The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  They had strapped their luggage on the back of a huge grasshopper, an obedient old beast that Xandibaum talked to like an intelligent horse. It clattered off ahead of them through the black sky. Now and then they would overtake it, Xandibaum would wake it up and give it another direction for the next leg of the journey.

  They avoided the forests as much as possible. The forests were sure to hold numerous Trapdoor Monsters that had not taken to the rigid life of conquered cities.

  “If we can get through to higher altitudes,” Xandibaum said, “well have a chance to survive. It’s a thin chance, at best, but now it’s our only chance.”

  “How soon do you think we’ll have pursuers on the trail?”

  “As soon as those two dead inspectors are missed. Six-six-six, one of the brainist of the monsters, will put two and two together. The two dead guards out on the boundary, and a third—myself—missing! Right away someone—some monster, that is—will be dispatched to investigate my living quarters.”

  “What if they can’t get in? You locked all the extra doors, I remember.” Vincent was thinking of that wonderful supply of scientific equipment for the manufacture of synthetic foods and clothing. He also thought of the scientist’s manuscripts, his diary, his power-driven spider shells that had given him such a perfect disguise.

  “Of course I put on every possible lock—in the last eight years one of my specialties had been to devise safeguards for my properties. But I’ll be lucky if any of that stuff is spared. As soon as Six-six-six gets suspicious he’ll have the place blasted.” Vincent considered this. It struck him hard to realize what a fiasco this adventure had become. And yet the whole failure hung upon that slight chance—that inspection had happened to come while Xandibaum was away.

  On the other hand, if Xandibaum hadn’t been away—that is, if he hadn’t chanced to be on guard duty out on the north boundary of that countryside, where the time chain came down, what would have happened to Vincent’s party?

  Considering Lindova’s swift fate, the answer to that question was only too apparent. That three of them were still alive and in the care of Xandibaum was after all more than average luck.

  They trudged along silently. Vincent’s conversation with Xandibaum had been relayed to the others, and it gave them all food for thought. And cause for added fears. The two non-English-speaking members of the party could not help wondering about this man Xandibaum.

  Did Xandibaum hate them for coming? Had they intruded with less welcome than Vincent had once intruded upon the life of the Cro-Magnon? It was plain that they had upset Xandibaum’s well regulated captive life. Unless he could appreciate the vision that had brought them here, Xandibaum had reason to hate them.

  Now the grade was getting steep along the mountainous foothills. They stopped to rest Dawn was showing gray and pink across to their left, as they looked back over their course. Xandibaum pointed back to certain topological landmarks.

  “There is where you arrived. That is a territorial boundary, where I was standing guard. And it is the spot where the equinox of this age brings the time chain.”

  Now for the first time since his brief words at the beginning of their flight, the warmth of fellowship came into Xandibaum’s voice.

  “We’ve been too hurried for me to tell you before,” he said, “but I appreciate from the bottom of my heart your coming. Do you realize that this courageous thing you have done gives me a hope I haven’t had for eight years? You’ve brought the time chain up with you. It gives us all a chance to—”

  Xandibaum’s words trailed off into silence and in the grey of dawn Vincent saw that his sharp-lined old face gathered tenseness.

  “Yes, I understand,” Vincent commented. “If we can hold out for six months—”

  “S-s-s-sh!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  All voices cut down to a whisper. At a wave of the hand Xandibaum silenced them. Then they heard.

  “It’s people!” Penzi gasped to Hunzk.

  From far down the dopes the little voices came. They were cheerful and musical and thoroughly indistinguishable. Vincent was aware at once that they were coming closer. He would have sworn that they were human voices.

  “Human, nothing! That’s the Trapdoor Monster’s cunning imitation,” Xandibaum snapped, “We’re being pursued. Come on!”

  They ran for half a mile along the rugged terrain. At present they dare not change their course, because there was the grasshopper and his load of baggage to be considered.

  “Can—can we outrun them?” Penzi demanded breathlessly, and Vincent knew that she was good for a swifter pace. But Xandibaum was flagging.

