Fantastic Vignettes

by Jerry

  John followed almost immediately, hugging the doorways and keeping out of sight as he followed the two. The street was deserted except for them.

  He turned and saw John coming rapidly toward them. He reached in his pocket.

  John shot once and the man dropped to the ground, a neat round hole in his forehead. In an instant John was on him. He dragged the body into a passage between two buildings. It was filled with the accumulated debris of years. It was the work of minutes to conceal the body effectively.

  “Listen,” he said. “If you want, I’ll smuggle you aboard the ship and by late tomorrow night we’ll be in deep space. We’ll never see Terra again. This mad Euphorian dream will end for you.” John took her abruptly in his arms and got his answer.

  Death on Betelguese

  Dee Arlen

  BILL CRANE was only eighteen at the time, and he was making the Martian run on the passenger liner Betelguese, actually a converted cargo carrier, running between Terran Station and Phobos. Since interplanetary travel as increased so vastly with the application of Atomics, ships have been multiplying like rabbits.

  At Mars minus two days, he had discovered an electronic relaying section of the ship on the number two bulkhead and despite the warning signs in six languages on the door, Bill entered the little room and found it fascinating. It was essentially the control center and of course was jammed with racks, cables wires, tubes and all the paraphernalia of electronic gadgetry.

  He watched Larsen turn suddenly to the Captain.

  “Sir,” he said, “Freighter Orpheus request permission to match velocities and bring an injured crewman aboard. They have no doctor and the man’s badly burned.”

  “Of course,” the Captain replied, “tell ‘em to match and send him on. Dr. Frane will take care of him.”

  This little exchange was not extraordinary though Bill thought it dramatic and moving. Rescue work in deep space. He remained at the monitor fascinated. He switched to a view of the boarding lock—external and internal and he could see the careful maneuvering of a standard KK-class freighter coming alongside to transfer the man.

  Wide-eyed, Bill watched. The freighter carefully matched velocities, paralleling the Betelguese at two hundred meters. From the open lock of the freighter, somebody shot a line across and a few moments later a “sick-suit” shaped somewhat like a coffin, was being escorted along the handline by three men from the freighter.

  Bill shifted the monitor to internal view and watched the interior door open. The coffin-like suit came in followed by the crewmen. Dr. Frane and the Captain waited to receive them.

  The crewman who was the leader of the little group, without removing his helmet, stepped forward to the head of the sick-suit and opened the clips on it. A yellowish gas burst from the container in enormous volume and Bill saw Dr. Frane, the captain and passengers suddenly grasp at their throats and then sink helplessly to the floor. Bill’s trembling hand ran over the monitor switch and he saw the scene duplicated everywhere as the air pressure units spread the insidious gas all over the ship.

  Without hesitation, the space-suited figures went through the ship, cabin after cabin, room and hold after room and hold. They missed nothing. Sick with fear and numb with horror Bill crouched in his suit in one corner of the relay room. Then an idea struck him. He put himself back against the suit-rack just as if he were still an empty suit. Anything more than the casual inspection would show the suit filled with a man, but there was simply no place to hide.

  As he expected the door swung open and a head stuck itself in, started to make a cursory sweep of the room, but before it could focus on the suits, someone outside must have said something and the door slammed shut. Bill was safe!

  There was no petty looting. In the control room, Bill saw and heard the pirate leader giving orders, completely oblivious of the dead bodies around him.

  “. . . Ferrin’s got the drug supply and liquor ready for trans-shipment. Forget about the junk. Make sure we nail all tools and instruments. You know what that stuff’ll bring on Venus . . .”

  Calmly and coolly the pirate leader ordered the calculated looting of the Betelguese, taking only materials of use in general deep-space and colonial work.

  Finally the leader gave the order to abandon ship.

  “All right, boys. That does it. I’m setting her for full blast. She’ll hit the Martian deserts and there won’t be a shred of metal left at the velocity she’ll have . . .” He laughed. “The Phobos station will think she’s simply vanished. I’m putting her in a paraboloid that’ll throw clear of any possible radar or Patrol detection.”

  A few minutes later he and his men were gone and Bill saw the freighter-rocket disappear. He was alone aboard an empty vessel filled with dead men.

  It took no genius to use the radio equipment and a half hour later when he was sure the pirates were gone for good and out of range, he put through the top-priority emergency one.

  The Phobos station picked him up and caught his story after they were able to convert his babbling into common sense. When he was calmed down sufficiently, they showed him how to cut power.

  Five hours later a Patrol ship matched the Betelguese and the Lawmen boarded and took over.

  And that was Bill’s role. Triplanet Insurance took care of him with a hundred thousand credits. The Patrol caught the pirates who were planning a series of grand coups like this and which probably would have succeeded for some time.

  Land of the Matriarchs

  E. Bruce Yaches

  FRANK MASON handed the Venerian the one-gram packet of tobacco. The Venerian extended a psuedopod and enfolded it, withdrawing packet and psuedopod into itself.

  “My Fathers request You-of-the-Source to deliver more of this substance to me, their Son.” Frank hefted the leaves of deen which the Venerian had given him. “Will You-of-the-Source oblige within the next few darkings and lightings?” Protocol demanded that he refer to the Venerians’ origin from the “Prime Source” for the little creatures placed infinite faith in externals and verbal structures.

  The thin piping voice of the Venerian replied graciously:

  “We-of-the-Source will enjoy doing this action for a Son of the Fathers such as you.”

