The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  It was nearly dark, and I had been on the point of turning on my lights. I thought better of it.

  I parked on the shoulder until a car came along from my rear. When it got to the barricade the men stopped it and all gathered around to take a look. While they searched under cushions for hidden Venusians, I cut around them.

  I heard a screech of surprise from one of the state police as I went around. I looked back. My rear wheel had evidently hit a mud puddle and thrown a spray of water on the fellow. He whirled as if he wanted to shoot someone. But he didn’t see anybody. The last glimpse I had of the group, they were pondering over some tracks along the shoulder. Already they were miles behind me.

  At last I dared turn on my lights, and traveling was much simpler. The other cars gave me plenty of berth. Now and then I had to run another barricade, and I knew the tavern proprietor had put in a good word for me to the police.

  I wondered if he believed I was heading for New York. I had mentioned New York to throw him off the track. I supposed he would jump to the conclusion that I was heading for San Francisco. But maybe he was smarter than I had given him credit for. I sped on toward New York.

  All along I continued to wonder what progress the other invisible cars were making. The last I had seen of them, you remember, was when they first slid away from the smash-up ahead of me. I had seen the men leap into action on the instant, start the cars rolling, pull their all-around windshields closed (which caused them to become invisible) and that was all.

  I was caught between two constant worries—that I might run into them, and that I might not. I assumed that they were keeping in formation so as not to smash each other up. I knew they didn’t dare use radios, for fear of giving themselves away. How in blazes was I going to fall into the invisible parade without smashing some more telltale spots into view?

  The only answer I could come to was to keep heading toward New York—toward the Spaceport Suburb. I had seen a newspaper back at the tavern and had checked my deadline. I had until tomorrow noon. Well, with any kind of luck, I could make it—easy.

  My lights caught sight of a hitchhiker up the road. I stopped, backed up, and took him in. He was about four-thirds drunk. And thirsty. Very thirsty.

  I kept the windshield open and gradually the fresh air began to have an effect on him. He showed signs of becoming talkative. I wanted some information on a few general topics and I began to quiz him.

  He did pretty well on the weather.

  He gave me a fair round on unimportant politics. But when I brought the conversation around to matters of specific fact, he was no help at all.

  “Didn’t you even know that America was shipping ten billion in gold to Mars tomorrow?” I said.

  “Never heard of it,” he answered. “What’s your favorite drink?”

  “Have you ever been to the Spaceport Suburb outside New York?” I said. “Have you ever seen any maps of it—or pictures? Can’t you tell me something about how it’s laid out?”

  He shrugged. “That’s outa my line. Which you like better, Martian wine or Jupiter gin? Me—I’ll take Jupiter gin.”

  We stopped at the edge of a one-horse town. Jupiter-gin had sobered down enough that I trusted him with an errand. Late as it was, one general store was still open. I gave Jupiter-gin some good American bills and in a moment he came back with the goods: a white broadcloth shirt, a pair of scissors, and a sheet to throw around my neck while he cut my hair; and a stock of bottled goods.

  I drove and he cut.

  He could hardly wait till I gave him the go-ahead on the bottled goods. But I was firm with him. Not until he had sheared by head thoroughly did I relax my disciplinary measures.

  Then I slowed up almost to a stop, rolled out on the soft shoulder, and carefully dropped the sheet full of bottled goods. My hitchhiker was out with a bound. I left him there in the darkness. I calculated that there were enough spiritual blessings to keep him soused for ten days.

  I put my foot down on the throttle and held it there. The hours from midnight to dawn went by in no time.

  I had to backtrack ten miles or so to pick up the two boys with the air rifles. They were the first persons I saw by the dawn’s early light, and it took me ten miles to realize that they were just the company I needed. Old Jupiter-gin hadn’t known a thing about space travel, but these two twelve-year-olds would know everything.

