The red head, who had lugged the heavy machine gun all the way with him, patted its snout affectionately. "It plays the devil's tattoo," he said.
More fliers materialized in the by now brighter blue of early morning. The sun was just peeping over the serrated tops of the mountains. But still they did not attack.
"Afraid of us," Wat chuckled. "Bet they'll send to Mercury for the whole damn army before they come for us."
The first shock was over. With the inevitable staring them in the face, the men had achieved something of a gay recklessness. Hilary found some natural recessions under overhanging masses of rocks that would afford protection from the searing power of the rays. To be effective, the fliers would have to land in the valley or fly low, thus exposing themselves to the raking fire of the Earthmen's weapons. Hilary posted his little band skilfully underneath these natural shelters in such a way that they would be able to command the bit of sky from every angle.
The men jerked and fidgeted. The heavens darkened with massed fliers, and still they came. The Mercutians were taking no chances.
"Plenty of guests at our funeral," Wat chuckled, sighting along the barrel of his gun.
Hilary left the jesting to the others. He was watching the skies intently.
Joan slipped her arm through his. "You see something that we don't. What is it?"
He nodded with an intent frown. "There are clouds forming up there. The first I've seen since I came back to this planet. Rain clouds, too, if I know anything about it. Look."
Joan tilted her head backward. Thin scuds of vapor darted across the sky, driven by the morning breeze; dissolved and reformed a little farther on. Tenuous wisps, evanescent, wraithlike. The sun shone steadily, unobscured.
"Those little things," said Joan unbelievingly. "Why, if that's all you're depending on, we're finished."
"Nevertheless they are rain clouds. But when the rain will come is another matter. Very likely too late."
Grim came hurriedly over from his post near the entrance to the little valley. His face was placid as ever, but his eyes were worried.
"We are being surrounded," he stated calmly.
Hilary sprang to his feet. "What do you mean?"
"Listen. Do you hear it?"
Far down the overgrown trail they had followed into the valley came the noise of heavy stumbling feet, innumerable feet.
"They are taking no chances," said Grim, his countenance unchanged.
Hilary looked swiftly around. The valley was a cul-de-sac, surrounded on three sides of its narrow oblong by precipitous hills. From the fourth side, the Mercutians were coming—an army, from the sound of them. Overhead were a hundred fliers, and more coming. The trap was sprung!
Hilary's voice rang out. "All men without guns down the valley to repel invaders. Those with guns remain at your positions; watch the fliers. Wat Tyler in command."
With a joyous cry the Earthmen started for the narrow mouth of the valley, all without guns. Gone was the helpless feeling of before; now they could fight too. Axes, spades, pitchforks, sticks and stones even, were their weapons.
Hilary thrust his automatic into Joan's hand. "You use it, dear. I won't need it. Come on, Grim."
Morgan smiled slowly, handed over his dynol pistol without a word to a weaponless man and stalked after his leader. His great hand clutched and unclutched unconsciously. This was what he wanted, hand-to-hand fighting.
By the time they reached the foot of the valley, the noise of the oncoming Mercutians sounded like the rumbling of thunder. Secure in their numbers there was no thought of concealment.
The Earthmen were pitifully few, only thirty of them, and wretchedly armed. Hilary disposed of them up the slope of the hill on either side, set them to loosening jutting boulders. He was in command on one slope. Grim on the other.
In a minute the Mercutians would be upon them. A simultaneous attack, no doubt; the fliers dropping low to loose their deadly rays from above as the land force attacked with their hardly less deadly hand rays.
Hilary shot a last hasty glance aloft. His heart gave a great bound. The thin insubstantial vapors of a little before had solidified, taken on a grosser leaden hue. The sky was a sullen gray, shot through intermittently with the broad flares of a sun valiantly struggling to reassert its long undisputed sway. Little flickers of lightning played around the ragged edges of the clouds.
