VANS picked up the spanner and went to the end hut. Three Martians at their machines looked up to see a dummy walk into their hut. One of them came up with a spanner. The dummy swung its own spanner, killing him, then with a rush was on the other two.
Vans looked round. He had accounted for four. How many more were there?
A Martian came running into the hut. “What’s the matter? Why are so many dummies out of order?”
“Four humans out of order,” corrected Vans. “And you are the fifth.” He went out, jerkily, straight into the larger hut. The toughest, strongest man in Mars was not afraid of a dozen ordinary Martians. He saw eight. His spanner reduced that number to six before the others realized what was happening.
Fighting a mechanical man gone haywire was a problem. No use trying deathrays on it. Two of the surviving Martians began to fetch their own dummies out of the water to defend them. The other four rushed straight at Vans, trying to throw him on the floor by sheer weight. They did not know they were attacking the most dangerous man in Mars. When they did, if they ever did, it was too late.
In an instant more, Vans was on the other two. One man ran, but the hurled spanner struck him in the back of the head.
“Huh! grunted Vans, panting slightly, “how can you expect to keep your dummies working properly when you yourselves get out of order so easily?”
Just then two machine men came charging through the doorway. They were two dummies recalled from the water by the last two operators to survive.
The Martian who had fought and killed thirteen other Martians with a spanner had no fear of two machine men. The two were proper robots with a dim intelligence animating them. Their last orders had been to kill Vans Holors. They came on with the dogged persistence of machines.
Vans hit them so hard that they flew through the air. One smashed into a large machine from which a steady hissing sound had come, silencing it.
Vans went out. The rest of the dummies were going all ways, lacking direction from their operators. One by one they collided with one another or with rocks, broke, filled with water and sank.
“A clean up,” said Vans, rubbing his hands together.
“Yes, it certainly was a clean-up,” agreed a harsh voice.
Vans swung around.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Switch on the television and you will see.”
Vans did. The lean face of Bommelsmeth appeared on the screen.
“How do, Holors,” he grated.
“How do, King Bommelsmeth,” returned Vans grinning. “I have rather dented your dummies and their operators.”
“Yes,” said Bommelsmeth, nodding. “I agree that you have dented my dummies. Incidentally, in doing so you have closed yourself up in a living tomb from which you can never escape. I have seen, although by bad luck I did not turn on the television from my end in time to prevent your clean up, as you call it. Still, as you have cleaned yourself up as well, it’s not so bad. I lose thirteen men and a lot of machinery, but at the same time I rid myself of one of my most dangerous enemies. Quite a bargain, from my point of view.”
“What do you mean?” growled Vans.
“I mean that I have given orders for the tunnel leading out of that cavern to be sealed up with millions of tons of rock. The only other way out of that cavern is by water. And you can’t swim it. It’s too far. You’d drown if you tried. Only if you are towed by robots can it be done. And you’ve smashed all the robots! Ha, Ha! To make things even better, you’ve broken the air-purifying plant. The foul gases that come out of the water will kill you within a few days. Ha, ha, ha! Goodbye!”
Vans watched in fascination. As Bommelsmeth showed in the television screen, a little figure was creeping behind him. It was me, and Vans says I looked subtly changed. I was even smaller than before, with quick, darting eyes. I leaped through the air toward Bommelsmeth. Vans says I moved with the speed of a bullet out of a gun.
Then the television screen went blank.
CHAPTER VI
Paths of Evolution
BOMMELSMETH eagerly watched the effects of his evolution-hastening ray on me. With all his faults, he was a keen scientist.
“It’s not working,” one of the Martians growled disappointedly. Let me ray him. It’s not safe to keep him alive.”
“It is working,” Bommelsmeth insisted. “I can see changes in him already, slow changes. It is exactly as I thought. Evolution in Earthlings is still proceeding, and my ray hastens the process naturally, not violently and disastrously. Now, what are the Earthlings evolving into? I wouldn’t miss this opportunity for anything.”
