Space Patrol : The Monsters by Roberta Leigh

The monster lurched hideously through the whitish green jungle and rolled its whole weight over on to its enemy, crushing it with the ugly spikes that grew like scattered, irregular spines all over its horny hide.
The scene blurred and changed.
There was now a shapeless something, colourless and without a head or eyes or any limbs save a long, glassy tail that lashed to and fro until it snared around a boulder or giant fir tree. Then the body would haul itself clumsily after its tail, engulfing any smaller creatures that happened to be in its way.
The men in the spaceship watched with horrified fascination. They were still in orbit above the cloudy planet that Space Headquarters knew as M17. It was a small world, recently discovered on the fringe of explored space. No human had as yet set foot upon its surface. In fact these men, under the command of Captain Fowler, were the closest that men had ever been.
Captain Fowler re-adjusted the vitascope, and the view on its shimmering screen ranged swiftly over the jungles of M17, showing the light greens, the purples and reddish browns of fantastic waving ferns, of growths with single polished stems that resisted the breezes like solid steel towers capped with lone, olive green pods. Even as they watched, the men saw one pod burst with the force of dynamite and a shower of cruelly spiked seeds slashed into the surrounding jungle like shrapnel from a mortar bomb.
"What we have seen is evidence enough to classify M17 as a hostile world!" announced Captain Fowler. "No human expedition could possibly survive in those conditions. Life on M17 would mean a constant war for survival against those terrible monsters, to say nothing of the dangerous and extremely dense plant life."
"I guess you're right, Captain! I suppose we ought to thank our lucky stars we had this vitascope along with us, or we would have landed on M17 not knowing what to expect."
As the crewman had said, the entire expedition probably owed its life to the vitascope, a new invention that they were using for the first time.
The vitascope was a device that could be carried in almost any spaceship, and from an orbit within two hundred miles of a planet's surface, the instrument would detect any form of life on that world by a highly condensed bombardment of micro-waves, and focus selected scenes of the planet's life upon a video-screen inside the ship.
"Signal Galasphere 774, and tell Lieutenant Roget to stay in five hundred mile orbit whilst preparing his return to Earth," Fowler commanded his communications man. "This mission is at an end."
Lieutenant Roget received the order and he did not like it. In fact he did not like Fowler, and was jealous of him because he had been promoted to Captain specially to lead the two Galaspheres to M17 on this special exploration mission.
"He's scared," Roget thought out aloud. "He's scared to land on an unknown planet, and he's using that new-fangled instrument as an excuse. We're going to land on M17 whether he likes it or not...and then headquarters will see that they made a mistake in promoting him instead of promoting me!"



"Has Captain Fowler's Court Martial come to an end yet, Marla?"
"They have adjourned, Captain Dart," the blonde girl from Venus replied. "And Colonel Raeburn wants to see you at once. I believe he is going to send you to the planet of monsters!"
Captain Larry Dart thanked the girl and reported to the Colonel's office. The senior man wasted no time on words. Everyone in headquarters knew that on his return from M17, Lieutenant Roget had made an official compliant of cowardice against the expedition leader, Captain Fowler. Roget claimed that in spite of Fowler's order to return home, he had landed on M17 and found the planet entirely covered by a layer of harmless green moss. He said there were no monsters anywhere!
Fowler's defence was the vitascope, and filmed records showed the monsters, just as Roget had taken films of the planet's harmless surface as he had found it.
"If we believe the evidence of the vitascope, then Roget is lying, and he must have faked the films he took in order to get Fowler into trouble. If Roget is right, well, something is wrong with the vitascope," Raeburn said.
"But I thought the device had been thoroughly tested and proved before the expedition took it," Captain Dart said.
"And so it was. There is only one way to settle this mystery, Dart. You must investigate M17 in Galasphere 347. Take a full crew, and Professor Haggarty...and be careful!"



