Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02

by Devil's Planet (v1. 1)

  “You’ll never get away,” she raged, managing to spit out through the gag. “That bracelet will bring you crawling back here.”

  “I won’t wear it long,” he said grimly. “It looks smashable.”

  “Try to cut or smash it,” she dared. “There’ll be an explosion that will tear your arm off at the shoulder. You’ll not live through that. I’ll be seeing you soon, big man—seeing you on your knees!”

  “Don’t hold your breath until then,” he answered curtly.

  Unfastening the door, he left, went down the hall and came to a corridor which led to an exit. Moored there was a speedy-looking rocket flyer. He sprang in, turned on the power, and sailed up and away.

  CHAPTER VII Thirst

  LIKE most young men of his day, Dillon Stover understood very well the workings of rocket craft. This purloined one-seater was not the newest model, but it was serviceable. He felt sudden elation. Nobody knew his jumping-off place save the undercover girl, Gerda. By the time she escaped even that faint trail would be lost. She would think twice about warning the police. If she appealed only to the unknown killer, and if that unknown killer came seeking him, Stover would like nothing better.

  “First,” he decided, “I must get to another town and pose there under a new name and personality. I’ll dope out this thing, maybe make a deal with some law-enforcement body that isn’t too friendly with Congreve and the Malbrook-Fielding combine — hello, this rocket isn’t any too well hung together at that. I feel a funny vibration all up my left arm. Must come from the fuel-feed lever.”

  He took his hand from the fuel-feed lever. The vibration still quivered his left arm, climbed and crawled into his shoulder and chest.

  “Whup!” said Stover aloud. “It’s that bracelet!”

  Gerda, whatever her shortcomings, had spoken the plain truth regarding this bit of police equipment. At ten miles, she had warned, his body would be shaken as by a heavy rush of current. The vibration now possessed his whole body, and Stover felt sick.

  The car swayed and bucked under his ill-steadied controls, and he righted it with an effort.

  “This can’t go on!” he muttered. “I’ll set her down on the sand—I’m well outside the city—and see if I can’t squirm out of that bracelet.”

  He nosed down, but his run of bad luck was well in. In descending, he went still farther from the police headquarters radio. In mid-flight, nausea possessed him. His sight went black, his brain whirled and drummed.

  With one hand he strove to flatten out his flight for a landing, but the other—the hand that wore the bracelet—refused to do its work. There was a shock, a crash of sound, and Dillon Stover flew through the air like a football. He fell sprawling in dry, powdery sand.

  On Earth, where his weight was more than double what it was on Mars, he probably would not have risen from such a heavy fall. As it was, he rose very shakily. The wrecked rocket was aflame. Overhead beamed the lights of other aircraft speeding to investigate.

  “Got to get away from here,” he told himself groggily. “Get away—”

  He headed out into the desert. His feet sank into the dry sand as into fresh snow. The vibrations from the bracelet still tingled in his arm and chest, made his lungs pant and his heart race; but, on the ground and walking, they were more endurable. The fall had made his nose bleed, and somehow this relieved his distress for the time being. He walked on, on. His lesser Martian weight made travel swift for his Earth-trained muscles, for all the binding sand around his insteps and ankles.

  Behind him the lights of rocket craft were settling around the fire. He hoped that their landings in the sand would obscure his footprints. Meanwhile, he wished that he had a drink, about a two-quart swig of water, such as Buckalew had given to the desert Martians.

  Stover had not taken a drink since before his trip to Malbrook’s. The liquid of his prison meal had been used to disguise him. And this arid place, far away from the city of Pulambar and its lake-evaporations, was drying, dehydrating, even in the chilly Martian night.

  HE made the best of two miles’ journey away from the investigators, then stopped. Overhead hurtled the disc of Phobos, giving him light whereby to examine the bracelet that dealt him so much misery. It was not too tight upon his wrist. He poked a finger under it, twiddled it, then tugged.

  A red-hot pain shot through his forearm, as though all his joints were being dislocated. He hastily took his finger away. Again he remembered the baleful words of Gerda: It will tear your arm off at the shoulder. Better let bad enough alone. Meanwhile, what wouldn’t he give for a drink?

