Robert Silverberg

The Day the Monsters Broke Loose by Robert Silverberg - People were trampled underfoot, people were crunched by ten-foot teeth in huge, fanged jaws - people died by the hundreds that day were eaten like tidbits!

Next week they'll be holding the Big Show, the Spectacular of Spectaculars, in Chicago. 150,000 people will be packed into Soldier Field to watch a couple of alien monsters rip each other to shreds.

Well, I'm not going to be there, for once. I'm going to be a couple of thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, sitting in a little bar off Wilshire where they don't have video, and I'll be guzzling synthoscotch and trying to forget all about my part in next week's show.

I'm the guy who caught the creatures that are going to perform next Fiveday night. I'm Jim Barstow of Barstow Eхpediters, Incorporated. We Bring 'em Back Alive is our motto, shamefully stolen from a great hunter of a couple of centuries ago, and right up until our last trip we were considered the top outfit in our line. But now I want to sell my share and get out of the filthy business while I still have a little piece of my soul left.

We made our first trip to World Twelve of Star System DA-7116 exactly two years ago. Herschel, my booking agent, gave me a buzz on the telestat one morning and said he had landed a fat contract for us. Barstow Expediters happened to be between jobs at the moment, and I was enjoying the pleasant layoff, but I obediently came shuttling across the country to New York for the contract interview.

We were being hired by J. Franklin Magnus of Magnus Promotions-the number one spectacle-producer of the twenty-second century. Magnus was famous for the way he threw. money around. I flew to New York determined to soak him for all he would part with.

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