When the crew of Galasphere emerged from their hibernation freezers at the end of the long space journey, M17 showed as a bright ball of cloud on the main video-screen.
"All crew to stations!" Dart commanded. "Slim, prepare the vitascope for use! I intend to hold an orbit one hundred and fifty miles above the planet's surface and use it then!"
"Very good, Captain," the Venusian replied in his high-pitched voice.
Galasphere 347 manoeuvred under Larry Dart's deft control until M17's cottonwool cloud surface filled the navigation videos. Captain Dart hit his chosen orbit and held it.
Slim switched on the vitascope.
Its panel lit up with a blur of confused colours that rushed backwards and forwards, in and out of focus for several seconds. They steadied gradually and took on definite shapes.
"Ah, 'tis more or less as Fowler reported it," declared the Irish professor Haggarty, who was watching closely. "There, you see, we have the ferns he mentioned, and a great tangle of greenery and things, but the truth to tell, I can see nothing I'd describe as a 'monster'."
"Look, what's that coming in at the top of the picture?" Husky grated.
The thing was round and flat, like a disc, and it seemed to drift steadily through the air by rippling its soft rubbery edges in the direction it wished to go. It was flying over something that the men had taken to be a plant with several soft, leafless stalks waving gently in the air.
Suddenly the stalks jerked into action. They grabbed at the disc creature catching it and curling about it like writhing snakes before thrusting it from sight into the heart of the thing from which they grew.
"It's like a sea-anemone that we find on sea-side rocks at home," Haggarty muttered.
A moment later, there was a movement behind a screen of needle ferns, and a mass of purple fluid oozed through them, rolling slowly and blindly, it seemed, like a bag of living jelly. It covered the plant-thing with the waving arms, sitting on it and concealing it entirely for several seconds.
Then the jelly bag bulged and rolled slowly off in another direction, and the watchers on Galasphere 347 saw the dim shape of the anemone inside it.
"There are the monsters, Haggarty," Captain Dart said, and even he could not help a slight shudder of horror as he spoke. "Now we must go down there and see if they really exist!"



Galasphere 347 landed easily upon M17. Surprisingly there were no obstructions, for the area where they had grounded was tediously flat.
"How long would it be before the first hideous monster lumbered their way?" This was Captain Dart's thought as he led his crew from the safety of Galasphere's air-lock on to the mysterious surface of M17.
The men formed a small, tight group. There was Dart foremost, the rightful position for their captain and leader. Slim and Husky stood a little behind him and faced outwards, fingers already on their gun triggers. Haggarty guarded the rear, and rather defiantly he was humming a merry little tune he had learned in his home on the pleasant Emerald Isle.
"Lieutenant Roget was right," Husky muttered as he holstered his gun. "There is nothing here but moss."
"We'll make sure," Captain Dart said thoughtfully. "We'll look around and see what we can find."
"You do that, Captain," said the Professor. "But I doubt if you'll find any monsters at all!"



"What is it, Marla?" Colonel Raeburn asked as the Venusian secretary appeared on his wall video-screen.
"Captain Dart and his crew have returned from planet M17, Colonel. Shall I send them in?"
"Thank you, Marla, I'll see them right away."
Almost as soon as the secretary's image faded from the screen, the entrance door panels slid open and Larry Dart stepped through into the room. Close on his heels trooped Haggarty, Slim and Husky.
j"I must say you look none the worse from your trip to the planet of monsters! I suppose that means Roget is right...there are no monsters there. Poor Fowler, he'll be dismissed from the service for cowardice!"
"Well, sir, Roget is right in so far as the planet is covered with nothing but moss. That's all we saw there!
"But on the other hand the vitascope showed us enough monsters to scare a whole fleet of spacemen!"
"Then what's the explanation?" Colonel Raeburn demanded to know. "If the vitascope detected monsters, there must have been monsters. Where were they?"
"They were there, sure enough, Colonel," said Haggarty. "And I've brought some of 'em back with me!"
"You've what?"
"I've brought a few specimens back with me. They're here in this small box of moss I collected...but you'll need a microscope to see them!"
"A microscope?" Raeburn gasped.
"Sure, a microscope," Haggarty insisted. "Y'see, the vitascope's job is to detect life and focus on it so that we can see it on the video-screen inside the spaceship. It just so happened that the only life on M17 is microbes and bacteria and germs and things that live in the moss. The vitascope found them and magnified them up so that we could see them...but it didn't give us a single clue to their size!
"You look through a microscope at a bunch of microbes that live here on Earth, and they'll seem like horrible monsters too!"
"That clears Fowler," Raeburn sighed. "There were monsters on M17 right enough, even though they were too small for Roget to see!"

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