The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  In this construction only a thin surface remained as the ceiling of each tunnel—the floor of the space port plane.

  Now, as the second of the meteoroids bounded down at us with a terrific impact, I saw neat rows of these ceilings fall through. The trenches broke into being before our eyes like the work of a well-planned earthquake, their crusted-over surfaces clattering down like thin ice.

  I was holding Ellen’s hand and we raced for the nearest trench, then dodged back to take another, for a great rolling object, the third to strike, was cutting off our path. Almost over us! Its flying debris struck my arm, and the snap against my fingers was like something electric.

  We joined the stampede to our right. As we approached the next trench, the dust of another rolling monster was blowing in our faces. I caught Ellen by the waist and swung her down into the ditch, tumbling in after her just as the great crunching ball swept over us. We came up out of the heap, then, and I brushed the chunks of earth from Ellen’s hair as we ran down the trench.

  Then we were safe. From here we could watch the ire in the face of Violet Speer as she contemplated her troubles. Her soldiers were in for a fight.

  Down came the great elevator cage filled with more starchy red and silver guards. Our guns held off until they swished to the ground. When they streamed out of the door, we gave them fire. The straight blue bars of lightning melted everything in their paths. A few of the guards found their way to the trenches, but most of them vanished.

  Up went the cage. We knew that the powers in the ship overhead were caught for a strategy. It gave us a moment for our own to form. Then here came another cage load, forty or more of them, leaning over the sides pouring their fire at our trenches.

  That was a costly deal for us. Our heavy sacrifices had only begun. It appeared that these forty or so would not be unloaded, but would be allowed to swing over one trench after another.

  Here came the cage and the luminous blue gun streams. I yelled at Midge to watch Ellen, for I was going to jump. But he was ahead of me, catching the side of the elevator cage as it swung like a cray pendulum close along the surface. Up it went, a foot off the ground, just as he caught onto it. A cable swung in my direction and I grabbed it. Ellen screamed and tried to pull me back.

  “No! No! No!” I heard her cry.

  I wouldn’t get far unless the gods of luck were with me. I saw one of the guns aim at me. But someone bobbed up beyond me with a stream of fire that cut the gunman through the head and shoulders.

  The pendulum, a moment at rest, began to swing back from the change of course of the great ship overhead. It was then I discovered that Ellen had come up off the ground with me. She was clutching my ankle, swinging in mid air, and we were going up—up—

  She dared not let go now, but it would take a superhuman grip to hold. Suddenly she slipped off, and I had visions of her falling into the ruins of the old government building. The sharp-pointed stones jutted upward only a few yards beneath the path of her fall. How it all happened so quickly I’ll never know. But Midge, bless his heart, somehow kicked one of the dangling loops of the elevator cable. It whipped out to her and she hooked an arm over it.

  In three quick hand-over-hand strokes I was into the car with Midge. Together we tugged at the looped cable. Swiftly, steadily, Ellen came up. Her sun-browned arm caught over the edge of the floor. I caught her wrist and flung an arm to her waist. And then she was with us, safe in the cage. Yes, safe, temporarily. Some of our sharpshooter friends in the trenches had cleared the way for us. The unfriendly arms and heads that had shown themselves above the cage wall were gone. The armless, decapitated bodies which now lay on the cage floor were as harmless as the red and silver uniforms that adorned them.

  “Quick! Get under the red coats!” I yelled.

  We tore off some garments and covered ourselves with them. And then we prayed to the gods of luck again—prayed that the observers from the big ship above us wouldn’t know that they had taken on a trio of revolutionists.

  CHAPTER XII

  Exit Violet

  Some of the cables that supported us had been cut through from the ray blasts. Now another gave way and we were tipped to one side of the cage. We were going up fast. The engineer was determined to draw the cage in before he lost it completely.

  Hastily we took what guns we could use. We were well supplied by the time we reached the top of the ascent. The blackness of the doorway closed around us.

