The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  The two red battering rams crawled up through the long runway and charged out into space.

  For a time the foursome in each boat were quiet and thoughtful. Venus seemed far away as it shone through the inky sky. The adventure ahead of them was nothing if not uncertain.

  As the hours rolled on, they enlivened their journey by radioing back and forth. Smitt and Mary were at one radio-telephone; Bob and Betty Wakefield at the other. It became a game to switch wavelengths on each other and find each other again—a sort of radio hide-and-seek.

  This game was still going strong when a strange voice leaked in.

  “This is the S-44 returning. S-44 returning. Do you hear us, headquarters? This is the S-44 returning . . . S-44 . . . S-44 . . .”

  Bob Wakefield’s slight hisst! cut the battering ram conversation off abruptly. Smitt and Mary held their tongues. It had been agreed in advance that all official radioing to outsiders was to be done by Smitt. But this seemed a good time for silence.

  For most of an hour both ships listened. The S-44, whatever it might be, continued to announce its progress, at intervals, without response from any headquarters.

  Reception grew clearer. The bluish white ball that was Venus puffed out like an expanding balloon. Mary kept her eyes on the heavens. Out across the blackness she had watched the other battering ram, flying parallel with them since their departure from Mercury. Less than a mile away, keeping an even speed, it blazed like a tiny red bullet against the ubiquitous black velvet of the void.

  Smitt stuck to the radio-telephone. Suddenly business picked up. An answering voice responded to the S-44 calls. Conversation took on a bewildering speed.

  “Come in, S-44. What’s the news?”

  “Everything’s okay. We cut a hundred-mile strip inland from the East Coast.”

  “Good. Hold on. I’ll relay that to Sasho.”

  A short silence followed; then the headquarters voice resumed.

  “What about the other ship?”

  “Haven’t they reported?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Give them time. They said they’d be late getting back.”

  “When did you last communicate?” the headquarters voice asked.

  “Six hours before we struck,” said the S-44. “They were ready to lay a flame-cloud down the seaboard at the time, and—”

  “Hold on. Another call from Sasho.” Half a minute or so elapsed. Then—“Sasho’s all primed for action. He’s ready to turn the whole fleet loose as soon as the other ship reports. You didn’t happen to see their flames?”

  “Hell, no, we cut down through a blanket of heavy weather. Not much chance anyway, the way we had split up the territory. We shot west. They had headed south.”

  “Okay, just so you both came through all right. The fleet’s fixed up with a layout that will prevent any cross-ups.”

  “They’ll have a fireman’s picnic. Tell them we’ll be down on their tails as soon as we can load up some more gas.”

  “They haven’t gone yet. Sasho’s still waiting on that Mercury deal.”

  Mercury deal!

  Smitt blew a bomb of breath square into the transmitter. Luckily he had thrown the switch several minutes before. The mention of Mercury caught him gasping.

  What was this all about? Cutting strips along the East Coast! Flame-clouds! Sasho! Gas! Turning the fleet loose! A fireman’s picnic. And now—that Mercury deal!

  “Hell, tell him to go ahead,” the S-44 voice resumed. “The other ship’s got that deal cinched by this time.”

  “That’s what Sasho’s waiting to hear. He’s in a stew about it. Waiting for another round with that Allison fellow. He’s getting the jitters. Says he smells trouble on that Mercury deal.”

  Smitt and his companions held their breaths. What a break! They’d blundered squarely onto a hot trail! Allison was alive! Alive and obviously much in demand!

  “What do you want me to do about it?” the voice from S-44 drawled. “Head back for Earth and pick Allison up?”

  On the instant Smitt took a long chance, snapped on his transmitter, barked,

  “Where on Earth is he?”

  Neither voice answered. There was something ominous about the silence. Smitt repeated his demand.

  “Where is Lester Allison?”

  Quick as a flash the headquarters voice snapped,

  “Who said that?”

