Beyond the End of Time (1952) Anthology

by Frederik Pohl (ed. )

  Somewhere on Riverside Drive that evening the detective declared: “I know it sounds like a damned childish trick, but I’m going to get drunk, because I had a lot of affection for Doolan. He would understand it as a fitting tribute.”

  “He was, in his way, the perfect expression of a brutal ideal,” mused Grafius. “In an earlier, less sophisticated day he would have been a sort of deity. I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind.”

  In a place whose atmosphere was Chinese they drank libations to the departed Iron Man, then moved on down the street. Midnight found Broderick pie-eyed, but with a tense control over his emotions that he was afraid to break through.

  It was Grafius at last who suggested calmly: “They are a menace. What shall we do about them?”

  Broderick knew just exactly what the man from Springfield meant. With a blurred tongue he replied: “Lay off of them. Keep out of their way. If we make trouble, it’s curtains for us—what they did to Doolan is all the proof I need. I know when I’m licked.”

  “Yes,” said Grafius. “That’s the trouble with you. Doolan didn’t know—” He collapsed softly over the table. Broderick stared at him for a long moment, then gulped the rest of his drink and poked his client in the shoulder.

  Grafius came up fighting. “Martians,” he shrilled. “Dirty, dusty, dry sons of—”

  “Take it easy,” said the detective. He eyed a girl sitting solo at a nearby table, who eyed him back with a come-on smile.

  Grafius stared at the interchange broodingly. “Keep away from her,” he said at last. “She may be one of the Martians—filth they are—unspeakable things—bone-dry monsters from an undead world—” He canted over the table again.

  The liquor hit Broderick then like a padded tent maul. He remembered conducting a fantastically polite Gallup poll of the customers in the saloon, inquiring their precise sentiments toward “our little feathered friends of the Red Planet.”

  He should have known better than to act up in Skelley’s Skittle House. Skelley was a restaurateur slow to wrath, but he had his license to take care of, as well as his good name. And Skelley, like so many of his kind, got a big kick out of seeing what a Mickey Finn could do.

  Grafius was completely unconscious when Broderick, with elaborate protestations of gratitude, accepted the “last one on the house.” He tossed down the rye and quaffed the chaser. Skelley, ever the artist, had stirred the chloral into the larger glass.

  The stuff took effect on Broderick like a keg of gunpowder. After the first few spasms he was utterly helpless, poisoned to within an inch of his life, lying heaving on the floor, his eye whites rolling and yellowed, pouring sweat from every hair, actually and literally wishing he were dead and out of his internal agony. That is what a skilled practitioner can do with the little bottle behind the bar.

  He saw the waiter and Skelley go through Grafius’s pockets, calling for witnesses among the customers that they were taking no more than their due. The customers heartily approved; a woman whose face was baggy and chalked said: “Peeble wh’ dunno hodda drink li’ gennlem’n shunt drink’t all!” She hiccuped violently, and a waitress led her to the powder room for treatment.

  Skelley laboriously read the calling card in Grafius’s vest. “That ain’t no help,” he declared wittily. “It don’t say which Springfield.”

  Broderick saw and felt himself being rolled over, his pockets being dipped into. The spasms began again, ending suddenly as he heard the voice of his host declare: “No. 108! Snooty neighborhood for a lush like that.”

  The detective tried to explain, tried to tell that man that it wasn’t his address but the address of the Martians he’d chanced on in his pockets. But all the voice he could summon up was a grunt that broke to a peep of protest as he was hauled up and carried out in Skelley’s strong and practiced arms.

  He and Grafius were dumped into a taxi; between spasms he heard the restaurateur give the hackie the Martians’ address.

  Broderick was going through a physical and mental hell, lying there in the back of the cab. He noted through his nauseous haze the street lights sliding by, noted the passage of Washington Square, sensed the auto turning up Fifth Avenue. His agony lessened by Fiftieth Street, and for a moment he could talk. Hoarsely he called to the cabby to stop. Before he could amplify and explain, the retching overtook him again, and he was helpless.

  He passed out completely at a long traffic-light stop; he never felt the car turn right. The next thing he knew the cabby was bundling him out of the rear, leaning him beside Grafius against the door of No. 108. The cabby leaned against the buzzer for a moment, then drove off.

  Broderick could only stare with dumb agony as the door opened. “Dear, dear!” said the soft, shocked voice of a woman.

  “Are they anyone we know, Florence?” demanded a man.

  “Unfortunate creatures, whoever they are,” said the woman.

  Broderick got a glimpse of a handsome, ruddy face as the man carried him into the hall, the woman following with Grafius. The man from Springfield awoke suddenly, stared into the face of the woman, then set up a shrill screaming that did not end until she had punched him twice in the jaw.

  “Shame!” she declared. “We’re kind enough to take you two sots in out of the cold and then you get the D. T.s!” There was a warm smile lurking in the comers of her mouth.

  The man opened a door somewhere, and Broderick apprehended a smooth, continuous clicking sound, very much faster and more rhythmical than a typewriter.

  “There’s something familiar about this boy, Florence,” declared the man as he studied the helpless detective.

