The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Without any beasts of burden or vehicles we gingerly held the pace up the long trail, through the semi-darkness into the mountainous region. We kept a mile’s distance between us and the guards. At length we could see that the party had stopped and made a fire. By its light we could see Mr. Grailford bending under the blows of the whips. He was digging. They were forcing him to dig his own grave.

  We came within thirty or forty yards of the scene in time to see-the last blow of the guard’s whip strike him down. He fell into his own grave. He screamed for mercy, but the men threw stones in upon him and covered him up.

  That explained many things to us—things best pondered in silence. We had no heart to return to the post and resume our jobs. So this was how men were treated as soon as their efficiency decreased and it was no longer profitable for Violet Speer to feed them.

  We had long suspected this. Now we knew, and the rumor would spread through the two thousand workers like angry lightning through the sky

  We were rebels now, as never before. Grailford’s fate would be ours, too, eventually, unless the two thousand of us acted together.

  The third member of our trio that night was a newcomer who had recently landed on the planet of Venus in a ship of his own. He had come expecting to find this landing (a dot on all interplanetary maps) to be a hospitable haven. At once an accident had happened to his space ship.

  One of the hanging meteors had rolled into it, crushing it to matchwood.

  We had not told him at once what that meant But he was advised officially by Miss Violet Speer to get to work if he wished to earn his passage back to the Earth. He was a friendly little fellow, Midget Jupiter by name.

  “You can call me Midge,” he would say pleasantly, “but don’t forget that my last name is Jupiter.”

  Midge didn’t understand these whisperings of revolution at first, but we had promised him he would before he’d lived here very long.

  “And another thing I don’t understand,” Midge said, “This Violet Speer, who you say is the big boss, told me she wanted me to be one of her head executives. But why did she put me to work with a pick and sledge?”

  “Did she actually talk with you?”

  “Oh, we had a very pleasant chat. She’s beautiful, and her gold ornaments and diamonds nearly knocked my eyes out. She was smiling and bowing pleasantly and wearing a beautiful gown—”

  “And so you thought she was a wonderful person . . . which may be true,” Lathrop said, “until she decides you need a change of climate”

  “Yeah,” Midge growled uncomfortably “Why do we men let things like that happen?”

  “That’s just what I wanted you to say, Midge Jupiter,” said Lathrop. “We haven’t made this trip to the mountains in vain. From now on you’re in on the movement. We’ll tell you all about it on the way back.”

  CHAPTER II

  Hanging Meteoroids

  So we started back through the semidarkness of the Venus night, talking of the trouble that was spread before us. And we gave Midge the background of what had happened here.

  We knew this much of the deep past: Four hundred years ago the explorers from the Earth had come several hundred strong and succeeded in establishing an American settlement. These early Venus colonists had endured their share of pioneer hardships. However, they had had one big advantage over the pathfinders of some planets. They had not been opposed by any native creatures intelligent enough to challenge their right to this new land. The highest animals had been found to be rajlouts—denizens of the swamps. The rajlouts—as large as chimpanzees and as curious as penguins, had watched from their swamps while the civilized men built a well-planned space outpost here.

  The best of architects had come, during the twenty-first century, and built a great number of fine stone buildings. An excellent quality of building stone had gone into these architectural masterpieces, and they still stood as solid as Gibraltar. It was a shame to tear them down.

  “But why?” Midge protested. “Why tear them down?”

  “Different people have different conceptions,” said Jay Lathrop, “of what a civilization should be. Those first Venus colonists intended that Venus should be, first of all, a traveler’s haven, a place of peace, an outpost that would serve the coming commerce of the solar system. But most of those colonists or their descendants moved on during the last century or two. They left enough people to hold it, they thought. But you see what has happened. This daring young female conqueror who calls herself Violet Speer, cruised down across these mountains a few Earth years ago and announced that she was to be known henceforth as the Ruler of Venus.”