  A group of guards waited to get in. They wasted hardly a glance on us. The engineer was shouting at them. “You’ll have to wait till I get the elevator fixed. You can’t go down there.”

  “We had our orders from the boss,” one of the guards retorted. “Send us down.”

  “Let the boss give her orders to me,” the engineer retorted.

  The look in that engineer’s eye was good to see. Any quarrel among the high moguls, I figured, was a boost for us. We waited, unnoticed, to catch the lay of the land. Plainly this engineer had been fed up with being run around in circles by the scientific wizard, Novairre.

  “Let Violet give me her orders,” he repeated. “Otherwise the elevator stays right where she is.”

  At that moment Violet appeared. She was in a bad mood, but there was nothing she wanted so much as cooperation from her guards and crew. “What’s the matter here?”

  “I’m running this ship for you,” the engineer said. “I’ll do anything for you. But I’ve had my fill of taking hard-boiled orders from that scientific demon.”

  “I see.” Violet Speer looked worried. “Remember, Novairre was the one that devised all these things. He was the one that formulated the different chemical solutions—”

  “Most of which didn’t work. Your guards are being killed off like flies.”

  “Because they are loyal,” said Violet Speer. “Without solution D, they’d be deserting. Look at them now pour into the fray.”

  “What about these that came back up?” asked the engineer, giving his head a toss in our direction.

  Violet Speer’s amazed stare was on us, a stare that quickly changed to a murderous glare.

  All right, my time had come. At least I’d go down fighting. Furthermore, before I got rubbed out there was a question I wanted answered. What had happened to Jay Lathrop? I knew he was either dead or a prisoner here in the ship all these months past. If he was here, I was damned sure he hadn’t stayed from choice. But I wanted it from Violet Speer’s own lips.

  “It’s you,” she said, as if the discovery amused her. “So you’ve come back to—”

  “To straighten accounts,” I snapped. “Where is he? What did you do with him?”

  My two ray-guns, together with Midge’s and Ellen’s, argued for a quick answer, no fooling. The guards fell back in a huddle. The engineer’s eyes grew wide with dismay. He didn’t like to see his beloved boss threatened.

  “Bring him out,” I repeated. “One false move and I’ll blast you and your damned ship into smithereens. Keep the engineer covered, Midge.”

  “I’ve got him covered,” said Midge, “but he keeps coming.”

  “If you turn that blast on me,” said the engineer, “you’ll lose the only knowledge in existence on how to-maneuver this ship. That damned Novairre don’t know what I know. Your first trip through the skies will bring meteoroids crashing into the hull—”

  “To the devil with the ship!” Midge cried. “Give us Jay Lathrop or we’ll blast the whole business to hell!”

  Violet Speer reached for her gun. I let her have it. It ’most killed me to shoot at a woman! Magnetic Miss Meteor, whose visits had electrified the Earth. I shot her—and I thought I saw, if I did not actually see, the horror in the eyes of my beloved Ellen that I would do such a thing. The engineer was lunging at me, but that didn’t stop me. I shot at Violet Speer. The blue death blasted the clothes from her statuesque body, blasted the flesh from her frame—and then—then there was still a living creature that would not melt away I

  It w
as Violet Speer transformed—Violet Speer no longer feminine! It was Novairre himself!

  “You can’t kill me!” The little wicked yellow face was grinning defiance at death. “I’ve protected myself against this moment.”

  As well as I knew my own name I knew that what he said was true. We had seen him stand against the rays just as he stood now. By some further scientific magic he had concealed his evil self within the likeness of a beautiful woman from time to time through these years of his growing power. Violet Speer—Magnetic Miss Meteor—lie stood revealed before up now.

  Midge’s life, Ellen’s and my own were in the balance. My brazen attack had been foiled, and now a guard—one who stood in a paralysis of amazement, allowed Novairre to seize his ray gun. In that split second the blue death came at me in a sure, straight blast.

