by Don Wilcox
Yawman paced about, slapping his orange sash against his knee, and doped out a story. They had got into the underground world at Mercury, he said, and had had to march two hundred miles hoping to get in touch with the dictator—only to find him away, gone to suppress some “rebellions!” But they did communicate with him and he gave them the Honorable Allison as his spokesman!
“That means we’re banking on you, Honorable Allie,” Yawman said with a slight taunt. “If you like to live, play the game. If you make Sasho any false promises and your dictator don’t back you up, it’s your neck, not ours—see?”
“I’ll make no promises that my government won’t back to the limit,” Allison answered.
He wondered how far he would have to go with his fabricated “dictator” and the non-existent “millions of people.” Certainly he had no intentions of revealing that there were only nine persons standing guard over the world’s finest metal mills!
“Then we’re all set,” Yawman said.
The tall Venusian went over the high points of the story again, to be sure no one would get crossed up. He added that on the way back on their “two hundred mile march,” they had bumped into a “thousand rebels” and fought their way through, and that accounted for their dead and wounded!
Someone ventured to doubt that they would have stopped to pick up their dead under such fierce gunfire.
Yawman considered and said, “Right! We wouldn’t.”
Thereupon the officers threw the dead soldiers overboard by way of the disposal chute—not neglecting first to loot them of everything but their uniforms.
One of the wounded men—and Allison recognized him to be the surly scout who had first approached him at the red bridge—got angry at these proceedings. He threatened to spill the whole truth to Sasho.
His threats were somewhat of a mistake. The officers exchanged glances and dragged the luckless scout to the disposal chute, and his pleadings became an hysterical wail, but down he went to join the other corpses. There were no further “disagreements.”
Venus welled up out of the velvet heavens, bluish and bright with fluffy atmospheric storms under the sunlight.
Allison followed the dials as if the landing were his own responsibility. Mentally he was fast becoming a pilot. He anticipated several of the pilot’s moves. He watched the colored lines come and go through the transparent chart, clicking off the miles of distance. He felt the cushioning effect of the atmosphere.
The counter-motors gave him a sickening sensation of falling in the opposite direction. Allison wanted to faint but he held fast, snatching at the last detail of that most perilous process—landing.
“On your toes, Honorable Allie!” barked Yawman with a touch of scorn. And then the ship set down on the tarmac.
It came to a rolling stop on the broad landing field. Blue domes of a Venusian capital were on the horizon. Yawman clipped a pair of handcuffs to each of Allison’s strong wrists and Allison found himself linked to two husky silver and orange-clad soldiers.
Radio messages had been active during the last few minutes. Now Allison learned what was in the air: an inspection. Sasho had called for a space ship assembly for this very hour. It was already in progress. The crew of the S-20 would just have time to make it.
“He might have given us an hour’s notice,” one of the officers grumbled, hastily donning a fresh orange sash.
“He’s damned full of whims,” griped another.
“Probably getting in a sweat to move ahead with his plan of destruction,” Yawman commented. “Better go light on the crabbing. There’ll be some promotions in the air after we start scorching the earth. Sasho knows what he’s about.”
Allison marched out with the others dazedly. It was breath-taking to step on the soil of Venus. Under more favorable conditions, it might have been a glorious thrill. As it was, the very atmosphere seemed charged with ominous electricity.
The vast wide-open space port was studded with big ships—fighting ships, dozens of them. Some were larger than the S-20, with bulky barrel-like hulls that might have been made to carry gigantic oil tanks.
The sky fighters were lined up in a long row, their noses even and their guns aimed in the same directions. Standing in their shadows were the uniformed crews, lined up in hard-boiled ranks that were almost defiant with stiffness.
Yawman barked rapid orders to get his men arranged in time. The soldiers on either side of Allison kept their hands back so that the handcuffs were out of sight.
“Silence!” Yawman snapped, and he fell in at the end of the line. The big military men of the Sasho Empire came along at a brisk pace.
