The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

  “Nice shorts,” said Villa.

  Full whirled on him, angry enough to bark out an insult, even an oath, but the man was evidently sincere in his praise.

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

  His trousers were thrown to him and he shoved his feet into them and secured them once more. He put on his jacket.

  One of the beasts which had not taken an active part in the business now walked to Mrs. Full and picked her up by the back of the waist, as though she had been a cat, and brought her over. For one ghastly moment Calvin thought it was going to divest her of her skirt, but after scrutinizing her a while, it set her down among them.

  He took her hand. “Are you all right, dear?”

  She was amazingly calm. “I am, Calvin, I am. I don’t believe they mean us any harm, after all.”

  The first great animal pointed at the box, waving his prod.

  “We’re supposed to go in again, I guess,” said Watkins.

  “Let’s go, then,” said Adam. “No sense in getting shocked.”

  They trooped in, and the wall closed behind them.

  CHAPTER 4

  Adam Pierce had an idea. It had begun to grow in his mind while the woman was running the miniature spaceship, but he had thought it over until he was certain it wasn’t so silly as to make them laugh at him. Now he felt sure he’d hit on the truth; too many evidences for it, and nothing much that he could see against it.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “To get out?” asked the woman.

  “No, ma’am. I think I know where we are.”

  “Where?” asked everyone, except the big man, Summersby, who was sitting on the tire looking away from them.

  “In a lab! This is a laboratory, and those big things are some kind of scientists!”

  “You could be right,” said Watkins reluctantly. “My God, what a spot, if you’re right!”

  “Sure. That’s why we were snatched off the coaster, however it happened. They wanted to experiment on us, and study us. They got this lab someplace where it’s secret, and they make tests—”

  “There was a contrivance like a milking machine,” said Full.

  “You don’t know what it’s used for,” said Adam darkly. He imagined it might be an especially nasty way of picking over a man’s brains or body. “Look, it all fits. That stool, that’s a funny way to punish a person, but all their stuff is a little cockeyed.”

  “By our standards,” added Watkins.

  “That’s what I meant. Look, you punish a guinea pig when it does something wrong, if you’re trying to teach it some trick or other; I mean, suppose you want to determine its intelligence, you give it a problem, and if it does the thing wrong it gets a shock, maybe, or a bat on the nose. That stool was punishment. If you hadn’t crashed the rocket,” he said to Mrs. Full, “it might have given you a reward.”

  “Maybe some food,” said Villa.

  “Here’s another angle,” said Watkins, who obviously knew something about lab work. “They may be trying to give us neuroses. Scientists induce neuroses in all kinds of critters, by punishment and complex problems and—”

  “What is that?” asked Villa.

  “Neuroses?” Watkins rubbed his chin. “Well, say they want to make an animal nervous, anxious, worried.” Villa nodded.

  “You mean they might be trying to drive us mad?” said the woman in a high scared voice.

  “I doubt it,” said Calvin Full.

  “They might be,” said Watkins.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” said his wife. She went trotting to the wall. “Didn’t anyone shove a barrier into this?”

  “I forgot,” said Full. She gave him a dirty look.

  “Anyway,” Adam went on, “that could explain why we were fixed up before they woke us—it was like quarantine. They wouldn’t want sick animals.”

  “Who was fixed up how?” asked the Mexican suspiciously.

  “My astigmatism,” he said to Villa, “and this gentleman’s sinus trouble, and his wife’s headache.”

  “And they pulled a rotten wisdom tooth for me,” said Watkins. “I just discovered it a minute ago. Hole’s healed up neatly.”

  Villa was peeling away the bandage on his hand. Now he gave a glad shout. “Madre de Dios! Look, the burn has gone!” He showed them his hand. “Tuesday, a terrible scorched place; today, behold, it is well!”

  The woman said, “You know, this might be a laboratory. When I taught kindergarten we had simple tests for the children that were somewhat like that remote control apparatus.”