All I could say about Bommelsmeth’s ray at the moment was that it was damn painful. It hurts a baby to draw its first breath and to cut its first tooth. It hurt me to evolve. Queer aches racked my whole body. I groaned and shuddered. I exaggerated these pains, groaning and shuddering much more violently than I need have done. I pretended to fall in a faint.
Bommelsmeth took no notice, except to adjust his machine so that I still got the full benefit of it as I lay in the stone floor of the rough cavern.
“He’s getting smaller!” one of the Martians exclaimed, suddenly.
“Yes,” said Bommelsmeth. “The tiny creature is getting smaller than ever. Yet I see no signs of his developing, as yet, an enlarged head with a bigger brain and no hair or teeth. The head, in fact, is diminishing in size along with the rest of the body. Now, what can be the reason for that? Does the tide of the evolution ebb and flow like the sea on the shore? Are Earthlings at the present time losing intelligence instead of gaining? Or does that apply to this one Earthling only? Or will the developing small brain be more efficient than the old big one?”
“I think I can answer your questions,” another Martian said, thoughtfully.
“Well do.”
“The human race on earth is at present splitting into two separate branches. One branch will be very small and active, like this example. The other branch will grow big, with large brains, and will move about very slowly. In time, no doubt, they will lose the power of walking and be carried everywhere on machines run by smaller men of action. Both branches will be far more intelligent than the present race of Earthlings, but will be specialized. If we could get hold of, say, Professor Winterton, and ray him, we might get an example of the big, huge-brained Earthling, hardly capable of movement, who would be to this creature before us—”
“The natural counterpart,” I think he was going to say, but he got no further.
I had certainly been getting smaller, and losing weight too.[3]
With my general reduction in size, my hands were also getting smaller, so that soon they were able to slip out of the iron rings that held them. Bommelsmeth hadn’t thought of that.
I slipped out my hands, behind my back. Then, in one movement, I jumped to my feet and leaped.
WHAT a leap! I was not yet accustomed to my new powers. I could always jump high in the light gravity of Mars. Now I could clear thirty feet.
I seemed to fly like a bird. I went high over the ray machine with its trumpet that directed the ray at me, high over the heads of the giant Martians, while they still gaped at the spot where I had been. Their brains were too slow and their neck muscles were too slow for them to realize what had happened and turn their heads to follow my movements.
Slowly they turned. Swiftly I landed. I jumped again, not as high this time, but high enough to kick one of the Martians in the head with my metal heel. My back was turned to him as I kicked. I can kick very hard that way. To kick a Martian in the head in the ordinary way hurts my foot more than it does the Martian.
My kicks cannot put men weighing three-quarters of a ton out of action, but their speed and the metal of my shoes does make them painful. The man I had kicked sat down slowly with a groan, and reached for a death-ray.
Slow as he was, and slow as were the others, six of them were reaching for the nerve-stopping deathrays. I had to run for it.
I went through
a door and along a dark cavern. The door swung open wide behind me. A beam of light shone into this second room, or cavern. Giants thundered after me.
The door of this cavern was closed. It was closed with one of those heavy Martian bolts that I cannot open. For an instant it looked as though I was trapped. I leaped into the air.
High on the smooth walls I found projections to which I could cling. I leaped to other projections, and to others.
The giants came in, shining their light beams around. It looked hopeless. But they shouted, “He’s not in here!” and poured through the second door.
I waited until they had gone, then looked into the first room, where Bommelsmeth was. He had remained behind. He was bending over one of this beloved machines.
I jumped and hid myself on a shelf among the bottles and things. I saw that the machine Bommelsmeth was using was a television set.
“They’ll never catch him,” Bommelsmeth was saying to himself. “But I know how to get him. I’ll get my dummies out of the secret cavern to track him down.”
He twirled dials and knobs. Then an idea seemed to strike him suddenly.
“Suppose that Earthling doubled back here!” he said. Striding to the door he threw heavy metal bars across it.