  Trudging onward, he pondered, despite his efforts to turn his mind elsewhere, on drinkables. Cold lemonade on the kitchen table at his grandfather’s home, a stein of beer at college, water trickling down a rock-face at Rogers, Arkansas, the multitudinous beverages at the Zaarr—even the acid drink he had used for his disguise at the prison. He tried to curse such thoughts away, but his voice was thick and his tongue swollen.

  Stover was scientist enough to understand all this. The atmosphere of Mars was light, one-third that of Earth. Plenty of oxygen made it fairly breathable, but it was hungry for water. Mars had so little water to give, and that little did not stay long —the lesser gravity could not hold water vapor. And so, as the moisture in his body was sweated forth, it was fairly snatched from him. He was dehydrating, like a prune or a date in a Sahara breeze, like a clay brick in a kiln.

  Thirst was making him forget the lesser agony of the bracelet.

  “I’d give up anything for a drink,” he thought. “A thousand dollars of my legacy. My house in the Ozarks, that once belonged to my grandfather. I’d give up—but hold on. As a criminal I have no property to give up. Who would help me, if anyone were here? Buckalew? I wonder. Phogor? I doubt it. Bee MacGowan? Poor thing, she’d probably do what she could for me. But how long can this go on?”

  Not long. For soon Dillon Stover fell on his face.

  He struggled up to his hands and knees. More than ever he was down to first principles, a four-legged creature again, as man had been ages ago, before civilization or even savagery, struggling for life against the bitterest of environment.

  He didn’t intend to be killed, unjustly or otherwise. It wasn’t on the books. Not for Dillon Stover. He managed to get up again. His tongue was swollen between dry lips, his stout knees wavered under his weight that seemed even more than Earth weight. But he’d get away from pursuit. And he’d drink.

  Water ahead!

  Both moons were up now, and they showed him a gleaming, rippling pool. With trees on the far side. He gave a joyful croak, and tried to run toward it. Again he fell forward and crawled painfully to the brink.

  There was no brink.

  Mirage. Or imagination. Dillon Stover would have wept, but there were no tears in his evaporated eyes. He sat, elbows on knees, and struck his forehead with his knuckles.

  A LITTLE recovery now, enough to know that the bracelet’s vibration was increased to a sharp agony. He had come miles away from Pulambar. Suddenly he wished he were back, even in jail. After all, there was comfort there, a bed to lie in, and doctors—and water. The Martians were right to prize it. If he could only wet his lips and wash his eyes. Then he’d think a way out for himself.

  The sun was going to come up.

  That would be the end. The dry Martian night had almost done for him; the blazing sun would finish the job. Perhaps it was just as well to lie down and die as quickly as possible. In the back of his head a little cluster of scientific-thinking cells computed that his night in this desert approximated five days of such an experience on Earth. Few people could survive that, even if they were as strong as Dillon Stover, and got help at the eleventh hour. And here was no help.

  Wasn’t there? He saw a shiny, semi-transparent blister among the sands, catching the first rays of dawn.

  Under that would be Martians, a water plant—and water. Ever so little of the precious stuff would be a blessing.

 
He crawled there somehow. Remembering how the Martians inside a similar structure had burrowed out to the jug Buckalew donated, Stover began to paw and dig with his hands. The sand came away in great scooped masses. He got his head and shoulders under the glasslike under-rim, poked like a mole into the interior.

  Something crept toward him, a Martian dweller. It had one of the artificial larynxes, for it formed words he could understand:

  “Who arre you? Why do you darre—”

  “My name is Stover,” he whispered a wretched reply. “Dillon Stover. I am dying without water. Help me. Just—”

  And he fainted.

  So this was heaven.

  The old talk about harps and songs and jeweled furniture had been wrong. It was more like the Zaarr, that report. Heaven really consisted in lying still in delicious dampness, with a ten-times blessed trickle of liquid into your open mouth.

  Stover’s eyes, no longer dried out, opened. And he saw heaven as well as felt it. The dull-clouded inside of a semi-transparent dome, against which spread the long branches and broad leaves of a blue-gray bush was above him, while around him sprawled three bladder-bodied, six-tentacled, flower-faced Martians.

