The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “Call me Ebb and be democratic,” said Ebbtide. “Why can’t I see him?”

  “Ze protection she eez too great.”

  “Protection. Ugh. So he’s a gangster, huh?”

  “Ze worst gangster in ze world,” said Frenchy. “Zat eez his veree own gangland straight ahead.”

  “Gee whillikins,” said Trixie. “We’d better turn back.”

  “Do you reckon?” said Ebbtide, his little eyes gazing moodily across the open country.

  “Ze poleece of Rotterdam have by zees time sent ze warnings ahead. Soon zay will stop us, kerpoof!”

  “Kerpoof, huh?” said Ebbtide. “Great spoutin’ whales, can’t a man even drive across the country peaceable?”

  “Look out, Ebb!” Trixie squealed. “Here comes a tank. It’s gonna smack us square! Look out!”

  “Ze Nazis! Zay’ll crash us—”

  “Let them look out!” Ebbtide snapped. He pressed a lever. Clink!

  A new silvery disc appeared in one of the transparent pipes. The Nazi tank had rolled into the wide-open giant scoop without a jolt.

  “That’ll learn ’em,” Ebbtide said with righteous indignation, “to stick to their own side of the road. I wasn’t crowdin’ ’em none.”

  “But zees ees war,” said Frenchy. “Zay meant to smash us, kerpoof.”

  “Durn the war,” Ebbtide said, becoming a trifle nettled. “Don’t they know I’m peaceable? I only want to bargain for some junk. I’m willin’ to bargain fair.”

  “In ze fair bargains zay are not interested,” said Frenchy. “Zat ze whole world should know.”

  “Ebbtide never reads about the war,” said Trixie. “He’s only interested in business as usual. But if they get him riled—Look out, Ebb I Dodge ’em!” Clink. Clink. Clink.

  Three more Nazi tanks were swallowed up by the hungry mouth of the atom-constrictor. Frenchy’s eyes almost popped out. Trixie swallowed her chewing gum. And even Ebbtide hunched his shoulders with a hint of uneasiness.

  “Maybe we are goin’ the wrong way,” he said presently. “I’d hate to have this machine bite off more’n it could chew. I reckon there are limits. That giant scoop ain’t big enough to swallow a battleship, and it’s just possible we might run onto an impolite tank that’d be too sizeable.”

  “Turn around, Ebb, before we get into any more trouble.”

  “I’m doin’ it,” said Ebbtide, yanking the steering wheel. “But I’ll tell you this. I’m beginnin’ to get mad.”

  Trixie whispered to Frenchy, “He’s beginnin’ to get mad.”

  “Me, I begeen to geet seek,” said Frenchy. “But now ze air she is better while we go zees way.”

  Again Frenchy began to be concerned over Trixie’s well-being—and his own. He wasn’t too comfortable sitting in the presence of measles.

  Trixie found another stick of gum and resumed chewing and enjoying the scenery.

  But Ebbtide paid no attention to either of his companions for he was considerably disconcerted over having to change his course, and over having had to absorb some items of military power. He hated to see any proposed business deal go to pot.

  Presently he parked the atom-constrictor by the side of the road and took a memo book from his pocket.

  “I’d better stop right now,” he said, “and set down a record of our catch so I won’t get things mixed.”

  He numbered the six items. 1. Nazi policeman. 2. Ditto. 3. Nazi tank. 4. Ditto. S. Ditto. 6. Ditto.

  “I got the stuff all mixed one time,” Trixie explained to Frenchy. “That’s why he’s so particular. You see, after things turn into frozen discs inside the atom-constrictor storage tubes, one disc looks just like another. To look at them, you couldn’t tell an army tank from a Nazi policeman. And you couldn’t tell either of ’em from a sack of rotten turnips—no reflection on the turnips, you understand.”

  To illustrate her point she led Frenchy along the catwalk past the pyramid of transparent storage tubes, “Zay are all ze same, I see,” Frenchy flashed a grin as he looked at the six silvery discs. “But what becomes of zem?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” said Trixie. “We simply shoot electric power into any disc. It swells up and turns back into whatever it was before.”

  “Not really? On ze level?”

  “Of course. Ebb’s used atom-constrictors to haul tons and tons of junk—and to store it too. Things that are too big and expensive to bring into our junk headquarters in New York can be carted around this way as easy as a sack of magic beans.”