  My last thought! A hideous realization that I was leaving Ellen in the hands of this beast. My last thought

  But was death from a ray-gun not instantaneous? Or could it be that my mind went on thinking even as the rays splashed against my chest? I was not dying! Every scrap of clothing disappeared from my shoulders and chest, and still I did not melt away.

  At that moment the engineer, once faithful follower of Violet, unleashed his pent-up hatreds. He plunged forward with all his power and caught the wizard of science by the throat.

  “You’ve played your last trick, Novairre! You’ve whipsawed me and trapped me between hate and love—love for something that didn’t exist: Violet Speer! The ageless, deathless spirit! Deathless? We’ll see!”

  “No! No!” Novairre cried. “We can work together—”

  “Together? You’ve had your chance to show me all about that. If you’ve got any solution to save you from choking to death, now’s the time!”

  Crunch! The outcries of Novairre changed to a low, horrible croaking. That went on, and for some astonishing reason the guards stood by unmoved. They were saturated with a solution of loyalty—a loyalty that was meant for the voice and form of Violet Speer, not the masculine self within.

  Novairre fell lifeless to the floor.

  We stood back wondering what the engineer would do next. Were we friend or foe?

  He turned to us slowly and wept as he spoke. “For all these years I’ve believed Violet Speer’s cruelties were forced upon her by Novairre. She led me on. I saturated myself with the solutions of loyalty—just as you guards did—and now—”

  “Now you’ve won the revolution for us,” came the quiet voice of Jay Lathrop, coming in past the silent guards. “You and these friends of mine who dared to come up.”

  Some of the guards, looking down at the trenches, weren’t so sure.

  “They’re still fighting down there, sir,” one of them said, and the respect with which he addressed Jay Lathrop was notable. “You see, sir, our companions don’t know that she’s gone—I mean he—”

  Another guard suggested, “Can’t you use the television screen, sir, and tell them?”

  These were telltale words. The revolution had been going on all the time up here. I should have known it. Jay Lathrop was the natural leader, the kind that earns loyalty by his fairness. How he had escaped the treacheries of Novairre we might never know. But here he was, very much alive and very much needed.

  Lathrop called down through the amplifier and gave forth with powerful words that terminated all the conflict. That for which the people were fighting was already won! Coming from Jay Lathrop, echoing the unforgotten battlecry of old man Kandaroff, these good tidings jolted the Venus settlement with something more powerful than falling meteors.

  Meanwhile, Ellen recalled that her people had an old legend about a leader named Hitler whose evil heart led him to make depredations upon civilization. “The legend ended,” said Ellen, “in an awful tragedy for him.”

  “Did they finally choke him?” the engineer asked.

  “The whole world moved in upon him and choked the life out of him and his followers.”

  Far down below us the fighting had ceased. Man’s eternal ideas of freedom and good will and fair play were to be restored for this planet’s coming civilization.

  Ellen turned to me, and so did Lathrop. They wanted an explanation. “How was it you escaped death from the atomic gun?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t understand it—unless it was from that time a guard chased me here on the ship, and I tumbled into a vat of liquid.”

  “Solution E!” said Midge. “I wonder if there’s any left. I could use a bath myself. . .. But on second thought, skip it. I might get the wrong bath and turn into a violet.”

  MAN FROM THE MAGIC RIVER

  First published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1944

  So skillfully had these jeweled chessmen been carved that they seemed almost alive. And sometimes they made their own moves!

  CHAPTER I

  Louise Wilmott was walking alone through the garden when the strange meeting occurred. It was nearly midnight. The moon was full, showering a soft, white light through the rows of graceful poplars. The night was warm. There was no dew, and the acres of lawn stretched away past arches of climbing roses and clumps of shrubbery.

  Louise was breathing in the fragrance and thrilling to that free-spirited feeling of being far away from everyone—reporters and cameramen and Washington officials and women’s uplift committees. Here was complete peace and tranquillity. Until this hour of arriving in this far-off lakeside country she had almost forgotten that such things could be.

