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"Black Destroyer" is a 12,000-word story by A.E. Van Vogt, about an alien monster that stalks and kills humans; most of the story is told from the point of view of the monster. The story was first published in the July, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

Coeurl is a creature on an alien planet, very large, and with features something like a giant cat with tentacles. Coeurl is prowling his territory, looking for “id-creatures” to kill and feed on, but he now worries that he has killed them all, and there might be no more left to eat. Then a spaceship lands nearby, and some small, bipedal creatures get out and start exploring the nearby ruins of an ancient city. Coeurl is very old, and he still has memories of the days when the city was inhabited, but his race has degenerated since then to the state of animals. Before they fell, his people had been on the brink of star travel, but had failed to find the final secrets necessary to make that possible. Now, seeing the spaceship land, Coeurl senses “id” in these creatures, and plans to kill all of these men, steal their spaceship and its secrets of starflight, then go to their homeworld and continue to feed on an unlimited supply of “id-creatures”. First, though, Coeurl must gain their trust.

Coeurl approaches the humans cautiously, knowing they have atomic guns at the ready. The men are startled at first, especially since Coeurl looks like a large, vicious predator, but they are fooled by Coeurl’s behaviour, which seems to be that of a domesticated, friendly, curious animal. They allow Coeurl to approach, and soon most of the men accept Coeurl as something like a pet, or an animal to be studied. Coeurl watches the men carefully, and when one man, Jarvey, goes off into the city ruins alone, Coeurl finds the opportunity to slip away from the other humans unnoticed. He enters the city ruins, stalking Jarvey:

The man, a heavy-set, powerful fellow, walked off with quick, alert steps. Coeurl didn’t like that alertness. It presaged trouble; it meant lightning reaction to danger. . . .

His ear tendrils caught the log-frequency waves of whistling. The sound throbbed through his being; and suddenly terror caught with icy fingers at his brain. The man would have a gun. Suppose he leveled one burst of atomic enegy—one burst—before his own muscles would whip out in murder fury.

A little shower of rocks streamed past. And then the man was beneath him. Coeurl reached out and struck a single crushing blow at the shimmering transparent headpiece of the spacesuit. There was a tearing sound of metal and a gushing of blood. The man doubled up as if part of him had been telescoped. For a moment, his bones and legs and muscles combined miraculously to keep him standing. Then he crumpled with a metallic clank of his space armor.

Fear completely evaporated, Coeurl leaped out of hiding. With ravenous speed, he smashed the metal and the body within it to bits. Great chunks of metal, torn piecemeal from the suit, sprayed the ground. Bones cracked. Flesh crunched. It was simple to tune in on the vibrations of the id, and to create the violent chemical disorganization that freed it from the crushed bone. The id was, Coeurl discovered, mostly in the bone.

He felt revived, almost reborn. Here was more food than he had had in the whole past year.

Three minutes, and it was over and Coeurl was off like a thing fleeing dire danger. Cautiously, he approached the glistening globe from the opposite side to that by which he had left. The men were all busy at their tasks. Gliding noiselessly, Coeurl slipped unnoticed up to a group of men.

When the other crewman find the body, they begin an investigation, and many of them suspect Coeurl. They note that the dead body, which was mostly intact, had all of the phosphorus drained out of his bones (this is the “id” that Coeurl consumed). One of the crewmen, Kent, fires a stun gun at Coeurl, and the alien is unaffected. Now they get worried, and they lead Coeurl into a locked room, with guards patrolling, to keep the crew safe. Coeurl waits until everyone is asleep, and then he opens the door (Coeurl has the ability to manipulate the atoms in metal), and kills a dozen men while they sleep. But then Coeurl panics when the guards return and see the door open; Coeurl rushes back, kills the two guards and flings their bodies across the corridor (so they will not be found next to his cell), and then goes back into the cell and pretends to be asleep.

The crew’s investigation now focuses on Coeurl as the most likely killer. They send a wave of electricity into his cell, but while doing that, Coeurl manages to smash a hole in the wall and escape. Coeurl makes it to the engine room, and ignites the engines, sending the ship into space. The captain now organizes a counterattack against Coeurl, but Coeurl uses his time to build another, smaller spaceship, equipped with engines capable of spaceflight. Coeurl’s intention now is to take this ship back to his home planet and give the technology to his species, enabling them to fly into space and take over the galaxy. Just as the humans launch their attack on the engine room, Coeurl enters his new ship and launches, leaving the Earth ship behind. He sets a course for his home planet, which he sees growing in the window. Soon, however, his planet starts getting smaller, and the humans’ ship approaches. Coeurl now realizes that when the two ships dock, the humans will kill him with their atomic disintegrators. Coeurl commits suicide. The humans explain that Coeurl failed because the humans’ ship was equipped with “anti-accelerators” and Coeurl’s little ship was not, so he overshot his home world. The humans now resolve to go back down to the planet and exterminate every one of Coeurl’s species.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939). This was Van Vogt’s first published story, and it later formed part of the author’s novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950).

Martin Greenberg writes: “There had been hundreds of stories about ‘space monsters’ and BEMS before Black Destroyer, the vast majority relying on the appearance of the creatures to frighten and amaze the reader. However, here it is not tentacles that provide the chills and frights, but Coeurl’s insatiable hunger." "BEM's" are "Bug-Eyed Monsters".

Isaac Asimov writes: “The July, 1939, Astounding is sometimes taken as the opening of the two decades of science fiction’s ‘Golden Age’….Why this issue? Very largely because of Black Destroyer which had the wallop of a pile driver to those reading it then for the first time. I know, because I remember.” The same issue included C.L. Moore’s Greater Than Gods and Asimov’s own story, Trends, his third published story, but the first story he got published in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov says that, “in the blaze of Van Vogt’s lead story Black Destroyer, I doubt that anyone noticed the twinkle of my own presence.”