The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Wayne Champlin caught his breath. But none of the young Disps, he noted, recoiled in the slightest. Their sadistic faces beamed eagerly.

  “We’ve invented a sleeping death,” said Malcinder proudly. “Our secret treatment makes the body as easily handled as if it were dead; though for the purposes of dissection it remains alive for years—or until it is dissected away.”[2]

  At this Champlin thought he caught just a shade of discomfort in the attitude of one of the Disps, who asked, “In this sleeping death, do they still hear, and know, and feel?”

  Clay Malcinder smiled evilly. “And if they do, what’s the difference? They’re only Grubbers.”

  He closed the car, snapped the silvery lever, and the three bodies shot away on their unknown adventure. Malcinder turned his attention to the invoice of the “raw material” on hand.

  “Where’s Champlin?” he barked peremptorily.

  A Summiteer jerked a thumb toward the railing.

  “Down there somewhere. He slipped through the net. But one of the boys plugged him with a bullet.”

  “Get the body up here!”

  “That is, they think they plugged him. He went down and they couldn’t find him—”

  The air turned blue as Malcinder strode around the balcony blowing off steam. He fired the young Disps off with orders to Ivan Scorpledge to send some veterans in for a search for the lost body.

  “It’s more than just losing a body,” he growled, when only his confidential Summiteers, so he thought, were within hearing. The caverns echoed his growl.

  “I hear you’re praying,” one of his companions chuckled, “for Champlin’s girl to come your way.”

  “Praying for her! I’m waiting for her. She’s been hiding out since that man of hers went down the chute. What’s more, I’ve had to tell that damned Scorpledge just where he stands a couple times. But of all things, I don’t want a ghost of Champlin bobbing up!” Champlin thumped at Douzel’s arm and whispered a sharp command. It was time to find the way out of here.

  “I don’t know if I can find it—” Douzel began.

  “You’ve got to! No time to lose!” They scrambled down the perilous black trail as hard as they could go. But Champlin had underestimated the speed of the Disps. As he and Douzel swam toward the central cavern, they found the waters alive with rubber boats.

  A light flashed out of a nearby alcove. The two swimmers ducked under, and Champlin cut for the farther side. But Jake Douzel’s luck for once was against him. He came up not four feet in front of a boat.

  Champlin looked back in time to see it happen. A Disp dashed down with his sword and split the grizzled old skull wide open.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Hours of Wrath

  Wayne Champlin’s last glimpse of Jake Douzel would haunt him for days. Hours later, when he huddled safely in a lost cavern after the most furious underwater swimming of his life, Champlin couldn’t help harking back to that bushy-bearded skeleton’s violent death.

  For three years Douzel had cheated the Summiteers out of his body. Now in one hasty act of friendship for Champlin, he had run squarely into death.

  And—the irony of it!—they hadn’t considered his body worth saving! Miserable heap of skin and bones that it was, they had dashed the brains out and let it sink to the bottom like a rock.

  Champlin took a deep breath. Where among these thousands of caves should he begin his search for Douzel’s channel to the outside world? How could he get out, now that Douzel was gone?

  He plunged into the water. His senses were never more alert. This very hour, he would start constructing a mental map of these caverns until he found the place he was looking for.

  Hours later he returned to Douzel’s cave, exhausted. A map of these caves would be as complicated as the orbits of the planets. His burning question loomed up like a terrifying phantom.

  During the next nine days and nights, that phantom grew until it nearly blotted out Wayne Champlin’s whole horizon. The map in his mind became blurry. All caves came to look and feel alike. All of them were black and full of obstructions; all were interwoven with others; all were flooded with water.

  He camped at Douzel’s fire, fed on fish and the remains of the stolen grain, tried to rest between periods of searching.

  But his sleep was filled with murderous faces of Scorpledges and the hungry pain-stricken faces of Grubbers. Or he would have visions of Malcinder—those hateful sly eyes—those treacherous lips, weaving lies and laying traps for Elsa . . .

