by Don Wilcox
This puzzled Joe. From his hiding place he could see Uncle Keller still standing there in the aisle staring at his corncob pipe, scowling.
Donna could be heard stepping into the ship. A switch snapped, hydraulic levers swished, the airlocks were closing.
“You’d better get out, Uncle,” Joe whispered. “She’s closing up.”
Uncle Keller looked down at him. “Move over,” he said. “We’re on our way to Mars.”
CHAPTER III
The shock of taking off began with a roar of rocket motors. For just a split second Joe thought, “Oh-oh, the whole town will come out to see what exploded. They’ll hear that I’m off for Mars, to deliver a silver—”
WHAMMMMMMM!
When Joe Banker woke up, several hours later, he looked up into the pretty face of Donna Londeen. She was bandaging his left wrist. Her smile was disturbing.
“Think he’ll live?” Uncle Keller asked between puffs on his corncob pipe.
“His eyes are open,” Donna said in her sweet, weird voice. “But I think he knows not a thing. He is so dizzy.”
“I know everything,” Joe growled. “What’s the meaning of all these bandages? Where am I?”
“In my rocket ship. You took a nasty jolt, both of you.”
“Didn’t bother me none,” said Uncle Keller. “I’m tough. But these city clerks—”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Joe. He was fascinated by Donna’s purple hair that cascaded over her shoulders among the horns.
“Didn’t bother me none,” Uncle Keller repeated, “ ‘cept for breakin’ my pipe stem. But I always carry an extry.”
“You mischief boys, playing stowaway,” Donna teased. “Why not tell me you want to go to my planet? I am delighted to bring home two living souvenirs.”
“I’m no souvenir,” said Uncle Keller. “I’m a free citizen and a Democrat.”
“That’ll cut a lot of ice with the Martians,” Joe said sarcastically.
“Two souvenirs,” Donna laughed, looking out into the blackness of space. Was she planning to sell her trophies over a bargain counter when she got home? “Two live ones—one short and one tall—”
“Who’s short?” Joe Banker barked. “Just because Uncle Keller happens to be built like a bean pole—”
“One tough one,” Donna continued, and one tender—”
“Who’s tender, darn it?” Joe growled. “Not me . . . Ouch! Easy on that wrist, lady.”
The blackness of space was everywhere outside the ship. The earth and the moon had been left far behind. The motors hummed so evenly you forgot you were moving at high speed.
Gradually the sun shifted. The bright dot of Mars, nearly straight ahead, grew larger.
The beautiful girl with the seven horns and the purple hair spent her hours at the controls. She was studying languages, between times, and was not to be bothered.
Sometimes she gave Joe and Uncle Keller lessons in her own native tongue. It was surprisingly like English, a fact which fascinated Joe. She urged them to study from her books. They would go obediently to the observation nook at the rear of the ship and work for awhile. But soon they would fall to talking.
“What on earth are you smoking, Uncle Keller?” Joe asked, looking up from his book.
“Paper. And it don’t taste healthy. But I been clean outa smokin’ for two hours.”
“Well, don’t start burning the ship down.”
“This was somethin’ in your handwritin’—somethin’ I found on the floor.”
Joe searched his pockets. “H-m-m. I know. Darn it, you’re burning up the note that I wrote to Donna asking her for a date.”
“That’s what it smokes like.” Uncle Keller gave a sour puff.
“Well, anyway I got my date without the note. Mars—think of it! I’ve got a hunch she likes me, Uncle.”
“Maybe so, for a souvenir.”
“I fell at first sight, or did I tell you that before?”
“Fifteen times. You’re goofy, Joe. When you saw her horns you shoulda chased the other way.”
Joe didn’t like the way Uncle Keller was throwing cold water. He got up and paced the floor, annoyed.
“Let me ask you. What did you and your missus do when she first arrived and asked to stay with you”
Uncle Keller tapped his pipe and frowned. “To be right honest, we took a fancy to her the minute we laid eyes on her. The horns was stickin’ up in plain sight, but the way she had her fancy hair ornaments and veils all woven around, it sorta took your breath.