  * * * *

  Watkins pushed the big man, Summersby, on the shoulder. “I wish you’d get into this,” he said irritably. “We need all the brains we have to get out.”

  Summersby looked at him. “You think we’ll get out?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Why?” Summersby sounded tired, and as if his mind was a long way off. “If these are scientists, they’ll keep a fairly close watch on their lab animals.”

  “You’re a forest ranger, man. Don’t you have to meet emergencies all the time?” Watkins was exasperated. Adam thought, I wouldn’t talk to the big fellow that way; he looks as wild as a panther.

  “I’m sorry,” said Summersby, turning away again. “I don’t think we can escape, or plan to, until we have more information.”

  “You needn’t inflict your morbidity on us,” said Full. “Because you’re a defeatist is no reason for us to be.”

  Summersby stood up. He looked as tall to Adam as one of the monsters. “If we’re guinea pigs, we’ll end up as guinea pigs,” he said. “And what do experimenters do with guinea pigs, finally? They infect or dissect them. Now leave me alone!” He walked to the farthest corner and sat down on the straw, staring at his feet.

  Adam reached up automatically to push at his glasses, found them missing, and was confused for an instant. Then he said, “There’s a thought. We better bust out as quick as we can.”

  “Summersby won’t help,” said Watkins. “Anybody else feel fatalistic about this mess?”

  “I must get back to my chili stand,” said Villa. “And my wife,” he added.

  “Adam, you’re nearer to college courses than I am,” said Watkins. Adam nodded. “How many places in the world are there, big enough and unexplored enough to hide a race of giants like these?”

  “I guess parts of Africa and South America, maybe the Arctic, some islands. I don’t really know.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Perhaps we aren’t on the earth at all,” said Mrs. Full. They all looked at her. “I read a book once in which a party of people discovered a land beneath the earth’s surface,” she went on, actually blushing a little. “It was a trashy sort of book, but—but I thought possibly there might be something in the idea.”

  “There might,” said her husband.

  “Wherever we are, we’ve got to get out of this box before we do anything else,” said Adam. He felt panicky, as the realization sank into him of what they might be in for, in this alien lab, under the care of scientists that looked more like apes than anything.

  “Look!” shouted Villa. Adam whirled and saw the small panel, that Watkins had discovered earlier, just sliding open. A large platter came through, heaped with what looked like a collection of junk. The huge hand which had pushed it in withdrew, the panel slipping shut after it. Villa was the first to reach the platter. “Santos,” he muttered. “Santos y santas!”

  * * * *

  The platter was two feet square, of sky-blue plastic, and on it lay seven pies, several dozen cupcakes, a double handful of macaroon cookies, and a quantity of glass shards. Some of the pies were upside down.

  “What on earth....” said Mrs. Full.

  “Looks like the contents of a bakery window,” said Watkins, leaning over with his briefcase clamped to his thin chest. “Window and all, I might add.”

  Villa picked up a custard pie. It had been smeared up by rough handling but it l
ooked good to Adam. He chose one for himself, and Watkins handed Mrs. Full an apple pie. She thanked him. They all took tentative bites.

  “What do you make of this?” Watkins asked Summersby, still trying to drag him into their group. The big man shrugged. “The glass,” went on the blond fellow, “that doesn’t make sense. Do they think we eat glass?”

  “Possibly,” said Calvin Full.

  Among the six of them, they consumed all the eatable contents of the tray. Almost immediately Adam felt his eyelids drooping. “I’m sleepy,” he said, yawning.

  “So am I,” said Villa. He lay prone and closed his eyes at once.

  Adam sat down, more heavily than he had meant to. He was vaguely disturbed by the sudden tiredness.

  “Someone ought to stand guard,” said Mrs. Full.

  “I will,” said Summersby unexpectedly.

