The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “I repeat, you horse-fish still have your rights. We’ll leave the girl out of this, because she’s a spiny-girl. And I’ll swear to her innocence. But you are entitled to a lije in exchange for those broken eggs.”

  The horse-fish waved their webbed hands like banners.

  “Yes,” Thork shouted, “I maintain you are entitled to kill the upper-world man who committed the crime!”

  Bill caught only half a glimpse of the pandemonium. He saw George Vinson try to reach the speaker’s platform. Windy Muff was helping him. And the scientist, like the other two, was shouting to the green sea-creatures to hold their places and listen.

  But Vin and his party were hurled back by a gang of horse-fish waving poison scorpion-fish in their faces. Bull’s-Eye, the friend of the lieutenant, was leading the gang.

  At the same moment other groups of horse-fish started chasing off in a dozen different directions.

  The spiny-men themselves jumped on the bandwagon that Thork had set in motion. Their shouts filled the air. “Bring him in!”

  “What can we lose!”

  “The horse-fish still have some rights!”

  “Anything to keep peace!”

  “Bring him in!”

  Bill caught his breath. Like arms of an explosion these creatures were shooting out in all directions. The frenzy of violence was on them. They were after him.

  At that instant Bea’s footsteps pounded past him, her hand swished across his shoulder.

  “Follow me, Bill!” she hissed.

  Together they bounded over the arched ledge to the eastward. They leaped a narrow gap. Bill had the dizzy sensation of flying over a hundred-foot drop, with bright light glowing up against his silhouetted bare feet and legs.

  Bea, only three paces ahead of him, was racing with confidence. She must have remembered these trails from childhood. The toss of her dark tresses showed that she was keeping an eye on the zig-zag trails. They were hardly a quarter of a mile away.

  But suddenly she stopped, flinging a hand back at Bill.

  The ledge ahead was blocked off. New seepage had cut off the trail since Bea, as a child, had traversed this narrow path.

  “Back!” she panted, bounding ahead of him. “Keep in the shadow!”

  But this time when they leaped over the narrow gap they heard an explosive outcry from somewhere below. The light had caught them.

  They ran like wildfire now. It was a race to the west end of the passage. There, Bill remembered, they’d be able to duck through the A-shaped entrance to the dark sea cavern.

  But as they chased down the incline toward the western end of the narrow ledge, they saw a cluster of webbed hands rise in their pathway. Six or seven horse-fish were scrambling up the narrow arched path carrying their poison weapons.

  “Back again!” Bea shouted. And as Bill tried to jerk a stone loose from the frozen wall, she cried, “No! Come on!”

  Then he was running at her side, heedless of the light. She gasped between breaths, “The fourth mound on the left, Bill . . . Can you make it . . . under water? Come on . . . Stay right with me!”

  They glanced back when they reached the point above the center of the river. The horse-fish were hurling their weapons like handgrenades. A poisonous lion-fish rolled in the stone dust near Bill’s bare feet, and its orange and black fins stiffened for action.

  “Together!” Bea panted.

  They dived. On the descent Bill gathered the confusion of sounds into his ears, aware that he was plunging from one danger to another. Gangs of horse-fish would see and rush back to the river. From the distance the slush-slush of the waterfall was growing stronger.

  Together they plunged under for the long under-water swim. Bea cut deep, and Bill followed. For two minutes they shot straight up the central channel.

  Now their ears caught the plunging of other divers. Bea forced a swifter pace. Then she suddenly plowed along an inclined channel bottom and rose. Bill followed her up through the darkness. He came up into air.

  The surrounding blackness of the mud mound was relieved only by a few narrow peepholes of light. Bill caught his breath and followed Bea down again.

  For five swift breathless underwater swims the chase went on. Each time they came up in the horse-fish houses for a breath they could see that their pursuers were gaining ground. They could see the panting gills, the blazing little magenta eyes and savage mouths skimming beneath the surface. Here and there they caught glimpses of webbed hands clutching specimens of poisonous sea-life.

  In the fifth empty mud hut they entered, Bea choked, “It’s over!”