  “How could she get away with that?”

  “She had beauty and intelligence, as you have already observed,” said Jay Lathrop. “She had the most obedient army of guards I ever saw. In brief, she possessed everything she needed to persuade people to do her will. Most important of all was this single ship, the massive space liner in whose shadow we work. She lives in it, elevated a mile above us, and from this high throne she rules us.”

  Midge conceded that this was a most remarkable arrangement. Not the least curious feature of this organization of ruling power was the fact that the ship had a seemingly magical faculty for gathering unto itself a cluster of meteoroids.

  “You mean those huge balls of stone?” Midge asked. “I’ve been puzzling over those from the day I arrived. What holds them up?”

  “Some secret gravitational forces on the ship itself,” Lathrop explained.

  Since neither of us had ever been aboard this great liner that rested in the air a mile above us, we could only speculate as to who might have invented ways for it to gather these meteoroids on its flight through the skies. But the obvious fact was that the meteoroids hung there, a dozen or more of them—great spheres of stone weighing many tons each, as large as cathedral domes. There were no inside cables to keep them from falling on us. But some strange magnetic lines of force did hold them, as if both drawing and repelling them at once.

  “When the ship cruises away, the hanging meteoroids go with it. Violet Speer is aware that they might have a real protective value in case of trouble.”

  On another such excursion into the mountains a few days later the three of us had another opportunity to talk over our situation. Midge was right with us in spirit. His eyes were wide open to the challenge that was ushering in our revolution silently, stealthily.

  “What happened,” he asked, “to those people who were left from the earlier colony. Where are they now?”

  “Some of the children of the original Venus colonists moved on to establish outposts on other planets. But a scattered few are still here in our neighborhood. Look across the valley. Do you see those tiny blue lights, little pinpoints against the mountain-sides? Those are the little huts. They’ve moved away from the port to keep out of her reach . . . but they are never out of danger.”

  “And all of you?” Midge asked. “How did you get into this?”

  I, for one, blushed to remember how gullible I had been.

  “We came in answer to her call,” said Lathrop. “She picked us up on the Earth. We left to come to a new land of opportunity. It sounded beautiful in her sales talk. If you’ve ever happened to be around Buffalo or Chicago when she swooped down with her big space boat, you’d know. There were items in the paper about it at the time, too. They all took for granted that Violet Speer was a great leader.”

  “And who is she? Where did she come from?”

  “Maybe the Earth, maybe Mars, maybe the American Colony on Venus. No one knows. Maybe from an outside world.”

  We trudged along. There were some electric lanterns coming now, and so we hid ourselves and waited. For tonight there was to be another burial, and the victim was to be old man Kandaroff.

  CHAPTER III

  Rumors of Deadly Rajlouts

  “What bright, burning eyes the old man has,” Jay whispered, as the guards and their victim paraded past our hiding place. “Those four
guards think they’ve got it easy with the old fellow.”

  “Guards! Guards!” I muttered disgustedly. “The walking forms of men with ray-guns for souls—that’s what they are.”

  “Are we going to jump ’em?” Midge asked. “It’s our necks if we muff the job”

  “We’ll never win our revolution letting them live,” said Jay Lathrop. “They’re virtually automatons of allegiance, for some strange reason. So—here goes. You two men follow them closely, and I’ll run ahead.”

  The plan was simple, quick, and none too safe. But worth a try.

  Lathrop disappeared in the darkness, running silently. Midge and I followed the shine of the electric lanterns as the guards trudged along their familiar path. In a matter of an hour the party came to a halt, and we could see they were examining some tracks that crossed their path.

  “Where’d this barricade of stones come from?” one of the guards was saying. “Who put it there?”

  “The rajlouts must be moving up from the swamp,” said a second guard. “They have a way of banking their paths with stones.”

  “But look at these foot tracks. A man’s bare feet. Some human has had a hand in this.”