Allison knew the Emperor Sasho at first glance. He was half a step ahead of the others—the big man with the hunched-down head and the huge chin, the heavy shoulders that squared out from above his ears. Bedecked in a distinctive uniform with sashes and medals and jewels, he was a blaze of color.
An ancient pharaoh, thought Allison, might have traded his second best crown for that flashy outfit. A pirate would have certainly cut throats for it.
Strange to say, Sasho carried no weapon but a small yellow quirt. This he wielded with such dexterity of his wrist that his shoulders scarcely moved.
Allison observed several samples of this deft whipping skill as the inspection party came down the line. One soldier had too much twist in his sash, and the Emperor lashed him across the fingers with a sharp reminder.
A member of the S-20 crew tried to make a last-minute adjustment of his own sash. A package of candy fell out. Sasho strode up in time to see it. His wrist flicked and the whip caught the luckless soldier lashingly across the face. The mark filled with blood, and Sasho gave a low cruel laugh. His voice was like the grating of rusty chains.
In front of Allison, Sasho paused, glaring at the odd red and white-mesh uniform. The hulking Emperor’s chin jutted upward, his black mustache drew down, his eyes gathered into slits.
“What’s this?” Sasho growled in his rusty-chain voice.
Allison’s heart pounded. Sasho’s guttural breathing was hot on his face.
Yawman spoke up. “Your majesty, that’s our ambassador from Mercury.”
Sasho gave an approving grunt. “Keep him on tap. I’ll get around to him later. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple weeks.”
The military party passed on. Allison wondered if they had noticed the handcuffs. Perhaps they were used to receiving their ambassadors in handcuffs.
CHAPTER III
The Cruel Napoleon
Emperor Sasho took his place upon his throne. It was high noon, as time on Venus went. He had just finished a hearty breakfast. He tapped an orange-colored cigarette, it lit, he placed it between his teeth.
Yellow teeth, they were, with twisting lips that tightened over them. He glanced at his handsome self in the panel mirrors, gave a self-satisfied grunt. That damned little wench with the stubborn chin and the stingy lips! She’d better keep her promise and come in today or he’d knock her ears down.
Involuntarily his hand fell on the long black bull whip and he lashed it out toward a mirror. He blew cigarette smoke out of his mouth, dropped the whip, pressed a button.
At his touch Sasho’s business day officially began. The circular walls that formed his small private throne room lifted—panel mirrors and all—and folded into the lofty ceiling. This first daily shift of scenes was accompanied by buzzers and bells throughout the capital building. The Emperor Sasho was on his throne!
The throne, a sumptuous composite of steps, rostrum, desk, seat and Emperor, was now in full view before the oval-shaped room. The people came to their feet and stood at attention until Sasho cracked the long black bull whip. They re-seated themselves at the rows of desks, and the oval room resumed the hum of an immense business office.
The attendants and secretaries went on with their routine business. Here and there among them were new faces—persons who had come to the seat of government with their special problems, or who had been brought h
ere because they had become problems!
Sasho sat smoking cynically. He liked this time of day. He liked to sit before the hall full of people, ready to whip out a final decision whenever his subordinates got into a deadlock. This was power!
Moreover, it was luxury. Sasho liked this time of day, because the shafts of sunlight shone down on his jewel-studded fingers and sent blades of colored light playing over his black marble table.
His eyes roved over the room. Those five old green-faced buzzards over there were rebels out of the Jagged Mountains, he’d bet. The Cutthroat Congress would make short work of them. And there, in the red and white, was that captive from Mercury.
If he was as easy as the three from the nations of Mars, there’d be no trouble on that score. One of the Mars ambassadors had committed suicide on the flame-cloud excursion to the earth. And what a juicy excursion that had been! Sasho smiled reminiscently to himself.
