The Best of Murray Leinster (uk edition) by Murray Leinster

Author:Murray Leinster [Leinster, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction
Publisher: Corgi
Published: 1976-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE DEVIL OF EASTLUPTON

Occult? Very definitely not. As far as records show, Leinster never wrote in this genre - although sometimes it seemed as if he was going to (as in ‘The Power’). No, the following is very definitely hard-line SF, very pleasantly laced with humor. Not that Mr. Tedder found the situation very funny ...

To this day nobody pretends to understand the Devil of East Lupton, Vermont. There are even differences of opinion about the end to which that devil came. Mr. Tedder is sure he was the fiend in question, and that he ceased to be fiendish when he rid himself of the pot over his head.

Other authorities believe that heavy ordnance did the trick, and point to a quarter-mile crater for proof. It takes close reasoning to decide.

But if by the Devil of East Lupton you mean the Whatever-it-was that came out of Somewhere to Here, and caused all the catastrophes by his mere arrival - why - then the Devil was the Whatever-it-was in the leathery, hidelike covering on the morning Mr. Tedder ran away from the constable.

On that morning, Mr. Tedder ran like a deer - or as nearly like a deer as Mr. Tedder could hope to run. The resemblance was not close. Deer do not hesitate helplessly between possible avenues of escape. Deer do not plunge out of concealing thickets to scuttle through merely shoulder-high brush because a pathway shows. But Mr. Tedder did.

The constable, behind him, shouted wrathfully. There was a thirty-day jail-sentence waiting for someone for vagrancy — which is to say, for not having any money. Mr. Tedder was elected.

He would not gain any money by staying in jail, but the

consta e who arrested him and the justice of the peace who se/1 en|”e h1! would receive fees for their activity. That was K ^ v,? t0Wnship was notoriously a bad place for tramps, ums, anket-stiffs and itinerant workmen in need of a job.

cant go much further,’ Mr. Tedder thought. His heart HMd^ ^10rrifc’ly. There was an agonizing stitch in his side. . was a hoarse, honking noise as it rushed in and out. ^Pair filled him as exhaustion neared. e Podded, sobbing for breath, up a little ten-foot rise. His e^s t0 blur with tears. Then he lurched down the other r u j ridge and saw that he was in the neglected, broken-lnL^ °rchard of an abandoned farm.

e house was partly collapsed and wholly ruined. A remaining shed leaned crazily. Vines climbed over a rail fence -ee parts rotten - and went on along a strand of barbed wire

nailed to tree-trunks.

e could run no further. He looked, despairing, for a hiding P ■ Wis haggard, ineffectual face turned desperately. He saw some ing dark and large. To his blurred eyes it looked like a C°Th C Tatl t0War^ ^ shrank back, stirring….

re was a thin, high screaming noise, like gas escaping rough a punctured tire, but a tire inflated to a monstrous pressure. There was a vast, foggy vaporousness.

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