The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Three ugly Dazzalox heads came up. Three axes caught on the edge of the walk and the choppers pulled themselves up with practiced skill.

  There was a moment’s hesitation while the green axman gibbered a word of instruction. Then two of them came racing around the perimeter, one from each direction. The third leaped out to a floating disc and waited.

  Allison dived again. There was nothing else to do.

  He made as if to dive deeply; then with distended eyes searching the green waves for forms above him, he switched back to retrace his course. It was an old trick he had used when he was a boy playing tag at the lake. Five seconds after the three choppers dived for him, he was upon the surface again.

  But he was well aware that all the tricks he could muster would not last long against their teamwork . . .

  To the utter amazement of the roaring, bellowing crowds, Allison’s wily tactics lasted for most of half an hour. By that time he was nearly exhausted, both physically and mentally. Had it not been for the rules, his hands and head would never have survived the ceaseless attacks. As it was, nine times the ax blades had bit into his legs.

  Three of the cuts stung him constantly. The sharp pains soaked upward through his legs, and blood and strength seeped away from him. But there was nothing to be done about that. The crowd yelped for action and the three choppers closed in on him again.

  Allison dived deeply. For the first time he allowed himself to go down—down—down.

  The walls of the cone narrowed around him. If the choppers should follow—But an upward glance told him they were still floundering several feet above, trying to locate him. If the fates would only give him the one break he craved!

  He groped at the bottom of the cone. His search was futile. He had hoped his hands might fall upon an ax lost in some previous tournament, fallen to the bottom of the cone, forgotten. Again he explored.

  No such luck. All his groping hands found in the point of the cone was slime. Slime and bits of bone.

  Slime! He cupped his two hands into it, then up he floated—up to the surface with bursting lungs.

  He caught sight of the three axmen back in their positions. He heard the crowd wail for action. Action! In another moment they would get it, if the gods of luck would give him half a break. Treading water at the edge of the pool, he smeared his slimy hands over the walk.

  The orange chopper bounded toward him with devilish yellow eyes gleaming. Three swift bounds—and a grand slip! Flying arms and legs, orange body, black ax—all went careening into the fence. The chopper made a swift scramble to recover his ax. Allison was too quick for him.

  A tense gasp echoed through the stadium, a long gasp that melted into worried mumbles.

  The yellow and green choppers who had started around the ring to their fellow’s rescue stopped short, for the orange form plunged into the pool. In his place stood the slave they were to execute—a well-muscled human being with an ax in his hands.

  They jabbered savagely for a moment. Outside the cage the announcer roared something at the frenzied crowd.

  Allison understood. The rules were automatically off. The choppers were to strike anywhere—and strike to kill! No more playing around. This culprit was a dangerous creature!

  Another ax was passed through the bars to the orange executioner. Three attendants outside the pen came toward Allison and debated trying to reach in and take the ax away from him, but decided against it when he flashed the weapon deftly toward the bars.

  “Stall for time,” Allison thought, but the words had a sickly taste in his mouth. How much time—or had the women forgotten their resolve? Pains shot through his feet. He felt weak from loss of blood. He wanted to lie down and faint away.

  Now two of the axmen began to close in on him from each direction, as before, but more cautiously, desperately. A disc floated toward Allison’s edge. The yellow chopper was on it. There was no more stalling. It was kill or be killed. One false move would be the end.

  Which way to strike? His right-handedness determined. He would throw his stroke in the direction that would give his right arm full play. Automatically he plunged to his left to meet the approaching green chopper.

  But fate waited in his path—the slime.

  Three steps he bolted, then his footing gave way. He shot outward over the water. But as his foot gave a final kick against the edge of the walk, he flung his ax back with all his strength, squarely at the green body. The force of a madman went into that blow and followed through as the ax shot out of his hands.

  His plunge carried him deep into the cooling waters. His hands were free now. He plodded on downward. He didn’t want to come up again. His strength was gone. He felt that drowning would be so easy, so simple. He clung to the slanting wall and waited.

  No one came after him. Things began to go black. His hands loosened . . .

  Even before Allison’s face cut through the surface of the water to gasp air, he was conscious of the terrific screaming that filled the stadium. His lungs inhaled air, blearly sight returned to his eyes, blood-chilling cries of terror crowded upon his ears. What a weird terrifying pandemonium!

  The tiers of the stadium were a shambles of mass murder. Knives flashed again and again upon the writhing bodies of male Dazzalox. Blood gushed and streamed down the steps. Males and females grappled in death struggles and tumbled down, tier after tier, to roll onto the open pavement of the Grand March.

  So the hour had struck at last—the fatal hour that might spell the doom of a race in the ghastly clash of sex against sex!

  CHAPTER IX

  Destiny

  What signal had set the shambles off? Allison’s eyes swept the bloody scene and returned at last to the pen of his own intended execution.

  Across the pool from him the gate was open. The orange and yellow Dazzalox choppers were outside, now running as if to the rescue of a friend, now halting as if overwhelmed by the scene of terror. They glanced back, and Allison’s eyes followed their glance. Their green-suited teammate lay motionless on the walk beside the pool.

  The ax, which had sunk deep in his heart, still hung there with its handle pointing almost straight up. Blood flowed in a crooked stream along the water-tracked walk to an ancient ax mark at the pool’s edge, and from there the eddying waters carried it away.

  Allison dragged himself up out of the water, rolled against the fence and lay there, bleeding, quivering, wondering at the fact that he was still alive. The two departing choppers looked back at him, but their hearts had evidently gone out of their jobs. It was a corps of angry women advancing upon them that absorbed their attention now. The last Allison ever saw of them, they were backing away and defending themselves wildly with their axes.

  Two slaughtered potentates rolled down the stone tiers and thumped into the bars of the cage. One of them was Naf, Smitt’s master. His wrinkled old face was a contorted mass of yellow chalk. He had weathered a thousand Earth years only to die from a black knife in his side.

  The dead and dying bodies rolled down, and those Dazzalox still alive scrambled across the tiers—to kill or to be killed.

  Allison was relieved to see that his fellow humans of both sexes were clambering to the upper reaches of the sloping sides and finding exits. His eyes sought for June. He remembered telling her he would try to escape by the narrow stairs above the striped door at the farther end—

  And someone was there! Someone waving at him—a girlish figure with black hair and a blue and gold costume.

  “June!” he breathed, half aloud. “June! June!” The very name gave him strength. Allison tottered dizzily to the door of the cage, waving at her.

  He paused. Several hundred Dazzalox males and females were battling to death on the open pavement before him. Armed women were charging about in small groups. Getting through that mad milieu wouldn’t be easy. He looked about for a weapon. The only thing he saw was the ax buried in the green chopper’s riven chest. He turned from the sight and plodded through the battleground
unarmed.

  “Lester! You were wonderful!” The girl bathed his face with her kisses and tears. “Don’t mind me. I’m so happy, I just have to cry.”

  But the next moment June dried her tears and became practical. She hastily tore strips from her garments to bandage his bleeding feet and legs. A crevice protected them from the spectacle of the bloody war, and they tried not to hear the thudding of feet and the wailing and cursing of males.

  “The women must have got off to a good start,” Allison remarked, lying back on the rock floor and closing his eyes.

  “You should have seen the first attack. It went off like clockwork.”

  Allison asked innocently, “What started them off?”

  “The signal you gave them.”

  “The signal I gave them!”

  “They had agreed that the death blow would be the signal to attack. You finally furnished it when you threw your ax at the chopper. They couldn’t have waited much longer, anyway. In fact, you provided them with the ideal moment. It was such a stunner to the males, to see you cut down one of their heroes, it was almost equal to an anesthetic.”