But wait till the real business began! Damned if he wouldn’t fry the old earth down to a cinder! And to think—if he hadn’t pulled out when he did, he’d have spent these last four decades in a cell! Four decades!
“Your majesty—”
“Well?”
“The young rebel I spoke to you about yesterday—”
“Send him up.”
The attendant went back to a desk and directed a well set up boy to the throne. The boy failed to bow when he crossed onto the orange and silver rug. Sasho’s black bull whip lashed out. The boy emitted a scream of pain. Attendants throughout the room laughed raucously.
The attendant and the hurt, frightened boy mounted the steps. Sasho touched a button and the circular wall descended. The three of them were alone in the little throne room.
“So you’re a rebel,” Sasho growled. “You think because your father was a Venusian—a damned anti-Sasho Venusian!—that you won’t have to bend to the Sasho Empire.”
The boy was too scared to answer.
“You know what happens to boys that won’t bend? We bend them!”
Sasho enjoyed the effect of his own words.
“If we can’t bend their wills, we bend their bones, see? Listen! I’ll let you hear how it feels to have your bones bent.”
Sasho snapped a switch and an amplifier brought in a pandemonium of such terrible crying and screeching that the boy shrank back, tripped on the steps and lay trembling in a heap.
“Get up!” Sasho roared.
The attendant helped the boy back to the rostrum.
“How old are you?”
“He’s ten,” said the attendant when it became evident the boy couldn’t answer.
“Ten!” Sasho muttered.
A twinge of something caught him. He cracked the bull whip at the attendant.
“Damn you! What do you mean by bringing ten-year-olds in here? Get the hell out!”
The walls shot up and telescoped into the ceiling. The boy and the attendant fled out into the open oval room, but the whip caught the attendant with four deep lashes before he scurried out of range.
A secretary of diplomatic affairs bowed onto the rug and mounted the rostrum.
“Your Majesty, the ambassador from Mercury awaits your pleasure.”
“Ten!” Sasho muttered to himself.
He hated to admit it to himself, but kids were the only human beings he had the slightest sympathy for. His eyes pushed into slits. He had been ten when he fought his way out of prison and onto the Death Ship.
Of the seven hundred criminals who had fled the earth, he’d been the youngest—and the toughest! They had told him he was the toughest, and by Jupiter he had made their boast good. And now look where he was!
“Your Majesty, the ambassador from Mercury—”
Sasho didn’t hear, for that hard-boiled, beautiful girl with the stubborn chin was coming over.
“The papers you ordered from the treasury office,” the girl said, mounting the steps saucily.
“Your Majesty, the ambassador from—”
“Can’t you see I’m busy!” Sasho barked, and the secretary of diplomatic affairs took his cue and scurried back.
“One moment on those treasury papers,” Sasho growled.
The girl stopped with a faintly mocking smile. Sasho touched a button and the circular wall descended. He and the girl were alone.
“You couldn’t be angry again this morning?” the girl said sarcastically, sitting down at the side of the desk.
“Those damned attendants!” Sasho lit a cigarette and tossed the pack across the desk top. “Bothering me with ten-year-old boys!”
“Absurd,” said the girl, adding cunningly that the most important man on Venus should be occupied with more important things.
“On Venus, did you say?”
Privately Sasho thought of himself as the most important man in the entire solar system. His conquests of the past decades had cut a wide swath in interplanetary history. And this was only the beginning.
“You’re the most important, the most powerful, and by far the most picturesque emperor that ever lived.”
The girl blew smoke into Sasho’s face. He glanced at himself in a panel mirror, drew his chin up, pulled his mustaches down. He caught the girl by the wrist and forced a kiss upon her. She returned to her cigarette with many a twinge of romantic flutterings.
“Of course, ten-year-olds can be important,” she said tactfully. “You were important at ten, from what I’ve heard.”
Sasho felt a familiar glow in his head and chest.
“I beat the cockeyed earth out of a rap, all right! There was seven hundred of us. We weren’t good enough for the earth!”