To the most unobservant it was evident now that a storm was in the making. But might it not be too late? The sun still shone, and as long as its light pierced through, the weapons of the Mercutians held all their deadly potency.
The alien invaders sensed the urgent necessity for quick action, for the fliers were dropping now, hundreds of them, to within range. Hilary heard the shouted orders of the Mercutians Cors, the crashing forward of a mighty host, and then the front of the attack burst out of the trees in an engulfing flood of gigantic unwieldy bodies and gray warty faces.
A quick view of the stout ungainly Viceroy, Artok, another of the coldly saturnine visage of Urga in the front rank, and with a roar of gutturals, the attack was on.
Down from above came a myriad blinding flashes, turning the inclosed valley into an inferno of heat and rocking, boiling, shattered ground. Up the valley shot the massed hand rays of the hundreds as they swept along in close-packed trot.
It seemed as if nothing could exist in that blazing, screaming hell. Hilary, stunned, shaken, scorched, felt as if he were the only one alive. Yet as the front of the attack washed up before him, he did not hesitate. He sprang to his feet, swung the nicely hefted long-handled ax he had picked up, uttered a war whoop that went back to remote ancestors, and flung himself headlong into the boiling mass of Mercutians.
As he did so, he caught a fleeting, comforting glimpse of Grim rising to his full height on the other slope, huge hands raised, and crashing down barehanded, silent, into the ranks of the enemy. A cheer went up, a faint ragged cheer, and other figures popped up out of nowhere and dropped feet first into the fray.
Hilary found himself engulfed in a welter of figures that towered heads above him. His ax swung up and down, bit into something soft and yielding. The Mercutian screamed horribly; blood spouted from his wide-split shoulder. He fell stumbling to his knees, and Hilary stepped into the little open space. That gave him more elbow room. A furious towering monster swung his tube around in the press. Hilary ducked as the sizzling ray sped over his head. There were howls of pain as the spreading beam cut a burning swath through the packed Mercutians.
Thereafter no more tubes were raised. The quarters were too close. It was to be hand-to-hand fighting; thousands of giant Mercutians against a handful of puny Earthmen.
Hilary swung his red-dripping ax in ever-widening circles. At every swing a Mercutian tumbled. A little space opened around him, literally hewn out of living flesh. But with strange fierce cries he threw himself again and again into the wall of bodies. There and there only was salvation possible where the sun-tubes could not be used.
Far over to one side he caught glimpses of bodies in violent upheavings, bodies that thrust explosively to either side as from the sharp prow of an invisible ship. Then a great figure heaved staggering into view, bloody, gashed, great arms encircling Mercutian heads, smashing them together like eggshells, flinging them apart, seizing others. Grim Morgan, berserk with bare hands.
Here and there in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads where an Earthman had gone down, trampled into pulp.
Hilary's first rush with swinging flashing ax had caught the Mercutians unawares. They had relied upon their sun-tubes, and in the mêlée succeeded only in inflicting frightful havoc on their own kind. Now, however, they came for Hilary in a solid mass, huge three-fingered hands flailing, seeking to thrust him down by sheer weigh
t of numbers. He swung and swung again, the ax bit deep, but still they came. His arm grew weary from so much slaughter, it rose more and more slowly, and then it rose no more. The bloody ax was wrenched from his nerveless fingers, and he was down, smothered by innumerable trampling bodies. Over him the tide swirled smooth. Heavy feet kicked and battered at his body, hands reached down to pluck and rip at him.
Feebly he tried to fend them off, but the shodden hoofs smashed him down again, gouged at his unprotected face. He struggled, but soon he would not struggle any more.
From afar came to his dimming ears below, a huge shout that shook the ground. Feet pounded him down into semi-unconsciousness; there was a mighty shuffling to and fro over him, and then the feet were gone. A huge well-remembered hand, caught him, heaved him upright. It was Grim. His face was a wreck, battered out of all semblance, but those blue mild eyes were flaming with an unholy light.
Hilary tottered, and the giant shook him.
