by Don Wilcox
He’d let them float down into the thickest blaze he could find!
As they neared the earth, Sasho became disturbed because he couldn’t locate any strips of flame. His aide at the radio tried in vain to tune in some unseen Sasho ship.
“What the devil!” the aide at the radio muttered. “The short waves are screaming all over the place, trying to locate Allison!”
Sasho took the phones and listened. He laughed like a sandblast. He tuned in the transmitter and bellowed taunts back at the earth announcers.
“This is rich! Your prize is already taken, numbskulls! I’ve got him and his girl friend right by the nape of the neck. If you want to see them, you can see them in hell in a very few minutes! . . . Who am I? I’m—” Sasho stormed with laughter. This was too good. “I’m the Emperor that’s just got through fryin’ the Earth’s pants off. I’m Sasho, by God!”
He roared his laughter into the transmitter. Then with a stroke of irony that was exactly to his taste, he said:
“Maybe you’d like to have a chummy little talk with Allison before his hair burns off and his toenails curl up? Yeah? Come here, you damned rat! Tell your friends about your fancy little tricks.”
Allison and June, with space helmets in hand, put on the earphones. Sasho pranced across the floor, laughing. For the moment the radio was all their own.
“This is Allison. I’m aboard Sasho’s S-37. June’s with me. We’re in a hole.”
“I’ll say you are,” came Bob Wakefield’s low mutter. “Don’t you know the battering rams are smashing every Sasho boat to hell! Smitt’s taking everything that comes down.”
“Let him come!” Allison whispered fiercely, and June nodded her quick approval. “We’re sunk already. Anything to get Sasho!”
“Smitt’ll get you, all right,” Wakefield groaned. “I couldn’t stop him—his radio’s dead. He’ll smack you square through the nose! Can’t you make a jump for it?”
That was all. A pained bellow from Sasho brought Allison and June up sharply. They saw no reason for his pain at first. He stood glaring at a porthole, his paunchy hulk frozen. Red light reflected across his silver headdress.
Then they saw. Swiftly it shot by—Smitt’s sleek red metal battering ram, tapering off into a tail of flame. It was gone.
“The gun!” Sasho thundered. He and his two aides stormed up the stairway. The anti-aircraft gun groaned and the ship shuddered.
Allison and June fastened their helmets on securely. The aide at the controls shot a glance at them—his own business was too pressing to do more. Together the two fugitives dashed for the disposal chute.
It was locked.
Allison grabbed an ax from under a bench and shattered a porthole. The glass blew out. He boosted June to the opening.
The sound conductors in his helmet brought them thunder of footsteps down the stairs. He whirled to see Sasho’s arm come up with a gun.
Allison flung the ax. A shot and the crash of metal rang together. Sasho came on, his big frame lunged. Allison doubled his fist and swung as hard as he could. He struck a head that was as solid as stone.
Two things Allison saw in that fleeting moment. One was the glint of red reflected in Sasho’s blazing eyes. The battering ram was coming back!
The other was Sasho’s suffocating gasp for breath. The air was leaving rapidly through the smashed portholes. The aides made a dash for space helmets—
June jumped. Allison followed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the others were coming too.
For the first time it flicked through his consciousness that he and June were the only ones with parachutes!
A few yards apart they fell, Lester Allison and June O’Neil. Looking back they caught a glimpse of one of the world’s rarest pictures—a picture they would remember as long as they lived.
A battering ram, streaking brilliant red through space, smashed squarely through the nose of the majestic S-37 as if it were nothing—a climaxing blow that spelled the end of an Empire!
[1] This explosive gas is undoubtedly a powerfully concentrated refinement of gaseous, volatile compounds such as have reportedly been used in World War II. When the Nazis took the Belgian Fort Eban Emael in May, 1940, it is said that they used a super-powerful flame-throwing device, shooting highly combustile liquids or gases, which disintegrated concrete and melted the heavy siege guns.
At any rate, whatever method the Nazis employed, it seems certain that in future wars, gas will be used more to destroy enemy forts, gun emplacements and trenches than to burn out men’s lungs, as in World War I.
There is little doubt that chemical warfare has far from reached its zenith of destruction. Nowadays, an invading army proceeds so rapidly with mechanized strides that the use of such gases as phosgene or mustard, to blind, cripple and asphyxiate enemy troops, is not only time-destroying but unnecessary.
But in the future, newer and far more deadlier gases will be found, which may even take the place of heavy armaments, at best expensive to manufacture and troublesome to service with gasoline and oil.
[2] The Mercurian workshops originally developed by Jason Kilhide, the renegade Earthman whom Lester Allison had vanquished, were a marvel of mechanical ingenuity. Helping not a little was the excellence of Mercurian ores, the most plastic and yet the most durable ever mined.
Because of this fine mahinery and the excellent ores, the young men whom Allison had left on Mercury were able to construct fighter space ships whose hulls were so durable, any other space vessel could be penetrated like a hot knife cutting butter.
While metallurgists have been experimenting for years to make metals lighter and more durable, it is entirely possible that metals on other planets may be entirely different from any ores yet known.