“The fust thing Mom whispered was ‘Goodness, ain’t she perty!’ ”
“There you are!” said Joe.
“But fallin’ in love with her—well, I tell you, son, it won’t work.”
The space ship rocketed on through the black mysterious sky, and the two men fell silent.
Little does a guy realize, when he gets that feeling that he’d follow a gal anywhere in the world, how much travel he may be bargaining for. Or how much adventure.
Mars loomed up like a, great white moon. Donna Londeen shared a meal of synthetic foods with her two passengers. Then she returned to the controls.
Keller ate six of the little food cubes with great relish. Joe warned him, “Concentrated stuff, Uncle. She said each cube equals two blue apples. You’ve eaten twelve apples.”
“Blue apples? Never heard of ‘em. Maybe they’re small, like plums.”
“Maybe they’re large,” said Joe “Cast your eyes at the plastic icebox down the aisle.”
Uncle Keller’s eyes widened. The icebox specimen was as large as a grapefruit. It was a soft-skinned fruit, deep blue.
“Twelve?” Uncle Keller put a hand to his midsection. “Confidentially, Joe, I’ve got a stomach-ache.”
They landed on Mars in the darkness, a little before the dawn of a Martian day.
A half hour before they swooped down upon the planet’s vast, shadowy surface, Donna gave a little curtain lecture.
She was much too attractive, Joe thought. Her horns were brightly polished. Her lovely purple hair fell in waves over her bare shoulders. She wore an abbreviated sport costume that would have attracted attention on a tennis court or a bathing beach. The red and white striped flowing gauntlets that hung from her wrists matched her striped, high-heeled pumps.
“You are not souvenirs to be sold over the counter. You are free men as long as you behave yourselves. But do not tell anyone I have a space ship.” She was deadly serious. “It was a gift from someone on another planet. Hardly anyone knows I have it. My people are not interested in the languages of other planets. They would not approve of space ships. That is why I land in the dark.”
Joe and Uncle Keller stared at each other. They had imagined her people to be a race of planet-hopping scientists.
“Scientists? No, you will find my race of Martians rather primitive.”
They sailed down into a world of dark tree tops. It looked as if the branches would reach up and scrape the hide off the ship . . . Zwinnng! . . . Zwinnng! . . . Zwinnng! . . . The counter motors had been retarding their speed for the past hour or more but these last moments were the, dizziest. Uncle Keller, still regretting his twelve-apple dinner, fell into Joe’s arms. “So you’re tough, are you?” Joe muttered.
“I need a smoke,” Keller replied weakly.
“If she smashes into those trees we’ll all smoke.”
Within two miles of the wide, silvery river, the bluff of a hill loomed. The slope was bare of trees for the space of a hundred yards. Donna landed the ship neatly. There was a grating sound. Zwinng . . . Zwinnnng . . . Zwuppp! It came to a stop.
Donna looked at her passengers. “How many are still alive?”
“Just one,” said Joe. “Poor old Uncle just now died in my arms.”
“I ain’t dead,” groaned Uncle Keller. “I only need a smoke.”
Donna operated a lever to throw a beam of light along the crest of the hill. A wide concealed door in the sloping ground folded ope
n. Rows of green lights revealed a deep cavern hangar.
“Don’t remember anything you see, my friends,” said Donna. “This is my little secret.”
The ship eased into the hangar.
“There are two things worrying me,” said Joe. “First, how are you going to account for your absence?”
“I shall say I was Up North,” said Donna.
“What’s up north?”
“In the Apple Forest Nobody knows. Nobody asks. When you say Up North, with a capital U and a capital N, that is where anyone has been when he does not wish to tell. What is your other worry?”
“How are you going to explain us?”
“That is not easy,” said Donna. “To be safe, I must hide you . . . Here we are. Are you ready to step out?”
“Step out?” said Joe grinning. “I’ve come thousands of miles just to step out with you. But poor Uncle, I think he passed out . . . Didn’t you, Uncle Keller?”
“I been Up North,” said Uncle Keller.