  Before picking them up I changed to my white broadcloth shirt and took pains to brush all the scraps of hair out of the car. Then I rolled up to within a few feet of them, parked, got out, and started hiking along with them. “Want a ride, boys?”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Back there by the road. You can’t see it very well from here. Come on. I’ll take you for a ride.”

  The freckled-faced boy gave me the suspicious eye. I don’t think he liked my hair cut.

  “Where you going?” he asked.

  “To New York—to the Spaceport Suburb,” I said, “to watch a big ship take off.”

  The boys’ eyes grew big. Freckles was cautious, but Shorty was eager from the word go. It was only a five minutes’ job to talk them into it. Right away the three of us were shooting silently down the road. The boys were so thrilled over the magic carpet effect of the invisible car that all their words were gasps. We slipped over most of two states before I got them calmed down.

  By that time we had run through some rain and got the car pretty badly spattered with mud, and everyone we passed craned at us. No doubt they wondered what sort of apparition we were. We stopped off the road by a pond and got a view of our car from the outside—and no wonder people craned. It looked as if a lot of mud had frozen against the sides of a car and the car had driven away from it, leaving the spatterings of mud hanging in mid-air.

  We gave the car a swift thorough washjob. The sun had come out to stay and we had run out of the rain belt, so we washed the thing back to invisibility and went on our way.

  “When we get to New York, boys,” I said, “we’ll see one of the biggest freighters that ever hippity-hopped among the planets.”

  “It’s got a capacity of twelve thousand tons,” said Freckles.

  “And a cruising range equal to the orbit of Neptune,” said Shorty.

  “Say, you boys are okay,” I said. “You probably know all about this trip it’s going to make.”

  “Sure, we’ve read all about it,” said Freckles.

  “Do you think,” I asked, “that there’ll be many people down to watch it take off?”

  “Gosh, didn’t you know, they’re having a big celebration at noon today! There’ll probably be thousands of people on hand to watch them load in the gold.”

  “Gold?” I asked innocently.

  “Gee, mister, you don’t know nothing, do you?” said Shorty.

  “Ten billions,” said Freckles. “The newspapers have been full of it. It’s the gold that America is sending to Mars to pay for the land she took up there. Everybody knows that.”

  “Well, well,” I said. “Well, well, well.”

  We drove along in silence for awhile, and I felt that the boys were studying me with curiosity. I changed the subject.

  “Say, fellows, wouldn’t that gold be a nice little dish for bandits?”

  The boys laughed at this. It struck them as funny that any bandits should be so foolhardy as to think that they could get away with a heavily guarded job like this.

  Then we stopped at the edge of a city and picked up a newspaper and an outrageously large supply of shot for the boys’ air rifles. Again we sheltered ourselves within our walls of invisibility and traveled on.

  The story was in the paper, all right.

  The boys discovered it, and they reread it to me three or four times, and I’ll admit the chills raced through me wildly. I had bought the paper to make certain the story wasn’t there—but evidently old Jupiter-gin had found someone to talk to before he knocked himself out with drink.

  “Although partially intoxicated.
” the story read, “he was able to give a logical account of the facts. He was certain that the man who picked him up wore a blue silk shirt and had an abundance of yellow hair of the sort that is called ‘Venusian.’ The man had him buy a shirt and forced him to administer a thorough hair cut to the yellow locks. In proof of the latter, scraps of the hair were still clinging to the sheet which the narrator had in his possession. The obvious conclusion is that one of the Venusians, wanted by the police on suspicion of a malicious plot, has escaped the trap of the Rocky Mountain state police and is heading eastward.”

  I glanced at the boys and saw the look of frightened desperation in their faces. They whispered to each other. Then Freckles spoke up.

  “Mister, you can let us out right here.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I promised to take you to the Spaceport Suburb and get you back home again. I’m a man of my word.”

  “Right here,” said Shorty, “will be okay.”

  “Now don’t go and get jittery,” I said. “You boys haven’t anything to be afraid of. What’s the matter? Scared of a little adventure?”