  “I don’t know,” said S-44.

  “Who called for Allison?”

  “I did!” Smitt snapped back. “Where is he?”

  “Who are you?” The headquarters voice sharpened to an urgent tone. “Who’s calling Allison?”

  Smitt snapped his transmitter switch off with a jerk. He had impulsively spoken out of turn and he knew it.

  Into his receiver came a persistent clamor to know who he was and where he was calling from, and what business of his it was that Allison was wanted on Venus. The tones were threatening.

  “Don’t answer them!” Mary gasped; but instinctively she knew that the damage had been done.

  There were minutes of silent panic in both battering rams. They seemed to be driving into something ominous. What was the unseen trouble back of those hostile voices?

  Smitt shifted wavelengths and soon Bob Wakefield on the other battering ram found him.

  “Bob Wakefield—”

  “Okay, Smitt.”

  “Did you hear that talk that about Allison?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you make of it?”

  “He’s on the earth instead of Venus.”

  “Right. We’re on the wrong track. Tell Laughlin we’re changing our course this minute.”

  Mary saw the heavens swerve gently. The huge bluish-white mass of Venus passed off the nose of the ship and far out to the side.

  Simultaneously the other battering ram turned. Had there been a traffic cop out in that realm of space, he would have seen the two sleek red bullets with their tails of fire cut parallel curves around him. Again they were off on straight unwavering lines. The tiny bright dot of the Earth was now their goal.

  Smitt hastily returned to the S-44 wavelength. The mysterious talk between the returning ship and its Venusian headquarters, though intermittent and sketchy for the next hour, was tense with gathering excitement.

  Headquarters were much disturbed. Emperor Sasho was reported to be on a rampage and the whole Empire was holding its breath. Sasho was scheduled to broadcast an important pronouncement within another hour. It was believed that he would give the go-ahead signal to his fleet. And within a few days the Victory Festival would follow.

  But strangely that certain ship hadn’t returned. There was the rub. It was problematical whether Sasho would risk going ahead. After all his intricate plans for the timing and spacing of his attacks, and after all his glorious boasts to his Empire that the moment of luscious revenge was at hand, here was a slip-up. And from the guarded talk, Smitt gathered that a slip-up was a blowtorch to Emperor Sasho’s pride.

  But on top of that was the disturbing report that had made the Emperor wild and had set the whole capital in an uproar. Unidentified voices had come in over the radio-telephones—voices that inquired for the ambassador of Mercury! What could this be but approaching ships from the militant millions of Mercury?

  Millions? Smitt found this talk wholly bewildering, not knowing of Lester Allison’s original bluff.

  The minute for the Emperor’s pronouncement drew close. The S-44 communications had ended, the S-44 having arrived at the capital port. There were frantic last-minute efforts by headquarters to get another word from the mysterious voice that had inquired for Allison. Needless to say, both battering rams kept their transmitters switched off; but at their receivers, the eight occupants were all ears.

  The designated minute arrival. Emperor Sasho was presented with a fanfare. His ugly voice grated through the speakers.

  “The hour for the ultimate revenge has come! (Loud cheering.) You of the younger generati
ons know what your forefathers suffered. Today the survivors of that gallant band of heroes sit before me. They have lived to see their powers multiply.

  “In these coming hours, they shall see their Empire—your Empire and mine—strike back at that scapegrace of the Solar System—the earth! (A tumult of cheering.)

  “No revenge was ever so sweet as this. The earth called your forefathers criminals. They were criminals! They would have been ashamed to be anything less than criminals on the earth! (Cheers!) The earth made them outcasts! The earth spewed them forth as if they were filth!

  “But the fortunes of the universe have followed them. They applied their talents to the building of a new civilization—a civilization built on those sturdy principles of might and power and seizure—yes, and slaughter! The gods of destruction have served them well.

  “Now they sit before me, these survivors of that original band, waiting to see what you and I will do in this, our greatest hour of opportunity. What will we do? Will we burn the earth to a cinder?”

