The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  It was a weird thought, no less so when she stopped to catalogue some of the varied chemical preparations with which she and her assistants had already treated their subjects in the line of experiments.

  Finally Lathrop said, “As I understand it, then, you’ve prepared five different types of chemical solutions which you have termed A, B, C, D and E; and you have bathed a number of persons in each, after which you’ve proceeded to shoot at them with rayguns. But you haven’t told us the results.”

  “If you’re not too impatient,” said Violet Speer, “I could give you a demonstration.”

  “No, no, no, thank you,” said Lathrop.

  “On you, Mr. Jupiter? Wouldn’t you like to experience this ordeal for yourself all in the interests of science, of course?”

  “You mean I’d take a bath in acid or something, and then you’d shoot a gun at me?”

  Violet Speer gave a cruel laugh. “Mr. Jupiter seems a trifle nervous. We’ll wait until he misbehaves before we give him a first-hand demonstration of this experiment.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Over the Earth’s Skyscrapers

  We took off quietly sometime during that night, and from then on it would seem that we were in a permanent night. The sun was out there doing its best to fill the windows of one side of the ship with light, but it was a thin and sickly effort, coming through the vast sky of almost tangible darkness. With no atmosphere around us to diffuse the light, neither the sun nor the stars could do much to brighten our gloomy way.

  Our routine of days and nights and mealtimes, however, was adhered to on a basis of Earth time. You’ve doubtless followed this custom in your own space travel. It makes for desirable regularity in the details of living. At the same time it admits of flexibility, giving you such added pleasures as come from ignoring the morning alarm clock, for example, and turning over for more sleep.

  My sleep was nothing to brag about. I drifted into gloomy dreams and tossed about like a bouncing meteor. After a night of nightmares I tried to improve my day with a long nap, which turned into a series of daymares.

  That evening we gathered on the observation deck where we could watch the half-lighted meteoroids flow along with us.

  I fired an abrupt question at Violet Speer to re-open the matter of ray-gun mysteries.

  “Tell me, Miss Spear, have you succeeded in equipping any people to live against this gunfire?”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Briff,” said Violet Speer, casting a cool wink at the two guards sitting across from us, “those subjects that have been dipped in solutions A, B, C and D and then shot at did not live to tell what happened. As to solution E—well I’m not through experimenting.”

  “Oh,” I said. I assumed from her manner that she was spinning a quick lie to taunt me.

  “Perhaps later on this voyage,” she continued, “you shall see. I always take a few extra guests along on these cruises to make sure we’ll not lack for subjects.”

  I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I did some lonely prowling around the ship—enough that the guards began to follow me. So I was forced back into my stateroom. Night and day, night and day, according to the clock, went along with very little visible change in the stellar scenery. The gradual shifting of positions among the closer planets was the all-consuming interest on the observation deck.

  Soon the Earth loomed large and we were moving down upon the wide white foamy blankets of clouds that covered great patches of continent. Like Venus, the Earth had approached as a sphere of misty white; its clear-cut features that stand out boldly on every drawingroom globe were blankets under the opaque covering of atmosphere.

  Our meteoroids were with us, and now they turned into glowing meteors. One could not be sure at what hour or elevation they first took on the soft glow of heat. The friction of passing through the light air was intensified, minute by minute. Soon our meteoric company had become a riot of light.

  No doubt many people on the Earth saw the cluster of brilliant flashes, and the superstitious ones wondered whether so many falling stars did not portend a disaster. I was guessing along the same lines, and superstition had nothing to do with it.

  A few of the meteors burned out. Others stayed lighted like steady candles, and as we crossed through the long zone of night they blazed a luminous path for us. Snow-covered mountaintops reared their brightened points toward us, with shadows falling away on one side and closing in from the other.

  Sometimes a flaming meteor would jump away from our course and shoot off on a tangent of its own, ripping into the forest and burying its white-hot mass in a mountainside.

  What a terrible weapon of destruction! For a moment I could imagine how a city might suffer under such a blow. But it was a magnificent show, and I kept wishing that Ellen were with me. If I ever got back I’d tell her—

  At last! Here we were approaching a city, retarding our speed at such a rate that the sensation was almost sickening.

  High over the tops of buildings in a skyscraper city we came to a stop.

  It was not an invasion. The people of the Earth no longer thought of other planets with invasion terrors. With earth man’s first acquaintance with life from the outside, that bogey had been blasted. Rather, the earth inhabitants had come to realize that visits from the far-off lands usually carried no implication of harm.

  I knew this to be so, because I had been a student of the trends of such opinions. Indeed, it was to get further information along this line that I had originally fallen for Violet Speer’s invitation to Venus.

  As it had happened a few years ago when I myself was enticed away from the Earth, so it happened now.

  That is, the meteors served to attract much attention. As they gently swayed, floating now at a level only fifty yards or so above the tallest skyscrapers, throngs gathered in the streets below. You could see curious people pointing up at them. Would they strike the buildings? Why didn’t they fall?