  “I’ll bet,” Allison said grimly. “But what next, after they finish with their men? Do they start in on us humans?”

  “There’s only one human they’ve sworn to get.”

  “Not Kilhide?” Allison came bolt upright.

  “Yes. They blame him for encouraging the men in this mania for female slaves.”

  “We can’t let them get Kilhide!” Allison snapped. As the final bandage was tied he came to his feet. “Kilhide’s the only one that can get us back to

  Earth!”

  Hand in hand they ran down the clay ramp as fast as Allison’s painful legs could travel. They dodged groups of fighters in the streets, they closed their ears to death screams from bodies that had been hurled into ravines.

  They glimpsed the fall of an aged potentate from the top of a stairs; heard a moment later the scream from the terrorized American girl who had just fought free of his grasp; saw the stricken Dazzalox crash to death over a torch light. Wincing, they turned their eyes away as the flames puffed up from his yellow hair and eyebrows. They hurried on.

  “Where’s Kilhide?” they shouted together at a two-striper who came running from the other direction.

  “Layin’ for trouble makers. Watch out! He got a couple at the suburb,” the slave retorted without stopping.

  They slackened their pace as they neared the red metal bridge. A severe voice barked at them from the shadows.

  “This way, you two.”

  They turned to see the gleaming pistol move out into the light. Back of it the sleek white-clad form of Kilhide appeared.

  “So you jumped your fate, Allison,” said the evilly handsome scientist with a twitching smile. “You’ll not jump this one. You happen to be superfluous to my purposes, and this hour was made to order for ridding myself of superfluous people. Your friend Smitt will also qualify. Now, Allison, step away from that girl!”

  “No!” cried June O’Neil. “Please—you can’t! Not unless you kill us both!”

  “Don’t be throwing yourself at the feet of a corpse, Miss O’Neil. It annoys me.” Kilhide twisted his little trick mustache into a cynical scowl. “Besides, it’s bad taste for one of your rank. You’re soon to be queen of these caverns—when the Dazzalox have had their fun, and I—”

  Lester Allison and June O’Neil were no longer listening. Their eyes were intent upon the six figures who were cautiously stealing toward the scientist from behind his back. Now Kilhide’s words broke off as he saw shadows creep along the perpendicular wall.

  The man with the gun whirled. He faced a group of Dazzalox women with knives and axes in their bloodstained yellow hands. The group bore down upon him. His pistol blazed, and three of them fell. The others swamped him with their blades. His arms clamped over his chest and his gun fell. In another instant he would have died with a knife in his throat, had Allison not interfered.

  But between the efforts of Allison and June, not to mention Jo-jo-kak’s widow, who chanced to be one of the attackers, the assault was brought to a sudden halt. . . “Ja-ik-lif! Ka-lib-or-taf-ki-damik!” Jo-jo-kak’s widow cried, pulling the other women back from the fallen slave master. “It is enough! We leave him to die!”

  The spacious corridors of Kilhide’s laboratory were seething with American men and women, who talked in low excited undertones. Though most of them wore the uniforms of Dazzalox slaves, their faces glowed with hope and enthusiasm. They were on the verge of freedom. They talked of a swift return to the earth.

  Whenever their conversation slackened, Allison, sitting near the door, could hear the roar of the rivers outside. The periodic floods of Mercury were scouring the rock dust and filth from the streets. Powerful torrents were sweeping the dead and dying bodies away through unknown subterranean channels, bearing them to the boiling seas on other sides of the planet.

  Allison watched through the glass doorway. The winds, generated by the floods, kept the red torches flickering and the shadows of the Red Suburb quivered. Occasionally—but rarely—a rush of water would slap over a flame and extinguish it.

  “June asked me to tell you that Kilhide is beginning to stir,” said a voice at Allison’s shoulder.

  “Tell her I’ll come soon,” Allison answered.

  “Smitt and the others haven’t returned?”

  “Not yet.”