  “Lie sstill,” purred the one with an artificial voice-box. “You arre verry ssick—nearr to death.’7

  “I’m not,” protested Stover, and sat up.

  His dusty garments, stolen in a police dressing-room, had been removed. His naked skin felt cool, moist, and relaxed. He touched his arm with a finger. There was a sleek damp to it, like the damp of a frog.

  “Lie sstill,” said the Martian spokesman again. “If you do not fearr ssick- ness, fearr then the coming of a ssearrch parrty.”

  Stover lay back at once in the neat sandy hollow where they had bedded him. “Are they looking for me?” he asked anxiously.

  THE flowery head of his informant nodded, Terrestrial fashion. “Thrree timess they have come herre to peerr in. We ssaw them coming, and each time we coverred you with ssand to hide you. We told them we knew nothing of a fugitive Terrress- trrial. A wind blew away yourr trrackss.”

  Stover was content to lie still now. “How long have I been here?” he asked.

  “A day and a night. It iss now the ssecond forrenoon.”

  Back into Stover’s wakening mind floated memory of all that had transpired to bring him here. So it was getting on toward noon. Three noons ago he had awakened in Buckalew’s luxurious apartment, reckless and carefree. At noon the following day, he had been in the police cell, again sleeping. When the third noon came, he had lain senseless in this poor makeshift den where Martians huddled to keep life in themselves. And now—

  “I’ll be awake this noon,” he said aloud. “I’ve got a lot of escaping to do.” To the Martian he said: “Which way is the nearest city? Besides

  Pulambar, I mean.”

  A tentacle pointed away. “But you cannot travel by day, on foot and un- derr the ssun. Wait until night. We sshall help you then.”

  Once again Stover took a look about. He saw whence had come the trickle into his mouth. One of those drinking tubes had been thrust into the integument of a great branch above him. Since he was awake, the tip of the tube had been thriftily plugged. But he felt dry again, and as though reading that thought in his mind, the Martian who did the talking removed the plug.

  “Drrink,” he bade Stover, and Stover drank.

  He pulled strongly on the tube, and a delicious spurt of plant-juice, free- flowing and pleasantly tart-sweet, filled his mouth. What joy to drink! What relief, what privilege.

  He stopped sucking all at once. “Plug that up,” he commanded. “Isn’t it very precious, that juice? How is there enough for me and for you others, too?”

  Something like a deprecating chuckle came from his attendant. “Do not ssay the worrd ‘enough’, Dillon Sstover. On Marrss, therre iss no ssuch worrd ass ‘enough’.”

  “You’ve been depriving yourselves to take care of me!” Stover marveled, almost accusingly. “Why? I’m a stranger, a vagabond, wanted by police, charged with murder.”

  CHAPTER VIII The Hope of Mars

  HE was suddenly aware that another dreadful pain was missing, the racking vibration of the bracelet. He lifted his left hand. The skin of it was scraped, broken in places, but the wrist was naked. The sinister metal ring was gone.

  “How did you get it off of me?” he asked. “It was due to explode if you tinkered with it.”

  “And sso we did not tinkerr with it,” was the calm reply. “Firrsst, a grreasse to make yourr hand and wrrisst verry sslipperry—then carre- ful prrying and tugging. We got the brracelet off without injurring it. We know how to deal with ssuch thingss. One of uss crrept forrth and laid the brracelet on the ssand farr frrom herre. It was picked up ass a clue by police ssearcherrs.”

  Dillon Stover sighed gratefully. Not only was he free of an awful agony* but there would now be no following of him by those who hunted him.

  “I started to ask you,” he resumed, “why you helped a stranger, a Terrestrial fugitive from the law, to so great an extent.”

  “You arre Dillon Sstoverr,” said the Martian simply. “Beforre you lost yourr ssenssess, you told uss yourr name.”

  STOVER looked his mystification. “But what difference—”

  A tentacle pointed to a little niche across the dome-den. There nestled a shabby old radio, near which the other two Martians sprawled. The thing only whispered, but they were getting news of the universe.

  “We have communicationss,” the one with the voice-box told Stover. “We know what befell you in Pulam- barr, what charrge iss made by the officialss. But we know, alsso, why you came herre—to do the worrk begun by yourr grrandfatherr.”