"Wake up," he bawled; "they're coming again."
With a great effort Hilary cleared his numbed brain, saw the resurgence of the temporarily beaten herd. His fists clenched automatically.
"Good boy," Grim whooped. "Let's get them."
Then they were engulfed, fighting back to back. Hilary seemed to be fighting in a dream. He never had a clear conception of what happened. Faces thrust themselves into his own, furious, contorted; his fist went out mechanically, thudded against something soft, and the face disappeared. Hands reached plucking for him; he thrust them off, and swung left and right again.
Once he looked dully upward. The sky was gray slate now, festooned with bellying black. No sign of the sun; not the least ray could pierce. The fliers hung aimless overhead, no sparkle to their hulls. The valley was dark too; the terrible rays had ceased raking it with an inferno of heat.
Just before he lowered his upflung face to smash his fist into another face, something wet blobbed on his forehead. A raindrop? Perhaps, but he was too far gone to care now. Life was an endless series of howling Mercutians to thrust fists into.
A cheer rose high, punctured by quick sharp explosions of sound. Guns. Those few remaining of the fighting Earthmen farther up the valley, no longer menaced by the futile fliers, had come down to help their weaponless brethren. Wat's voice was shrill in the land, yelling, exhorting, screaming. A familiar rat-a-tat-a-tat came down the wind. The submachine gun was spitting steel-jacketed death. Where was Joan? Hilary wondered wearily.
A face towered over him, a face he knew. Urga. The Mercutian was no longer impassive; his gray countenance was distorted with hideous hate. "I'll break you in two," he mouthed, and lunged for Hilary.
The Earthman came out of his daze at the sight of the other. Strength seemed to flow back into his weary body. His fist came up, clean with all the power that was left in him. It went home with a soul-satisfying crunch. Urga's gray gash of a mouth seemed to smear slowly over the rest of his face. A wild animal scream burst from him as he sagged. Then a swirl of other Mercutians anxious to get at the Earthman eddied him out of view.
Hilary felt better. Now he could die content. Even with their guns, what could a handful of Earthmen do against the resistless, ever-coming tide of Mercutians, thousands of them?
It was raining now, slowly at first, large scattered drops, then heavier and heavier, until the fogged air was a driving sheet of water.
What of it?—thought Hilary bitterly as he fought and slipped and stumbled in the slimy, bloody muck that was now the ground. The Mercutians' weapons were useless, but they did not need them any more. Sheer numbers would overwhelm the Earthmen.
Then to his amazement something happened. The heavens, long outraged by the artificial repression of the weather machine, kicked over all traces and opened their sluices in earnest. The sky was one vast waterfall. The elements roared and rocked; the valley was knee deep already in a spate of waters.
Hilary splashed and waded after his enemies. But they were going. They staggered and trembled in every shaking limb, heedless now of the Earthmen. They slipped and fell into the flood, and stayed there, motionless under the waters. Like Pharaoh's army they were being drowned before the amazed Earthmen's very eyes.
On their own planet it never rained; there was no water except for carefully hoarded underground lakes. This first taste of real Earth weather was too much for them. They could not withstand the driving rain, the water swirling round their knees. All the strength went out of their shaggy frames, their knees buckled and down they went, helpless, destroyed by a natural phenomenon to which they were unaccustomed. They had actually been smothered by the humidity!
Hilary's voice was strong again. With great shouts, he rallied his men. A pitiful handful; only fifteen of the fifty that had entered the valley. But Joan was alive, her face black with burned skin, otherwise unhurt. Wat's grin rose superior to a mask of raw flesh, and Grim, bleeding from a hundred wounds, was still a tower of strength.
It was a strange sight as they stood almost waist deep in the flood, the storm beating down upon them, hundreds and hundreds of bodies floating, bumping against them.
"We must clinch our victory, men," Hilary shouted above the roar of the elements. "We must go to arouse the Earth, sweep the Mercutians into the oceans while the storm lasts, or all our work will go for naught."
