The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  The doctor came back with a cold defiant answer. “I’m the scientist of this party. I’m not concerned with the pigmentation of those three prisoners. To me they’re simply three living pituitaries. That’s my full report.” Hi Turner turned to the two Thinning brothers. “You two men helped with the doctor’s capture. Since the green swamp men are known to be in the neighborhood, you realize that it isn’t safe to leave your prisoners bound somewhere out in the forest. The doctor wouldn’t want them turned into dead pituitaries. Accordingly, I’m ordering you brothers to bring them here to the ship as soon as possible after daylight.”

  The Thinning brothers nodded an assent, in spite of dagger glares from the doctor.

  The response to the next order provoked considerable mirth. It concerned the mission of the pilot, who had been sent off somewhere in the space lifeboat. Hi observed that since the lifeboat was part of the ship’s standard cruising equipment, the party deserved to know where it had gone and why. But Hi presumed that we would have to wait until the captain met with us to get any light on this matter.

  One of the engineers volunteered what he knew of the matter: the space lifeboat had been serviced for a round trip to the nearby planet, Efde-Aurus, and could easily have been back by this time.

  It was at this point that Blackwell brought down laughter by admitting what he knew of the business.

  “The captain has a foolish heart. He got lonesome. He needed an old friend to liven up the party and he remembered that when he last heard of her she’d gone from Mars to Efde-Aurus.” The dapper little financier grinned sheepishly at the cynical gurgles. He added, “The captain said he was doing it for me, being afraid I was getting bored. But I assure you, gentlemen, I couldn’t possibly be interested in the captain’s Martian brunettes.”

  Someone mumbled that that was what the captain had called the subswamp girl. But Hi rapped for order and brought the party back to sterner business.

  “Blackwell, if you want to do a real piece of service for this expedition,” said Hi, “you could lend us the money to give to the sub-swampers.”

  “Give to them?”

  “To help clear accounts,” said Hi, and everyone stole a glance at Dr. Blyman. “In our haste to explore the forces back of the Brain Hop, we made a serious mistake. We killed a man who was one among our new-found friends. I know that—”

  “All right, Turner, kick me in the face again,” Blyman blurted hotly. He rose and stormed to the door. There he whirled and flung back at us, “You know damned well that I hadn’t been down in the chasms rubbing elbows with your sages. I didn’t know this bird wasn’t another swamp demon—”

  “If there was a mistake,” Hi said forcefully, “we can help make up for it by paying—”

  “There was a mistake, all right,” the doctor snapped. “The mistake was bringing you along.”

  “The mistake,” said Hi, “was killing without cause.”

  “I’ve been known to kill with cause, Hi Turner!” the doctor blazed with complete loss of temper, and the threat of murder was hot in his eyes. “Don’t you forget it.”

  He banged three doors on his way to the laboratory, and that was the last we saw of him for some time.

  But the sanity of the meeting was at once restored as the dignified little financier rose and said, “I’ll lend whatever amount is needed, Turner, and I’ll go down to the chasm with you to help make explanations.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Head Bumps

  The sun came up to the roar of blasting. The engineers were up to some new tricks at long last Before the pre-dawn assembly had adjourned there had been a hot round of discussion over the various untried schemes for recovering the ship.

  The engineers had agreed to undertake the scheme of their eight-and-a-half footer. (His suggestions had all been overruled before the Brain Hop had sent him towering upward.)

  The plan was to shift as much of the ship’s weight as possible to the rear, and to concentrate the derrick lifting on the fore end of the ship. If the nose could be freed, then some swift excavating could be applied at the sides, supplemented by blasting at the rear. If the hull could be loosened enough to yield in the slightest to a sideward rolling pressure, then would be the time to risk everything on a chance application of the ship’s own atomic power.

  Already the engineers were trying their luck with the blasting idea. But as I hurried through my breakfast I couldn’t feel any results. The ship was planted like an immense hollow rock, and the explosions didn’t jar it in the least.

  My first job was to find Skinny.

  I pocketed my pistol and made ready to strike out. As a last errand I checked up on the captain to be sure that this bright pink dawn found him in merry good health.

  He looked as if pink elephants were keeping him company.

  Dr. Blyman was talking with him so

  I didn’t go in after all. I paused outside the open door just long enough to get a neat little earful. I had supposed the captain would explode when he heard about Hi’s assembly. Not so. The captain wasn’t even listening. He was too busy talking about himself.

  “It was the worst case of insubordination I ever witnessed,” the doctor growled, as he tried to enumerate Hi’s orders.

  But the captain, not hearing, went right on with, “I still can’t figure what it was that fell on me. It musta been as heavy as the swamp man’s steel club, though I can’t locate any cleat marks. But this I know for a fact, it staved off the Brain Hop.”

  The doctor was suddenly all ears and so was I.

  “Staved it off, how?”

  “I don’t know. But it sure as hell did. I know, because this was the second time it happened just the same way.”

  “When was the first?”

  “The time I was fighting with Skinny Davis.”

  “You fought with Skinny?” the doctor gasped. “Don’t you ever make use of your authority as captain? Why didn’t you throw him into solitary?”