  Allison’s eyes turned again to the red scene, coming to rest, as always, upon the crumpled striped door beside the gaping death cave. Earlier he had seen the three Dazzalox women crash that door with axes, and then themselves fall victims to the escaping death gas. Now the last of those three women was caught by a wave and borne away, and only the battered fallen door was left as a monument to their mad determination.

  Poor insane Dazzalox women, Allison thought. Not satisfied until they had turned the last stone upon their own extinction. They had released the invisible death that would rise to slay every male who escaped the high rocks.

  Four hooded figures came bounding along the path.

  “The door!” Allison called. “Unseal it!”

  Someone obeyed, and Smitt and his three companions entered; the door was sealed again. The four men removed their oxygen masks.

  “Well?” Allison asked, facing Smitt.

  Smitt shook his head slowly. “Complete slaughter,” he said. “Every striped door is down. I don’t think there’s a living soul left out there, human or Dazzalox. We found a few of both up on the shelves, but they were gone.” He added, turning away, “We didn’t find—Mary.”

  Allison put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Your Mary is here,” he said. “She came in just after you left—and none too soon. I think she’ll be all right.”

  In an inner chamber Allison glared into the eyes of Kilhide. The dying scientist had been given every medical attention. He knew he could not live many hours longer, but he fought death as bitterly as he had fought his fellow men.

  “You’ve got to live!” Allison said to him fiercely. “You’ve got to live long enough to send these people back to Earth!”

  Kilhide muttered profanity. “So that’s why you wouldn’t let them kill me.”

  “There couldn’t be any other reason,” snapped Allison. “You’ve got to come through!”

  “You can’t threaten me, Allison,” the sick man answered sardonically.

  “For God’s sake, man, show us how to operate the robot ship before it’s too late.”

  The dying man answered with a sarcastic, taunting laugh.

  “You’ve got to do it, Kilhide! You’ve got to send us back!”

  “You can go to hell and fry,” Kilhide sneered, and then he closed his eyes.

  June and Allison and the others who were at his side during the next two hours were convinced that he never once returned to normal consciousness. All his feverish raving was simply the welling up of repressions and hatreds and loves, dreams
and ambitions and scientific secrets that were imprisoned within his warped, complex mind.

  Two hours they heard of the most eloquent raving that ever passed a scientist’s lips. A dying genius, declaring himself to be the master mind of the world!

  Allison listened in awe; Smitt snatched at every word of information; June, with her practical turn of mind, seized pencil and paper and captured the flow of words in shorthand.

  For the fever-stricken slave master was at last the glorified figure he had always dreamed of being. He was host to the world’s leading scientists. They were evidently circled around him, and his maniacal eyes glittered upon them as he talked. His delusion was complete.

  He commanded them to carry him through his laboratories from top to bottom while he lectured upon their wonders. All through his ravings, he acted as though his delusions were being carried out to the letter. He extracted promises that they would never reveal his magnificent secrets to the rabble from the earth, nor to the world tourists who might come to this place.

  He began with the robot ship’s controls, followed through the power plant, started through the shops—and then, in a burst of rage over imagined enemies from the earth, he collapsed. A minute later, the amazingly brilliant, incredible evil Kilhide passed on to the eternity for which his whole life had been a fitting preparation.

  With the aid of gas masks, Allison, Smitt and three other men had rebuilt the doors across the death caves. They had needed something to do, they said, while they counted off the days of waiting for the robot ship’s final return trip for its last load. Only ten persons remained to go. Today was the day.

  June and Allison strolled along the clean streets, surveying the strangely quiet world. All signs of the war were gone. The air was fresh. The waterfalls and rivulets gushed with lively music that seemed more melodious, now that there were no harsh Dazzalox voices.

  Strangely, in the many days that had passed since the fighting and the invisible death took their toll, not a single living Dazzalox had been found. In a sense, Allison thought, the women had won a complete victory.