Then back he came to the television machine.
I was right behind Bommelsmeth and I could see the screen almost as well as he could. The scene I saw amazed me as much as it did Bommelsmeth. In a smallish cavern an animated dummy with plain metal head marched mechanically around, spreading slaughter. Hurling its spanner, the dummy killed the last man, then took off its metal helmet. It was Vans Holors, disguised. Two other dummies attacked him, but these also Vans Holors destroyed.
I saw other dummies, uncontrolled, smash themselves up. I saw Bommelsmeth reveal himself to Vans. I heard him, gloatingly tell Vans that he was now trapped forever in the little cavern.
Then I leaped at Bommelsmeth from behind. My foot struck the delicate machinery of the television as I went through the air, so Vans saw nothing of the fight.
Bommelsmeth half turned. I caught him a good bang over the right ear with my iron-studded heel. Giving him no time to recover, I leaped and kicked him over the right eye. A hand grabbed at me, but missed.
All this time he had been shouting for help with all the strength of his enormous lungs. I heard answering shouts.
“Come back, you fools,” Bommelsmeth roared. “You have let the Earthling slip past you. He’s in the control room, all over the place like a jumping cricket.”[4]
I tried to stop him with kicks on the mouth, delivered with my back to him while I turned a somersault in the air. His hands beat the air trying to seize me, but they were very slow. To him, it must have been like fighting a wasp.
Soon a dozen giant Martians were hammering on the door. Bommelsmeth bellowed:
“It’s barred! Get a melting ray pistol!”
A Bommelsmeth melting ray, which turns all known substances into gases, would soon cut the door open, I knew. I had to hammer Bommelsmeth unconscious before they got in. But a man who weighs fifteen hundredweight takes a lot of knocking out.
All at once Bommelsmeth fell backward. This unexpected victory took me by surprise. For an instant I could only gape. He had fallen right in the path of the beam from the trumpet of his evolution-hastening machine.
But Bommelsmeth’s pretended collapse was only strategy, as I realized an instant later. By feigning unconsciousness, he checked my attack for a moment, and was able to reach a deathray box that rested on a seat.
As I leaped over his head to avoid the deadly ray, I secretly kicked the switch that set the evolution-speeding ray in motion. Yes, I let him have the chromosomes of his own body cells mucked about with, as he had mucked about with those of so many other people. So busy was he trying to get me with his ray that he did not even notice the yellow light, his own danger signal.
For a minute or so he flashed his ray about while I jumped. It was something like a man slashing at a gnat with a walking-stick. In the end, of course, he was bound to get me. But his strokes slowed up. The raybox fell from his hands.
Then I was able to look at him. Bommelsmeth was evolving fast. He was rushing down one of the queer side turnings that branch off the main path of evolutionary progress. His skin was growing a coat of smooth, shiny black fur, his hands and feet were changing into flippers.
But I had no time to watch the progress of Bommelsmeth. The melting-ray was in action. The metal bar had been cut through. Another second and the door would open.
CHAPTER VII
Return
TO silence Bommelsmeth, I switched his death-ray to half strength so that it would only produce unconsciousness, and let him have it. The halfdeveloped creature fell in an ungainly attitude.
Then I looked for hiding. Time was short. I snatched the trumpet-shaped funnel off the evolution-speeding machine. I turned it upside-down and hid under it. Like a candle under an old fashioned extinguisher. The evolution ray, no longer confined and directed by the funnel, filled the whole cavern. I, alone, was shielded from it.
The door crashed open. I heard many Martians come in. I heard their puzzled cries.
“The place is empty!”
“Where’s the chief?”
“Where’s the Earthling?”
“What’s that black thing on the floor?”
Then someone shouting, “The Earthling must be hiding somewhere. Shut the door so that he can’t get out, and hunt till you find him.”
I heard things being turned over. Presently came strange cries.
“What’s the matter? What’s happening?”