  “It was over a girl,” said the captain. “I’d followed her up from the sub-swamps and he same taggin’ after me.”

  “All right never mind that. The thing I’m after is your dope on the Brain Hop.”

  “It was comin’ on me, I know it was,” said the captain. “I mean I could feel it in my bones and I was sweating all over. And each time something hit me over the head and stopped it from coming on”

  “In other words, you think the traumatic effect of the blow on the cranium postponed the metamorphosis?”

  “All I said was, the bump on the head stopped the Brain Hop,” the captain growled. “But here it comes again, sure as shootin’. I can feel it in all my joints. Quick, where’s something to hit me with?”

  The captain came bounding out past me, looking around everywhere and picking up everything he could lay his hands on. He smacked himself over the head with books and flashlights and saltshakers before the doctor could grab him and get a word of explanation.

  “But I’ve got to postpone it,” Redfife yelled. “I can’t be swelling up like a mountain, considering the size of that space lifeboat and how loaded it’ll be—”

  “Sssssh!”

  “All right, this ship, then,” the captain snarled. Noticing me he moderated his tone. “That’s what I meant, anyway. This ship. Look how I’d crowd it if I’d take on sixty or seventy feet . . . Well? . . . Go ahead and say it, Doc. So you don’t think I’ve got brains enough, huh?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” said the doctor.

  “All right, just wait. You didn’t see that big human hippo down in the chasm. You don’t know how big they grow. I’m not talking about small potatoes like Blonder here. I’m talking about—”

  “Don’t go off the deep end till you start swelling,” the doctor warned savagely.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I wouldn’t be talking too much till you look around at some of your men. Not to mention present company, what do you figure will happen to brains like Hi Turner? I’m
not ballyhooing for him, you understand. I’m just warning you. Whatever height you hit, I’ll bet ten dollars he’ll go a couple feet stronger.”

  “He’d better not!”

  “How you going to stop him? Hit him over the head?”

  “You’ve got to help me, Doc. We’ve got to think this thing out. Quick, hit me over the head before things go blooey.”

  The last I saw, the doctor was Hamming Redfife over the head with a shovel he’d grabbed out of the tool closet, hitting him good solid licks like a true friend.

  Several hours later I came upon Skinny Davis.

  I had been upon the point of giving up the tortuous hiking, to go back and try to borrow someone who could pilot the plane. I had just dropped down on a log to rest and debate the matter when a little creature hopped up on the other end of the log.

  It might have been a two-foot woodchuck or fox or bobcat; but it was a two-foot Skinny.

  I needn’t tell you how he felt. Put yourself in his place and see how you’d like it. Think of yourself as the high jump champion of your state, the pride of your home town and your school and all the alumni. Imagine that high jumping has been just about the biggest thing that ever came into your life, and now you suddenly find yourself reduced to a height of two feet. How do you like it? Well, that’s just the way Skinny liked it.

  The poor guy had discarded three-fourths of his clothes and bundled himself up by tying the upper sides of his trousers over his shoulders.

  He looked up at me sadly and said. “For gosh sakes, don’t laugh, Blonder.

  I couldn’t stand it.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  “Don’t even talk. Don’t mention anything about taking me back. I’m not goin’. I’ll spend my life right here in the swamp. No, don’t talk—please.”

  “There’s something I’ve got to say pal . . . Have you stopped to think how lucky it was this didn’t happen to you sooner, before you had it out with Redfife?”

  “Did I make an impression on that damned girl thief?”

  “He said you knocked him out.”

  Skinny gave a funny little grin and came over and sat down by my knee. His talk took on a cheery note.

  “Ten minutes after I smacked him over the head with a good sized tree I began losin’ size and strength. Gee! That does feel good, come to think of it. Somethin’ like gettin’ salvation just before you check in.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Gunfire Over the Swamp

  In some ways my pal Skinny was a remarkable guy. Not everyone would have the guts to do what he did—that is, to fight it out with himself and decide he’d come back and face the music.

  The amazing thing was that while he was thinking his way through, facing himself honestly, he got a strange feeling that he was beginning to grow.

  “I can feel it clear down to my toes,” he said, “By Jupiter, I am growing. Maybe not much, but—Blonder, do you wanta know something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve dodged brain work all my life. That’s a fact. High jumping came so easy, and the coach always managed to push me through my courses. Do you know, I think I’ve got a brain—I mean a good one, not a two-footer—only I just never bothered to use it.”

  We did some high-powered dodging on the way back to the ship. There was death among our swamps at last. That death was within twenty yards of us once, coming through the water at a good swimming pace.

  I estimated that there were fifty of the ugly green and blue creatures in that particular bunch. I didn’t have time to count, for the nearest half dozen of them were swishing along through the brown water at a good swimming pace.

  It was these six who were only sixty feet from us as we passed. They saw us, all right, and the two small ones immediately fell back, while the others—six-footers and one eighteen or twenty-foot giant—put on a burst of speed toward us.

  Across their backs were the gleaming metal clubs, which they carried without effort. From the giant to the dwarfs they were heavily muscled creatures, almost naked, as much at home in swamp waters as Waters moccasins.

