ATOMIC TALES – Strange Invaders #39: Berserk in the Lab

Agent Seven, “Ruthless” Ruth Donlevy

Agent-in-training Gigi Brock jumped as the giant spider lunged at her.

THUMP!

The hideous mutation didn’t break the heavy steel bars inside its Plexiglas-encased cage, of course, but when something that large comes at you, it’s difficult not to flinch.

Gigi sighed with relief. “Jeepers, that scared me! Here are the results you requested, Ruth—I mean, Agent Seven.”

I took the papers and studied them.

It was hard to believe that when the agency caught this jumping spider, just a few weeks ago, it had been the size of a house cat. It had grown to mountain-lion-size by the time it got to U.S. Science Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C. Now it was as big as a grizzly bear and on the verge of outgrowing its enclosure.

“Anything new, Agent Seven?” Professor Teragon’s inquisitive voice crackled over the PA system. Most of the time, he observed our experiments remotely, while his daughter, Dr. Shannon Teragon—”Doc” to most of us—worked here in the lab.

“Immersing spine clippings taken from the subject in a solution of Hideaway Hunny seems to slow their decay… But not long enough for us to draw any conclusions… Yet.”

“Increase the amount of…” CRACKLE! “…in the…” HISS! “…and tell me what you…” Fzzzz…!

Gigi rolled her eyes. “There it goes again!”

Our lab’s PA and radio equipment had become unreliable since the growing spiders arrived. And the larger they grew, the worse the interference got.

“I think Dad wanted you to increase the amount of honey in the solution and then report back, Ruth,” Shannon Teragon interpreted.

“Check. But if the PA gets worse, your dad may have to come down and observe the experiments in person.”

Shannon laughed. “We wouldn’t want that! Dad can’t keep his hands off any experiment. Gigi…?”

“Yes?”

“Bring me that bottle of formic acid, would you?”

Gigi fetched the beaker from the shelf and brought it to Shannon’s work table. “Do you think this will kill the giant ants and other mutants, Dr. Teragon?”

“Not by itself, Gigi. So far, only brute force or flamethrowers can do in any of them.”

“Or a Faraday cage,” I added.

Because of the radio interference they caused, when the spiders first came to the lab, we’d put one of our two specimens into a large Faraday cage—a room covered with metal mesh to block electromagnetic signals. That cut down the interference, all right, but it also snuffed the spider.

In a matter of minutes, our priceless specimen transformed from a deadly giant arachnid into a pile of foul-smelling greenish goo—the same frustrating, fast-evaporating substance that all giant bugs become when they die.

We’d obtained a small sample of the original mutagenic gunk from our raid on Dr. Mihm’s lab, but we still didn’t know what it was or where it came from. So far, the goo defied analysis—which was one of the things keeping Shannon’s dad, the head of the USSB, busy.

We still didn’t understand why that first spider had died. Did these outsized freaks need some form of external electromagnetic energy to exist? And if so, what kind? The mysterious death brought up more questions than it answered.

“We can’t drop huge Faraday cages over every giant bug in the U.S., Ruthless,” Shannon noted. “We need to break down their biology somehow—find a faster way to kill them than a hundred rounds of machine gun fire. But they’re armored like tanks, and they shrug off even the strongest pesticides.”

She stalked back and forth in front of her lab table, frustrated. “And even if we don’t feed this darn thing… It just… keeps… growing.”

“So, you’re thinking this acid might help?” Gigi asked.

“Formic acid is common in insect venom. They use it against each other. Maybe if we combine it with something else…” Doc meandered into silence for a moment. “Gigi, unlock the probe door and snip me another spider hair, please.”

Gigi swallowed hard. “Sure thing.” She went to the cage door and carefully undid the small access portal in the Plexiglas that would allow her to reach through the bars and take a sample.

“Maybe if we enhance the formic acid with something from Dr. Hedison’s lab,” I suggested. “What about his formula that—”

“Great idea, Ruth!” Shannon enthused, as if reading my mind. “If we combined the acid with elements of his Mansect cure—”

Suddenly, a red warning light flashed on the lab wall, a klaxon blared, and Professor Teragon’s voice fizzled over the loudspeaker:

“—sor Teragon, the U.S.—” HISS! “—Force repor—” CRACKLE! “—unidentified flyi—” POP! “—over the U.S. Cap—” CRACKLE! “High Alert!” BUZZ…!

Then the audio died and the lights went out.

A frightening rumble shook the lab, making our myriad scientific devices quake and clatter. The dull thud of an electrical lock opening echoed in the darkness.

Red emergency lights flared.

Gigi screamed as the door enclosing the spider cage flew off its hinges, smashing into her as the monstrous arachnid burst free.

The mutant turned on our young assistant. Four of its huge orange eyes focused on her terrified face. Its mouth parts clicked hungrily, dripping with greenish saliva. The lab air reeked with the thing’s musty, rotten-meat odor.

Before Shannon and I could do anything, the monster sank its huge fangs into Gigi’s neck—at least, that’s what it tried to do.

Fortunately, the Plexiglas door of the cage had fallen on top of Miss Brock, and the devilish fangs didn’t penetrate the thick plastic.

But the weight of the arachnid crushed Gigi to the floor. She screamed again as the acrylic door buckled and cracked; it wouldn’t protect her for long.