  A mob of infuriated voices clamored,

  “Hell-l-l, yes-s-s!”

  “I, the youngest of the founders,” Sasho’s voice went on in a rattling throb, “am proud to be your Emperor! I am proud that you younger generations have taken the great ideals which the smug earth once branded as criminal and cutthroat—that you have made of them a dignified and honorable philosophy of slaughter. You are the hope of the universe!

  “You have tested equipment at your command—the most efficient machines of devastation ever made. You are ready to go forth and explode life off the face of the earth. At my command you will clean up the earth!

  “Did I say the earth? Let me quickly add—the earth and her allies!

  “I refer to none other than the hordes of Mercury! Let them come! Let them descend upon us by millions if they are able! We’ll slaughter them on sight!”

  There was a tremendous cheer. The clanking voice resumed in a low ominous tone.

  “At this minute, the ships of Mercury are plunging through space to meet us. At this minute, we have good reason to believe, they are hearing my words. The Dictator of Mercury himself may be listening.

  “For the sake of the record, let me repeat that my offers of a friendly agreement with Mercury have been refused. My efforts to set up trade relations—Mercury metals for Venus protection—have been scorned. The mischief-making ambassador of Mercury, treated to an excursion to the earth, has not returned.

  “Mercury ships, are you listening? For the last time, wherever you are, have you any words for us? Answer me this minute—or you shall take the consequences!”

  At their receiver Smitt, Mary and the Redmans looked at each other out of white, nervous faces. Smitt’s teeth were set, his lips were tight. The impact of this colossal scheme of destruction beat down upon unsuspecting nerves with a shattering effect.

  Fifteen seconds of silence passed. Then Sasho’s voice jumped through the receiver in a high, screaming pitch.

  “All right for you, Mercury! Come on! We’ll blast you to atoms! I hereby command the flame-cloud fleet to go into action at once! Carry out the destruction plan to the letter! Whatever resistance crops up out of land or skies, smash it mercilessly! Go! and the gods of slaughter be with you!”

  On toward the earth the two battering rams sped. The occupants were for the most part speechless. They had set forth simply to find Lester Allison. But the scene had widened. Gradually, as they rode the spaceways, their quiet tension changed from the silence of frightened rabbits to the silence of steel determination.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Nick of Time

  At the controls of the S-37, Lester Allison sped for Mercury as hard as he could go.

  All the way he thanked the fates that had spared his life. It had been almost miraculous, so swiftly had it happened. The picture of that crucial moment still hung before his eyes.

  Underneath the gray overcast sky, the blue ropelike death cloud had boiled down fiercely. Allison’s party had dropped their cameras, weapons and trophies and bolted for dear life. His two guards had instantly unsnapped the handcuffs to free themselves for the chase.

  The dash for the rock quarry where the S-37 had landed had been a futile gesture. The distance had been too great. Death had descended too fast.

  But Allison’s sharp observations of a few hours before had furnished him a trick. Something beyond that nearby embankment of pink stones had clung in his memory.

  His wrists free, he had leaped for the hidden cut, set into motion the little four-wheeled car at the summit of the narrow-gauge track, shot down the long incline with the speed of a rocket.

  The rest had happened almost too fast to be remembered. The four guards left with the ship had been completely befuddled at the sight of their party returning on the dead run. Allison had brushed past two of them, knocked down a third.

  The fourth he had caught—within the chamber of the airlocks, for the airlocks had automatically closed the instant the flat of his hand had shot out against the throttle, and he had zoomed off into space.

  An instant after the shock of takeoff, Allison had looked back to see another hideous, fan-shaped inferno sweep across the landscape, its flare reddening the vast blanket of clouds overhead.

  His own rocket fire had missed the descending gas, surely by not more than a few yards; but the S-44 many miles inland had touched off the explosion. It was sickening to think what must have happened to the rest of the S-37’s “excursion,” victims of the medicine they had dealt to others so gleefully.