  They passed the lights back and forth over the low stumbling blocks of stone which Lathrop had hastily piled in two parallel rows squarely across their path. They were mystified. Could there be rajlouts with the feet and the toes of men? Violet Speer should have the valley swamps explored for signs of enemies.

  Two of them went on with old man Kandaroff and the other two kept on working with their lights. “Come on,” one of the guards called back. “We can play around after our job is done.”

  But the two laggers decided the least they could do was to measure the tracks and take a report back to Violet Speer. So they bent down to compare measurements.

  In that moment we were upon them. We swiftly, cold-heartedly, almost silently, gave it to them. We pounded down with stones and smashed skulls to pulp.

  We dragged the dead bodies to one side. We took the guns and the guards’ red coats, silver belts, and the lights. Equipped with these, Lathrop and I marched forward. Midge followed at a safe distance. He had been a bystander through this action. He cooperated in silence.

  Lathrop and I moved up to overtake the rest of the party. Old man Kandaroff cried out in surprise and jumped to one side. The remaining guards were quick to fall under the blasts of our newly won guns.

  That was all. The job was done. The next party that might come across the mountain would find a warning in the form of four dead compatriots.

  We took all four guns, we made a pack cot for the elderly Kandaroff and bore him back toward home. He was the most grateful man in the world.

  We hid him in a cave and did everything we could in a clandestine way to make life comfortable for him.

  Right away there was a search party of guards who went out to look for their missing brothers. They not only found the bodies. They found the human foot tracks which Lathrop had taken pains to leave imprinted in the mud. They noted the missing guns. They returned with news that must have been disturbing to Miss Violet Speer. She called an assembly of all people who professed to be her loyal subjects and made the boast that all traitors would be sought out and buried alive.

  She was quite a beautiful person, and I was aware that my new friend Midge Jupiter was not the only person among the assembly who caught his breath when she appeared and sighed when she departed.

  Even Jay Lathrop was noticeably affected on these rare occasions when she made her public appearances.

  The did not actually come down from her ship and walk among us—though she should have been safe enough, with five hundred armed carmine coats to protect her.

  No, her appearance was through the medium of a great globe—an artificial meteoroid which hung suspended by the mysterious magnetic forces like the others. It contained a screen which mirrored her by television. In this guise she appeared to us, dressed in the loveliest of purple and white gowns, with jewels aglitter. Everyone hushed as if here was something too beautiful to be realized.

  Even when Violet Speer made a speech she kept her distance. That was her way. She preferred to use a television screen that would magnify her before the eyes of her audience.

  This device spared her the annoyance of rubbing elbows with her people. She could keep her distance. Popular feeling being what it was, this was the safer thing to do. The low mumblings of hatred from these enslaved employees could not reach her. She could not see the deep hatreds that burned in the eyes of men whose comrades had been tortured and buried alive.

  But upon this occasion Violet Speer quickly silenced her audience There were signs of a mysterious danger in the land. The people listened intently.

  “My dear subjects! If there is a dangerous breed of rajlouts moving in upon us, I have the means to destroy them. My great ship carries the facilities for wholesale destruction. So do not fear. But let me warn you. If any of you learn of the presence of these creatures and do not report them, you will be held guilty of a crime against our common safety.”

  It was at this point that Violet Speer became most emphatic. There was dynamite in her threat.

  “I promise you that every such offender will die a horrible death. So beware! Do not let yourselves be found in the company of this mysterious breed of poison rajlouts.”

  The audience was pretty well tamed by this speech. It was a clever stroke. Violet Speer wasn’t talking about any swamp-dwelling rajlouts. What she really had in mind would dawn upon everyone sooner or later.

  But for the remainder of that twilight the people returning to their homes preferred to talk in low voices. Some were angry, some were afraid, many were puzzled. Could such a tyrant as Violet Speer become a fairy godmother of protection overnight?

  “I don’t get her angle,” said Midge Jupiter. “What does she get out of all this?”

