The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “I hasten to add,” said Hi, “that the captain insists on three living proofs. His scientific interests in this matter need no comment, I’m sure. The lovely young lady between the two extremes is to be the third.”

  At this thrust Skinny, parked under the arm of an overstuffed chair, gave a loud, “Ahem.”

  “Suffice it to say,” Hi went on, “that the captain himself must go, since the rules require him to be present when the evidence is presented. In addition, Dr. Blyman will be needed to make the necessary explanations.

  “As for the rest of us—we stay.”

  The group lapsed into hard silence as Hi opened this second nutshell.

  The space lifeboat, Hi argued, would be overloaded with its party of five, plus the doctor’s lab things. The rest of us must hang on here.

  How long?

  That depended.

  “Until you guys get the ship up,” the captain cracked.

  “Is that so?” one of the engineers snorted angrily, looking at the blisters on his hands.

  “If you don’t make it soon I’ll send for you,” said the captain.

  Talk about your hollow promises. That one echoed out an awfully empty barrel and we answered it with a groan. How long would we be stuck here? What could we do about it if the captain suffered a lapse of memory? And if there should be any prize money, how far and wide could it float before we ever saw any of it?

  There was a hot round of argument and several of the group demanded to know whether this was Hi Turner’s idea or the captain’s. Hi answered that it was the captain’s, but under the conditions he was forced to indorse it. Time was short and the spaceways were full of distance.

  “The lifeboat is the only thing that can pull our expedition out of a hellova mess,” Hi fired back at us, heedless of angry faces. “None of you hate that mess any more than I do. Part of it has been bad luck, part due to loafing and bad management. But that’s water under the bridge. We’ve got to send the lifeboat, the quicker the better.” Little Skinny Davis piped up with a warning that made everyone stop and think and stare.

  “That lifeboat’s not very big. How can the doctor and the captain go? Room for five? Maybe. But suppose they have the Brain Hop on the way. Who knows whether the ship’ll hold ‘em?”

  It was a good warning, and afterwards some of the men declared they could see Skinny grow a little when he was thinking it up. In fact, they brought up the incident as an example of good clear headwork that doesn’t have anything to do with book learning.

  Skinny saw that he had scored with his warning, and he followed through. “We oughta send no one that hasn’t already Brain-Hopped.”

  “Brainless midgets like you, I suppose,” the captain snarled. But it wasn’t a popular thing to say. Everyone knew that Skinny could run the lifeboat as well as anyone.

  All this pow-wow had electrified the doctor until he was ready to blow a fuse. He’d been sitting there beside the hall door that led to his laboratory, looking like a mad man imprisoned on a powder keg. Now he gave a snort.

  “Don’t worry your heads about the Brain Hop. I’ve got that matter in hand. If you’re through with your confounded rag-chewing, I’ve got work to do.”

  “One moment,” said Hi. “If you’ve pulled any secrets out of those cream-colored powders, give us the dope.”

  “I’ve got the dope. I’ll be on the lifeboat. That’s all that’s necessary.”

  “Suppose,” said Hi in a cold tense challenge, “that you and the captain should both swell into twenty-footers—en route.”

  “An unlikely circumstance,” the doctor snapped, and Captain Redfife grew red with resentment, evidently taking it as an insult to his brains.

  “Our expedition is at stake,” Hi said savagely. “What would you do if you’d both swell—”

  “Give me a guinea pig and I’ll show you,” the doctor answered icily. “Give me a swamp rat, or a monkey, or a—” He hesitated, and his wild dangerous eyes dwelt upon the two silent Stairsteps, the twelve footer and the two footer. “Give me any living pituitary—”

  The voice of Blackwell, calling from his observations post, broke the discussion off short.

  “Could you send a scout up here?” his voice sounded down to us, crisp and dignified. “I’ve sighted some figures in the dark distance.”

  A pair of gunners went up and the meeting went into recess. Everybody welcomed the chance to get around some food and drink, unless it was Dorothy. The captain brought a tray to her, but she was as unresponsive as an ice statue. Something besides the captain had chilled her, and T thought it was the voice of Blackwell.

  Blackwell hadn’t seen her, as yet. He had no doubt heard that the captain’s “Martian brunette” had been discovered among the sub-swamper Stairsteps. But her path and Blackwell’s hadn’t crossed.

  During the recess Skinny and I had the good luck to slip into Doc Blyman’s laboratory, and what we saw and overheard was enough to make us dizzy.

  But right away the recess was over and Hi called us back to order. It would soon be dawn.

  There was a new bump on the captain’s head and I knew he was working overtime these hours to stave off the Brain Hop. Soon it would overtake him. In fact, according to Greekel, it was due to catch all of us by this dawn.

  Well, the doctor and Hi were both beginning to perspire at the temples. Everybody else had gone through it except Dwight Blackwell and the captain.

  Hi held the attention of the assembly while he ran through a summary of the plans. Then he put the pressure on Greekel and the little two-footer and Dorothy to make sure they were signing up to make the trip, for better or for worse.

  Greekel and the little fellow said yes. But I saw there was trouble coming as soon as Dorothy got up to argue her case.

  A whisper from beyond the dining room door caught my attention. It was Blackwell. I slipped out.

  “What’s happened?” Blackwell asked. “Has a ship come?”

  “The lifeboat came back,” I said.

  “What’s my daughter doing here?”

  “You mean the captain’s Martian brunette? She came from the subswampers.”

  Blackwell went white. He listened. Dorothy had the floor and she was stating her case in no uncertain terms. She would be willing to go back to the inter-planetary committee and testify to the truth of our discoveries here—under certain conditions.

  First, she would not go unless Captain Redfife dropped all of his outlandish talk about her. And secondly, she must be brought back here safely before any of her old social set found her and tried to keep her: for she had run away from them and all their sham, in spite of her wealth and her aristocratic parents—

  Dwight Blackwell stepped in to defend himself. “Young lady—”

  “Dad!”

  “Young lady, if you’re living down in these chasms, go get your things packed. You’re going back with me.” Captain Redfife squealed like a pig under a gate. “The boat won’t hold you!”

  “I own a share in that boat,” the dapper little man snapped. “We’ll make it hold me. Dorothy, get your things.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  Battle at Dawn

  That cute little five-footer had a way about her. Before the guns began firing that morning, she led her father off to the sub-swamp city for a quick visit before the space lifeboat was due to take off. It was dangerous, cutting across the swamps. So I was glad to see Skinny load himself down with a pistol and some ammunition and go jumping along after them.

  Daylight revealed a wide wave of the swamp enemy coming toward us. The previous day’s clashes must have mobilized the whole region. Greekel estimated there were twelve hundred, not counting the scores of midgets. At least a hundred of them towered in the twenty-foot range. This, according to Greekel, was the largest mass of swampers ever seen at one time.

  He sharpened his bayonet as he looked out over the misty landscape. It was an ominous sight to watch them edge their way along like so many alligators, now creeping
, now swimming, now disappearing entirely under the slime and brush. What sort of men were these?

  Greekel had an answer. It was a simple legend without any proper names or dates: They were human beasts.

  Where had they—or their ancestors—come from?

  From some solar planet, it was rumored: a planet that had been infested with a breed of men who made it their business to kill and destroy. The last of the killers had eventually been loaded up and “dumped” in this region of space. These swamp beasts were their descendants.

  Were the original killers green, blue, and yellow? No, such characteristics had developed with this climate. It was not a result of swamp life, but a result of their own cruelty.

  Their colors were thought to vary with their cruelty, just as their size varied with their brains. But Greekel couldn’t say which of the colors signified the most bestial nature, for any of them was a symbol of murder.

  It was a fearsome sight to see this wave of death oozing toward us. When they were two miles away Greekel urged us to desert our ship.

  “You’ll be safe in our city in the ground,” he said. His nerves were good but he was afraid we might underestimate our peril. The little two-footer was pacing like a tortured bobcat.

  I noticed that their terrible agitation was a knife stab to Doc Blyman, who was hurrying his preparations to go. Every time the doctor threw another package together he whirled to make sure his “live pituitaries” were still there. He was running a race against time, and his hands fumbled, for all at once he had begun to gather size. I heard him mumbling oaths every time he dashed past me.

  My present task was to guard Greekel and the little fellow to make sure they didn’t get any obstreperous ideas. They weren’t supposed to know they were Blyman’s prisoners. They were supposed to march calmly into the lifeboat and take off with the rest of the party. The quicker the better.

  But this oncoming wave of blue death was a monkey wrench in the machinery. It had knocked the props out from under us, so to speak.

  Of course nobody expected the captain to rally us to the job of fighting. That was left to Hi Turner. But it was a bad time for Hi to have to march out with his bayonet, for Hi, too, had begun to swell up with the Brain Hop.

  When the Brain Hop is on you, you don’t feel fighting fit, I can tell you that. But Hi never hesitated.

  He was all of nine feet tall when he and a handful of faithful marched out to try their strategy. From then on you could almost see him grow.

  Before he got a half mile away he was breaking out of his clothes. Later I heard the gunners remark that he’d cast off everything but the breech cloth he’d made out of his shirt. They guessed him to be sixteen feet tall.

  But he lifted to more than twenty feet before he got within action range of the swamp beasts, and was still growing.

  He and his men were outnumbered more than a hundred to one. True, they were armed. If they could keep from getting mobbed they had a chance. But the treacherous danger lay in the sudden up-cropping of a whole cluster of blue devils, pouncing with their metal clubs from ten or fifteen directions at once. The first two times that happened it looked bad for us. Three of our men fell under a rain of clubs.

  But soon from the gun turret we saw the planned strategy go into action. Hi and his men picked up wooden clubs of their own. At a given signal they struck the mud with a volley of blows.

  We couldn’t hear the smacking sound, but we could imagine it. To the blue swampers it must have sounded like some of our men were being beaten to pulp. The blue heads bobbed up all around to see. That’s when Hi would jab out with his bayonet and his boys opened up with their pistols.

  It was also the cue for our gunners in the turret. They spotted the big boys who bobbed up out at a safe distance. Then crack! Swooosssh-blanimm! Big boys and patches of swamp blew up together, and what came down could have passed through a sieve.

  That was good for the next two hours. Whenever a big twenty-foot leader was lost, a handful of smaller fry got the same medicine.

  Hi was shrewd enough to work back and forth from one end of the line to the other, and to vary his technique often enough to keep a jump ahead.

  As the big ones were blown to smithereens, the scared midgets went high-tailing it off for deeper water or blacker mud.

  It was one of those rare military shows that you’d never forget as long as you live, and Hi was running it all the time. He was so big, now, that he was down on his chest most all the time; for if he exposed himself they would know his men were there too. So far he had lost only the three.

  Meanwhile in the ship Greekel and the little two-footer were jumping around like wild men, they were so excited. They wanted to run back home and tell everybody, and I was in such a jubilant frenzy I could easily have consented.

  But Doc Blyman was seeing to it that there were no such slips.

  What interest was the doctor taking in this perilous job that Hi Turner and the boys were putting over for us?

  None whatsoever.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Orange Juice and Pigment

  And what about Captain Redfife?

  Did he exhibit any concern over this bold smash at the creatures who would have gladly dispatched him in their stride?

  He did not.

  The fact is that Redfife was in no condition to be interested in anything pertaining to the destiny of our ship. If ever I’ve seen a man in a state of jealous insanity, it was Redfife during those crucial two hours. He saw only one thing: Hi Turner’s increasing stature.

  Of course everyone knew that Hi had a headful of brains, though we hadn’t exactly stopped to realize he would rise right up into a seventy-five footer.

  Captain Redfife couldn’t take it.

  “What makes him keep growing?” the captain bellowed. “How tall is he now? . . . Thirty-five? . . . I’ll be forty. I know I will. You just wait. He’ll never make forty . . . if he does I’ll be forty-five. He can’t outdistance me. . . Listen, Doc, I’ve got to talk with you . . . Wait, Doc. I want to talk in private . . . You’ve got to tell me, did you get those powders made up? . . . Where are they? Well, why the hell haven’t you tried them out? I told you—Listen, Doc, I’ll outsize him, or I’ll blow your damned brains out. I’m the captain! He’s got no right to be so big. Look at him, he’s all of forty already and still going! . . . Doc!”

  But the doctor wasn’t listening. He was in a strange madness all his own. I insist a man would have to be mad to ignore what Hi and those boys were doing, risking their life blood for the expedition.

  Obviously Blyman meant to take himself and his two living proofs—the top and bottom Stair-steps—off into space within the next few minutes. And I’m certain he didn’t give a damn whether the captain or anyone else came with him. I’d take an oath on that. All the science was in his hands. The prize and the glory were his, almost. He was in a panic to cash in by himself.

  That was what Skinny and I knew after our clandestine visit to his bloodstained, powder-smeared laboratory.

  Now the doctor was forcing a spoon between the lips of the little two-footer, saying, “Tell me how this tastes to you. Sweet?”

  The spoon had contained a few grains of the cream-colored powder mixed with water. It was a stingy dose, considering that there was a whole red shoe-box of the stuff.

  “It’s sweet,” said the little fellow skeptically. “What is it?”

  “Just a test. No—no more. This stuff is potent. Tell me if anything happens.”

  Five minutes later the little chap was loosening the bands on his luminous garment and pacing around to make his doughy-white shoes more comfortable. To me it was one more proof of the protoplasmic flexibility that human beings had attained under Swampy Satellite conditions. The little fellow grew at least six inches. The doctor noticed in passing but made no comment.

  The little fellow was sore about growing. As low man of the well disciplined eleven Stair-steps he had been proud. Proud to keep his place. He had taken
pains to learn nothing, thereby remaining exactly two feet tall.

  Now he was as mad as hops. He started to think over some methods of revenge, but Greekel warned him not to think or he might do more growing.

  Greekel was a decent chap and I hate to tell you what he and the little fellow went through soon after that. I was sure when the Doc gave them each a drink of orange juice that he was pulling something over on them.

  “This’ll rest your nerves for the takeoff,” he said sharply, and they downed it.

  It might not have happened if the battle outside the ship hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. From the looks of things, the east end of the line of blue swampers might gather in close enough to make a rush on the ship. Our ship’s gunners were pot-shotting at them hot and heavy. But every third or fourth shot was needed on the west end to protect Hi and his fighters. So the east end gained ground.

  On the previous evening the space lifeboat had been removed from the ship to relieve it of weight during our attempted excavations. Consequently the Doc had had the steaming hot task of carting all his luggage a distance of a hundred yards, where the lifeboat was parked on solid ground ready for a take-off.

  Now the doctor stopped to tear off part of his tight clothing. He had been laboring under his own violent period of

  Brain Hop, now about over.

  He had no time to be proud of his new ten foot height, and scarcely time to be annoyed at his strangely darkening complexion.

  At last almost all his goods were ready to go.

  As for his passengers, only the captain was aboard. It was time for Greekel and the two-footer to follow suit, and the doctor cursed me because I hadn’t already seen to it.

  “Step along, you goddam exhibits,” he yelped. “You might just as well start marching to my music—”

  Greekel slugged out with a fist, and the doctor found himself against a wall with his hands rubbing his jaw.

  “We think we won’t go,” Greekel said.

  “What kind of talk is that? Of course you’re going! Has this damned Blonder been putting ideas in your head?”