I took a cautious peep out. The Martian nearest the evolution machine had developed long ears, horns and a tail. And all the others were changing at a speed that was beyond all belief, into creatures more fantastic than any science-fiction artist ever dreamed of. Half cat, half fish, half horse, half crab, half spider, half bird. But I am no artist, and can never convey to you the incredible nightmare of shapes that resulted from evolution, after its sleep of ages, being suddenly kicked into action.
With one impulse all these queer creatures made for the door and rushed away; galloping, leaping, crawling, gliding, flying. I came out from under my extinguisher turned off the ray.
Bommelsmeth was still there unconscious. He had now changed completely into some amphibious creature that I can describe only by saying that it was something like a sea-lion.
Bommelsmeth, the mighty Bommelsmeth, who once held all Mars in such terror as had never before been known on either of the twin worlds, turned into a sea-lion!
Suddenly I remembered Vans Holors. It took me only a few minutes to contact Vans. The television had already been adjusted to the correct spot by Bommelsmeth, otherwise I might have hunted forever without finding that one little cavern in the heart of a great rock.
VANS was sitting there looking pretty dejected, but brightened at the sight of me. I told my story hastily, and he told his.
“Don, boy,” he said, “we’ve beaten Bommelsmeth, but we’re both in a jam.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t get out of here. You can’t get out of there where you are.”
“How come?”
“Can you find your way across the surface of Mars to the cavern you came out of?”
That was a new thought to me.
“No, I can’t,” I said presently, not feeling quite so bright.
“And another thing, Don,” he went on. “There is a price on your head. You are an outlaw. I have been listening to the radio-television broadcast.” He explained how I had been accused of the attempted assassination of Princess Wimpolo.
“That is awkward, Vans,” I said. “What am I to do?”
“Go back to Earth, Don,” he said earnestly. “You can do it now. You have a hermetically-sealed travel-sphere. Your blood krypton has been removed by Bommelsmeth. You could soon find the mines of your old mining company where your
Earth friends are. Go back to Earth, Don. Leave us Martians to solve our own problems.”
I thought for a minute.
“No, Vans,” I said. “I cannot leave Princess Wimpolo. I cannot leave you to die miserably in that cavern. I cannot leave all the Earthlings in Mars imprisoned at Usulor’s orders. I’ve got to get you out, and I’ve got to prove my own innocence.”
“But how, Don?”
“Be quiet, Vans. Let me think.”
“Vans,” I said presently, “to prove that I did not attempt the assassination of Wimpolo, we must produce the real culprit. We must produce the dummy made to represent me. Was it ever found?”
“No, it was never found,” said Vans. “That dummy was just about my old weight and strength,” I mused. “What would I do if a lot of big dummies were hunting me? I would climb, Vans, look up. Is my dummy anywhere above you on the rocks?”
Vans turned a searchlight beam upwards, then gave a shout.
“Why, yes. It is sitting in a crevice in the rocks. It must have reached it when its stored power gave out.”
“Good. Now, Vans, make a great pile of seaweed so that it falls without breaking itself. Get a melting ray and cut away the rocky ledge it sits on.”
In a few minutes the dummy was down.
Bommelsmeth, or the sea-lion that had been Bommelsmeth, had opened his eyes and was staring at me mournfully. I had chained him to the wall, and also I held in my hand one of his own melting-ray pistols in case of accidents. He seemed still able to understand what Vans and I were talking about.
UNDER my directions Vans repaired the dummy, emptied out what water had not drained out, and got it watertight.
“Capital!” I said. “Now you have a dummy that can haul you through the watery caverns to safety.”
“One moment,” said Vans. “Not so fast! Who is going to sit at the switchboard here and direct the dummy while it is hauling me to safety?”
“Wuff! Wuff! Wuff!” barked the sea-lion. I’ll swear it was laughing.
“Never mind, Vans,” I said. “Get the dummy going. Send it out. Use it to tell our friends where we are!”
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 17
