by Don Wilcox
“Where are they?” Uncle Keller’s Martian accent was faulty.
The victim shrugged. He thought the question referred to his horns. “Off,” he said, pointing to his head.
“Where are the guys that chopped ‘em off?” said Uncle Keller, lapsing into his own brand of English. “I’ll bet they’re hidin’ along this crick, layin’ fer us.”
“Off,” the Martian repeated sadly. “Gone. The masked men attacked me with saws. I fought. They seized me. They flew with me. Then I saw them without their masks. They wanted my horns. They got them.”
“Flew with you?” Joe echoed, his face a question mark.
“It was horrible. My horns—I was so proud of them. I cannot talk about it. But—thank you. I will go now—this way.” He barely fought off a faint, then, slowly, he began to walk.
“You’re in bad shape,” said Joe. “We’ll tag along.”
The three of them followed the bank of the stream. Night came on and they kept trudging, with the aid of torches. The bandaged man declared that he must reach the Silver River. The waters would heal him.
“I need you,” Joe said to him over and over. “You must tell me who did this thing to you.”
“I will talk after I have reached the healing waters.”
“If you would only rest—”
“Let us hurry on,” the Martian said.
Uncle Keller grew weak, and Joe was obliged to carry him. This pace was slow and cautious. Joe’s eyes grew blurry, watching for trouble from every black shadow of every tree trunk.
Before morning Uncle Keller dropped out. He would follow at his own speed, he promised. And Joe understood. Exhaustion had overtaken the old fellow. He would undoubtedly sleep before he tried to finish the journey.
From then on, Joe carried the Martian—carried him in a sitting position to keep him from complaining of the dreadful pains in his head and shoulders.
“We will reach the healing waters soon after dawn,” the Martian said. “But for you I would have died from loss of blood. I owe my life to you.”
“You, in turn, will save my life,” said Joe. “You will tell your people that I am not the man who removes horns.”
“Tell my people?”
“Yes. Otherwise they are going to kill me for what I haven’t done.”
“But I—I cannot face my people, now that I have no horns. I cannot!”
“You’ll have to! It’s the least you can do. Promise me that you will.”
The Martian drew a painful breath. “I will talk after I reach the healing waters.”
The pink light of morning came at last. A soft cloud of mist could be seen across the clearing by the river. The low roar of the falls came from that direction. The tributary that Joe followed circled to the west of the Silver Falls village and joined the river two miles downstream. Uncle Keller might find his way here by daylight without being seen.
The Martian bathed in the shallow side of the great bend. He ate a little, and slept. Joe waited. Would the man fulfill his half of the bargain when he awoke? Or would he be in the mood to kill every hornless foreigner?
Joe lay on his stomach, his head propped in his hands. He almost dozed. From a distance the soft sounds of falling apples, like the lightest patter of raindrops, lulled him to unconsciousness.
The grass rustled. The Martian was rising slowly. Joe sprang to his feet, stood squarely before the man whose life he had saved. The poor fellow passed his hands over his head and shoulders to convince himself that the awful happening was no dream. For a moment Joe thought he would weep. He bowed his bandaged head, closed his eyes.
“Now I know how Donna would feel if she were ever deprived of her horns,” Joe said to himself. “And to think—I had wished it—so I could marry her! Why did I dare fall in love? Uncle Keller warned me . . .”
In that moment Joe knew the pain of having to fight when you’re already beaten.
“Courage,” he said to the Martian. “You’ve lost your horns, but you’re still alive. Let me tell you a secret. There are such things as imitation horns.”
“Imitation?” The Martian’s eyes lifted slowly.
“I’ve seen them. In fact, I’ve worn them, a whole set. They strap on with a harness, and you smear grease paint around your shoulders and ears so the harness won’t show. When you get fixed up, no one will know the difference.”
The Martian’s eyes glowed. He pressed Joe on the arm. “You have already befriended me. If you can find horns for me, I will do anything you ask.
Joe’s face set with a fighting determination. “There’s only one thing I have to fight for now. It’s that other hornless man—the one we left behind. If you can fix things so we won’t be killed—so I’ll have a chance to get him back to his home—that, and clear the decks for a certain girl—
“What would you have me do?”
“Get well, so you can tell them—”
Plop!
An orange-colored apple struck the ground within fifteen feet of them. It burst with a spray of reddish liquid.
Where the devil did that come from?” Joe muttered. The nearest tree was several yards away.
“Quick! Take me from here!” the Martian cried.
Joe swung him off his feet and bore him away. They ran downstream. This gave them the advantage of a wider clearing between the river and the forest.
“What are we running from?” Joe said, slackening his pace, now that he had failed to sight any danger.
“Do you not know of naggie madness?” said the Martian. “Let me down. We are out of danger now. But it is lucky the poison apple did not burst upon us.”
Joe mounted a stone and looked back over the terrain. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Someone was there. Someone threw the apple.”
“What if we’d been hit? Are those poison apples sudden death?”