  Bill heard a rush of water in the black entrance through which they had risen. The horse-fish would catch them this time. There would be no room to dart past a horse-fish in that under-water passage.

  But Bill sprang up, struck his husky shoulders against the baked-mud roof. It strained, cracked. The gash of light showed the noses of horse-fish scrambling up out of the inky liquid. Bill crashed the roof again and it crumbled in a mass of debris. But he and Bea were out and on the run.

  “Quick headwork!” Bea’s smile flashed at him from her dirt-smeared face. It was a grim smile, aware of the nearness of death, but there was courage in it.

  In the mad foot-race that followed, Bill and Bea gained over the horse-fish. They rounded the upper end of the merged cities, leaping inlets, dodging pools of imprisoned scorpion fish, passing small parties of creatures that were neither horse-fish nor spiny-men but something of both.

  At nearly every turn a new surprise party was awaiting them. Horse-fish were trying to close in from all directions.

  But not spiny-men. Somehow their explosive violence had become disorganized and they were doing more shouting than chasing. Bill understood. They were willing to catch him; but their discovery that their own Bea-Bea was helping him race to freedom had thrown them into confusion.

  Now Bea ran straight over the triple domes of the king’s mud palace and jumped to the edge of the zig-zagging ascent. Bill felt the mud roof break under his feet and he bounded after her. Then they were running side-by-side up the trail. Somewhere high above there was a patch of open sky. But nearer at hand there were parties of guards from both cities.

  Two hundred feet up they came to a dead stop. A semicircle of hardened guardsmen with strong human faces, slightly webbed hands, and spiny bare backs bobbed up out of the stone-wall barrier, marched forth to cut off the trail from both directions.

  The leader of the guards stepped over to a pink globe and inserted his head in the phone. Then he emerged and barked his orders.

  “Thork says we’re to hold Bea-Bea. As for the man, we’re to let the horse-fish guards have their own way with him.” The leader whistled a signal and twenty horse-fish, stationed a little farther up the trail, came bounding down over the rocks swinging loops of sea-weed rope.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Bill and Bea stood on the point of a hairpin turn, watching the semicircle of guards close their ranks. An opening was left for the horse-fish to gallop through, like a band of weird cowpunchers on a rampage.

  “Stay with me!”

  Once again Bea’s courageous whisper gave Bill his cue. Bea sprang over the edge of the trail and caught herself on a ledge twenty feet below. Then she was off again, on what seemed to be an uncharted road to sudden death. Bill followed on her heels.

  He followed without looking back, though the sea-weed ropes were swishing right back of him. Once a loop caught on his forehead and he barely ducked in time. If it had settled over his neck he’d have gone tumbling down the steep rocky wall, perhaps to hang himself.

  This was no marked trail. Bea was fighting to catch the least perilous handholds. In places the wall was like the face of a skyscraper.

  But every step brought them nearer to the bounding two-hundred foot waterfall. And now Bill guessed her strategy.

  “It’s our old dive, Bill!” Her eyes flashed at him. “This is where I learned it. Four swift death-leaps in successio
n.”

  Bill felt the spray of water on his bare chest and legs. Then he felt the snap of rope over his arm. The loop suddenly tightened on his wrist.

  He had an instant’s glimpse of the three horse-fish jerking the other end of the rope. They must have been mad to take such chances, standing on a four foot shelf.

  As they jerked, Bill dropped into the big rock basin where the vast fall of water was roaring in and out. One hand found a hold. The other was tending the rope. It gave, and he saw the three horse-fish fly out into space. Two of them slipped off and fell down—down—

  No one would hear them crush to pulp. The roar of the falls would drown that sound. But the hosts of creatures below would see. Their little faces were staring up—

  Jerk! The weight of the third horse-fish couldn’t have pulled the rope that hard. Bill struggled to free his wrist.

  Momentarily he released his handhold.

  “Careful, Bill!” Bea screamed. The horse-fish that had held on had swung, pendulum style, to wedge himself safely in a crevice. There he applied the leverage of his arms to the rope, and pulled Bill over.