  “I’ll do it,” said Watkins. He started to pace up and down. “I’m a little groggy myself, but I’ll take first trick.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When they were let out of their prison box next morning—nine o’clock Friday, by the chronograph, and they had slept another fifteen hours—there were five of the gigantic beast-creatures waiting for them. Any hopes that Tom Watkins had had of rooting around the big hall for a way of escape died with a dejected grunt. There must be well over a ton of enemies there, with their caverned red eyes peering down at the humans. No chance to explore under those gazes.

  The boss of the alien scientists—Watkins recognized it, or him (or was it her?), by the clothing and by certain differences in facial structure—came and bent over them. Watkins was smoking a cigarette he had bummed from Villa, Summersby’s having given out the day before. He took a hearty drag and blew out the smoke, which unfortunately lifted right into the creature’s eyes. It shook its head and made a squawking sound, “Hwrak!” and flipped its green prodder into his belly. He abruptly sat down, with the sensation of having stuck his finger into a lamp socket. “My God!” he said. Cal helped him up.

  Summersby walked off toward a twenty-foot-high door. None of the beings tried to stop him. The boss motioned Watkins to go with it, so he rather shakily followed it across the room.

  Before him was a gadget that resembled a five-manual organ console. The banks of keys were broad and there was a kind of chair, or stool, fixed on a horizontal bar in front of them. The giant indicated that he was to get onto it.

  “Now what?” he said, when he had been stopped directly in front of the apparatus. “Expect me to play this? Look, Buster, I’m tone deaf, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I’d just as soon dance a polka as play you a tune.”

  The thing pressed down two of the keys—they were of an amethyst color, longer and more tapered than those of an organ—and looked at Watkins.

  “Drop dead,” he said to it. He was always bitterly antagonistic to everything and everybody if he didn’t have three cups of coffee before he got out of bed. “Go on, you big ape, make me play.”

  It hit him on the head with a couple of its big rubbery fingers. He felt as if a cop had sloshed him with a blackjack, and all the hostility went out of him. He leaned forward and pushed down half a dozen keys at random.

  There was no sound, at least none that he could hear, though he remembered the whistle he had at home to call his dog, and wondered if the notes of this organ were sub- or supersonic. Certainly there was no reason to suppose this race of creatures was limited to the same range of hearing that humans were.

  The thing went down the hall some yards and folded itself into a sitting position before a large white space on the wall. When Watkins did nothing, it gestured angrily with its goad. He pressed more keys. It jerked its head around and stared at the white space.

  Accidentally he discovered that by pressing with his calves on certain pedals below the stool he could maneuver the seat to either side. The gadget began to intrigue him.

  He had never played any musical instrument, but had always had a quiet desire to produce music. He couldn’t hear this organ’s sounds, but he could go through the motions with fervor. He did.

  The boss scientist gazed raptly at the wall screen; was it concentrating on what he played? Did his random selection of keys indicate something to it, something about his mental powers or emotions or—what?

  Or was it possible that the playing produced images or colors on the blank space? He craned his neck, but could distinguish nothing. Pounding on, he called over his shoulder, “Come here, somebody!”

  No one answered. Pushing keys at random, he turned to look for them. Each of them was doing something under the supervision of a twelve-foot beast, except for Summersby, who was still examining the door. “Hey, High-pockets!” he yelled, knowing the big man hated the nickname, but not giving a damn. “Summersby! Come here!”

  “What is it?” said Summersby in a moment, standing below his seat.

  “Take a squint at that screen the old boy’s gaping at. I want to know what the devil I’m doing.”

  Summersby walked over and stood beside the scientist.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Well, the screen’s mottled gray and white, and the pattern’s swirling slowly; but that’s all.”

  “Is it particularly beautiful?” asked Watkins.

  “No. It’s hardly distinguishable.”

  * * * *

  Sliding right and left on the bar, striking first one and then another of the manuals, Watkins said to Summersby, “What do you figure these scientists are, anyway?”

  “Mammals,” said the big man.

  “I suppose so—”

  “They have navels. They weren’t hatched.”