SECRET OF THE STONE DOLL
First published in Fantastic Adventures, March 1941
Who was the madman of the island? What was the enigma of the stone doll? Why must I make a pilgrimage into a weird hell to earn Looma’s love?
CHAPTER I
You may say that I was a romantic fool for staying on the island of Traysomia. But you never saw Looma.
You may say that I was a madcap to think that I could cast my lot with the natives and learn to live as they lived. You may say that I was overwhelmed by passions that no man with mature sober judgment would entertain—passions that were sure to bring my world crashing down to ruin.
Again I answer—you never saw Looma.
Had your eyes beheld her, as mine did, on that night of the Traysomian funeral, you too might have cast your cool judgments to the winds and allowed your party of seafarers to sail on without you. Can any man weigh his reasons like so many ounces of silver and predict what he would do under strange circumstances?
My eyes beheld Looma.
She was young—she could hardly have been more than seventeen. She was beautiful—never have I seen a girl whose beauty was so enthralling.
I stayed realizing that I was probably the only American on the island. I realized that it might be years before another ship from the civilized world came this way.
My ship would not return this way. It was a ship of amateur explorers, casting about over the vast tropical Pacific for lost peoples and forgotten islands. By mere chance the party had come upon the island of Traysomia.
After a few hours of visiting, my companions had rowed back at sunset to our ship, which lay a mile or two beyond the Traysomian beach. I had stayed. The charm of the Traysomians had captivated me from the first. Then the preparations for an elaborate tribal funeral had engaged my attention. So I had instructed my companions to have the ship wait for me and I would swim out later.
It was the funeral for an old Traysomian woman. I later learned that she had been the wise old woman of the tribe for many years. It was plain that all the people had great affection for her.
Even the Traysomian outcasts, who dwelt across the Lakawog river, gathered in little groups close to the river’s edge to pay tribute.
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Fires burned at each end of the crude wooden coffin. Red sparks rose into the black midnight sky. The solemn faces of the tribesmen, circled around the fires, glowed darkly.
I sat in the outer circle. A young native Whispered to me from time to time, trying in his friendly way to explain the ceremony to me. Many of his words were almost perfect English. Although my companions and I had been unable to trace the racial ancestry of these golden-skinned primitives, obviously their paths had crossed with those of English-speaking peoples.
Through the long night we sat there on the mile-wide beach. To one side of us was the mouth of the Lakawog river, with its little groups of outcasts huddled by their own fires on the farther bank. Around us was the Traysomian village. Its neat little bamboo cottages tucked in among the midnight blackness of the forest flickered with little grilles of reflected light whenever our fires blazed high.
From time to time certain native men would add small bundles of julgor twigs to the flaming heaps. Gradually the rude coffin and the corpse within it burned away.
“The wind is right,” the friendly Traysomian whispered to me. He indicated that the smokes were blowing toward the center of the island. He made certain explanations of why this was right, but his talk went outside the bounds of my vocabulary. Besides, by this time my eyes had fallen upon the lovely girl.
Such a strange charm came over me.
I can scarcely describe it. Above the low half-muffled noises of the burning twigs I could hear the voices of the women—priestesses, as I later learned—who made up the inner circle around the fires. They kept up a long musical murmur—and such dreamy voices! On and on these soft-spoken recitations continued, seeming to blend with the magic of the tropical night.
Gradually most of the tribesmen closed their eyes.
But the girl I watched showed no signs of drowsiness.
Her dark liquid eyes seemed to be as alert as the rising sparks that she watched. She scarcely moved, and yet she appeared to be on the verge of action, like a bird caught by a camera as it takes to wing. The flickering light was full on her uptilted face and throat. The wind played through the shower of blue-black hair that draped her shoulder. She was clothed in a simple native dress that clung closely about her full breasts and her lithe shapely body.
Now, as one by one the natives fell asleep, the girl’s manner became all the more alert. She rose to her feet slowly, almost stealthily. Her eyes roved over the sleeping throng. For an instant I felt her gaze linger upon me. Her look of suspicion was disturbing. I knew instinctively that, whatever her plan, it was not a part of the regular funeral ritual. I pretended to fall asleep.
The girl hurried away. She ran. She was out of sight. She had disappeared in the direction of the silent glassy sea.
The faintest gray of dawn was upon the water’s surface. I could make out a dim outline of my ship on the right horizon. Far to the left I thought I could see traces of waves out into the mirror-smooth surface—the wake of a canoe, perhaps. Or a swimmer.
I ran to the water’s edge. Half a mile out in the vast expanse of gray the girl was swimming. Her course pointed to nothing but the endless ocean. There was no time to look for a boat. I shook out of my surplus clothes and plunged.
It must have been all of an hour later, judging by the rising sun, that I struggled back toward shore dragging the half-drowned beautiful girl with me.
Several Traysomians were on the bank by this time, chattering excitedly. They sent a canoe out to meet us.
“Looma! Looma!” the men in the canoe cried. They drew her in. They made me get iH also. We rowed back to shore. All the way Looma was silent. And to my surprise the men did not demand any explanations. I could not understand this at the time, for I had not yet heard of “vling-gaff”, the taboo. It seemed to me that the girl’s strange conduct would surely get her into a tangle.