  It was apparent at once to the streetfuls of crowds that this line of meteors was being controlled from the massive ship a half mile above them. In my own day of seeing this from the earth, I remember; we had marvelled at the delicacy of the controls. What wonders—to maneuver these countless tons of stone safely over the aerials and smokestacks and flagpoles! Now it was just as uncanny to us on the ship who had watched the regularity of this control straight across the heavens.

  But of all this spectacular array the most sensational item was the leading meteor. For it was not a meteor but an artificial one. Violet Speer evidently had had it made to order. Unlike the ten or twelve that followed it, still luminous with sprays of fire, this artificial meteor contained instruments within its metal shell.

  It was equipped with a television receptor which displayed to the city a huge image of Violet Speer.

  That was somewhat deceiving. It was not, as I had once thought, an actual screen enlargement of Miss Speer herself; rather, it was the televised enlargement of a delicately carved statue of her.

  It announced her coming, just as any one of the great blazing sky advertisements of the times might announce their products: with the most attractive devices possible for catching the eye. It was no mean psychology on Violet Speer’s part to employ this statue as her manner of appealing to the crowds. For what could be more attractive than such an exquisite image of herself, in the nude?

  At once the great electrically lighted boards that flashed their news items to the street crowds sent forth the message:

  “Miss Meteor has arrived from Venus. Miss Meteor, with magnetic ship and stellar display, may be seen hovering over the center of the city at this hour.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Novairre the Wizard

  The hours of waiting passed quickly, and before I could realize it we were again on our way to Venus.

  I had never stepped my foot off the ship. The reason was obvious, considering what a different story I might tell about Venus from the one that “Magnetic Miss Meteor” must have told.

  None
of us three was allowed to talk with the reporters who came upon the ship to interview the engineers, mechanics and guards. It had again become apparent that Lathrop, Midge and I were prisoners.

  What had happened during that stop was that Violet Speer had communicated with the Earth people through the medium of loud speakers. She had paid herself some very pretty compliments. She had implied that she was being kept in power on Venus by the hearty support of her subjects there, and that she was building the happiest kingdom in the solar system. And so—what loyal men and true would go back with her to fill some of the important positions that were now available?

  “I need only men that are highly skilled. In every case they will be given positions of great responsibility; each with hundreds of workers under him.”

  This strained the credulity. It was unlikely that each of these volunteers could become the bosses of three men each, let alone a hundred. But it sounded good, and several men came aboard in the earnest hope that they were going forth for a share in Utopia.

  To five large cities we had gone. Occasionally Violet Speer had called upon some of the guards or crew to testify to her words. From five cities the new men had come up in the elevator cage to fill passenger compartments. Violet Speer had not neglected to add the very attractive lie that there were great numbers of beautiful girls among the native population of Venus, who looked forward to winning their husbands from these loads of passengers.

  The truth was that there had been some intermarrying of this sort, if the remnants of the old American colonists might be called the “native population.”

  But these marriages were rare. The hard work and severe discipline were not conducive to marriages.

  High pay, beautiful living conditions, delightful homes—with these selling points it was no wonder that there were more applicants than the ship could accommodate. And so, loaded down with men and good will, we sailed for Venus.

  On the way back something came up that scared Midget Jupiter so he couldn’t eat.

  When he managed to convey to me what had happened I was so badly jolted I couldn’t talk straight or show my face on the observation deck.

  What happened was that one of the guards came to Midge and told him I wanted to see him in a lower room, number 247. Okay, Midge said, he’d go right down.

  And so he started. Then he took a notion he’d have a look at our stateroom to make sure I hadn’t walked out and left it unlocked (which I never did, but he always thought I would). He looked in, and lo and behold, I was in it!

  “I thought you wanted to see me in 247,” he said.

  “You’ve been dreaming,” I said, “I don’t even know of such a room.”

  He gave me a surprised look and then sauntered out without saying another word. As I thought this over afterward it seemed that he had behaved rather strangely. I wasn’t aware that the moment he closed the door he struck out on a one-man investigation of room 247.

  He knew at once that someone must have wanted him to step into that room. So, of all things, he swiped a brace and bit from a repair kit and edged around to a room adjacent. This turned out to be a part of the individual breakfast nooks along the rear of the dining hall. He timed his strokes to the ship’s rhythmic vibrations and quietly drilled a hole through the wall.

  Luckily he wasn’t discovered. He returned to the stateroom after one quick eyeful of what could be seen through that wall. When he told me about it I wouldn’t believe him until I went down and looked for myself.

  Then the three of us—Lathrop included—took turns looking.

  “I’ve seen them before,” Midge whispered. “They were in the last batch to come aboard.”

  “You’ll never see them again,” said Lathrop.

  Then it was my turn for a glimpse at the strange goings-on.

  What I saw was a ray-gun demonstration. Here was Violet Speer’s experiment involving human beings. Men were being led in as targets and shot down.