  “We’re not scared,” said Shorty, “but we don’t want to get into a jam with the police.”

  “We don’t want to spend our lives in jail,” Freckles said, and every freckle was standing out on his white face.

  “Listen, men,” I said. “Let me worry about that end of it—” and then and there I took them into my confidence. I had to make a pretty big story of it so that they would understand; and by the time I got through we were almost at our destination.

  We were a pretty tense trio. The last two states we had crossed had been alive with highway patrols. We had to do some tall dodging and squirming to get through.

  “So there you’ve got it,” I concluded my story, and I knew my eyes were blazing from the way those two boys watched me. “Keep your mouths shut and do exactly as I told you. Don’t tell anybody anything. I don’t want to see you trip up and get in trouble. This thing has got to go through like clockwork. Do you get me?”

  “But what if you get killed?” Freckles protested.

  “That makes no difference,” I said. But his question made a noticeable difference in the pit of my stomach. And Shorty’s comment didn’t help.

  “You probably will get killed,” Shorty said, his eyes shining dangerously. “Anyway, it begins to look like it to me.”

  Yes, and to me. The nearer we got to the great metropolitan spaceport the more ominous signs of trouble we saw. State police were stationed at frequent intervals. Motorcycle cops were on the alert at every crossroads village. Nothing but an invisible car could have slid through the way we did.

  And we held our breath, you can bet, every time we shot past a bunch of them wide open.

  But it was plain as day that those cops weren’t out to stop anything invisible. Maybe they were combing the highways on the suspicion that the mysterious Venusian gang was heading for the gold-ship take-off. Maybe they were simply guarding the spaceport region on general principles, stopping everyone that looked suspicious.

  Anyway, none of the highway patrols had taken the trouble to string any ropes across the roads; so it was a cinch that they didn’t know there was an invisible motorcade on the way. Zang! What a chance that old Jupiter-gin had been too stewed to know he had ridden in an invisible car! He’d have spilled the beans sure!

  Zang! All three of us gasped at once. Shooting over the crest of a hill we saw it before us—the Spaceport Suburb. And was it alive! It was teeming with cars and people and colored banners like an interplanetary holiday.

  Two big objects loomed up across that vast stretch of green plain to the left of the village. The biggest one was the freighter—the hugest space ship I had ever seen. It looked like a colossal streamlined lizard all set to leap into the skies.

  The smaller blotch on the landscape was the stadium. It was sizeable enough, as stadiums go; but the space ship dwarfed it.

  It was a U-shaped stadium with its open side toward the poised ship; and what a crowd it held! The ceremony must already be on, full blast.

  “How come they’ve started so early?” I muttered. I had hoped to have time to spare.

  “We’re in the Eastern time belt, you know,” said Freckles.

  Zang! I had forgot all about that cussed change in time. My watch was loafing along two hours behind schedule. It must be high noon—fifteen after, to be precise.

  “Zang!” I blurted. “That boat might charge off before we get there! Check over your rifles, fellows.”

  I opened an end of the all-around windshield and they each fired a few shots. Clever little guns, those thirtieth century air rifles. Pneumatic B-B guns, you might call them. They were nothing but high-powered toys, but they carried an automatic mechanism that fired two hundred B-B’s per minute.

  We cut around the village and headed straight for the stadium. There were lots of people to dodge, but most of the crowd was packed in the stadium. Surrounding the grounds were little clumps of uniformed guards stationed at twenty-yard intervals. Nothing visible was getting by them. We squeezed through and moved straight for the open U of the stadium. From then on I practically ceased to breath.

  Plainly no Venusians had invaded the ship as yet. Guards stood in its big open doorway.

  One bit of luck was with us. The take-off was a free public ceremony. The ushers hadn’t bothered to shut up the peep-holes at the base of the stadium.

  “There’s your spot, boys!” I said. “Slip under the stadium and nab one of those little open windows. If you can find any old boxes, build a little screen around yourselves to make sure no one sees you. Then go to work. Have you got it?”