  Bill saw too late. He skidded over the slippery edge of the basin and shot down with the fall.

  On the descent he barely succeeded in freeing himself of the rope. He straightened out with the falling water, fought toward what appeared to be the deepest point of the approaching pool. He struck it for a shallow dive—and was off again for the next waterfall descent.

  Then another—and a fourth.

  And before he had had time to catch his breath he was looking up from the boiling surface of the river to see Beatrice, with all her grace and beauty, plunge down the same succession of falls.

  She bobbed up beside him. They looked back at the mountainous wall where several horse-fish guards were perched. The little green figures showed no inclination to duplicate the series of dives. Then Bill and Bea turned to face the hosts of spiny-men on the riverbank. The crowds were cheering . . .

  “That’s for you,” Bill said. “Why don’t you go back to them and stay clear of my fate?”

  “Because I want to share your fate, Bill,” Bea swam close to him, reached out to grip his hand. “I knew as soon as they started after you that I was wrong—about trying to stay here and be loyal, I mean. I’d rather die with you—”

  The clamoring voices from the riverbank were demanding that they come. And though it was puzzling, the voices carried no tone of menace. The shouts were welcoming them, hailing them for their valiant escape, heaping honors upon them.

  Bill and Bea obeyed. But it was several minutes before they could understand the strange turn of events. They were made to sit down on comfortable mats and relax. And Bill found it impossible to relax with throngs of spiny-men and horse-fish crowding around.

  At first everyone talked at once, but soon the talking was left to Vin, with interpolations from Windy Muff.

  “I started it,” Windy said. “I figured it was time for me to do a little lyin’ to get you outa trouble. So I told the bunch that you wasn’t the one that busted into the eggs. It was Thork. I said I’d seen him with my own eyes, an’ you only went in afterwards to make sure he hadn’t got up in the top of the cylinder to bother Bea.”

  “And as we soon discovered,” said Vinson, “Windy’s guess was right. Yellow-Z discovered Thork’s foot-tracks in the egg-compartment. There was nothing for Thork to do but admit it.”

  “What happened to Thork?” Bill asked anxiously, catching the flicker of worry in Bea’s eyes.

  “We fought,” said Vin. “We’ve always been enemies—and rivals. When he found himself caught, he turned on me. Bull’s-Eye tried to help him, but it was a mistake, because Yellow-Z jumped in on my side.”

  Vinson paused to glance at the bruised fist of his webbed left hand.

  “That’s when you popped him,” said Windy.

  “Yes, I gave it to Thork and he took an unfortunate spill.”

  “Unfortunate?” said Bea.

  “He fell,” said Vin, “against the scorpion fish that Bull’s-Eye was trying to use on me. It got him. I think he’ll die before morning, in spate of the care they’re giving him.”

  There was a cool silence. Bill wondered what the horse-fish were thinking, after all the trouble Thork had made for them, and after all he had pretended to be the champion of their rights.

  “That ain’t all,” said Windy. “Here comes Yellow-Z and the king now.” While the aged white-haired old spiny-man approached, the throngs rose and waited respectfully.

  “You got a surprise comin’, Bea,” Windy whispered. “You see, when Thork fell an’ Bull’s-Eye was crouchin’ in the way, darned if the horse-fish’s slabbers didn’t stick the old boy right along the backbone.”

  “We saw it happen,” said Vin, “and it gave us an idea: If Thork’s inner sentiments were transferred to Bull’s-Eye, we could put the horse-fish into a thought-phone and pick up Thork’s dying thoughts. So we did.”

  “An’ guess what—”

  But the king was entering the circle now, and everyone was silent. Maribeau, the scientist, crowded close to miss no detail of this impromptu ceremony. Windy’s eyes ran rings around the breathless audience. Bea’s shoulder trembled against Bill’s arm.

  “I have been asked to approve the revelation,” said the king in a low rumbling voice, “which one of the horse-fish has made of Thork’s dying Sentiments. Those sentiments, as quoted to me are, ‘They mustn’t know that Bea-Bea is not a spiny-girl. They mustn’t know that I stole her from an English family visiting above—’ ”

  “Did Thork say that?” Bea fairly floated to her feet in astonishment.

