The Slitherers

by John Russell Fearn

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

The obscure village of Coxwold had suddenly become the centre of attention of every daily newspaper. People from all over had descended upon it, investigating, questioning and sending reports to London. Something had happened in a nearby wheat field which had reduced two normal, healthy men to insanity and death. The police, suspecting foul play, lacked any evidence. So what could it be that had driven the victims to madness? This was unlike any crime ever before recorded...

Release date: June 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 223

Sample

I had been looking at the object for a long time and its very strangeness fascinated me. After all it is not common to behold a dome of blue glass — or at least that was what it looked like — perching in the midst of the tranquil English countryside

How I had come upon this object doesn’t really signify, but I suppose I ought to lead up to it. Matter of fact, I was on holiday at the time, a camera holiday, and my wanderings had taken me into southern England in the midst of a blazing July. Then, one mid-afternoon, after toiling up a long slope which somehow looked as though it had once been a paved roadway, I came across the blue glass dome.

There it was, right before me, surrounded by the wilderness of the countryside. The bright sun, the soft wind, the twittering of birds — all the adjuncts of the countryside grouped around this monstrous silent thing. As I said, I just stood and stared.

The object was pretty nearly four miles square I reckoned, and some twenty feet in height. But the odd thing was there seemed to be no way of getting into it. For over two hours I prowled round this huge black greenhouse, taking a photograph or two, and all the time wondering how the blazes such a thing came to be here in the lonely countryside. It seemed to be made of glass — the one-way variety, for I could see nothing through it. It just reflected the glare of the midsummer sun in one purply-black dome.

So I passed the afternoon, mystifying myself more deeply with every moment. It was only the need for tea that got me on the move again at last, and I finished up at a local inn that was still within sight — very distinctly — of the dome.

‘What is it? That thing?’ I asked mine host, as he brought me beer and ham sandwiches onto the inn’s little garden.

‘You be meanin’ the blue dome, sir?’ He cocked a curiously grim eye upon me.

‘Naturally. I never saw anything quite like it. Is it some sort of building?’

He was silent for a moment, his thumbs latched in the strings of his apron.

‘No, it’s not a building,’ he said finally. ‘It’s a shield — and y’might call it a sort of monument too. A monument to something mighty queer which happened when I was a lad …’

I waited, reflecting that that must have been some time ago. He was well into his sixties I judged.

‘You won’t be much age, sir, will you?’ he asked presently.

‘Me? I’m thirty-two.’

‘Aye. You wouldn’t be born when the Slitherers were here. That dome was used to deal with ’em …’

I slowly picked up my glass of beer. ‘Slitherers did you say? What the hell are Slitherers?’

‘That’s the funny part — Ain’t anybody knows, really — save perhaps some of these scientific fellers. I did hear it might have bin the end of the world if they hadn’t built that blue dome.’ He hauled across a chair and sat on it. ‘I’ve got a bit of time to spare so I could tell about it … I’m always being asked,’ he finished broodingly.

‘Be glad if you would,’ I told him, and started on my ham sandwiches — but believe me I soon forgot all about them as he told his tale. How much of it was true I cannot say, but I suppose it could be checked by reference to old newspapers. Anyway, see what you think.

In 2010 the mystery of flying saucers reared itself again. The almost forgotten controversies of earlier years received a fresh impetus by the appearance in March of a veritable flock of the strange craft. Most of them were seen to be moving with enormous velocity and trailing a queer grey smoke screen that settled rapidly into a dense mist. In all parts of the world visitations were noted and prompt measures were taken — uselessly. The world’s fastest planes and guided missiles carrying movie cameras were powerless to keep up with the disk-shaped objects, and in most cases the mist-screen acted as a complete visual blanket.

Almost before anybody could do anything the saucers had come and gone — leaving behind them a settling pearl-grey mist which, the experts assumed, had been used solely as a smoke screen. That was all. The hue and cry and banner headlines faded out and the visit of the saucers, en masse, was forgotten, except for one or two scientists who made the usual announcement that there was no doubt whatever that Earth was being watched.

Being watched did not, however, interfere with the normal pursuits of Mr. and Mrs. Citizen. Work and pleasure continued as usual and nobody was particularly concerned. There were perhaps one or two puzzled people, mostly in the farming community — so puzzled indeed that a conference of farmers was called for in London — whilst in other countries other members of the rural fraternity congregated at the meetings in their particular capitals.

Out of these specially reported meetings there emerged the fact that the value of wheat in particular would have to undergo radical changes for the simple reason that nearly every farmer was growing wheat over nine feet high. It was unbelievable, and yet a fact. Even the most efficient fertilizers and modern methods could hardly account for this gargantuan result, and in the main, farmers did not know whether to be pleased or worried about it. Certainly something would have to be done in regard to the currency value since for every acre of wheat there was now approximately three times the normal yield.