  “We’ve got it!”

  “Good-by, boys.”

  “Good-by.”

  Again I was alone in the invisible car. I was taking what would probably be my next-to-last ride, in the presence of several thousand people—and none of them saw me. I wondered, morbidly, if anyone would bother to see me when I took that last ride. Or do the Earth funeral cars have windows? Well, all of that would be the least of my worries within a few minutes.

  The close-cropped grass of the stadium floor was in my favor. I watched it press under the front wheels as I rolled along. The action was scarcely noticeable. Still, I realized, anything will be noticed sooner or later if there are several thousand eyes looking on. Even those little postage-stamp spots on my front and rear bumpers. Terror shot through me.

  My eyes swept the scene apprehensively. The big speech of the occasion was evidently on. From a small platform planted in the center of the stadium, the orator shouted vigorous patriotic platitudes into the microphone. From time to time the stadium came back at him with a thundering cheer.

  Now and then he turned to his fellow dignitaries on the little platform to heap his praise upon them. Occasionally he would make a sweeping gesture toward the mammoth ship.

  But his most thrilling gestures were the ones he made toward the three big armored trucks parked squarely in front of his speaker’s platform. You can’t stand up and toss gestures at ten billion dollars without stirring up a little excitement. My blood pounded so fast I was afraid I would jolt the steering wheel into visibility.

  Well, there it was—the crowd, the gold, the speaker and his pals, and the wide open spaces beyond the open U of the stadium where a big runway, wide enough for the trucks to drive up, had been built right up to the vast yawning freight door of the space ship. In that open door stood the starchy crew of the boat.

  There, I repeat was the picture. But I didn’t forget that that was simply the visible picture. If the invisible could have been seen, how much more would there have been to the picture?

  Me, at least. And maybe others? I wasted no time trying to answer that question. I drove around. I circled the platform and the gold trucks a dozen times. I cruised in and out of the open spaces. If the speech lasted long enough, I was going to bump my way through every square foot of space that might contain other
invisible cars.

  My search was brought to a sudden halt by a roar of applause that indicated the end of the speech. Someone else made an announcement and the affair turned into a pageant. Down the runway from the freighter the starchy uniformed men came marching. In a few minutes they were to parade back to the ship with the gold trucks.

  I held my breath. I saw little tufts of grass jumping from near the foot of the inclined runway. Some police noticed it too, and they started over in that direction. Then it stopped, and so did the police.

  The dignified march came down the incline steadily and with great dignity, and I knew from the announcement that these officers, guards and crew were picked men who were being assigned the great honor of transporting the gold to Mars. There were not more than forty of them.

  Not so many, in other words, but what ten or twelve skillful interplanetary bandits might handle them if they worked it right. Working it right consisted of getting into that space ship this instant—by means of invisible cars.

  A split second after the parade trailed away from the inclined runway on its march toward the speaker’s platform, I shot ahead. I zipped onto that runway like an invisible torpedo. Up to the ship I sped.

  I cut through the open door with the feeling that I was being swallowed up by some great monster with a stomach as big as an auditorium. This was the big open freight room, nearly half full of cargo. Bandits could make good use of that, too. I flashed on my lights, gripped the wheel, and shot back and forth across the big room.[*]

  In ten seconds I must have cut across the room ten times. Every instant I expected to be blown to bits by some guards left concealed in some of the dark corners. Constantly I expected to bump into some invisible obstacles.

  All right, they weren’t there! That precaution was taken. If they didn’t come within the next few minutes, their chance was gone.

  I cut off my lights. My invisible car spun around and leaped out through the big open door. Down the inclined runway I chased—

  There it comes! And fast! Car number one of the invisible motorcade! Yes, I saw it! I saw the curved all-around windshield melt into visibility before my eyes. I glimpsed the Venusian faces, the bushy yellow hair—