  She wrinkled her brows prettily. “Of course!” she cried at last with a delighted smile. “It’s that Broderick!”

  “Yes. That Broderick,” said the man. “And this other one—”

  “Oh!” cried the woman, in tones of ineffable loathing. “Oh!” She turned her head away as though sickened.

  “Yes,” said the man, his face wrinkled and writhing with unspeakable disgust. “This other one is the Grafius he was so often thinking about.”

  The woman turned again, her face raging angry, black with the blackest passion. Her high French heels ground into the face of the dead-drunk Grafius again and again; the man had to pull her off at last. It was plain that he himself was exercising will power of the highest order in control of an impulse to smash and mangle the despised one.

  “Grafius!” he said at last, as though the word were a lump of vileness in his mouth. “That Venusian!” He spat.

  The woman broke free from his grasp, kicked the mutilated face. Broderick heard the teeth splintering in the abused mouth.

  There’s plenty of adventure in a big-game hunt . . . particularly when the quarry is you

  THE HUNTED

  By John D. MacDonald

  The lesser gravity of Earth gave the two creatures a free, bounding stride as they walked down the slope toward the pens. The myriad facets of their eyes caught the morning sun with the iridescent gleam of oil on water. As was the rule when inspecting the penned creatures, they both carried the liny silver tubes which, when properly aimed, blocked all neural impulses except those necessary to sustain life.

  To the two of them, the penned creatures were a source of excitement. Thome, the elder of the two, said in his piping voice, "A new lot came through yesterday. I want to get your opinion."

  They stopped and looked through the electrified wire. Riss, the younger, made a high thin sound of satisfaction. "Excellent! They are in fine shape. Look at that one.” They both looked with proprietary pride at a young naked man who stood and stared sullenly at them. He was well over six feet tall, heavily muscled, his tan skin marked with the white scar tissue of many wounds. His blue tyes seemed to flare with the instinct to kill as be looked at the two outside the fence.

  “It seems odd," said Thome, "that die first .of us to come here found these creatures repulsive. I have become quite fond of them."

  "In a way," Riss sa
id, "it is sad." He turned and pointed to the shattered skyline of Chicago. "They were far enough advanced to have built their crude cities, even to release a fractional part of the power of the atom. Who can tell what their destiny might have been?"

  Thome giggled. "You are too imaginative. They are too wild to have continued to live with the atomic power in their grasp. We saved diem from themselves."

  Riss shrugged. "Maybe you're right. And then again, in the last eighty years of breeding, while we strove for ferocity and cunning, we may have bred out of the race some leavening factor which would have enabled them to overcome their innate murderous instincts."

  "This group will make good sport," Thome said proudly.

  "What is planned?"

  "Tomorrow I am expecting a rather large party. We will release twenty of these creatures in the ruined city. All will contribute and a prize will be given to him who brings the most of them down.”

  Riss frowned. “They are dangerous in the dty. It is better to hunt them on the plain."

  Thome giggled again. "All the better. The sport lasts longer. Would you like to inspect that one?”

  Riss nodded. Thome adjusted the switch on the small silver tube. As he aimed it, there were hoarse cries of fear from the pen. But the young blond man only crouched and drew his lips back from strong white teeth. Thome carefully sprayed the group with the silver tube and they froze in position. One, caught oil balance, fell

  After throwing the switch, Thome opened die gate and die two of them went into tiie pen. The blond young man was frozen in his half-crouched position. They walked around him while Riss prodded his muscles, inspected the white teeth.

  "A fine specimen," he said at last. "Will he be used for breeding?”

  "If he is not too seriously injured in the hunt.”

  Peter could not move his eyes. Many times this undignified thing had happened to him and each time it made him furious. The two dead-white beings with the silver tubes walked back out and slammed the gate. He could see their movement from the corner of his eye.

  The silver tube was pointed again and the power that had kept him immobile was suddenly released. He looked at them, made a low growling sound in his throat and turned away. His hands itched with the desire to get hold of them, to tear their pale flesh, sink his teeth in their tiny throats, smash in the huge many-faceted eyes.

  Vaguely he wondered why they had looked so carefully at him. This was a new pen. In the beginning, the first thing he remembered was the pen of the children. That was when he learned about the fence. Only once had he been thrown back stunned, after touching it. Yet he had seen others in the children’s pen touch the wire

  In the end of the runway was the feeding trough. It was wise to run quickly at feeding lime, to push the others away, to snarl and bite and strike out. If you missed too many feeding times, you became weak and then never again would you be able to feed. The others would push you away and then you would lie down on the dirt and breathe no more.

  In the pen of the children he was the strongest. All bowed to his fist and his sharp teeth. He remembered the time they had moved him from the pen of the children to the pen of the young men. He had not wanted to leave the pen of the children. A week before, he would have been glad to leave, glad of the change. But he had begun to have an odd feeling when he looked at the girl-child they called Mary. He did not want to leave when they moved him.

  The pen of the young men had been vast. There was not so much fighting there, because of the work. The work was strange. Great stones had to be carried back and forth without reason. And then, of course, there was the running.