  These details came to me in a glance, for there was no tarrying on our part. We broke into a cross-swamp race. And I’ll bet no one ever saw a two-foot man who was any stronger on the jump than Skinny Davis.

  Throughout the next breathless fifteen minutes I could catch occasional glimpses of the gun turret atop our ship and I wondered whether Dwight Blackwell was up there keeping watch, or whether he had gone with Hi on the mission of good will to the chasms.

  Someone was there.

  At any rate a gun flashed from the turret. Skinny and I dropped down. Some distance back of us the eighteen-foot swamp man, who had just clambered up out of a pool, was looking for us. He was deep green and wet like a monster frog.

  A sudden slush of deadwood and water jumped up within a tree’s length of him. He leaped as the spray caught him, and began charging around madly, apparently looking for his lost club.

  One of the six-footers grabbed him at the knee and the others tried to cluster around him for protection. He was in the act of battering them down with his nail-keg of a fist when the second bullet flashed from the ship.

  It caught the bunch of them squarely.

  Amid the dull echoes of gun thunder, Skinny and I listened for screams or moans. But we didn’t hear any. And I wasn’t surprised, for that second bullet had caused a small volcano of mangled blue and green torsos, heads arms and legs.

  By the time we reached the ship the wave of oncoming swamp men had been turned back. The guns had done effective work on the giants, and that was enough. The smaller fellows hadn’t dared to come on by themselves. Many had turned tail and swum or crawled back to the northward, though some were no doubt still lurking, hidden.

  Before sunset the pilot came back in the space lifeboat. He was alone, and my first impression was that he was plenty sore over his wild goose chase.

  The captain ordered that the lifeboat be serviced at once to be ready for another hop at an instant’s notice.

  “Sorry,” the pilot said to me, out of hearing of the others, “that I failed you and Hi on that sunset appointment a few days ago. But the captain took a freak notion to give me orders.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “But keep in touch with Hi. He’s giving the orders now.”

  “That’s jolly,” said the pilot with a spark of hope in his eyes. “How does the captain take it?”

  “He’s blind to it. There hasn’t been any mutiny or any official transfer of authority. The captain just let himself get closed in with his own interests, and the party has gone on without him.”

  “Count on me,” said the pilot.

  Other than his search for the Martian brunette the pilot had performed one official errand which deserves mention.

  He had gone to the Efde-Aurus representative of the interplanetary competition with a message from Captain Redfife requesting an extension of time. As per the captain’s orders, he had stated that some startling evidence was being collected by our expedition, but that our ship was imprisoned in a swamp and we might be delayed in returning. Could we, under those conditions, have an extra week?

  The representative’s answer was no. At least some evidence of our discoveries must be in official hands—not on Efde-Aurus, but on Mars—by the hour of the deadline. Otherwise we would be left out of the competition.

  Which meant that we had only one more day, at the most, to unmire ourselves and take off for a full speed race to Mars.

  One day to go!

  When that news was relayed to the engineers it was reported that the eight and a half footer fainted. Working day and night those boys had lost all sense of time.

  The pilot could see that some terrific changes had come about during his absence, and he was shocked to discover that he, too, might be struck by the Brain Hop.

  But the pilot was most chagrined to learn that the Martian brunette—the lost dame he’d been searching for all over Efde-Aurus—was alre
ady here.

  “What a sap that makes me!” he groaned. He sank into a chair and broke into a cold sweat. Ten minutes later the Brain Hop was on him full blast.

  “Some hop up, some hop down,” Skinny murmured philosophically. “It looks like the pilot’s coming down to keep me company.”

  Soon after dark the whole group came in for another general assembly. And for once every living one of us would be present, as soon as Blackwell came down from his watch.

  In addition there were three visitors in luminous clothes and puffy dough-white shoes.

  CHAPTER XX

  Dibs on the Lifeboat

  So these were the doctor’s three living samples: Exhibits A, B, and C of this satellite’s pituitary phenomena.

  The stately twelve-footer was Greekel, the top man of the eleven Stairsteps. The little two-footer was the bottom man. The middle one was Dorothy. You should have seen the captain falling all over himself trying to be sweet on her!

  “Disgusting!” Skinny whispered to me.

  “Has she seen you yet?” I asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” Skinny mumbled, adding that she had passed him twice, but both times he’d ducked behind a chair.

  “Get your nerve up, Skinny. Better face her.”

  “I will as soon as that damned captain get out of the way. I’m just the size he likes to kick.”

  The captain rose and tried to start things off. He got lost in the first sentence, and stood beaming at Dorothy, who did her best to ignore him. He recovered himself and called upon Hi Turner to report on the progress.

  Hi summarized the situation in a couple of nutshells.

  “First, to make our deadline,” he said, “we’ve got to shoot the lifeboat on its way tomorrow with some convincing evidence. Dr. Blyman tells us that his laboratory specimens are ready, and that in addition he desires to take living proofs, one to illustrate each extreme of our discoveries.”

  “Two living proofs?” the captain interrupted. “You mean three”