  “Some people have a hankering to own a big industry, some a whole nation, some a continent,” said Jay Lathrop. “All this pretty little lady wants is to get a good solid choke-hold on a planet. The first great wave of pioneers has gone on. But there’s enormous business ahead: space travel, military outposts, permanent settlers. I think Violet Speer would be satisfied with a complete monopoly.”

  “It’s my opinion,” I said, “that this woman has an insane passion for something called power. And her way of achieving it is through destroying. She may have plans that go beyond Venus.”

  “She may,” said Midge, “intend to take in the Earth eventually.”

  “She’s got a long way to go,” Jay Lathrop laughed. He brought our idle speculations back to the practical and immediate. “She’d better not command me to destroy that old government building. Of all the beautiful architecture! Maybe it doesn’t match the Taj Mahal or the finest cathedrals, but still it’s one of the world’s architectural treasures. And she’ll sacrifice it because it stands in her way.”

  “She’s trying to erase everything the early colonists planted here,” I said, “to strengthen her own claim.”

  As a newcomer. Midget Jupiter was brimful of curiosity on all the whys and wherefores. A soft mist had crept up from the swamps. In the dimly lighted doorways and porches of the ancient stone buildings many little groups were passing the night as we were—talking, wondering, trying to cut into the thick mists of the future to know what meaning life might hold for them here on Venus.

  Midge uncorked another question. “Where’d she ever get such a terrific space ship?”

  CHAPTER IV

  A Girl on the Trail

  “That,” said Jay, “is as much a mystery as where it got her. Apparently it was Earth-built. But it contains an amazing secret process for gathering a quantity of little meteoroids out of space. Somehow those masses come, hundreds of tons of them, as if to a magnet. And yet they don’t make contact. There is always that zone of safety. They move along with the ship and yet keep their distance—a hundred yards or so from the ship’
s surface.”

  At present there were about twenty of these rounded stony bodies hanging in the air beneath the ship, as if suspended by invisible cables. The ship itself was at least a mile and a half long. It was, to all appearances, a great bar magnet, capable of drawing these stray little heavenly bodies and for keeping them at safe arm’s length.

  When the ship was at rest in the air, as at present, half a mile above the flat space port, the meteoroids clustered around, occasionally sounding off with a low grinding or a crash of thunder when they bumped. Floating balls of dead weight, they might serve as buffers for the ship’s protection. Or, as Violet Speer had so continuously suggested, they might be used as instruments of destruction.

  The big orange-colored ship was said to contain a crew of only forty-five men. In the very near future I had occasion to verify this fact.

  In the whisperings of that night following Violet Speer’s speech the topic of revolution was not neglected. Lathrop knew, and so did I, that her allusion to a dangerous breed of rajlouts was intended as a thrust at rebel organizers. From her vantage point high above us Violet Speer was keeping watch.

  The plan of revolution was known to the inner circle only, and that was a pretty small circle in a population of two thousand workers. There would be about five hundred guards with standard ray-guns who would have to be overcome.

  We had watched repeatedly—we of the inner circle of twenty-five—we had watched and sifted these guards looking for some key man through whom we might get arms. But every man of those five hundred stood as solid for his boss as a fallen meteor.

  That in itself was very surprising. When Midge said, “What kind of dope does she give them t© make them that way?” we laughed. But he was hitting pretty close, as we afterward learned.

  And when he said, “Are you aiming to slaughter the whole bunch?” we had to stop and philosophize over the matter It’s always a question, when there’s a cruel but necessary surgical operation to be performed, whether any innocent flesh is going to get hurt. It’s a tough nut to crack when you stop to consider that some of your enemy are persons who by their own bad fortune fell in with the wrong side. It’s a hard decision to say that they have to be bumped off right along with the sinners. But when we talked it over in a dark council meeting a few nights later, Jay Lathrop offered an opinion that stuck: