The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves

by Festus Pragnell

  “Who are you? What do you want?” rasped a voice inside.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  The door flew open.

  The professor stood in the doorway.

  First he looked over my head, expecting to see a Martian. Then he looked down and saw me.

  But he didn’t say anything. Because I rushed forward, between his legs. It was the only way. I didn’t stand any chance in that bare tunnel if he turned a ray on me. In the laboratory I might.

  My rush, quite unexpected, knocked him off his balance. He fell with a crash in the doorway.

  Judging by the noise he made, he was not very pleased.

  I took a quick glance round just to see where I was.

  IT WAS a very big place. That Martian scientist certainly needed plenty of room to work in by the looks of things. Big bottles, cans by the thousand, apparatus of all sorts. And against one wall, lying on shelves, were bodies, living or dead, of Martians. Row behind row, row beside row, shelf above shelf, layer above layer. Countless thousands of them.

  Their eyes were open, their lips slightly apart, they all looked exactly alike. They seemed about to spring from their shelves at any moment. They lay in different attitudes, and several of them were moving their arms or legs very slowly as I watched.

  It was their exact alikeness, as though they were all twin brothers and sisters, that told me what they were. They were the “Professor’s” synthetic bodies, neither living nor dead, waiting to be provided with brains. Each one had a number and a name tattooed, very small, behind his or her left ear. Next to each man was a woman, then another man and so on. Though what on Mars that crazy scientist wanted with so many females I can’t think. I should have thought he had enough trouble already.

  But, as you can guess, I did not have time to examine them very closely. That professor was getting on his hind legs again, and I had to attend to him. He met my eyes. No sir, it definitely was not a smile of welcome that he gave me. Neither did he say, “How do you do, my dear Prince!”

  No sir. His manners were very, very bad. He just made a queer hissing noise, picked up the nearest heavy object and threw it at me, hard. If I had stayed where I was it would not have done me any good. I thought it best to be somewhere else. There was a smashing of glass and choking fumes began to arise. Sulphuric acid, I think.

  Another missile followed and another.

  He hadn’t much chance of hitting me, of course. He seemed to realize it.

  He filled a large glass out of a large bottle. Whatever it was that he poured into the glass smoked as he poured it. Then he came towards me. And the look on his face told me that he didn’t mean to do me any good.

  Well, I didn’t fancy getting half a gallon of sulphuric acid in my face. That Martian glass held about half a gallon. And, roomy as that Martian laboratory was, I soon found that it was not at all a good place in which to be with a man who has half a gallon of sulphuric acid in his hand and means to give you the benefit of it. It was too full of things to trip one up, and of blind alleys likely to trap one between machines or between rows of synthetic men.

  I decided to put the lights out, if I could, and get away in the darkness. I threw every switch I came across that looked like a light-switch.

  No lights went out, but various machines began to hum.

  “You maniac!” screamed the professor.

  Beside us all those synthetic men began to stir. Some turned their heads from side to side, inquiringly. Some raised themselves on their elbows. And some lowered their legs over their bunks’ sides and got ready to step out onto the floor of the bunk beneath.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Girls Fellow

  THE worst of not being used to writing stories, like me, is that it is so easy to get them faced with the wrong part first sort of business. Here I have been telling you all this time how me and Vans got on, and I clean forgot to say what Wimpolo, that Martian wife of mine, was up to. Because, without me to control her, you can bet your last cent she would be up to some mischief.

  You remember I said that Wimp had told me she was going to see the fight in disguise. At the time I rather wondered whether I ought to put my foot down and put a stop to that nonsense for Wimp’s own sake. But I decided that if I said nothing perhaps she would forget about it.

  And did she? Like hell!

  She went straight to Olla, wife of Vans Holors. And when two saucy cats like Wimp and Olla put their fluffy heads together you can bet there’s something doing.

  “And why is little me picked out for such an honor as a visit from the great Princess?” purred Olla. Or something like that. All sarcastic you know. I think myself that Olla is just a wee bit jealous of the Princess.

  “Forget that stuff,” says Wimp. “These husbands of ours are going to get themselves into trouble.”

  “You’re telling me,” says Olla, forgetting even her cattiness for a time. “Ever know that gorilla of mine when he didn’t get into trouble? If he went to Heaven there would be a brawl among the angels right away. And he would be up to his eyebrows in it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking so much about your chimpanzee,” says Wimp, “as about my little Don.”

  “Chimpanzee,” says Olla, through her nose. “Just because I can’t have dinner with my husband sitting on my shoulder and have him fall off and nearly get drowned in my soup you can’t call my man a chimp!”

  Olla exaggerates. That only happened once. And it wasn’t Wimp’s soup I fell in. It was the tureen. And I didn’t nearly get drowned. Old Usulor fished me out with a large ladle.

  “We got to work together,” says Wimp.

  “How?”

  “You are not going to let your husband get out of your sight, are you?”

  “Well, hadn’t thought of it,” says Olla.

  “No,” says Wimp, bristling. “Because you reckon that with Vans out of the way you would soon find someone else. Let me tell you that with Vans gone you would not be in the palace five minutes. You would be back in the kitchen where you belong! And you can put that in your powder-puff and dab it on your nose!”

  The sweetest women can get very sharp with others of their own sex.

  “You hold all the cards,” says Olla.

  “You bet I do,” says Wimp, still sore about the soup-tureen crack.

  “Well, what do you aim to do?” Olla asked.

  “You and me,” Wimp announced, “are going to disguise ourselves as men!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got it all worked out. Don will have half a dozen guards with him when he goes to this fight. I insist on that. The captain of the guard will be you, in a false mustache. And Vans will have a new second—”

  “And that will be you, in another false mustache,” Olla finished.

  “What do you think of that plan?”

  “Crazy as the person who thought of it,” says Olla. “All the same it will be fun.”

  AND that was what these two headstrong females did. Neither Vans nor I had any idea of it. Olla watched me and Wimp watched Vans. That was Wimp’s artfulness. Either of us would have known our own wives in a moment in any disguise, but the other girl might fool us. And they did. Which only shows what games girls will get up to if they are not kept under firm control. Especially Martian girls.

  Well, I’ve no need to tell you the story of Vans’ fight with the giant Hudells all over again. Because I am only telling you now what I should have told you before if I hadn’t got this story all mucked up and told you the wrong part first.

  Did your wife ever disguise herself as a man and go about pretending she was looking after you when she was really out for a bit of fun? Or is it only me that has to put up with this sort of thing?

  Well, anyway, those two girls thought they had Vans and me safely under their noses. But I don’t need to tell you all over again what happened. That giant, Hudells, had other ideas. Vans left the building through the roof. And I followed.

  Then Wimp gave tongue. She had a
lot to say. She told everybody who I was, and who she was, and ordered Hudells to be arrested and put in jail on the spot, and a lot more besides.

  Hudells made a fight of it, twisted as he was. He whirled on his heel, arms outstretched, and everybody near him was knocked flying. Then he made a dash for the door, but, being twisted, went in the opposite direction. But he kept going, looking over his shoulder, and his great weight smashed right through the wall.

  He vanished in the darkness.

  “Come on!” yells Wimp, and dashes out with her men and a water-proof sheet with the idea of catching me.

  And, oh yes, I’ve told you that part too. How Wimp’s plan was just working out nicely when that prehistoric bat-wing that ought to have been extinct millions of years ago swooped down and carted me away as though I was a fat worm.

  “Airplanes!” yells Wimp. “After my husband!”

  “And what about my husband?” asks Olla.

  “Your husband? Hasn’t he come down yet?”

  Vans had not returned from his flight.

  “Where my husband is we shall find yours,” declares Wimp. And sets out for an airfield.

  Their planes were little gyro-copters that could hover and dart. Got to have planes like that in Mars, to dodge through all those twisty caverns. There were eight of them, carrying the two silly girls and six men.

  And I’m bothered if they didn’t find the way, too. One of those Pteros was sighted, and they followed it.

  Right to Prince Grumbold’s stronghold.

  CHAPTER IX

  The Mastering of Hudells

  M EANWHILE, Vans and that synthetic giant, Hudells, were arguing the toss in that little cavern. Not that I care much for telling a story this way. Seems an awful mix-up. First I have to tell what happened to me, then how Vans was getting on, then what Wimp was doing. But we had all got separated you see, and blow me down if I can see any other way of doing it.

  So, as I said, Vans had got this Hudells nearly helpless by tying his arms together at the elbow-joints. Which, look at it how you like, was real smart of Vans. How he was able to do it I can’t think. Perhaps the professor reckoned to make it impossible for his synthetic soldiers to get dislocated joints. Or perhaps synthetic cartilage didn’t work so good. Or perhaps he reckoned to keep a lot of spare parts, arms, legs, heads and so forth, about, and have his men change their parts as easily as changing hats.

  I don’t know.

  Anyway, that bigger giant could see that the littler giant had done him one in the eye, and presently he stops wriggling and says, “What do you aim to do?”

  And Vans, he says, “I was just going to ask you that.”

  “Huh!” snorts Hudells, scornful, “I thought it was you that held the whip-hand now, Mr. Clever. I thought it was you that was giving the orders.”

  “I am,” said Vans, lifting his big stone thoughtfully. The professor, we afterwards found, had given Hudells a skull of steel to protect his brain, but Vans would soon have crushed that with his stone. “But you know your way about here. I don’t. You got to get Don and me away from this place. How you do it is your worry.”

  “Now see here,” snapped Hudells, “that’s impossible. Even I can’t get out of this place alone. How can I take you and your little chum—?”

  “You can’t do it then?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Pity,” says Vans, thoughtfully. “Because now I shall have to put on your clothes, pad myself out a bit, and pretend to be you. But first I shall have to rub you out. Pity.”

  He sighed and raised the stone. Hudells sweated.

  “You couldn’t do it. They would see through you at once. You are not nearly as tall as me.”

  “True,” said Vans. “But they would not notice that until I was close to them. And then they would not be interested.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have means of making people lose interest in things,” said Vans, doubling his mighty fists.

  “Your plan is a mad one.”

  “All the same, I like it.”

  He lifted the stone again.