  He did not know how long he had been in the pen of the young men. It was like the children's pen in that there was a place for sleeping, with a roof, and the feeding trough. And the wire.

  Then he had been moved. One sun ago he and many from the pen of the young men had been moved to this much smaller pen. It was far too small. He felt cramped, stifled.

  As the two walked away from the wire, back up the slope toward the white sphere in which they lived, Peter turned back toward the sleeping place. The others laughed at him because he had been prodded and in-

  "Oh-eh, they will kill you and cat you, Peter,” one of them said.

  The others laughed deeply in their throats.

  Peter pretended not to notice. He walked slowly by the group. Then, bunching the muscles of his huge legs, he threw himself at them, striking them at ankle height with his hurtling body. He was the first to scramble to his feet. He did not use the blows that kill; just punishing blows. His square fists smacked against flesh. One of them leaped onto his back and with a quick twist he threw the man against the wire. There was a puff, the smell of singed flesh. They crept away from Peter and laughed no more.

  He inflated his big chest and thumped it twice with a heavy fist, making a hollow booming that resounded through the pen. At the sound, an older man swaggered out of the sleeping place. He was more scarred than was Peter. Peter had given the challenge.

  Stiff-legged they walked around each other, making small sounds in their throats. Once the challenge has been made, die fight must be to the death. Peter saw that this was an old one, a clever one.

  The clever one's body was nearly covered with tightly curled reddish-brown hair. His face was scarred so that one side of his mouth was always drawn up away from the yellow teeth in a snarl.

  The old one feinted, thrust at Peter's eyes with long nails. Peter slid away from die sub, clamped his fingers on the other's wrist and spun. The old one cleverly threw himself in the right direction so that his arm did not snap. In doing so, he brought his shoulder close to Peter's mouth. Peter's teeth met in the meat of his shoulder, and then with a wrench of mighty neck muscles, he tore a long strip of flesh loose. The old one bawled, leaped away, blood staining his arm, dripping from his fingertips.

  The others in the pen, some diirty of them, stood in a loose circle and watched without expression, without sound.

  Once more they circled each other. This time the old one was more cautious. He knew his muscles were stronger, but diat he was not so quick.

  Peter dodged suddenly to one side, and then threw himself straight at the old one, knee plunging up toward the groin. The old one turned, caught the thrust on the hip bone, and his arms locked around Peter's torso. The old one made a small purring sound of approval. Slowly his arms began to tighten. Peter took a deep breath. The old one had his face tight against Peter's chest so that Peter could not get at his eyes. Peter grasped the hair of the old one's head with both hands, pulled the old one’s head back. Then, letting go with his right hand, he quickly brought it around so that his forearm was across the mouth of the old one. Peter felt the slinging pain as teeth met in his arm.

  His leverage was good, but the old one was stubborn. Sweat poured from both of them. Suddenly there was a dim crack, as of a dry twig in the forest. The old one slumped to the ground, his head at an odd angle. Peter kicked him full in the face with the hard ball of his foot, then turned and once more issued the challenge. There were no takers. He walked into the sleeping place, stretched out on the straw and began to lick the wound in his arm. It was in a difficult place, but he knew that if he did not lick it, it would not heal properly.

  Somehow he felt no urge to join the others. They had gathered the sticks and built the lire. He could hear them quarreling mildly over the more succulent portions of the body of the old one. Though they had just been fed, they would eat the old one, because there was no other way to gain the strength that the old one had pos—

  Aftcr a time Peter slept, his big chest rising and falling very slowly, his dreams filled with memories of battle.

  The next day, just as the sun had risen, a large number of the masters with the little silver tubes came to the wire. One of their floating platforms was brought dose.

  The little tubes were aimed and Peter (elt the sudden stillness that could not be broken.

  With their lifting sticks, t
hey picked him up, floated him through the door set into the wire and dropped him heavily onto the floating platform. Though he tried with all his strength, he could not break the invisible bonds of the silver tubes.

  Others were dropped near him. He felt the thuds of their bodies. Many thuds. One man landed across Peter’s legs.

  The gate closed and then the floating platform went off at great speed. He knew they were high in the air and it made him dizzy.

  His stomach felt the sudden drop, the slowing, and once again the platform hung still in the air. They were all taken with lifting sticks and dropped onto rough broken pavement.

  He heard the voice of one of those weak, soft men who served the masters. The hated voice of one of those who filled the feeding troughs and cleaned the pens.

  "You are in die city. You arc free. You cannot leave the city, because on one side is vast water and on the edges of the city are the areas of pain. But the city is large. There are many places to hide. The masters will come to hunt you down and kill you. If you can, you are permitted to kill first. There will be no punishment.

  "In an hour the masters will come. Many of them. They will leave the city at dusk. They will return at dawn. If any of you last for three days without being found and killed, you will then be recaptured and sent to the pens where there are women.”

  The voice stopped. The pressure was suddenly released. Peter jumped to his feet, saw the floating platform soaring above the shattered roofs. He looked about, his head thrown back, sniffing the air.

  So the masters were coming to killl Good! They would come to be killed, also. He, Peter, would see to that. At last a chance to tear their pale fleslil In the tull pride of his strength, he beat his chest once more.