  “The work of my grandfather,” repeated Stover. He had almost forgotten it. “You mean the condenser- ray?”

  “Yess. The hope of Marrss.”

  Stover had recovered enough to tell himself savagely that he had become short-sighted, selfish, craven. The Martian was right. He, Dillon Stover, meant the sole chance of a dying world for a new lease on life. He was fleeing for more than his own life.

  “I know so little,” he pleaded. “I’ve been here only three days, and for most of that time I’ve been running from both police and law-breakers. I have now a better idea of what water means to this planet, but—”

  “Come, if you arre strrong enough,” bade his helper.

  Stover got up, having to stoop beneath the low dome, and made his way to the radio. Quickly the Martian turned on the television power, and a small screen lighted up. Tentacles turned dials.

  Stover saw a gently rolling plain, grown over with hardy, tufty scrub, the chief vegetation of Mars. From it rose a vast and blocky structure, acres in extent. The construction seemed to be of massive concrete or plastic, reenforced by joinings and bands of metal. As the viewpoint of the television made the building grow larger and nearer by degrees, Stover saw that it had no visible doors or other apertures. Along walks at the top, and around railed ways at the bottom, walked armed Martian guards in brace-harness to hold them upright. The roof bristled with ray-throwers and electro-automatic guns.

  “A fort?” said Stover. “I thought Mars was at peace everywhere.” “Therre iss no peace in the conflict with drrought,” his informant told him. “You ssee yonderr a rresser- voirr. It holdss a gatherring of the mosst prreciouss thing on thiss planet —waterr.”

  “It has to be guarded like that?” “Ssurrely. People would rrisk anything to ssteal a little—only a little. The only frree waterr on all thiss worrld iss in the guarrded and rre- sstricted city of Pulambar, frrom which you have fled.”

  The dial clicked, another scene showed itself. Stover saw a building with open front before which huddled and crept a line of wretched Martians. Each presented a document to an official. Each was grudgingly handed a small container, no larger than a cup. Stover turned his head away. With a sympathetic purr, his companion turned the radio off.

  “Water-lines,” muttere
d Stover. “Guarded reservoirs. Little camps like this—and nobody has enough water. Malbrook, who held the monopoly, did this to Mars.”

  “You sserrved uss well by killing him,” said the Martian. “Come, I wissh to dampen yourr sskin again.”

  HE would not take no for an answer. An application of the

  plant-juice refreshed Stover’s thirsty body all over.

  “Do not thank uss,” deprecated the Martian. “We do thiss becausse, to rrepeat mysself, you arre the hope of Marrss. By depriving ourr- sselvess of waterr rrationss today, we arre prreparring you forr the tassk of winning uss plenty in the futurre.”

  “You’re trying not to be noble,” Stover smiled. “But what if I miss out? If I’m caught, or killed, or if I try to develop the ray and can’t?”

  “We sshall have played forr high sstakess, and losst.”

  Stover found his clothing, neatly folded away, and began to struggle into it.

  “When nightfall comes, I go,” he announced.

  “The besst rrefuge among the nearr townss—” began his rescuer.

  “I’m going back to Pulambar,” said Stover grimly.

  All three Martians turned toward him silently. They had no human eyes, yet he had the sense of being stared at.

  “I mean it,” he insisted. “Pulambar’s the place. The lights will guide me, and this stuff on my skin will keep me from drying out too soon. I can get by the outer guards, because I’m Terrestrial with money in my pocket. I’ve got to find the real killer and first put myself in the clear.”

  “Then?” prompted the Martian with the voice-box.

  “Then,” and Stover’s voice rang like a bell inside the little dome, “I’m going to perfect that condenser-ray. I was wrong to want to play around first. Buckalew was right to keep after me. You’ve shown me a duty I can’t turn away from. That killer in Pulambar had better hold onto his hat, because I’m going to smack him right out from under it!”

  ONCE more back on the bright streets of Pulambar, Stover skirted a building and came to a canal crossing full of music and carnival. Entrance to the city had been quite as easy as he had figured. No one had dreamed that the fugitive would circle back. He halted now to consider his next step.