  She gave Frenchy a thorough one-lesson course in operating atom-constrictors, and by that time Ebbtide called to them to get in. It was time to be on their way.

  “Those Nazis have made me mad,” said Ebbtide. “They ain’t decent.” He stepped on the gas and headed back toward the channel coast.

  “Gee,” Trixie whispered to Frenchy. “When he gets in that mood anything can happen.”

  “So you don’t like zem, Meester Ebb?” the Frenchman smiled as if he had a green persimmon held in his mouth. “Zay will be vairy upzet.”

  “Oh, oh. Great spoutin’ blue-bellied whales. Look ahead. What in the name of floodin’ comets?”

  “That ees a Nazi army.”

  “Thousands of ’em. Where do they think they’re goin’ ?”

  “Zay are ze invasion army, bound for England.”

  “England, huh?” Ebbtide blinked four slow even blinks. The head of the moving columns was only two miles distant.

  From this hilltop the pattern of roadways could be seen leading toward the coast. If the atom-constrictor’ didn’t dodge out of its course it would be rubbing elbows with this Nazi army within ten minutes.

  “If they’re headin’ for England, we might give ’em a lift,” Ebbtide grunted.

  “Mercy, zat would be fatal!” the Frenchman squealed. “Zat would be ze final end of England.”

  “Control yourself, Frenchy,” Trixie hissed in his ear. “Don’t start crossing Ebb when he’s on the warpath.”

  “But ze army, she’ll cross his warpath. Zen what?”

  “You’ve got me, pal. Gee—look! We’re taking a short-cut.”

  Ebb stepped on it. He rambled over two forests and jumped a river that brought the big galloping machine to the edge of the coast road, a mile ahead of the advancing columns. He wedged the big machine into a natural nook close against the hill cliff, and stopped it between two trees that furnished a landscaping effect.

  “I am zat scared,” the Frenchman gulped, “zat I could stick my head in ze bank of ze hill.”

  “Stick your hand in your paint bucket,” Ebbtide ordered. “Get your brush and go to work. Paint a big picture of a stein of beer and some steaming frankfurters.”

  “Paint eet? Vare?”

  “All over the front of the atom constrictor . . . and make it snappy. If it ain’t done before that army comes in sight, you go into the atom-constrictor.” Frenchy climbed down and started slapping paint.

  “Now, you, Trixie.” Ebb scowled at her. “Hell, you’re speckleder than a trout. Measles is measles. I better put you back under quarantine.”

  “Please, Ebb, I don’t wanna. I’m feeling swell, honest.”

  Ebb was being mysterious. He seemed to be holding back a grin. “Come on. We’ll see how swell you’re feelin’.”

  By the time they reached the giant entrance the columns of Nazis were rounding the corner only fifty yards away.

  “Now, Trixie,” said Ebbtide, stationing her at the entrance. “If you’re feelin’ swell, dance.”

  The mysterious glint in Ebb’s eyes meant business. Trixie did a jitterbug. Her heels made the metal entrance rattle like a syncopated machine gun.

  The first columns of Nazis halted even, with the atom-constrictor. The big officer raised his eyebrows to take in the whole landscape. He licked his lips. The picture of beer and frankfurters, together with Trixie’s dancing, must have appealed to him. He madfe a greedy smile.

  Then he turned to his soldie
rs.

  “Recess vor twendy minutes. Heil frankfur—er—Heil Hitler!”

  “Heil Hitler!” his troops shouted.

  Then the officer came straight toward the atom-constrictor, and the dismissed troops trooped after him.

  “Gee, Ebb,” Trixie squealed, freezing in the middle of a dance contortion. “What are they going to do to us?”

  “Git back into quarantine, quick,” said Ebb, springing back to the cab.

  Trixie gave a little gulp of exasperation. Frenchy was climbing out of sight on the farther side of the big machine. She hissed a reminder to him. She’d be turning back into a silver disc now. “But you remember my number, Frenchy, and let me out as soon as Ebb gets in a better humor.”

  Then she disappeared into the giant scoop.

  Clink. Silvery disc number seven.

  The Nazi officer was only two paces behind her. Clink. Number eight. Clink-Clink-Clink-Clink . . .