  “That, as caught by Bull’s-Eye,” said the king, “was Thork’s secret thought immediately after the mortal wound struck him. And I must add—”

  Bill could hear Bea’s heart pounding.

  “. . . that the lieutenant confided this secret to me many years ago,” the king said calmly. “It happened after the drowning of one of our babies . . . so I assure you, Bea, that you are not a spiny-girl.”

  Bea reeled, nearly fainting, as Bill helped her gently to her seat. The strangest of fires lighted her eyes, and with burning amazement she looked from Bill to Vin and back to Bill. A curious smile touched the corners of her lips, as if she were laughing inside.

  “But perhaps,” the king added, after he had turned to go, “we should insist that you are a spiny-girl, since we’ve raised you. That, however, I shall leave with our mediator and new lieutenant, Vin-Vin.”

  The white haired king hobbled away. Vin turned to Bea and Bill, smiling. “Friends, my yacht and sailors are up there—at your service. Will you come back sometime?”

  “Will we!” Bill said it enthusiastically. Then he turned to Bea. “Will we?”

  “Well think it over, Vin,” Bea smiled. “After all that you and the scientist have told us, we may want to come—to live—for the benefit of our descendants.”

  BULL MOOSE OF BABYLON

  First published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942

  The time-transfer machine deposited them on a Babylonian battlefield 2500 years ago

  CHAPTER I

  I felt trouble in my bones when I flew to Denver in answer to Colonel Jason Milholland’s wire. His mention of a time-transfer device should have been warning enough. But I plunged, like a fool, and came up gasping for air in a sand-blown battlefield just twenty-five hundred years before my time.

  Ten minutes after I had convinced Milholland that my improved vocoder would analyze animal voices, modern or ancient—ten seconds after I had nodded my agreement to his outrageous proposition, I was biffed across the head by an ancient Persian soldier.

  That’s how quick it happened.

  One moment I was standing on the Colonel’s roof porch surrounded by the glories of the Rockies; then the big red cylinder swished down out of nowhere, like a series of neon hoops, to enclose me, and the next instant I was skidding down a sandy incline that wasn’t
a golf hazard, and the desert dust and battle din was all around me. I hugged my precious black case and slid for the bottom of the ravine.

  That was when the wild-eyed soldier, dashed past me, flashing and steaming in his metal armor, and whammed me—accidentally, but none the less potently—across the head with the handle of his spear.

  “Wa-ha-kik-log!” he was yelling, and he must have been brass inside as well as out. He didn’t stop to notice me. He was charging into the fray, along with a few thousand other mad men.

  “Wa-ha-kik-log!”

  Such voices! If Colonel Milholland wanted a complete collection of the bellows of beasts, be should have had these.

  But there was no time to operate my vocoder amid this chaos. My first duty to mankind was to avoid being tramped to death. Already my new hunting togs were being torn to shreds. I rolled into a knot and hugged the hot sand and let the stampede hurdle past. But some clumsy heavyweight came pounding along, dragging his feet, and kicked the daylights out of me.

  When I came to, after hours of blackout, I was not in a downy hospital bed, and no kindly doctor was bending over me. My first impression was that my scalp had been carved in strips, that I had been hung on a hook by a segment of hide just above my right ear, that someone was striking the hook with a maul at regular intervals.

  This impression underwent a slight modification as consciousness came clearer. I was actually walking on my two feet, along with some five hundred other ragged and battered prisoners of war, and my scalp was cut, not with any geometric precision, but rather in the style that a blind man with a meat cleaver might achieve.

  I was still hanging onto the little black case, however. And I managed to cling to it through the unprintable year and a half that followed.

  Of those hectic eighteen months of imprisonment and slavery all I need say is that I gradually became accustomed to my fate. I had no power to take myself back to the twentieth century. Evidently Colonel Milholland had lost his power to bring me back. I was stuck.