The Book Monster

Nathaniel and his crew land on planet Ninosa, home of the Ninos, pale-skinned, black-haired hominids. Ninosa is largely a windless desert of white clay, white sand, and white salt. The few tree trunks and roots are also white and often resemble twisted stacks of pizza boxes or Styrofoam cup sleeves. The palm-like fronds are indigo. The large fruits are puffy and hollow. Ninosa is also home to brown, sticky, carnivorous ferns and various herbivores. Due to the sparse biomass, Ninos live in white cities of artificial wood and eat factory-made food compounds. Most everything is powered by energy crystals, which create energy out of nothing. Ninos use a time-based currency. The value of goods and services is proportional to the time it takes to supply them, with no consideration for the costs of energy or anything else.

In places too rough for roads, the Ninos use flying cars with propellers front and back. Many vehicles are designed for multiple purposes, including helicopter airplanes, helicopter boats, helicopter submarines, and helicopter spaceships. The Ninos have mostly flat spaceships shaped as squares, hexagons, or octagons. Patrol robots have propellers on their heads.

The prime library on Ninosa is enormous. The four explorers spend a lot of time there. One day, they hear a scream and run to investigate. All they find is a stain on the carpet. They call the police, who end up closing off that section of the library. “This is the second attack like this. Until we figure out what’s going on, the library isn’t safe,” the officer says.

“What is the stain of?” Nathaniel asks.

“Blood, bones, and organs completely dissolved by a strong acid mixture. It looks like their body fluids boiled from the inside out,” the officer replies. Typical of many Ninosan uniforms, the police wear boots, briefs, and little else. Badges are fused to their skin. Over one hand, they wear a sock-like accessory capable of firing bursts of quasi-coherent infrared radiation.

“What could contain such a strong acid?” Nathaniel asks.

“We’re investigating that,” the officer says.

Soon, there is another attack in another building. Since the whole planet cannot be shut down, the police reopen the original building, but their patrols are greatly increased. Curious and not content to rely on the police, Nathaniel buys a bunch of small cameras and places them on shelves throughout the library. When there is another attack, he pulls the nearest camera off the shelf and watches the tape.

With the police, he watches as the victim places a book on a table and opens it. Out pops a cat-sized creature, folded and flattened to fit into the book, resembling a scorpion with five tails, zero claws, and three compound eyes. Before the victim can react, the creature sinks one stinger into his chest and he explodes. Boiling blood foam dribbles everywhere as the creature runs away. Without waiting for direction, Nathaniel runs the same way the creature went, looking for the next camera.

Following it in this way, he finds that just minutes ago, it flattened itself down and crawled into the twentieth book on the fifth shelf. The police ready their hand sock weapons and reach for the book. The creature springs out and stings two of them at once. Nathaniel is standing too close and feels the heat of the chemical reaction. The police hit it with heat bursts, but it heals in seconds. One of them blows off a stinger, but acid sprays out of the wound and melts some book covers. It then stings two more cops and skitters away.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, Doctor Bill, and the two remaining cops chase after it, but it is too fast. Nathaniel checks his cameras, but eventually sees it run into a section beyond his surveillance. “We lost it,” Haticat whines.

“We need to find it,” Fred says.

“Not before we know how to kill it. We need to keep it from healing,” one cop says.

“We need to experiment on it first, but to do that we need to catch it,” Nathaniel complains. It is quite the catch-22.

“Maybe not,” Doctor Bill says.

“How?” Haticat asks.

“We’re in the largest library on Ninosa. There must be a book somewhere here about what planet it comes from,” Doctor Bill says.

When more police arrive, everybody starts grabbing books. They are wary, since any book might contain a monster. “We’re looking for a high-gravity planet with an acidic biosphere,” Doctor Bill says.

Eventually, they find it. Arphenard is a cold planet with four times the gravity of Ninosa with a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, containing many clouds of water, hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and hydrochloric acid. It is home to rapidly-healing animal life immune to acids at normal temperatures and only partly affected by the hot acids used as venom by many of the species there. Further reading reveals their sensitivity to alkaline compounds. “That’s it; we’ll spray it with a base,” Nathaniel says.

Several pump sprayers are filled with concentrated sodium hydroxide solution and the police carry them on their backs. Then they go looking for signs of the creature. They cannot find it. “How are we supposed to find the thing? Do we have to open every book? Or should we spray the books and destroy them too?” one frustrated cop asks.

“No,” Nathaniel says. “I know what to do.” He suddenly braces himself against the floor and pushes on one of the bookcases, knocking it over and scattering books everywhere.

The officer looks at the mess for several seconds, then says, “Come on. Everyone clear a shelf.” They begin sweeping books onto the floor left and right.

Finally, they find it. The monster jumps on top of a case and runs down the aisle. They try to spray it, but it is too fast. It outruns them until they trap it in a corner. Just as they close in, it starts to climb up the wall. Small claws on each foot dig into the artificial wood. Finally, one officer climbs up after it. He raises his spray nozzle. “Consider yourself neutralized.”

Boom! The creature explodes. A giant fireball fills the room, killing all the police. Badly burned, Nathaniel breaks a window, tosses out his smoldering Stuffians, and jumps to the ground three stories below. He and his crew are the only survivors.

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