“Not death but madness. Have you never seen a naggie gone mad from eating one? It runs in all directions at once and smashes into trees.”
“I saw a girl that acted like that one time,” said Joe reflectively. “They spoke of her as a ‘naggie girl.’ She was running like wild. A bunch of young fellows were chasing her, and I think they meant to kill her.”
“Of course they did,” said the Martian. “When anyone gets the madness of the naggie, he must be killed. Nothing less than the Ring of Death will serve, if you become a ‘naggie man.’ ”
Joe understood, at last, the mystery of the girl he had tried to rescue on that first memorable day. So it was madness that had caused her to cut the rope and fall to her death on the waiting horns—a madness that came from contact with the wrong kind of apple.
The Martian stood beside Joe, gazing across to the bank of trees. No one could be seen, yet both men knew that an enemy was closing in. Poison apples don’t roll across the clearing by accident.
“We’ve got to walk into the village at once,” said Joe. “You’ve got to tell them who attacked you—”
“But not until you get horns for me.”
“We can’t wait for that. We’ll go at once.”
“No. The horns—”
Slash!
A spear plunged through the Martian’s side, just above the left hip.
CHAPTER XV
“The horns!” the Martian repeated. Joe would always remember that moment of pride and glory in the Martian’s gesture toward his high head, imagining the horns that would be replaced, according to Joe’s promise. The expression went sick all at once, as the spear whizzed up from the river bank to plunge through him.
The Martian stumbled forward, clutching his side. Miraculously, he recovered his balance and ran to the riverbank. Joe saw him dodge a flying rock, then plunge over the bank, hugging the spear as he dived, aiming it.
A shrill cry rang out. The Martian had caught someone on that same spear.
Joe leaped to the bank and saw. It was that foreigner Rabbit Face, who had caught the spear-head through the heart. The handle broke. The dehorned
Martian, with the broken stub plugged through his side, backed away and sank down against the sloping earth, still watching. Blood spurted from the rabbit-faced man’s mouth. His cry choked off. His eyelids fell, and he was dead.
“Rabbit Face!” Joe muttered. “What the hell was his game?”
“He was one of the gang who took my horns,” the Martian said. “Another had scarred hands. And there were others.”
“Talk fast,” said Joe breathlessly. The Martian’s life was ebbing away. “Tell me everything. Tell me—”
“They flew over in a house.”
“A house?”
“A house with wings and a roar.”
“A plane or a rocket ship! Go on.”
“They meant to tie me to a tree . . . as they have done to others . . . But I fought . . . It was then that the flying house appeared, and stopped near me. When they took me in, I saw.
“Yes, go on. Go on!”
“I saw their faces without masks. I saw the piles of horns they have gathered into their flying house, like bundles of wood. We flew. When they finished with me they immediately dropped me from high in the air, and I fell to the forest. But the fall did not kill me, and you found me.”
“Was there a black-haired man?” Joe asked anxiously.
“The leader . . . and I recognized him . . . His color changed . . .”
“What do you mean? Who was he? Speak up! Tell me!”
“From another world . . . His color . . . changed . . .”
That was the last. The Martian died in Joe’s arms.
Two dead men at Joe’s feet. One, a man born to wear horns with pride, and Joe looked upon him with tenderness. The other, a hornless fellow whose schemes Joe was beginning to understand. He and his friends, from “another world” were here to gather horns as ivory traders might gather elephant tusks.
But Joe was also aware that at least two other men had had a share in this attack, for he had caught a fleeting glimpse of their retreat down the river a moment after Rabbit-Face was killed. He doubted whether either was Scar-Hands or Black-Hair. They were two of the assistants—with horns—although the horns might have been imitation.
Later, as Joe related the whole fracas to Uncle Keller, he theorized that these two who raced away could well have been Martians, somehow forced into Black-Hair’s game. For it seemed likely that men with a flying ship could have done their killing with guns or rays, if they had wished.
“But instead, what did they do? They resorted to such Martian devices as poison apples and spears.”
“That means,” said Uncle Keller, “that they figured to shift the blame.”
“And with a few Martian stooges already lined up, doing their dirty work, they’ll get away with it. That makes it all the harder to deal with. These spear-throwing, apple-throwing people won’t have any conception of what a clever enemy they’re up against.”
Joe and Uncle Keller were trudging into the forest slowly, thoughtfully.
“Did you have any hankerin’ to stay and bury your Martian friend?” Uncle Keller asked.
“I wouldn’t have dared,” Joe admitted. “The natives came thick and fast within five minutes after Rabbit-Face let out that awful death cry.”
“I heard it myself. By crackies, I was scared it was you, Joe.”
“That’s no compliment to my voice.” Joe grinned. “Remember, I sing first tenor in the Bellrap quartet.”
“I figured you were practicin’ grand opery,” Uncle Keller chuckled.
As they tramped along, they did their best to keep up a gay front. But it wasn’t easy.