  “Oh.” Watkins hadn’t noticed that. “Where are we, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another scientist wandered over and sat down beside the first. Shortly they seemed to get in each other’s way, and there was a lot of shoving and squawking. At last one of them hit the other in the face with an open hand. Then they were rolling on the floor, snatching at one another’s hair and pummeling the big bodies and heads with those gargantuan fists. It sounded like a brawl between elephants. Watkins swiveled round to watch. Mrs. Full said to someone—Watkins heard her distinctly in a lull in the ruckus—“If these are scientists, what are the common people like?” For the first time that day he grinned. He had stopped playing the organ. The other scientists had gathered around the fight and were uttering strange cries, like wild geese honking. Cheering them on? he wondered.

  Adam came over. “Mr. Watkins,” he said, “could we have been wrong about them? Do you think a scientist would act like that?”

  “They sure seem to be a quarrelsome race, Adam,” he said, “they’re not noticing what we do. Suppose you go look for a way out.”

  “We want to get away as soon as we can,” nodded the boy. “Dangerous around here!” He ran down the hall.

  The giants arose and straightened their clothing. They had patched up their argument in the midst of fighting over it. The leader walked toward a tall device of pipes and boards and steps, motioning Mrs. Full to follow.

  Apparently Watkins had been forgotten. He took his briefcase off his lap, where he had held it all the time he played, and dropped it to the floor. Then he hung by his hands and let go. He picked up the case and went to investigate the room.

  Before he had done more than glimpse the enormous door, he was picked up kitten-fashion by a scientist, who carried him off, dangling and swearing, to another infernal machine.

  For a couple of hours they were put through paces, all of them; sometimes one man would be working a gadget while all the scientists and humans watched him, at other periods they would each be hard at work doing something the result of which they had no conception of.

  * * * *

  Several of the machines could be figured: the pink maze, one or two others; and Watkins had at least a theory on the organ. The sleek modernisti
c machinery which directed the airship was plain enough. There were certain designs and arrangements to follow that flew it up and down the room. They were hard to memorize but Mrs. Full and the somber ranger, Summersby, became adept at them.

  Then there were the others....

  There was a remote control device that played “music,” weird haunting all-but-harmonies that sounded worst when the creatures appeared most pleased, and earned the punishment stool or a brutal cuffing for the operator when he did manage to produce something resembling a tune. Evidently bearing a relation to this was the sharp slap Adam got when he started to sing “The Whiffenpoof Song” while idling around a pile of outsize blocks like a child’s building bricks. What the human ear relished, the giant ear flinched from.

  There was a sort of vertical maze that verged on the four-dimensional, for when they thought they were finding a way out the top they would come abruptly to the side, or even the bottom, and have to begin anew. This one was obviously impossible to figure out, thought Watkins. It must be one of the ways in which the scientists induced neuroses in their experimental subjects. He had a quick mind for puzzles and intricacies of any kind, but this one stumped him cold.

  “You think it’s calculated to drive you crazy?” he asked Cal.

  The New Englander considered for a minute. Then he nodded. “Possibly,” he said.

  “You think it might work?”

  This time Cal pondered longer. At last he said, “Not if we don’t let it.”

  “I could develop a first-class neurosis,” said Watkins to Mrs. Full, “if I let myself really go.”

  “We must all keep our heads, Mr. Watkins,” she told him. “Those of us who have not given up—” She glanced at Summersby with a frown—“must hold a tight rein on ourselves.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” he said. They all called her “ma’am” or “Mrs. Full.” Nobody knew her first name. He wondered if she’d be insulted if he asked her, and decided that she would.

  Capriciously, then, on the heels of a series of punishments, the head scientist went out of the room and came back with food for them. It flung the food—three chickens—on the floor. Villa snatched one of them up with a happy shout, but at once his dark face soured. “Raw? How can we cook them?” His hand with the fowl dropped limply to his side.