  Allison had at once set his controls for some idle circling on a safe side of the earth, and had taken some minutes for deep breathing. It was hard to realize that he had suddenly been freed of his handcuffs and had fallen into possession of a space ship.

  But he knew he was not free in the fuller sense of the word. He was bound to a responsibility. He must warn the earth.

  He had thereupon transferred his one passenger, a surly conceited, yellow-eyed guard named Siccola, from the airlocks to a small steel-encased room obviously designed for prison purposes.

  Then Allison had gone back to the earth and had spent tense hours warning the governmental leaders of America. That gas-cloud explosion of four months ago, he insisted, and the two recurrences of recent hours, were not astronomical mishaps. They were trial attacks. They were forewarnings of a complete devastation planned by a deadly enemy on Venus.

  The governmental leaders had listened open-mouthed. Some had fainted, some had been angered, one had succumbed to a heart attack, many had even laughed. But Allison had driven the message home, and the newspapers, radios, and alert governmental leaders had caught up the alarm to spread it like wildfire over the continents. The civilized world went into a panic.

  “We’ve got to do something!” was the inevitable cry of a defenseless people.

  The earth suddenly realized that it was years behind the times in the development of space ships—and no offhand avalanche of blueprints could make up for the wasted years.

  Having done all that he could do in a few hours of time, Allison had sped away toward certain other responsibilities—personal ones that were near to his heart. He had a planet of his own to look after. And a people. And a sweetheart.

  Had the Sasho Empire invaded Mercury during his four months’ absence? That fear had accumulated in Allison’s spine, and knotted his nerves and fatigued him for many days past . . .

  The S-37 nosed down into the long dark runway, into the deep chasms of Mercury. Allison’s eyes were eager.

  There were the torchlights burning as brightly as ever, the red rock walls glowing. There was the red metal bridge, the avenues into the distance. But there were no people.

  Allison leaped through the opened airlocks, strode out into the light gravity, called at the top of his voice. No one answered.

  He hastened to the laboratories. Keys had been left in the usual hiding place. In a shop he found the robot ship—thoroughly dissected!
He found designs—reams of them, waste-baskets full; and on the shop walls was the final supreme design worked out in all its intricate details. One by one the items of that final plan had been checked off; and all around the shop were the evidences of building.

  So they had built a ship and gone! But where?

  Perhaps to Venus to find him? Perhaps to the earth from fear of more invaders?

  Allison was suddenly tired. His prisoner aboard the S-37 had been cared for and was securely locked up. A host of worries flickered out of Allison’s mind and he slept.

  He awoke hours later, made hasty preparations to take off. The disappointment of finding no one here at the home base hung like a shadow over his thoughts. He supposed he would go to Venus. Strange, he thought, that June hadn’t even left a message for him.

  A moment of sentiment directed his feet toward the red bridge, down the torchlit path, up the circling stone staircase to the balcony where he and June had often sat together. Now this seemed the loneliest spot in the world. He must not linger. Whether June and the others had gone toward Venus or the earth, they would run into untold dangers.

  Allison hesitated at the airlocks. He bent to pick up a scrap of paper. It was June’s handwriting. He read it swiftly.

  Lester might come while you are gone . . . I believe he would want to stay here . . . That is what I have decided to do . . . I know that you will come back. I pray that you may bring Lester.

  —June.

  Over and over Allison read it.

  I shall hide where you can’t find me, so please don’t delay . . . I know that you will come back. I pray . . .

  Up over the cavern paths Allison bounded, a flashlight in his hand, a rope over his shoulder. He called until he was hoarse from shouting. He deserted the well-beaten paths for the many-branched caves that were endless. Up near the cavern ceilings he called, only to hear the echoes of his voice mock him from distant underground canyons. Then he would wait in vain for the silence to give something back to him.