  One at a time these subjects were being admitted to the room. I could hear a door open and close. Then a man, inevitably looking like a drowned rat, would stray into view, usually asking the guard what this was all about.

  “They’ve been saturated with a chemical solution,” I whispered. “But it doesn’t have any effect on the gunfire.”

  The guard would wait until the subject had strayed half-way across the room. Then he would pull the trigger. There’d be an instant’s flash, like a straight bar of blue lighting. In that split second the luckless man would melt away.

  The three of us caught our varying impressions of this weird drama. A few minutes later we were back in the comparative safety of our stateroom talking it over.

  “Aside from the unspeakable horror of it,” said Lathrop, “It is an amazing thing.”

  “Amazing? How?” I asked.

  “Amazing that that little wizard scientist could stop the rays with his body.”

  Midge and Lathrop had both seen what I had missed. As we compared observations we knew that the only reason the rays didn’t eat straight through the walls of the ship was that they were caught and absorbed by the naked body of this little withered yellow man.

  “He is the scientific brains of this outfit,” said Lathrop. “I knew these inventions had someone other than Violet Speer back of them. I’ve been keeping an ear to the ground. This little man’s name is Novairre.”

  “You’ve seen him, Briff,” said Midge to me. “Between their descriptions of this little wizard who would promenade the observation deck in a snappy pinstriped suit. They spoke of him as having a highly intelligent look.”

  “The look of a fiend, if you ask me” I said. Which was our common feeling, now that we had seen him at work. He and a couple of guards had run the whole show. The gun victims were the few new volunteers from the Earth who, once aboard, had shown signs of being hard to manage. Their uncooperative tendencies were evidently taken by Violet Speer to be sufficient cause for ridding herself of them. Some of them, I confess, were pretty hard lots—escaped convicts, Lathrop said. But you never know: a good revolution can sometimes make heroes of persons who have, for one reason or another, fallen into an unfortunate relationship with the law.

  At any rate these men were being brought in one at a time and melted to nothing by the blast of the atomic pistols, and the very blue blast that turned them into thin air would spray harmlessly against the chest of this fiendish little Novairre just back of them. And he never suffered in the slightest.

  Among the three of us we had seen six men lose their lives. That was enough to scare us into a sickness and a panic. Midge and I stuck tight to our stateroom.

  Meanwhile it was difficult managing for Jay Lathrop, for the reports he brought back to us after a visit with Violet Speer were that she was encouraging him to fall in love with her. In fact, she was spiking her advances with little implied threats that he might lose a couple of friends if he didn’t show more inclination to be sociable.

  “And so I’ve spent the last two hours reading poetry—nice, peaceful love songs and all sorts of refined sentiments—to this magnetic murderess. What a mess we’re in . . . If I ever get back to the rest of the poor devils she’s hounding, I’ll never waste another minute on anything but revolution.”

  Thus spoke the most determined friend I ever knew. And Midge and I were back of him a hundred percent.

  But there were several obstacles, long and short. One of them might take a year to overcome. Another might knock at our door at any moment and turn all our plans to naught.

  There were going to be three thousand of us now instead of two. Lathrop was weighed down by that.

  This new thousand (minus the six or more who would never be accounted for) would be slow to awaken to the need for a revolution. They were coming into the situation blind. That was sure to hamstring us and present any immediate revolutionary play.

  “What a bunch of innocents,” Lathrop groaned. “I’ve tried to talk with some of them, but they think I’m a crank. The
y’ll have to see things for themselves. It may take years to swing them into line. At present they can’t be organized to listen t© our stories, for they’re a scattered bunch of ambitious individuals, not a social group.”

  This was true. They were competitors for the big jobs they thought were waiting. At present they were completely in sympathy with Miss Violet Speer, so they were unlikely to believe that such an attractive woman, showing them her most charming hospitality, could possibly be anything less than a beautiful character.

  “It will take time,” said Jay Lathrop. Then came heavy footsteps and a loud knock at our stateroom door. The voice of a guard called, “One hour until we arrive at Venus. Get your things in order.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Lathrop called back. “It will take a few minutes.”

  “Are the other two men with you?”

  “They’re here,” said Lathrop.

  “They were supposed to report to room 247. Why haven’t they done so?” The words sounded like a death sentence. Neither Midge nor I could utter a syllable.

  “Why haven’t they reported?” the voice barked.

  “They must have missed the order,” Lathrop. “I’ll tell them—”

  “Open up!” the guard shouted. “I’ll conduct them down myself to be sure they get there. Open up!”

  Lathrop opened the door. Not one but four guards in their gaudy red and silver uniforms. They glared in at us with faces as hard as marble.

  “This way, you two! Make it snappy!”

  CHAPTER IX

  A Race from Ray Blasts

  We came to our feet and advanced across the room.

  I wondered, in that brief second, whether the mean-looking ray-guns in the guards’ hands might also contain attachments for shooting old-fashioned steel bullets. I wondered whether they knew that all three of us had guns of our own.