  Then came the day at Douzel’s listening post that struck the ultimate horror through Champlin. He learned that Elsa was to be forced into a marriage with Clay Malcinder. If she refused, she would be fed to the Fury that night!

  The Summiteers talked the matter over with a glow of eagerness. Plainly they hoped that the girl would refuse to go through with the marriage. Not that they had ill wishes toward Malcinder. But they knew that he would not hesitate to go through with his proposition. And it was not often that the hideous laboratory received such a prize as this girl. The Summiteers checked over their instruments and went out.

  Wayne Champlin was near to fighting the walls with his bare fists, when something in the back of his mind went ablaze. It was only the wildest of chances, but—

  The balcony was empty when he first started throwing the stones. Stones crashed into urns of powders, stones knocked out a glowing lamp, stones shattered a shelf of serums. Then a stone struck its mark squarely—the silvery lever! In that instant things began to happen.

  A motor whirred. The cables went into action. The watertight, coffinshaped car rode down the inclined track, gathering speed.

  Champlin swam—almost flew—across to the point where the cable line disappeared into the water-filled tunnel. By this time it was moving fast. He wanted it to move fast. He sprang, froze onto the cable for dear life, rode with it.

  Faster and faster! The water pounded against his head. Three minutes it would take to get across.

  Three minutes until his next breath! For unquestionably he would be underwater all the way. If he could hold on—if the bombarding water didn’t crush his skull—

  The cable rollers along the ceiling snapped past his hands like a picket fence.

  Now they slowed up. What was the matter? The cable was retarding! It stopped!

  Had the car reached its destination already? Champlin’s chest was bleeding for air. Hand over hand he drew himself along until he came to the car. But car, cable and Champlin were all still somewhere in the middle of the water-filled tunnel—somewhere beneath the surface of the sea, stalled!

  Someone had cut off the power!

  This was the perfect death trap. Champlin was doubtless more than a mile from air. Even on a fresh breath, that would be an impossible underwater swim. He pictured the hilarity of the Summiteers. They must have guessed what had happened. They had him where they wanted him now—and for lack of a lungful of air, he would perish.

  His heart pounded. His head swam. The pressure was terrific. It would be mad to strike out swimming, futile—

  He drew himself close to the coffinshaped car. There was air in that box if he could get to it. Perhaps—

  Champlin groped upward through the watery blackness. A natural cup in the rock ceiling above the box gave him a fighting chance. He pounded at the levers and in a split second he had the car open. Air swept out of it toward the cupped rock ceiling.

  Under the pressure of the water, the pocket of air was not large; but it was a diving bell on a small scale, and it was good for a few breaths. Champlin’s burning head plunged into it.

  His lungs drank in deeply. Eleven breaths, twelve breaths, thirteen—Without warning the cable began to move—back!

  Champlin caught a final half breath and grabbed on. Back to the big cavern he sped. Once more he had cheated the fates by a narrow margin. As the cable rose from the water, he let go and breathed with a wonderful relief.

  But his relief vanished on the spot.
A light caught him. Before him was a rubber boat occupied by three Disps. Guns came up. Champlin went underwater like a streak.

  What had always appeared to be a very shallow alcove in a straight high wall was his only chance for shelter at the moment. He came up within its blackness. The boat hove in sight and he ducked under—and back—deeper into the wall! In his groping Champlin had discovered a new opening. Three interlocking vertical ridges spread at the low tide level like tree roots. Whatever the risk of being trapped Champlin plunged through.

  In another moment he was yards ahead of his pursuers, swimming at full speed through a narrow, high-walled passage—that led toward a faint light!

  The water grew shallow. He ran and leaped; he crept through dark corners and bounded through spacious rooms—always toward more light!

  Were the Disps still on his trail? They wouldn’t get far with their boat through this narrow passage. But they were not far behind.

  Champlin was almost through. Fifty yards ahead of him was the dazzling white light of day. He dared not show himself against it. He slipped along cautiously.

  Suddenly a voice cried out not twenty feet ahead, “Ghost!”