  Forty-nine thousand clinks later Ebbtide and Frenchy were still counting.

  After a swift voyage across the Channel, Ebbtide wasted no time finding some one to talk business with.

  “We’re in need of all sorts of scrap metal,” said a purchasing agent for the British Navy. “Those are nice bright discs.”

  Ebb removed disc number 50,007 from the storage cylinders, spun it on the paved street and noted the rich metallic clang that it made. The purchasing agent leaned it against a stone wall and had his test men try its resistance against machine-guns and anti-tank fire.

  “Very good,” said the purchasing agent. “How many of those discs do you have on hand?”

  “Fifty thousand. Sellin’ ’em dirt cheap. Four bits apiece. Twenty-five thousand smackers buys the lot.”

  “We’ve no time to haggle over prices. Maybe you’re profiteering, maybe not.

  “I’m not,” said Ebbtide. He shot a glance at Frenchy, who added, “He ees not, I assure you.”

  The purchasing agent paused a moment for calculations. “Yes, fifty thousand discs would finish the armor on some fighting boats—and barely in time.”

  “Een time for what?” Frenchy broke in.

  “In time to turn back a channel invasion,” said the purchasing agent. “If we can get these fifty thousand metal plates riveted onto a few old wooden hulls, that invasion will be stymied.”

  “You never spoke a truer word,” Ebbtide said. Frenchy nodded with his eyebrows.

  Ebb pocketed the purchasing agent’s check and went to work dumping the silvery discs at the shipbuilding yards. Franchy helped him. As fast as the discs rolled out, the shipbuilders riveted them into sea armor, in patterns that resembled the scales of fish.

  When the last disc had been riveted into place and Ebbtide had mounted to the cab to be on his way, the purchasing agent came running up.

  “One moment, Mr. Jones.”

  “Well?”

  “We need one more disc. Don’t you have one more for us?”

  “Hell, I threw in seven extras already.”

  “Six,” said the purchasing agent.

  “My automatic counter says seven,” Ebb declared stubbornly.

  The purchasing agent didn’t care to argue. His point was that he needed one more. Ebb scowled. Then Trixie peeked in at the opposite window of the cab.

  “Hi, Ebb. Remember me?”

  “Trix!” Ebb gasped. “I forgot about you. Say, how in the name of numerical navigation did you git out? You were supposed to be in quarantine.”

  “You can’t quarantine me with fifty thousand Nazis,” Trixie snapped. “Get back to business, Ebb. The man wants another disc.”

  “Yeah, the man wants another disc.” Ebb turned to look for Frenchy, who had taken a strange notion to chase himself halfway down the block. Ebb shouted after him. “Hey, Frenchy, hey! Come back. You’ve been exposed—you ought to be quarantined fer—”

  Ebbtide broke off with yelling in order to concentrate on gazing and blinking his eyes. The Frenchman, halfway down the street, bent down and picked up a steel manhole lid from the pavement and came running back with it.

  “Here ees ze one more disc,” said Frenchy, handing it over to the purchasing agent. Then he turned to Ebb. “May I have ze job to work for you?”

  “Ze job is yours,” said Ebb. “Get in. We’re cruising back to the continent.”

  “One more moment,” said the purchasing agent. “If I take this steel lid what about that open manhole? We can’t have a sewer left open—”

  “Put a box over it till I get back,” said Ebbtide. “I know exactly where to pick up a new sewer lid. There’s a chap over on the continent named Hitler—you wouldn’t understand—but I’ll be back with a new lid.”

  Ebbtide stepped on the gas and the atom-constrictor roared on its way. Frenchy, sitting on the other side of Trixie, whistled softly to himself. But Ebb’s expression became an accusing scowl aimed at his wife.

  “I still can’t figure it, Trixie. The last time I saw you, you danced into the atom-constrictor and turned into a disc. How in thunder’d you get out?”

  “Very simple,” said Trixie, slipping Frenchy a wink on the sly. “I broke out with the measles.”

  Trixie wasn’t telling all her secrets.

  THE EAGLE MAN

  First published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1942

  If the vulture men were to survive, they must have mates; so they kidnaped them. But Fire Jump’s mate came to him willingly.

  CHAPTER I

  My huge brown wings hung limply like the wings of a dead vulture strung up by its feet. I was pacing my state-room floor. The incredibly swift space flight was almost over.