  Xandibaum’s interpreted answer was that the monsters could cover ground two to three times as fast as a person.

  “Our one chance to shake them off our trail is the grasshopper. He’ll be waiting on this next knoll.”

  The voices were still a mile or two down the slope when Xandibaum waked up “Grundy.” He removed a good share of the baggage, placed Vincent astride, and got on with him. It couldn’t be ladies first this time, he said briefly. He would come back for Hunzk and Penzi soon. Vincent must learn to handle a grasshopper like a riding horse. In the coming six months they must all learn. . .

  Vincent dug his legs down beneath Grundy’s folded wings. Xandibaum, seated ahead of him, barked a command. The giant grasshopper took a running start, sprang into the air and clattered away.

  Vincent looked back and tossed a reassuring wave to Penzi. The scissors grip of his legs slipped. He almost fell! He bent to the grasshopper’s back, grabbing with arms and legs for dear life—and held tight. No broncho rider at the rodeo ever had a wilder ride than this!

  CHAPTER XI

  Battle of Bolts and Fangs

  In a matter of thirty minutes faithful Grundy had succeeded in transferring all passengers and baggage to a point several miles from the pursuers’ voices. There was a moment to breathe and eat and drink.

  They were by a stream now. Xandibaum feared that the pursuers had picked up the trail by means of smell, so he had deliberately sought a stream. It meant a loss of time in their ascent up the mountainsides, and a further risk of running into the habitats of outlying spiders.

  “Those are the chances we have to take,” Xandibaum declared as the party waded downstream. “Those monsters will avoid the high altitudes if they can. But if they’re on a direct trail they’ll follow even at a sacrifice.”

  “We’ve got to hold on for six months,” Vincent said grimly; and his remark brought a quick searching glance from the old sharp-faced scientist.

  “That’s the very point,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Arid frankly, now that we’ve been driven out of my old stamping ground, I’m out of any territory. I only know this region from my study of man’s maps. I don’t know how the monster spiders’ settlements may be distributed. But this I know: If we can shake our pursuers off last night’s scent and locate in a high altitude away from any beaten trails, we can live for six months on herbs, if necessary, and they’ll never find us.”

  The water swirled around their legs and little blobs of melting snow floated past them. Somewhere up this swift rocky stream were headwaters fed by glaciers. Long before that elevation would be reached, this party would find a comfortable altitude just chilly enough to stiffen the body of any Trapdoor Monster into sluggishness.

  Xandibaum led the way out of the stream. Grundy the grasshopper listened alertly as his master barked orders to him. The beast bent down for loading—but suddenly he jumped up with a sharp sniff at the air.

  “Get down there! What’s the matter with you—”

  Xandibaum’s sharp worry lines deepened. He turned and passed critical eyes over the mossy river banks, the patch of open meadow, the forest that bounded it.

  “We’d better get out of here! Grundy smells salt. It might be—Here, Grundy, I’ll give you some salt.”

  Vincent saw that the scientist carried a small box for emergencies of
this kind. Salt to Grundy was as indispensable as food to a hungry man. When a salt smell in the air caught Grundy at low ebb, he was uncontrollable until his need had been supplied.

  Penzi was first to see the monster spider. She shrieked, then stifled her cry. Her arm went out rigid, pointing, trying to say what her lips couldn’t.

  It was coming across the river. Not down the river, as they had come. There was no chance that it was one of the pursuers. There was a remote chance that it was a guard, or a new pursuer, who had been informed by a radiophone or other communication line.

  It was hopping nimbly from stone to stone. It had not seen them!

  It would not see them!

  Xandibaum hurled a death bolt—a miniature hand-bomb no larger than a walnut. It struck. It was almost noiseless. Simply a pooof!

  The monster spidfer hurdled, fell with twitching legs, floated away on the water stone-dead.

  “There’ll be others!” Xandibaum gasped, and he was right. Five of them came into view. The first started nimbly across the river, tripping lightly from stone to stone. It stopped, looked about. The others gathered back of it. The five of them were looking for their dead brother. What they must have seen was Xandibaum.