Sasho’s voice grew bitter as he fell into a well-worn train of thought. That dirty low-down Earth! Jails for folks that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks! Laws for the rich folks to hide behind!
“We didn’t have any right to live. They didn’t want us in the way, so they locked us up. I was the only kid in the bunch, and I was plenty tough.
“And then this crackpot of a scientist finished up his junk-heap that everybody called the Death Ship, and he needed a crew to ride in it and called for volunteers. Hell, what was a Death Ship to us one way or the other, with some of us up for life, and some for death!
“All the bunk they whipped up about sacrificing our lives for science didn’t fool us one bit. None of the officials thought that Death Ship would get anywhere. All they wanted was to save feeding us. Save the trouble of strapping us to the hot plate and jamming on the juice.
“So off we went, and what a laugh! What a helluva laugh! We set down on this little planet like we was an egg! An egg!”
The comparison pleased Sasho. He paced around his throne room, rattling with boastful chuckles.
“That Death Ship was an egg, all right. But the damned scientist that laid it never got to cackle. The earth never found out. We’ve slipped back there enough times—and they still don’t know. But we’ve done plenty of cackling, by Jupiter!”
Sasho poured himself a drink and grew expansive with the memory of conquests. He’d fought his full share of every battle, even though he was just a kid. And the way they’d slaughtered Venusian men and converted Venusian women was a lesson in history all by itself.
The hard-boiled girl shuffled restlessly. Sasho raved on.
“It’s amazing how far a neat bit of slaughtering will go.” He laughed coarsely. “A neat bit of well-placed devastation—that’s how we did it.”
The seven hundred criminal exiles had played in luck. The native Venusians had been softened by civilization, and their best men had become tangled in the pudding of soft politics, and their best women had grown bored with the ease of living.
“They had plenty of science too,” Sasho gloated, “but they’d forgot all they ever knew about flame guns and explosives. You can figure for yourself what a darb of a setup that was for us seven hundred professional killers!”
The girl twisted her lips sarcastically.
“Do you always cackl
e in the same key?”
Sasho shot an angry glance over his thick shoulders.
“Go ahead. Don’t mind me,” said the girl, reaching for another cigarette.
“So you want me to shut up, do you?” The chains in Sasho’s voice clanged harshly.
“I didn’t mean anything. Go on and finish—” she protested.
“So you’re getting tired of me!” Sasho snarled.
“No. No, I didn’t say that!” the girl wailed.
“Get out, you stubborn little devil! I’ve had enough of you! Get out, damn you! Tell those space ship rats you’re fed up on the Venus luxuries. Tell them you want to go back to Earth—where you can walk the streets and starve!”
“No! No, your Majesty! I didn’t mean—”
Sasho caught her at the throat and blasted his words at her face. He’d show her! He’d send her back to the earth and she’d get hers right along with the rest of the Earth scum! He screamed,
“We’ll come down in our gas flamers and scorch your insides out and singe your hair off, and you’ll die with your tongue hanging out, and you’ll be saying to yourself this is fine, this is just dandy! You’ll say old Sasho treated you too decent up on Venus and you couldn’t take it. So you got sassy and got sent back to the earth with the dregs of the universe, where you belonged!”
“Forgive me, Sasho! Forgive me, honest—” the girl cried in utter panic.
“Shut up and get out!” Sasho roared.
The circular wall flew upward. The amazed throngs in the big oval room saw the girl sprawl down the rostrum steps. The irate Emperor caught up his whip and cut a stripe across her naked back as she fled across the silver and orange carpet.
Needless to say, this action was greeted with sadistic laughter throughout the oval room. The attendants and officials had long since learned that the Emperor’s temper tantrums must be interpreted as sportive jokes on whoever happened to be the goat. Laughter proved that they were on the side of the Emperor. And it was the best tonic for his ego.
“Your Majesty, the ambassador from Mercury who arrived yesterday—”
