“A Present for Pat” January 1953

Eric returns from a business trip to Ganymede. His wife Pat expects a present. Eric has purchased a god––an actual deity––and he got a very good price on it. The little figure is called Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo, and its description is right out of H.P. Lovecarft––scales, clawlike hands, mandibles, tentacles instead of legs, an angry, cynical, lustful expression, and an awful stench. Pat is not especially pleased with her present, but Eric encourages her to communicate with it. In short order, the god turns Eric’s colleague Matson into a toad and Pat into a stone statue. The god explains that he arranged to be sold and transported to Terra, where he hopes to pursue and punish a criminal from his realm called Nar Dolk. Eric is called into work by his cranky boss Bradshaw, who is less than pleased that Eric is somehow responsible for Matson’s transformation into a toad. He fires and blacklists Eric. After Eric returns home, he pleads with the god to restore his wife, which he does. But Bradshaw has sent the authorities to arrest Eric for bringing a non-Terran lifeform to Earth. Eric tries to make a deal, which they claim to agree to, and the god is brought close enough to Bradshaw and the others for his powers to be effective. He turns Matson back into a man, but then recognizes that Bradshaw is in fact … Nar Dolk, flotsam of space. Bradshaw transforms himself into another Lovecraftian monster, with Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo hot in pursuit. He destroys Nar Dolk, then disappears back into his own dimension. With the evidence gone, the charges against Eric Blake are dropped. Pat’s present is gone, but she admits, she doesn’t mind that at all.