Nor did anyone dare get too close.
+
+Harold caught up with Mr. Untz about the time a man he recognized as a
+reporter did. The reporter was stout, freckled and bespectacled.
+
+"_Untz!_" barked the reporter, with all the power of the press in his
+voice, "do you realize this is a national danger? If those monsters
+can't be stopped by bullets, what will stop them? Where will it all
+end? Where did they come from?"
+
+"Look in tomorrow's paper!" growled Mr. Untz, brushing the reporter
+aside. He kept Jimsy's arm in a firm grip. Jimsy was bawling at the
+top of his lungs now. Mr. Untz breasted the police cordon, broke
+through.
+
+"Max! _Stop!_" shouted Harold. "Max--have you gone mad?"
+
+Max evidently had. He moved so swiftly that everyone was too surprised
+to stop him. He burst into the small human-walled arena where the two
+bewildered monsters squatted and he thrust little Jimsy LaRoche out
+before him--right at the monsters.
+
+An extraordinary thing happened. The monsters suddenly began to quiver
+and squeak again but this time--it was clear to the ear somehow--not
+with rage, but with _fear_. Pure and terrible fear. They trained their
+eye-stalks on Jimsy LaRoche, they paled to a lighter shade of brown
+and green, then slowly they began to back away.
+
+"Hold your fire, men!" called a police captain, probably just to get
+into the act.
+
+Dr. Mildume appeared again from somewhere. So did Etienne Flaubert. So
+did Eddie Tamoto and some of the other technicians. They gaped and
+stared.
+
+Slowly, inexorably, using Jimsy LaRoche as his threat, Mr. Untz backed
+the two monsters into the studio, and gradually to the cage. Dr.
+Mildume leaped forward to shut them in once more.
+
+And through it all Jimsy LaRoche continued to bawl at the top of his
+lungs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, in Mr. Untz's office-cottage, Harold read the newspaper
+accounts. He read every word while Mr. Untz was in the other room
+taking a shower. He had to admit that Max had even thrown a little
+credit his way. "My assistant, Mr. Potter," Untz was quoted as saying,
+"indirectly gave me the idea when he said that one man's meat was
+another man's poison.
+
+"Dr. Mildume had already explained that the monsters came from a
+high-gravity planet--that the smaller of the species evidently seemed
+the more capable, and therefore the dominant one." Harold was sure now
+that the statement had been polished up a bit by the publicity
+department.
+
+"The only logical assumption, then," the statement continued, "was
+that small stature would dominate these life forms, rather than large
+stature, as in the environment we know. They were, in other words,
+terrified by tiny Jimsy LaRoche--whose latest picture, 'The Atomic
+Fissionist and the Waif,' is now at your local theatre, by the way--as
+an Earth-being might have been terrified by a giant!"
+
+Mr. Untz came out of the shower at that point. He was radiant in a
+canary-colored rayon sharkskin. He was rubbing his hands. He was
+beaming.
+
+"Harold," he said, "they're putting me on a musical next. I got them
+twined around my little finger. Life is good. I think that screwy Dr.
+Mildume was smart to send those things back out into space before they
+could get to him. Otherwise we might have _had_ to put them in
+pictures and with contracts yet."
+
+"Max," said Harold, staring at him quietly.
+
+"Yes, Harold?"
+
+"Just answer me one thing truthfully. I swear I'll never repeat it--or
+even blame you. But for my own curiosity I've got to know."
+
+"Why certainly, Harold, what is it?"
+
+Harold Potter swallowed hard. "Did you," he asked, "_really_ figure
+out that Jimsy would scare the beasts--or were you about to _throw_
+the little brat to them?"
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes
+
+This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1954.
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication has been renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Jimsy and the Monsters, by Walt Sheldon
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