They gathered up a few things in their haste and confusion and lightheadedness of arriving on a new planet. Uncle Keller took his loop of rope but shook his head when Joe offered to fill his pockets with food cubes. Joe couldn’t think where he had put the silver loving cup. He decided he would come back for it later. Just now he was eager to bound outside.
CHAPTER IV
Mars!
Mars! The light gravity made Joe feel as weightless as popcorn in the popper. It was exciting to run out on the hillside and try out his new legs.
“Come this way, Joe. You and Uncle mustn’t be seen.”
Gray dawn was over the land. Donna led the way through the forest of black tree trunks. The sweet air was exhilarating. Joe simply had to run. He bounded like a deer over every root or log or clump of grass. When they came to a ravine, he picked Donna up in his arms and leaped across with her. He felt much too good. He’d bet he could jump over that ravine backwards.
“Just watch me!” His foot slipped on a fallen apple, and he sat down in the mud.
“Do it again,” Donna laughed. “Uncle Keller did not see you.”
Joe got up, rubbing his hip. “It’s a thrill to set foot on Martian soil, as the saying goes . . . Coming, Uncle Keller?”
“I hear animals,” said Keller, pausing with a hand to his ear. “It sounded like an elephant steppin’ in the mud.”
“Me,” said Joe.
“Naw, this was somethin’ else. Hear that kerthump? There’s another one . . . By crackies, I hear ‘em from all directions.”
“You are in the land of falling apples,” said Donna. “They ripen and fall constantly. In Mars there is no finer food.”
“Don’t mention food,” Uncle Keller put a hand to his stomach.
“The river bluff is just ahead. There I will hide you in a cave above the village. . . Are you coming, Uncle?”
Ker-thump!
Uncle Keller wasn’t coming. A big blue apple had smacked him on the back of the head and knocked him down.
“What a peaceful expression,” said Joe. “See his lips puff. He’s dreaming he’s having a smoke.”
“Quick, Joe. Someone is coming. Can you carry him? We must make a run for it.”
CHAPTER V
Donna caught Joe’s hand and almost jerked him off his feet. He ran back with her and gathered up Uncle Keller, who still sat on the ground, muttering at the apple that had struck him.
“Come! Hide!” Donna exclaimed. “We should not be seen here.”
The three of them dodged behind a large cool tree trunk. The Martian who had sauntered into view came nearer. It was the celebrated chef, Ruffledeen. Donna knew him well.
“He prepares the finest foods in the forest,” she whispered. “I wonder why he is here . . . Look.”
Ruffledeen picked up a fallen apple and threw it toward a treetop. He repeated this act. Was he trying to hit that orange apple?
Each tree, as Donna had explained, had one orange apple near the top. Orange apples were poison. Usually they did not fall, except during wind or rain storms.
“By George, he’s trying to bring down that poison one,” Joe whispered.
“S-s-sh.”
Ruffledeen came closer, trying for the orange apples of nearer trees. He did not know he was being observed.
He was dressed in short, puffy pantaloons and a workman’s yellow jacket. He was eight horned. (Joe realized at once that he preferred seven horns, because of Donna). He looked like a walking picket fence. Joe was impressed by his lumpy whiskers which resembled a bunch of purple grapes.
As he sauntered closer, a blue apple fell. One of his horns caught it neatly. Now Joe realized for the first time that people who live in the land of falling apples need horns.
He reached up and removed it, took a bite or two, and threw it away,
Then suddenly he looked in their direction and his purple eyebrows jumped at the sight of Uncle Keller, who failed to pull his neck in.
He came over, then, and it was a strained greeting. He stared at Joe and Uncle Keller. He was embarrassed, it was plain. So was Donna. She made a gesture toward her two companions. She spoke in her Martian tongue, most of which Joe understood.
“Ruffledeen, I will ask you to say nothing about my hornless friends.”
“I will say nothing.” Ruffledeen’s eyes shifted toward a treetop and back to Donna. “You will say nothing.”
He walked away. Donna looked after him wonderingly. Between them a temporary bargain of silence had been sealed. Yet neither knew what the other was up to.