  With abruptness the creature sphered itself and rolled like a three-foot bowling ball through the open door of the aluminum collectors’ hut. Frank knew that the Venerian would be back shortly with quantities of deen. He liked the Venerians for whom nothing mattered so much as fulfilling an obligation regardless of the reward—though they could bargain at times. Filial duty was the highest belief of the Venerians. “Fathers” was a good name for Biologicals Limited, Venus.

  “About time I did a little collecting from the Outlanders too,” Frank muttered half-audibly. Enough time alone and it’s perfectly normal to carry on audible conversations with yourself. “I’ll have to take a run-down to New Paris,” Frank said wryly, “I’m beginning to feel too lonesome.” Companionship, of women particularly, was scarce outside the few cities, and even they were losing lots of women to the crazy cult of the Matriarchies which had begun to get a foothold even this far from Terra.

  Frank jumped into his heliflitter, patted his side to make sure the beamer was there—at night the variety of wriggling, crawling monstrosities that Venerian darkness could bring out, were fearful. He headed due North. His first collecting point was a colony of the Venerians about thirty miles from the hut and almost halfway straight to City Nightinggale, as the little matriarchal colony was called.

  He’d never seen it nor did he care to. Matriarchs often dropped into the cities for supplies and trading and what he’d seen of the girls didn’t seem particularly inviting. In addition the Matriarchies were never enthusiastic about male visitors—even bio-chemists.

  About twenty miles out, he suddenly spotted another heliflitter sitting on the soft ground. Automatically on Venus you give assistance. Humans are too few and far apart. He put the ’flitter down a few feet away from the other.r />
  The girl was working on the engine and obviously she was from the Matriarchy from the markings on the ’flitter. But she was certainly different. She wore nothing but a brief halter and scanty combination and despite the dirt a grease that marked her, she was beautiful. Her hair was cropped close in the manner of “efficiency” affected by the Matriarchal groups, but even this couldn’t disguise the extraordinary femininity of her. Frank felt his pulse rise as he looked at her.

  “May I help?” he said politely.

  The girl looked at him curtly. “No, thank you,” she said and turned back to what she was doing.

  “You’d better hurry it, Miss,” Frank advised. “Darking’s coming on and it isn’t nice to be caught on the ground, you know.”

  The girl dropped her tool-case and faced him in exasperation. Mentally Frank whistled when he saw the full figure. Brother, he thought, if this girl only wasn’t half nuts!

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t need any help—or advice. Leave me alone. HI take care of my ’flitter. I’m a Matriarch and I need your assistance like a hole in the head.” She turned back to her machine.

  “I’ve been told off.” Frank said to no one in particular. “It only goes to show what fools the Matriarchies are.” If he expected this to elicit a response he was disappointed for the girl payed him no further attention.

  Frank went about his business. Within two hours he’d picked up the bio-stuff from the collectors and headed back to his hut. Already it was dusking and soon the darking would be on. It was no place for a lone man—or woman. He flew back along his initial course, but the girl was still working on her machine. As he passed low overhead this time she looked up, he thought anxiously, but she neither hailed him nor said anything. Frank kept on going.

  He thought about taking a quick run back North to the Matriarchy and warning them that the girl was isolated but then thought the better of it. The Matriarchs were fanatic enough to take a shot or two at strange males.

  “Oh, hell!” he said, and kicked the ’fitter into a one-eighty turn. “I’ve got to take another look.”

  He put his ’flitter down beside the other machine. The girl was pressed immobilely against the side of her own ’flitter. The tentacled “snaker” had looped her gun-arm rigidly within its toils and her left hand was a rigid bar trying to fend off the beaked mouth of the monster. Her eyes were wide with fear and horror, and the realization of impending death. There were long ugly marks along her side and shoulder where the scaled exterior of the snaker had scarped and cut her. The little wisps of clothing she had worn were torn away. She was the antithesis of everything. Matriarchal. Here was no self-determination, no skill, no assurance, no masculine equality. Here was only helpless femininity.

  Frank reacted immediately. His beamer cut the head from the monster in one accurate blast and the girl collapsed into the oozing mud as the dying beast relaxed. The scent of blood was causing other stirrings and rustlings in the darkness beyond the ’flitter’s lights.

  Frank bent over and picked up the girl. She clung fiercely to him. “Oh,” she moaned, “please take me away, please . . .” Her voice trailed into a sob and she pressed tightly against him.

  Twenty minutes later they had reached the hut. By this lime the girl was becoming conscious of her hurts and her nudity and Frank wasn’t sure which bothered her more. After a hot shower she came out wrapped in an improvised robe. She said nothing.

  “Come here,” Frank ordered, “let me take a look at those cuts. I think you’ll need a shot of toler. That anti-biotic will knock out any infection.”

  “Look,” he said after a while during which they were sipping the warming liquid. “I can’t tell you what to do, but you’ll be making a mistake if you go back to the Matriarchy. Why did you go there in the first place?”

  The girl raised her eyes and looked at him squarely. Her face colored. “My mother said . . . I felt that . . .” she hesitated. Suddenly she was in his arms, sobbing. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know . . .” she said over and over again. “It’s a dream . . .”

  Frank held her closely. He was smiling. “Don’t worry,” he whispered gently against her hair, “you’re here now, and the Matriarchy is far away. You don’t have to go back.”

  The girl glanced up at him. Convulsively she pressed closer to him. “I don’t want to go back,” she said softly, “hold, me closer . . .”

  Frank held her closer . . .