  Suddenly her easy stride came to a stop. She was startled by the movement of a dark object among the shadows only a few yards to her right.

  The object had been lying in a horizontal position and at first glimpse had reminded her of a fallen scarecrow. But as it drew its knees up and bent forward to catch them with black-gloved hands, Louise knew the strange apparition must be a man.

  As the figure rose to his feet and strode slowly toward her path, Louise saw that his face was concealed by a mask.

  “Good evening,” he said. His voice was deep, like an echo out of a well.

  Louise caught her breath. The mask he wore glittered with a row of bright green points of light across the forehead; like real emeralds scintillant in the moonlight. The man’s face was lost under the loose sack of black silk. A face that cannot be seen is a face to be feared, Louise thought. The eyes were bright black beads within deep shadows. They were exceedingly alert, for a man who might have been sleeping under the stars, but Louise could not tell if they were smiling.

  She yielded to an impulse to change her course. Abruptly she left the gravel path and started off across the patch of lawn.

  The phantom of silk and jewels did not choose to be ignored. He crossed the gravel path with an unhurried stride.

  “Good evening, miss,” he repeated. His footsteps swished through the grass, coming closer. As she passed a row of garden sage his shadow crossed hers.

  “Good evening,” he said for the third time. “Aren’t you lost in this garden, miss? You’re a half mile from the house. You might not be safe.”

  She stopped and looked up at him. He was quite, tall, and his broad shoulders, his high head and his wide, fan-shaped cap with the emerald band gave him the aspect of towering above her, a weird symbol of doom.

  “Why are you following me?” Louise asked, trying hard not to seem frightened.

  “D© let me show you around. This garden is quite large. You might get lost.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Until you came along I was simply lying on the grass watching the skies, thinking what a beautiful moon—what a beautiful world—”

  “It is beautiful,” Louise said, somewhat, breathlessly.

  He nodded his head gently two or three times, and she guessed he might be smiling and saying to himself, “So you are going to see things my way!” What he did say was simply, “Beautiful!”

  “Now please go back to your observation post,” Louise said. “You’re missing
out on the moon and stars.”

  “But you are so much more beautiful. Do you come here often?”

  Louise Wilmott might have answered that, although she had never been here before, she had become the owner of this property through an inheritance.

  Furthermore, she might have stated that persons who could not explain their presence here could be arrested for trespassing.

  She fought down the impulse to give angry orders, though she would have been within her rights.

  Instead, she said, “Do you have to wear black? Do you have to blot out my moonlight and roses.with a shroud and a mask?”

  The emerald-capped phantom gave a low laugh.

  “Your moonlight? Your roses?”

  “Very well, they are my roses.”

  “Then you are the owner—the very famous Miss Wilmott. I am honored.”

  He gave a deep bow. The fan-shaped cap stirred a breeze against her face. The emerald band flashed. Then he stood very tall and straight again, and much too dignified.

  “Since you insist upon talking with me, wouldn’t it be courteous for you to remove your mask?” Louise suggested.

  “That I cannot do,” said the dark phantom. “But I must talk with you. I have a request to make. It will be to your advantage— But come.

  Here’s a place for us to sit.”

  “A park bench, I suppose?”

  “No, a marble table—a chess table, if you please. I often engage myself in games through the night. The chessmen are jeweled. They catch the light of the farthest star. There. Won’t you sit down? You are quite an expert at chess, I’ve heard.”

  Louise asked herself how he knew that. In fact, she suddenly asked herself a hundred questions.

  Who was he? Had he known that she, the nation’s famed “Miss Citizen” was coming here tonight? Did he know that she had longed for many years to see this lonesome old lakeside estate that her aunt had left to her? That she had decided only a few days ago to suspend the political career she had followed in her three years since college, to while away a few lazy months here in the country?