"Black Destroyer" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, first published in Astounding SF in July 1939.

It was claimed as an inspiration for the movie Alien and van Vogt collected an out-of-court settlement of $50,000 from 20th Century Fox.

[2][3] A Coeurl, a large, intelligent, black cat-like animal, considers its near-future starvation as its food source of id-creatures has been hunted to extinction.

[4] Using his powers to control energy, the Coeurl causes the rear wall of the cage to dissolve and locks himself in the engine room.

He uses the ship's power to reinforce the walls of the room so the men cannot blast their way in, and then sends the craft into space at high acceleration.

But the key to the plan is a proper understanding of their enemy; the ship's archaeologist had concluded that the Coeurl is a member of the race that constructed the dead cities they explored on the planet and that they have reverted to a criminal state after an unimaginably long time of isolation and starvation.

He switched to science fiction and submitted his first SF story, "Vault of the Beast", to Astounding but received a positive rejection letter.

[5] The story was re-used in 1950 as the basis for the first six chapters of The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Van Vogt's first and most famous fix-up novel.

[9][1][5][11][12] Asimov cited "Black Destroyer" itself and not the issue as the starting point, stating that the presence of his story was "pure coincidence".