Science fiction; Scientists -- Fiction; Secrecy -- Fiction; Short stories; United States -- Fiction
A Guard lay crushed under a steel beam. Lewis took the stungun from
his hand and went up the debris choked stairs. Outside, he saw figures
streaming out into the starlight, and the lab buildings bursting into
flames. He also saw the Monster, glowing with bluish radiance, moving
straight ahead toward the electric fence.
The siren was screaming and howling. Shadows seemed to be streaming
toward air-raid shelters. That was all right. The security curtain was
torn down. They could come back up later into the light and wonder what
had happened and find out where they really were.
Guards were running about like ugly toys out of control, looking,
listening for commands.
Lewis ran through thickening smoke, and saw the jeep by the South Gate.
Betty was in it, together with Brogarth and Nemerov.
"Hurry, hurry, run," he heard Betty scream.
The Guard was cutting at an angle toward Lewis, between him and the
jeep. Beyond the Guard was a gaping hole in the fence and on the other
side of that he could see the gigantic flickering nimbus of the Monster
still walking toward the East.
Lewis kept running. Five feet away he brought up the stungun and shot
the Guard in the face. Lewis jumped under the wheel of the jeep,
slammed it into gear and they headed down the concrete strip and
straight for the gap in the fence.
"What happened to Cardoza?" Lewis asked.
Brogarth said from the back seat, "He said he didn't want to be labeled
a security risk and be executed for sabotage."
Nemerov was drunk and he kept mumbling incoherently, and sometimes
giving out with bits and pieces of half remembered poetry.
* * * * *
About a mile out in the sand and next to a wall of sandstone, they
waited for any signs of pursuit. There were none. They rested there
until morning, only an hour and a half away, and when they looked back
toward the location of the Project, they could see nothing that looked
any different from sand, brush, rocks and red sandstone.
"Perfect camouflage," Nemerov said as the jeep started up again. "You
could walk within fifty feet of that fence and never know there was any
Project there."
Later a hot wind came up and they ran into the Monster lying dead on
its face with dust devils dancing over it.
An old prospector leading a burro came around the wall of sandstone and
looked at the Monster, then at the occupants of the jeep.
"Howdy, folks," he said.
"Hello," Lewis said. "We're lost. Where are we and which way do we go
to get to civilization?"
"What's that thing?" the prospector asked, looking at the Monster.
"A scientific experiment that was never finished," Lewis said.
"What I figured," the prospector said. "You scientists out here always
up to something." He pointed to the right. "Keep going that way and
you'll find a narrow road. Follow it and you'll hit the middle of the
valley and a highway right into the Chocolate Mountains."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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