A great cheer went up from the little band, and without resting, without food or sleep, they waded their way out of the valley, into civilization once more, carrying their message, arousing the peoples, gathering to themselves like a tiny snowball rolling down a mountainside, a huge swelling army of jubilant Earthmen, Earthwomen, too, moving in resistless flood down upon New York.
The rest is history. Like a torrent they swept down upon the cowed, weakened Mercutians. Those that did not escape in the great diskoids back to their own torrid, waterless planet were searched out, torn to pieces by the infuriated Earth peoples.
For five days and five nights the storm raged, all over the world. The floodgates were opened; outraged nature was taking her revenge. For five days and five nights the sun was hidden behind bucketing gray skies. And for five days and five nights, Americans, English, Chinese, Zulus, Australians, Russians, Bushmen, Argentinians, animated by a common purpose, rose gleefully and smote the invaders. When the sun finally peeped once more from behind the thick blanket of clouds, not a Mercutian remained. Few had escaped; the rest would never see Mercury again.
"We've won," Joan sighed happily, after it was all over, and was able to nestle once more comfortably in Hilary's arms. "Thanks to you."
"You forget Grim Morgan and Wat Tyler, dear."
"Ye-es, they helped, too," she admitted grudgingly; "but without you, what could they have done?"
Hilary started to protest, but over her crown of shining hair, he saw Grim and Wat watching him, grinning like two monkeys. Wat's thumb was raised to his nose in an immemorial gesture.
"You're right," said Hilary defiantly. "What could they have done?"
The End
***************************
He From Procyon,
by Nat Schachner
Astounding April 1934
Novella - 26647 words
He looked upon the world from his shining globe and saw intelligent life—or was it intelligent? Suppose he were to experiment—?
I.
He from Procyon saw the insignificant star glimmer redly in the depths of the universe. What it was that attracted his attention to it he did not know. There were hundreds of other stars in its immediate sector, far more brilliant, more brazen in their clangorous demands. Perhaps it was its very mediocrity that caught his fancy. So he plotted his course toward the modest little gleam.
The huge, many-faceted sphere swirled with magnetic currents. The swift light waves crisscrossing the universe felt the imperious pull, and swerved to concentrate their stores of energy photons on the angled plates. The impacts hurled the shell in the new direction, at a speed only slightly
under that of light.
Alpha Centauri heaved into view, a dazzling blob against the immensities of space, and receded into the distance. Then there was nothingness, five years of it almost, while the dim red Sun grew from insignificance to respectable dimensions.
Time was an empty phrase—no one of his fellows on that vast satellite of Procyon had as yet dissolved into mortality. At stated periods, however, a certain restlessness seized the individual. The infinite universe beckoned, beckoned with the fascination of new systems, new worlds, new knowledge. So one by one they departed in their bubble shells, to return in centuries of years, content, or never to return at all. He was still doubtful. He was a bit tired of the tremendous suns he had visited, of their crude physical sameness. Life was what he was interested in, life informed with intelligence, with certain strange quirks and interesting oddities. Thus far, life had been a rare byproduct of scattered worlds, slimy, sluggish, not far removed from the mineral.
He was an invisible transparency of supermanlike form and dimensions. The basis of life on Procyon’s satellite was silicon rather than carbon, silicon phosphorohydrates of complicated pattern. Only in certain lights, rich in ultra-violet emanations, did the glasslike plasm become visible reality to eyes accustomed to infra-violet spectra.
He yawned. Five years of nothingness and he was weary. The insignificant Sun was close by now. Planets swung around its redness, nine of them. For the moment he hesitated. Even the four larger ones were not of respectable size. It was hardly possible that they were the abodes of life. Life required spaciousness to be anything else but slime. He searched the heavens. The next sun was eight light years ahead. He did not wish to travel any farther. Either he found what he was seeking here or he would turn back to Procyon and the society of his fellows.
Four Astounding Novellas Page 10