  In the past five seconds Xandibaum had whispered quick orders and established his party in a position of temporary defense. Grundy, chewing on a mouthful of salt, had obediently crouched within the protection of a long jutting rock almost as large as himself. Back of him were the four of them, taking advantage of the animal’s protective coloration.

  Vincent, Penzi, and Hunzk watched through a transparent tip of a folded wing. Xandibaum held a position where his arms were free.

  He hurled three death bolts. The spiders scattered and fell. Only one of the five succeeded in getting back to the opposite bank, and there he fell.

  “Will there be more?” Vincent gasped, and Hunzk muttered in Cro-Magnon, “Let them come!”

  Hunzk was gripping his poison-tipped spear, ready and eager. He wore a bundle of spears on his back—he had refused to let them be packed in with the luggage Grundy bore.

  Vincent, clutching Penzi’s hand, trying to press the terror away with confidence and courage. He nodded his head toward Hunzk, and Penzi saw what Vincent meant her to see: Hunzk the fighter!

  It was good to see, somehow, in that terrifying minute when they were all four aware that a swarm of death might be closing in upon them. It was good to see Hunzk, crouched, tense, strong of body and keen of wit, hungry for a chance to fly into the merciless monsters that killed by stealth. That terrible blow Hunzk had taken—back there in the underground habitat at the edge of a monster’s city—had not bled the spirit from him. It had keyed him up to struggle—to the last ounce of his blood—

  It was inspiring, thought Vincent, and at the same time sickening. If this skirmish of four humans against unknown millions of monsters should be man’s last stand against the insects, Vincent hoped that Hunzk would be the last man to go down.

  Xandibaum passed out handfuls of death bolts.

  “Save your spears,” he ordered. “If it comes to hand-to-hand fighting you’ll need them.”

  Now they came, a score of them—and more. They seeped out from between the trees along the opposite bank of the river until the ground was fairly alive with spidery arms and legs and dark crusty bodies. Some were upright, others crouched low.

  “We’ve got ammunition enough to kill fifty or sixty,” Xandibaum cracked. “If they swarm in greater numbers than that we’ve only one thing to do. Strip the baggage from the grasshopper and all get astride. If Grundy can take off we’re safe. If not, man’s days are over.”

  The Trapdoor Monsters were huddling on the opposite bank, keeping out of range, evidently holding a last minute conference.

  “How many do you estimate?” Vincent asked.

  “Too many . . . Eighty . . . Maybe a hundred.”

  The Cro-Magnon voice broke in. “Why don’t we throw?”

  “If he can throw that far,” Xandibaum said eagerly to Vincent, “tell him to go ahead and make it good!

  Hunzk had his own ideas. If the swarm of monsters was out of range, it wouldn’t be in a moment. He sprang up and dashed into the shallow river. A third of the way across he began throwing.

  The first few pooofs scattered the swarm into a raging, chattering chaos. A dozen or more monsters fell lifeless. The others leaped over them and spread out along the river’s edge like an advancing line of soldiers.

  And then they came—fast!

  And Vincent and Penzi and Xandibaum threw death bolts like mad.

  “Come back!” Vincent cried at Hunzk. The Cro-Magnon’s muscular arm worked with the speed and accuracy of a machine. Every monster that rushed at him became another stone in the dam of stumbling blocks around him,

  “Come back!” Vincent cried again. He was afraid of his own aim, with Hunzk so far advanced.

  Hunzk came back—his ammunition was exhausted. Twice on his retreat he thrust a spear that counted. Then two other monsters were on him—almost. His spear jabbed deep into one of them. He wrenched at it. It broke. The other monster pounced down with fangs ready.

  In that instant Vincent hurled a death bolt with all the speed his arm would carry. He watched it fly from his hands. His eyes tried to turn away. He could not stand to see where that missile might strike.

  Then he saw Hunzk running back, and the monster slipped into the water, bumped against a heap of bodies and tangled black legs, and floated down the river.