  “The ghost of Champlin!” another voice shouted, and two Grubbers bounded up, dropped their fishing baskets, and tore through the last few yards of the cavern at a furious rate.

  As they disappeared into the outside world, a bullet crashed through the cave and the report roared ominously.

  Champlin crept upward to a perilous shelf in the wall, waited. The voices and footsteps were almost under him. To his surprise, the Disps seemed to have suddenly lost interest in the chase. They stopped to talk, and their conversation indicated that they had seen one of the Grubbers and taken him for Champlin.

  “It’ll be hell to pay,” one of them said, “if the girl finds out he’s not dead. Tonight’s her deadline.”

  “She’s already given her decision,” another spoke up. “She said ‘no’ so flatly that Malcinder’s in a rage. He’s already sent out the word. He’s feeding her to the Fury tonight. That’s why we’ve got to get back and report.”

  “Yes, and that’s why that damned Champlin has no business being loose. If Malcinder knew, he’d throw his sacred whispers to the winds. He’d give his right arm to kill Champlin outright.”

  “Any of us would.”

  “Listen, men,” said the third member of the party, who hadn’t spoken up to now. “We’re not through yet. The Disps guarding the shores may have picked him up by now. But if he sees them first, he’ll be right back in here. We’d better push on to daylight.”

  “Suits me. I’d follow him half across the ocean.”

  “Keep your light flashing.”

  Two Disps passed beneath Champlin, wading shoulder to shoulder in the shallow water. One of them held a gun, the other a light. The third man also with a gun, straggled after them.

  It was ugly business, but necessary; Champlin made as quick work of it as possible. He pounced down on the third man, froze onto his gun hand and wrenched the weapon free. The foremost gunman whirled and threw a wild shot against the wall as two bullets from Champlin ripped into his chest. He collapsed, dropping his gun.

  The Disp with the light leaped toward the fallen weapon; but his arm flew out helplessly and he fell face down in the water, as Champlin shot him between the eyes.

  The gunman upon whom Champlin had fallen at the outset was swiftly dispatched. Of the searching party, the only remaining life was that contained in the flashlight, itself slowly dying to nothing.

  Wayne Champlin took one longing look at the out-of-doors only a few yards beyond. His body craved the food and air that were somewhere out there; but his will pointed him back in the opposite direction.

  He carried two of the dead Disps back to the rubber boat they had deserted. Evening was falling fast when he came back for the third time and went to work upon the third fallen man. He worked fast. He took the Disp’s uniform off and dressed himself in it.

  It was no easy matter to get the rubber boat and his two uniformed corpses back through the narrow passage. He was working against time now.

  At last Champlin rowed back into the dimly reflected light at the outskirts of the central cavern. He propped the two dead Disps into as natural positions as possible, tying them in place with narrow strips torn from their uniforms. One held the flashlight; the other, a gun. Champlin began to paddle.

  No sooner had he moved into the ring of light from the Purple Fury, than men from the balcony aloft caught sight of the party. Someone shouted orders.

  “Hurry up! Malcinder’s feeding the Fury at once! What the hell’s been keeping you? Scorpledge called assembly half an hour ago.”

  The ropes came down and Champlin hooked them to the boat. It began to lift.

  “What’s the report down there? Did you ever get close to Champlin?”

  “He got away!” Wayne Champlin shouted back, barely looking up from under his feathered Disp’s cap.

  “Hell, we knew that. The Grubbers have gone wild from seeing his ghost. Malcinder’s hurrying this sacrifice through like a tornado. As quick as it’s over, we’re going out in full force to scour the island and kill on sight.”

  The Disp who had barked these orders now threw a rope to the rising boat, so that the returning searchers, as he thought, could draw themselves over to the balcony rail to disembark. With a sharp command for them to make all possible speed, he strode off.

  Champlin watched him go with a feeling that was far stronger than relief. Now there were only six men on the balcony—the official six who manipulated the details of the hideous sacrifice. They were absorbed in their machines, paying no attention to the returning boat.