Some suggested naively that it was the unusually hot, fine summer in England that had caused this attack of giantism — but that did not explain why almost every agricultural country had got the same result. Certainly it was peculiar, but as usual it did not interest the average man and woman for long. The curious mystery of gargantuanism faded from the public eye and became the plaything of the professionals.

One professional in particular was assigned the task of trying to solve the problem for the British Ministry of Agriculture — Hartley Norcross by name, an analytical chemist in the Ministry’s scientific division. And so Hartley Norcross came to the little village of Coxwold in Hertfordshire, choosing this spot as about the heart of the farming community.

Here Norcross talked with farmers, lived with farmers, and drank with farmers in the local pub.

He wrote lengthy reports back to the Ministry, but in each one he unashamedly confessed that he had not solved the problem. The reply was swift and to the point: Find something or come back to London.

Faced with this ultimatum, Norcross made a last, desperate effort. That same evening he cornered one of the leading farmers in the pub.

‘I’ve got to get to the bottom of this business, Mr. Henshaw,’ Norcross was briefly explanatory concerning London’s dictum. ‘The Ministry is a bit short-tempered about my having got no results. What can you tell me?’

‘I don’t see there’s anything more,’ the farmer responded. ‘I can only repeat what I’ve said before. We’re all growing wheat the like of which you never saw before. All of us.’

Norcross led the way to a corner table and ordered beer. ‘I think I’ll try a fresh track, Mr. Henshaw. Is it only wheat which is affected?’

‘You’ve seen my farm and pasture land.’

‘I know, but I looked particularly at the wheat. How about other things like — like turnips, carrots, and potatoes?’

‘Fairly big yield, I’d say, but nothing like the outsize in wheat.’

‘How does the barley behave?’

‘Normal.’

‘Yes. That’s the damnable thing.’

Norcross slitted his eyes and took a drink of his beer. He was a small, officious man with a long, inquiring nose.

‘What’s so damnable?’ the farmer asked, wiping his moustache.

‘Why, the wheat growing whilst the barley doesn’t. One could picture some kind of fertilizer that has an unusually powerful property causing giantism, but it wouldn’t single out wheat and leave the barley untouched. That wouldn’t make sense.’

‘No. But then, nothing does in this business.’

‘Would you say,’ Norcross persisted, ‘that each plant has an individual plan of nourishment? I mean, would a fertilizer for turnips act equally well for — say, rose bushes?’

‘It might — and then again it might not. There are rose bushes and rose bushes.’

‘The wheat is perfect? It is not deprived of essential ingredients by being outsize?’

Henshaw shook his head. ‘Everything’s there — full to overflowing. The finest wheat the world has ever known. If you ask me, Mr. Norcross, it’s a warning. There’ll be a famine after this, and the Good Lord is giving us the chance to fill our storehouses.’

Being a materialist, Norcross took no notice of spiritual warnings. Instead he did what he ought to have done at first — took a sample of the soil and fertilizer used on Farmer Henshaw’s fields and returned with it to the Ministry’s Laboratories. Not that this did any particular good, either, for analysis showed the fertilizer to contain all the ingredients one would expect of a good plant food — bar one, which was presumably a secret of the manufacturers.

This one ingredient worried Norcross more than somewhat. When he had completed his analysis he sat at the bench, studying the results of his work.

‘Nitrates, phosphates, sodium, they’re all here,’ he muttered. ‘But what the hell’s this one?’

‘This one’ had no name and was brownish grey when detached from its brother elements. It refused to respond to any reagent, and as far as Norcross could tell did not enter into any of the known tables of elements, either. It had something of the quality of brown dung, yet it wasn’t that either.

Finally Norcross rose to his feet, glanced at his watch, and then searched the telephone directory. In another moment he was speaking to the manager of one of the biggest fertilizer concerns in the country.

‘This is confidential,’ Norcross said briefly. ‘The Ministry of Agriculture, Scientific Division, speaking. I’m Norcross. I understand from one Mr. Henshaw that you supply him with all his fertilizer?’

‘Quite right,’ the manager agreed. ‘Can I help you?’

‘You can. Give me the formula for your X-1 fertilizer, specially intended for crops.’

There was a brief delay, then the manager complied. The more ingredients he reeled off the more puzzled Norcross looked. At length he said:

‘You are quite certain that is the formula you sold to Mr. Henshaw?’

‘Why yes. Not only to him, either, but to hundreds of other farmers as well.’

‘I see. Thanks very much. Just checking up.’

Norcross put the telephone back on its rest and stared in front of him. The peculiar thing was that, though the ingredients themselves had been mentioned, the proportions were utterly different from Norcross’s analysis — and even more surprising, the brown substance had not been referred to at all.

‘Something had been added to the fertilizer since it was sold to Henshaw,’ Norcross said, to the empty reaches of the laboratory. Then he shook his head. ‘No, not that. The proportions aren’t even the same. And there’s this brown substance.’

He considered the matter for a moment or two, then went into an even more exhaustive test — this time solely on the brown substanc. . .