  Again the four of them were fighting side by side, and their grasshopper was staying with them. Together they retreated across the clearing. The spiders came on, but less aggressively. It was almost certain death for any of them to get within range of Hunzk’s arm.

  “Keep back, Grundy!” Xandibaum muttered. “We’re going to need you.”

  The spiders distributed themselves widely. They were forming a circle.

  “It looks like this is the size of it,” said Vincent.

  “They’re stymied,” said Xandibaum. “They’re not going to get any closer—Look! There goes a party of them back across the river. I know one of those monsters!”

  Vincent saw the group of five beating a swift retreat. There was something distinctive about the appearance of the one in the center—it had the same look of cruel, merciless destructive intelligence as the others, but in a more pronounced degree.

  “I’ll know that middle one if I see him again.”

  “That’s Six-six-six,” said Xandibaum. “I wonder what he’s doing here. He’s the master of one of the cities, the one we—” Xandibaum’s face grew tighter. “He has a home somewhat apart from the city, I never knew where.”

  “We must have crashed it,” Vincent said.

  “It’s no doubt somewhere across the river, and they saw us fly in upstream. No wonder we had a hundred guards on us. Well, there’s one satisfaction. We’ve broken the backbone of that hundred, and before they can get reinforcements, Grundy will get us out of—”

  “Look!” Penzi cried. “They’re starting to make webs.”

  The thirty or forty monsters that had trailed out into a circle at the forest’s edge were busily weaving their white strands.

  Hunzk looked grave. He demanded to know what was happening.

  Xandibaum warned of trickery. “Between spears and ammunition, we’ve got the edge. In fact, if we work it right, we can watch our chances to get closer and pick them off, one at a time. But they can play the same game. In fact that’s probably what they’re up to. The thing we’ve got to do is keep watch on all sides of the circle. Otherwise one of them will slip in here silently while our backs are turned, and plant his fangs—Here come three!” The spurious attack from one side of the ring drew the three men into a moment of quick action. They each picked their victim, their shots went true.

  Then they whirled, and Hunzk saw, not fifteen feet beyond the grasshopper’s tail, another one.

  “How’d that one get
in?” Vincent yelled. The invader chased away, then flopped into a heap as the penetrating little blast of explosive overtook it.

  “Can you manage Grundy alone?” Xandibaum cracked at Vincent. “Get the girl on, ride out of here. Go straight north, as far as you can get in ten minutes. Then send Grundy back. He’ll know where to come.” The scientist began to strip the luggage off the grasshopper’s back.

  “Where is Penzi?” Vincent blurted. “Penzi! Where are you”

  Three men and their beast of flight cast their frantic eyes over the clearing. Across the smooth grassy meadow the spiders were industriously stringing their web—from the semicircle of tree trunks to the jutting rocks along the river’s edge. Within that circle no Penzi was to be seen!

  CHAPTER XII

  A Chance for Man?

  “I tell you there’s no use looking any A farther,” Xandibaum said finally. “We’ve done everything in the world that can be done. You’ll have to give her up, Vincent.”

  And in his soft Cro-Magnon tongue Hunzk pronounced the same verdict. “Their cunning has won, Ponpo. They killed her with their lightning poison. They raced away with her body before we had time to turn and see. They—”

  Vincent was not listening. He would not believe it anyway. He was too stunned to do anything but tramp over the grassy meadow, searching—everlastingly searching.

  The battle had ended at noon. Every last web-weaver that had not beaten a retreat across the river had paid with death.

  Now it was growing late. Xandibaum was listening sharply for the expected voices of an approaching body of reinforcements.

  The sun sank low, and the long shadows of the giant grasshopper lay in thin lines of blue across the grass.

  “Any further delay will make the tragedy complete,” said Xandibaum, taking Vincent by the arm. “I know you can’t give up easily. You think that there must be one of these trapdoor habitats here in this clearing. I think you are right, for she vanished too quickly to have been carried to the river or the forest. But we have searched in vain for a trapdoor—”