“Looma! Looma!” the women called excitedly as soon as we were within hearing. “You are alive, Looma!”
The canoe drew up to the beach. Looma took a deep breath as if summoning her energies. She rose and stepped forth gracefully.
“I have come back,” she said. Those simple low-spoken words were all. She brushed the water from her hair and eyelashes, smiled and walked away.
A few girls followed after her to escort her to her home. Most of the crowd stood gazing as if baffled by what had happened. One nervous impetuous young native boy came running up and blurted his curiosity aloud.
“What made her do it? Did she want to drown herself?”
“Vling-gaff!”
A dozen persons must have gasped the word at once. The effect was like an electric bolt. Fright shot through the boy’s face. He cupped his hands over his mouth. He bowed his head. Slowly he walked away.
The people stood almost like statues, watching the retreating figure. Not until the boy had reached the mouth of the Lakawog river, plunged in, and swum across to the other side to join the outcasts did these people relax.
This boy, as I later learned, had impulsively crashed through the strictest Traysomian taboo. His tongue-slip had implied that Looma had been afraid of something and had sought to escape that something by drowning herself. Such a charge cannot be uttered aloud in Traysomia. The taboo of vling-gaff bans all mention of fear or weakness or defeat.
“But the girl’s own actions—” I protested, when a friendly Traysomian tried to explain this matter to me, “—the fact that she was deliberately swimming to her death—doesn’t that prove that she—”
“Vling-gaff!”
The friend cut me off so sharply that I never again tried to argue the matter. And gradually I saw that this taboo was a wonderfully effective scheme.
In fact, I bumped into the thing again that very day. The instance was so slight as to scarcely deserve attention; nevertheless it illustrates how all-inclusive this silence taboo is.
I had eaten something that did not agree with me. I started to tell the native who had served my meal that my stomach wasn’t equal to the demands of these exotic native foods. On the instant he had replied, “Vling-gaff!”
Very well, I said to myself, vling-gaff! After all, why should I admit this weakness? Henceforth I would follow the footsteps of the Traysomians and enshroud my failures, small or great, in silence.
Again, I felt a growing warmth for the taboo when I learned that all those outcasts who had taken up their abodes on the other side of the mouth of the river had gone there voluntarily, and that they would voluntarily return when they felt that the shame of their broken silence had worn off. The boy who had blurted the words about Looma swam back to the village side of the river, I recall, some ten or twelve days later.
For two days my ship waited for me, sending a boat for me periodically. By this time I had been completely captivated by the charm of these peaceful primitive people and had decided to stay. My seafaring companions would not accept my decision. I commanded them to sail on. They insisted that they would wait a few more hours.
“We expect favorable winds by afternoon,” they warned me, on the third morning of my stay.
“Take advantage of them, by all means,” I replied.
“If you change your mind, signal us with a white flag. Otherwise, we’ll take you at your word.” They rowed back to the ship.
I breathed deeply of the highly scented tropical air. I seemed to have fallen into the life of a prince. The Traysomians had established me in a luxurious bamboo house with ornamental furnishings. The neighboring families brought me foods. One by one, each of the older and more important men and women of the tribe came to me and expressed gratitude for my rescue of Looma.
A very dear girl was Looma, they said. Looma was a girl born to a destiny. The tribe was rich, indeed, to have such a girl as Looma.
To me, all these extravagant comments were no more than fair and honest appreciation of Looma. Never, of course, was any mention made of her having voluntarily embarked upon an endless swim.
“We welcome you to li
ve with us as long as the seasons come and go,” one of the leading matriarchs of the village told me. This, I realized, was official. It was the elderly women, not the men, who governed this society.
“You shall be one of us, if you will so honor us,” said another influential tribeswoman. “Perhaps you will marry among us.”
I returned the matriarch’s courteous bow, and she turned and walked away. My eyes swept across the wide panorama. A soft breeze swayed the lacy tropical ferns along the line that curved from the forest-tops down to the beach. Peaceful golden-skinned Traysomians played on that beach. Their dark hair fluffed in the rising winds. Far out on the waters my ship was setting sail.
I could see someone on the bow waving a signal flag.
For a moment a little flurry of panic shot through me. I felt a sharp impulse to answer that signal. I started to rise—
Then I dropped back into the comfortable lounge-chair within the shade of the tropical foliage that graced my front porch. Looma was coming toward me.
A faint smile was on the beautiful girl’s lips. She sauntered into my presence with the easy grace of self-confidence. I had not seen her, I was poignantly aware, since the morning of her swim. I had never talked with her.
And yet she approached me as if she were an old friend.
In her hand she carried a comb of highly polished shell.
“I bring you a gift,” she said softly. Then, as if to illustrate the purpose of the article, she began to comb my hair. I was entertained, to say the least, by her efforts to untangle my matted locks. But before she got through I began to suspect there were not so many tangles as she was pretending.
My ship sailed out of sight. I smiled. The words of one of the old matriarchs echoed in my mind. “You shall be one of us . . . Perhaps you shall marry among us.”
CHAPTER II
Traysomian Wedding