“Hey, you!” I cried, tossing a beaker of distilled water at the thing.

The glass shattered on the spider’s spiky cephalothorax, just behind its multiple eyes. It didn’t hurt the monster, just gave it a good drenching.

The spider wheeled at me and leaped.

I dived under one of the big, slate-topped lab tables and skidded across the floor to the far side. The spider missed me, but not by much. It crashed into a long cabinet filled with empty retorts. The glassware shattered into fragments, and the cabinet fell on the spider but didn’t even slow it.

I could tell from the way its inhuman eyes were tracking me that I wouldn’t be able to dodge it twice. I froze, calculating my next move, hoping my lack of motion would make it harder for the beast to zero in.

“Look alive, eight eyes!” Shannon shouted. When the spider turned, she scorched it with a blast of fire from a Bunsen burner that she’d rigged into a makeshift flamethrower.

The spider didn’t like that. It hissed, gave an ear-piercing shriek, and backed into the far corner of the room.

I took the opportunity to help Gigi out from under the Plexiglas.

“T-thanks.”

As the fuel supply for her improvised flamethrower ran low, Shannon called: “Ruth… Gigi… Keep it busy. I have an idea.”

Gigi and I exchanged a worried glance.

“We’ll lure it toward us and then run in opposite directions,” I said. “I’ll go right; you go left and close yourself inside its empty cage.”

“Ch-check!”

Gigi grabbed a heavy ring stand as a makeshift club, and I hurled an Erlenmeyer flask full of saline solution at the monster.

That got its attention, and since two lightly armed women were more appealing targets than a lady PhD wielding fire, it leapt at us.

We split left and right, and the spider landed between us. But it moved faster than I’d calculated, and one of its spiky legs snagged the back of my lab coat.

It wheeled to finish me, but Gigi clobbered it with the ring stand.

That bought me enough time to shrug out of my coat and scamper to the far corner of the room. Gigi retreated to the specimen cage and pulled the barred inner door shut. The spider lunged after her but couldn’t squeeze through the bars.

I thanked heaven for a large laboratory right then. With the spider distracted by Gigi, I easily reached the locker on the far side of the room, where I’d stashed my Colts.

A couple of shots into its hairy leg joints made the monster stumble and turn my way. Another volley took out its pair of primary eyes, but that didn’t stop it hissing angrily and springing at me.

If I hadn’t crippled one of its legs, the mutant would have squashed me. Instead, it shattered the lab table between us into fragments of wood and slate.

Unfortunately, grabbing my guns had left me pinned between the lockers and a large row of chemical cabinets. If I ran, the bug would catch me. And taking out its six remaining eyes before dying seemed unlikely.

I gritted my teeth. Maybe I could shoot off its fangs before it poisoned me…

Before I could pull the trigger, though, Shannon sprinted in and smashed two beakers against the mutant bug’s backside.

The giant spider reared up and shrieked loud enough to rattle the overhead lights which, just then, flickered back to life.

I clambered past the thrashing beast and watched in awe as it quickly disintegrated into the familiar pool of foul-smelling primordial goo.

“Shannon…” I said, panting, “what did you do?”

“I tried that idea we had—combining formic acid with Hedison’s Mansect cure. I think the acid weakened the spider’s carapace and allowed the rest of the formula to break down its mutant biology.”

“So, that mixture should kill the bugs but still be harmless to normal physiologies—aside from the slightly corrosive effects of the acid.” I smiled as the implications sank in.

Doc Teragon nodded. “Yes. And it killed the mutant much faster than gunfire could. We’ll need to conduct field tests to discover the optimal formulation, but…”

“That’s great!” Gigi piped from inside the spider cage. “You’ve invented a better bug spray. You can call it Compound T, for Teragon, but you know what you should do first?”

“What?” Shannon and I both asked.

“Get me out of this cage! The door locked automatically when the lights came back on!”

THE END

About “Berserk in the Lab”

How many times have you seen scientists with giant bugs in their labs? Scenes in Tarantula and The Beginning of the End spring to mind. I’m sure there are many more as well. So naturally, this was another touchstone of insect invasion movies that I wanted to include in Atomic Tales: Strange Invaders.

I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t had a lot of scenes featuring Professor Teragon directly in this series. He’s often spoken of but seldom seen. Maybe it’s because when I decided that he worked with his daughter, he became the more mysterious figure and Dr. Shannon Teragon the more public one. Or maybe it’s because producer Christopher R. Mihm and I never really settled on a voice for the good professor early on (Chris played him… once), while our female cast members had been knocking their roles out of the park every episode.

Whatever the reason, the agency folks staffing the lab when the remaining giant spider gets loose in this story (and don’t the monsters always escape?) are the series’ main field scientists: Ruthless Ruth and Doc Shannon—plus the irrepressible Gigi Brock.

It’s another dose of action and danger for our women of the USSB, and another chance for our top-flight actresses to shine during the audio production.

It’s also a giant leap forward for our heroes in their fight against the insect invaders. They’ve finally found something that may work against their foes better than ordinary weapons and flamethrowers.

But how that will turn out remains to be seen in future episodes.

Happily, Mihmiverse veteran Mike Cook has recently stepped in to voice the elder Teragon for the rest of the series. Thanks, Mike! Great to have you joining our regular audio cast and crew.