  Counter motors sent jarring vibrations through my tough yellow talons as I padded back and forth. The steamy blue lake of oblivion outside my window began to take on distinctive form. Hard purple lines of mountain ranges pushed up through the atmosphere. We were arriving on Karloora’s single satellite—the so-called Blue Moon.

  As usual, the low leathery voice of Flanger, my owner, dominated the welter of sounds from the fore of the ship. But everyone else was talking excitedly too, speaking in the universal interplanetary tongue disseminated in recent centuries from the distant Earth planet.

  Everyone was talking except yours truly. I was behind a locked door. This flight wasn’t my idea.

  As we swooped down into a cliff-walled valley toward a smooth landing spot, I denied to myself that any thrill of excitement leaped through my drooping wings.

  Like my spirit, these wings of mine were dead weight.

  In all my seventeen years they had never once lifted me. In spite of the massive muscles I had developed over my chest and back, in spite of my tireless practice, I had yet to fly. My human body was too heavy.

  Would today be a new day?

  Would the light gravitation on the Blue Moon make all the difference?

  Flanger had said it would, and he had brought me here to prove it. If I succeeded, he would be on his way to a vast fortune.

  Actually I was vibrating to the toes of my yellow talons with feverish expectancy. But Flanger and the others mustn’t know it. Above all, they mustn’t guess my cunning. For I hated Flanger and all his men, and secretly damned them for capitalizing on my agonized life.

  The ship stopped. The floors and walls were silent around me. I ceased to pace. I crowded close against the window, locking my human hands upon the frames. I caught the slightest reflection of my sharp-beaked eagle face in the crystal pane. My eyes were burning too bright. But I couldn’t help it. That scene beyond the window—

  What a landscape! There it lay, a strange new world, waiting to be conquered. And here I stood, hardly daring to breathe—hardly daring to admit to myself that the moment for hope had come.

  It was as if the fuse of my explosion had burned steadily through seventeen years of silent hatred, and now there were only inches left to go.

  The moment was at hand. I looked out on the landscape—a wide lazy river, a vast green meadow, lofty rugged
trees, and on either horizon rows of majestic purple cliffs.

  My heart was thumping wildly. I glanced down to discover that my sharp scaled claws were gripping at the smooth floor as if hungry for the feel of ragged rocks and shaggy tree limbs.

  The old consuming fire of mystery flamed through me momentarily. Why had my makers planted the wild instincts of the eagle within my breast? Wasn’t it enough to give my human body an eagle’s head, eagle’s wings, and eagle’s feet? If the scientists had simply turned to grafting experiments for cruel sport, couldn’t they at least have dulled my consciousness with some lifelong anesthetic, instead of sharpening it with the suspicions, the avarice, the cunning and cruelty of an eagle?

  A key sounded in the lock of my stateroom door.

  I sprang back from the window lightly and pretended to be lounging half asleep in a corner.

  The door swung open.

  “All right, Eagle Boy. Come on.” Flanger snapped his fingers at me as he gave his curt orders. Five or six of his helpers stood in the doorway with him. Two of them were his regular assistants, Tokel and York, who were well known by me. For many seasons past they had bestowed upon me their peculiar brand of care, which might be called the punch-and-slap treatment. According to Flanger, they had given me the very discipline I needed.

  “Let’s wake him up with a few marble shots.”

  This suggestion came from one of the passengers to whom I was still a novelty. The eight or ten strangers that Flanger had brought along had made a popular game of me, shooting marbles at me from pneumatic guns. My quickness in dodging never ceased to amaze them.

  Actually I had always been far quicker than they knew. Neither they nor Flanger guessed that their pot shots brushed my wings only when I intended them to. It was part of my cunning to keep my phenomenal celerity a secret.

  “No time for marble shots now,” said Flanger. “Save your fun till we start back. We’ll all have to work fast. You all know your jobs. We won’t risk any more time here than necessary. The pilot is staying at the controls. You newsmen—get your cameras going. Don’t miss anything . . . All right, come on, Eagle Boy. Operation number one is to clamp a safeguard on your foot.” The observers watched me closely while Tokel and York locked a chain of claytung metal above my left claw. Somebody muttered that I was being strangely silent, considering that I was the star of this momentous experiment.