  The two dead Disps slumped languidly against the rail, weltering in their own blood that filled the bottom of the boat. They had served their purpose and Champlin had no further need of them. His deception had gone the limit. The rest was up to him—and his guns.

  And his corn knife!

  For his amazed eyes beheld his familiar weapon leaning against the balcony wall. With it were other effects from Douzel’s fireside. Sometime during Champlin’s recent absence the Disps had discovered the Douzel camp.

  CHAPTER IX

  Fight to the Death

  “All set?” a Summiteer called out with startling pointedness.

  “All set!” one of the others answered. “Is the monster ready?”

  “Ready!” came another voice. “What’s on your periscope?”

  “They’re chanting,” said the periscope man. He was enclosed in a booth, but his voice—all the voices, so it seemed—clattered back and forth through speaking tubes. Most of the talking was done by the man at the periscope, whose instrument evidently extended up into the wall of the Shrine to give him a view of the hillside.

  “They’re leading her to the feeder. On your toes now, men—”

  “Put your hands up!” Wayne Champlin’s voice thundered through the rocky dome.

  His words scarcely registered. Summiteers weren’t aware of threats. These men were too intent on their machines—“She’s at the feeder . . . She almost fainted. . . They’re putting her in—”

  “Get your hands up or I’ll shoot you dead!”

  Two heads bobbed up, then a third and a fourth. Still it was a moment before the situation drove home to them.

  “What the hell? You Disps were ordered—”

  “I’m no Disp! Listen to me or I’ll blow you to bits!”

  “Champlin!” No growl of the Purple Fury ever sounded a more spine-chilling note than this Summiteer’s shocked cry. His hands flew up.

  But the man next to him reached sharply for his gun—a reach that cost him his life. A bullet jumped through his eye. He plunged like a blind bull, rolled through the railing at the edge of the balcony. His scream fell with him and was swallowed up in a deep-throated splash a hundred feet below.

  Four Summiteers lined up before Champlin, pale with shock. The fifth and f
inal man stayed with the periscope by command. He was to keep his back turned, keep calling out the events from overhead. The instant he turned around he’d be shot.

  “Now! No false moves. You on the end there, put on your automatic cage controls.”

  His eyes glanced angrily at the human grappling hook—two jaws of steel which picked human bodies from the net and then snapped shut to imprison their victims in a small cage for as long as the Summiteers desired.

  The Summiteer, chalky pale, shook his head defiantly. There was no time to waste. Champlin shot him through the heart. He fell underfoot and Champlin kicked him out of the way. The remaining men, seeing the jig was up, were as docile and willing as slaves. They were frightened and performed badly, but they performed.

  At Champlin’s orders, the big steel jaws of the cage swung around toward the wall. It rammed toward a vertical copper gas pipe that crawled up the wall like an immense stove pipe. In a glance Champlin had seen that the power for the balcony’s appliances was stored electricity, not gas. But this copper pipe was the gas conduit to the purple flames—flames that awaited Elsa’s fall.

  “The feeder is lifting,” came the voice of the periscope man. “The chant has stopped . . . Any moment now—”

  At that instant the powered steel arm struck. It crashed and clanked against the copper conduit. The pipe was broken through. The thick lower stalk bent aside and poured out bluish fumes like some gigantic exhaust pipe. The live gas streamed forth as if from a fireman’s hose.

  “She’s about to slide—she’s sliding—”

  Pwofff! The hated roar of the purple blaze from overhead suddenly snuffed out.

  “Blackness!” the periscope man cried. “Something happened! The Shrine! The Shrine is dead!”

  Champlin had ceased to hear. His eyes were on the waiting net. At that instant the figure of Elsa fell past his gaze. The net caught her and eased her safely down into the darkness.

  “Keep reporting!” Champlin shouted at the periscope man, who stammeringly obeyed. The Disp was seeing things that stunned him and tied his tongue in knots. At first, when the blaze had choked off, he had seen only torches jerking up stiffly, all over the hillside. The entire assembly was frozen. It seemed too dazed to move—except for some of the Disps and Summiteers. They quickly broke out of their paralysis and raced for their prayer caves.