  “I should advise you to close your eyes and keep still while I am crushing your head in. Don’t wriggle like that. The sooner I get the job done the less pain you will feel.”

  HUDDELLS made a desperate effort, but a sweep of the stone sent him reeling back, brain inside its steel cover severely jarred.

  “I give in,” said Hudells. “Don’t hit me again. Steel skulls may be strong, but they transmit jars, vibrations and heat too well for me. It’s ringing like a tuning-fork now.”

  “Now you are talking sense,” says Vans.

  “Will you untie my arms if I promise to help you?”

  “First get me a deathray.”

  “In the cupboard behind you.”

  Vans took out the box with its switches and valves, and tested it.

  “Does this work on synthetic men?” Vans asked.

  “Doesn’t touch them.”

  “Get me a disintegration ray then. That will be capable of cutting your body in pieces.”

  “Can’t. There aren’t any of those things up here. The Prof. won’t have them.”

  Vans nodded, thoughtfully. The professor obviously did not want his men to have any possible way of hitting back at the synthetic men. The synthetics were to be the bosses. A new sort of superhuman race perhaps. While he himself kept control over them by means of his mysterious white powder. A neat and effective way of holding power.

  “Guess I’ll have to trust your word then,” says Vans. “You used to be an honest fighter. On the up and up always.”

  “Till I met the Prof. with his talk of getting the championship back with a synthetic body.”

  “Yes. I’ll take a chance then. If I untie your arms will you promise to help me and do as I tell you?”

  “Guess I got no choice.”

  “All right then.”

  Untying the arms of Hudells proved more difficult than tying them, but in the end Vans succeeded. Hudells was back to normalcy.

  “You are only a little shrimp,” he said, admiringly, “but you got the better of me. That is the last time I try to fight you, in a snake-ring, with my brains or any other way.”

  “Forget the compliments,” said Vans. “We have got to get busy.”

  “What do you aim to do, chief?”

  “How can we get away from here?”

  “On the backs of Pteros. There is no other way.”

  “How do you reach the Pteros?”

  “Through the Prof’s cave, past all his guards.”

  “I see. Would we pass the laboratory on the way?”

  “Right past the door.”

  “Good. Now listen to me. We walk out of here together.”

  “Together?”

  “I said, together. We meet a guard.”

  “And he gives the alarm at once, says you have escaped. And your plan is bust.”

  “No it isn’t. Because he doesn’t see me. He only sees you. I am behind you.”

  “Well?”

  “You tell the guard you must see the Prof. at once. You have important news for him.”

  “Then we meet the Prof. and he says, ‘What’s the news? Spill it quick!’ What then?”

  “Then we pick up our deathrays, get everybody covered, back to the cave of the Pteros, and we are away!”

  “Not bad,” Hudells murmured. “But what about the powder? Without daily supplies of the white powder this synthetic body dies a painful death in about three months.”

  “Where is this powder kept?”

  “In the laboratory.”

  “Good. On our way we make a quick dash into the laboratory, grab a bottle of this powder. And later we get chemists to analyze it and duplicate it.”

  “Reckon they could?”

  “Certain. Emperor Usulor’s chemists can do anything. What do you think of the plan?”

  “It has got me scared. And I am not easily scared.”

  “Wh
at have you to be scared about? Deathrays cannot hurt you, nor knives, nor clubs—”

  “Clubs can hurt me when anybody as powerful as you swings them. Not in anybody else’s hands, though. All the same, I’m scared. Still, my dad said to me when I was a boy, ‘Bruny,’ he says, ‘if ever you feel scared don’t stop to think. Just go right in and do what you are scared of before you have time to feel more scared. Because if you wait for your scare to ease up on you you will feel worse every minute.’ So, let’s go.”

  And he set his jaw and walked out of the cave, Vans behind him.

  No guard tried to argue with “General” Hudells even when they saw Vans with him. They got into the professor’s and Grumbold’s office.

  “The Prof. is in the lab,” they were told.

  “Send for him. I must see him at once.” Hudells sat with crossed legs.

  They waited in the Professor’s office. The show-down was not far off now. I think even Vans was a little bit nervous as he waited.

  Suddenly, a terrified scream. The messenger came running back. His eyes were bulging with terror.

  “The synthetics are loose! The brainless synthetics!” he howled.

  Behind him came thousands of men and women with curious staring eyes and slightly open mouths, all exactly alike. And all with no sign of human feeling in their blank, expressionless faces.

  CHAPTER X

  The Synthetics Loose

  I KNOW what you’ll say. It don’t make sense. And, in a way, it don’t. Those synthetics hadn’t any brains. Leastways, they wasn’t supposed to have any brains. And people with no brains at all are not supposed to walk about. Surprising what a little in the way of brains some people can get along with.

  Yet here were people with no brains at all, I thought, sitting up, looking round, climbing down from their bunks and walking all over the place. But I reckon the Prof. must have put some sort of brain in each one of them. Not a high-class, reasoning brain. Not even, so far as I could tell, a brain as good as an average dog has. Rather simpler than that. But still a brain. Able to move the body about quite efficiently. But not able to talk or to understand talk.