“We must hurry on,” she said to Joe. “At the hangar I received a message from my sister. One of my friends desires to see me at once.”
“A friend with horns, I suppose,” Joe said, growing warm at the temples.
“No.” Donna hesitated, uncertain whether to confide. “It is my scientist friend from Venus.”
“Oh, that bird from Venus!” Joe Banker was stung with jealousy. She seemed fond of mentioning him.
Along the rocky bluff was a small cave, not easily seen from the slope below. Between it and the river were the unpainted mound-shaped wooden structures that comprised the village.
“In this cave you two will be comfortable, until I return, Donna said.
“You will like it here—I hope.”
Then she left them, bewildered and stung, and hurried away.
A few hours later a gruesome event took place in this part of the Martian forest. A Martian girl was killed. And by a twist of fate, Joe Banker was involved. It was a cruel ordeal for a newcomer to this land.
Before it happened, Joe was beginning to like Mars. In their cave he and Uncle Keller made themselves comfortable. They first had the trouble of chasing a naggie out. The naggies, as Donna had told them, were the chief animals of this region, slow moving sheep-like beasts, as sure-footed as any mountain goats.
“Don’t smell like a goat, though,” Uncle Keller observed. “Don’t smell bad, in fact.”
Uncle had slapped the naggie’s mane and caught a handful of loose white wool. With a burst of inspiration, he packed the wool in his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke. A peaceful smile spread over his face.
“By crackies, better’n the best tobacco I ever tasted.”
Then he laid down the pipe and dashed out of the cave.
“Gotta find that goat, Joe,” he called back. “Gotta lay in a supply of smokin’.”
Joe laughed. Lazily he stretched out on the cave floor to watch the forest village. People were out under the trees, gathering food, working with tools, or tending children. He had brought binoculars from the ship. Whenever he saw a pretty girl he thought, “Maybe that’s Donna’s sister.”
Everyone had horns—six, seven, or more—occasionally as many as ten or twelve. Often the horns were loaded with fallen apples. People carried them with no more concern than Joe carried chewing gum in his pocket. When a person grew hungry, the food was there.
Uncle Keller came back with his over
all pockets full of naggie wool. He tossed two blue apples to Joe.
“I’m still off my feed. What do they taste like?”
“Yummie! Not like apples or food cubes. They’re more like a swiss steak and sweet potatoes and all the trimmings. From now on I’m on a blue apple diet.”
From somewhere down the valley a long, weird scream sounded.
“Yee-eek!”
It was the terrorized voice of a girl. She was approaching the village on a dead run. A gang of boys were after her, shouting wildly.
She ran straight into the village of mound-shaped houses. The swift-footed lads were right on her heels. She dodged from one row of buildings to another. She bumped into a child as she rounded one corner. The child fell, crying, and the mother came to the open door in time to see the wild chase.
“Yee-eek!” the girl cried. She leaped over an outdoor fireplace, she hurdled a pile of dead timbers, she almost ran into two of the boys. They dived toward her, heads down, their sharp-pointed horns aimed with deadly intent. She sprang like a deer and cleared them.
Now she cut a straight course along the foot of the cliff. She passed beneath the cave, and Joe saw her wild, panicky expression. Her purple hair was streaming like flames around her horns.
Against the vertical barrier of rock, she was surrounded. Eight of the young huskies gathered in a semicircle, moved toward her slowly. They bent their heads forward, so that their horns became a trap of deadly spears, closing in.
Her back was against the wall. She looked for a chance to leap out of the circle. But the other seven youths outside, held their heads high. Whichever way she might leap, they would catch her on their horns.
They meant to kill her. Joe was. convinced. He glanced toward the village. Housewives and laborers were running out to see the excitement.
“Stay out of it!” Uncle Keller warned.
“How can I?” Joe snatched up the coil of rope. “She might be Donna’s sister!”
He clambered to the upper edge of the rocky cliff. He tied a slipknot in the rope as he ran. He reached a jutting stone straight above the point where the girl was trapped.