“We’re like a couple of convicts slated for the chair,” said Joe. “The one guy that might have saved us has got himself bumped off, and we’re trying to be cheerful about it.”
Uncle Keller was philosophical. It was something to know who your enemies were.
“I always figured if I was gonna be hanged, I’d rather be hanged in the daylight than in the dark.”
“So you won’t miss out on the show, I suppose,” Joe mumbled.
“Yeah. An’ so I’ll know who to haunt when I get to be a ghost.”
“Well, you can haunt a black-haired, smart looking fellow of medium height, who speaks good English, like all of these men-about-planets. He’s probably from Mercury. He flies some sort of ship, and has a crew of helpers—”
“And is as tricky as the devil, pinnin’ this whole dehornin’ scheme on us.”
“But the Martian told me one thing about him, right at the last, that I can’t figure out,” said Joe. “Something about his changing color.”
They pondered this mystifying remark. Uncle Keller had a theory.
“It means he turns yellow. He’s a coward.”
“That might be right if we were on the Earth,” said Joe. “But turning yellow doesn’t mean anything to a Martian.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just an expression. An American expression.”
Uncle Keller couldn’t get that through his head. He argued stubbornly.
“I figure if a guy’s yellow, he’s yellow, whether he’s an Earth man or a Martian or a Mercurochrome.”
“You mean a Mercurian.”
“I mean a yellow guy is a coward, in any language,” said Uncle Keller.
Joe had his own theory that the color change was from white to black; that the black-haired scoundrel from Mercury, and the white-haired scientist from Venus might be the same person. He had never seen Donna’s scientist friend. But wasn’t it a reasonable guess that a man skillful enough to disguise himself in a harness of horns might also disguise himself in white hair and whiskers?
“I’ve got it doped out,” said Joe confidently. “It’s like this—”
But Joe’s theory blew up before he could tell it. For at that moment, as they walked over the crest of a wooded hill, they looked down on the camp of the Venus scientist. Donna and her sister were there. So were Axloff and a few others. But the dominant figure was the white-haired scientist himself. He was not Black-Hair. He was like no one Joe had ever seen before.
CHAPTER XVI
Donna was more than cordial. She was genuinely joyful. She came running, calling so eagerly that everyone knew these were the two Earth friends she had lost.
“It is so good to see you, Joe. I was afraid you had fallen into wrong hands . . . And you, Uncle Keller, you are able to walk. You look strong. I am so glad.”
The scientist’s guards approached, putting away their weapons as they came. Axloff extended the warmest of welcomes to Joe. He was the same handsome, boyish eleven-horned rival that had competed with Joe for Donna’s hand. Yet, as before, Joe felt the sincerity of his friendship.
“To you, Uncle Keller,” said Axloff, “I apologize for striking you so hard with my horns.”
“I reckon you had to do it,” said Uncle Keller philosophically. “One guy’s meat’s another guy’s poison, they say.”
Axloff scowled, trying to decipher the maxim. “Poison? What we did to you is not to be compared to poison. Have you ever seen the naggie leap from its four hoofs when it tasted poison?”
“I saw some gal run when she was naggie-crazy,” said Uncle Keller.
“Then you know how dreadful it is. We brought no such harm to you, bumping you with horns.”
“Well, nothin’ to make me run, if that’s what you mean. By crackies, I couldn’t even walk. But I’m gettin’ spry again.”
“Big news,” said Donna. “I have learned that Axloff is the son of my scientist from Venus.”
Joe’s jaw dropped. He looked from the tall eleven-horned young stalwart across to the hornless white-haired man.
“You’d better say that again. I didn’t quite catch it.”
“Do not frown so,” Donna laughed. “It is true. Axloff, who has eleven horns, is the son of Axotello, who has no horns. And I am told that Axloff’s mother had no horns.”
Joe stared blankly. “How is that possible?”
Donna held
up her hands. “Do not ask me to explain such mysteries. That will be for Axotello, whose business is to puzzle over the strangeness of the universe. He is forever writing his scientific observations, but never reading any conclusions aloud. Come, you must meet Axotello now.”
Then Joe and Uncle Keller found themselves being introduced to one of the boldest scientists of the interplanetary world of science.
He was tall—as tall as Axloff minus the horns. His face was broad, with a massive white forehead beneath flowing waves of white hair. His features might have belonged to a dignified judge or a minister on the Earth. His eyes, however, were related to the cat family, Joe decided—the eyes of a lynx or a leopard—large, amber-colored eyes partially covered by the straight upper lids. His white whiskers, clean trimmed like a Southern colonel’s, only emphasized the breadth of his face.
In spite of white hair and whiskers he was, above all, youthful.
Joe, shaking the man’s strong, solid hand, felt a return of that emotion which had swept through him before. He was jealous. This was the man who had befriended Donna and made her a gift of a space ship—the man she had hastened to see, on her return to this planet.
And with the sudden wave of jealousy, Joe also felt himself dwarfed. Physically, he was perhaps the shortest man of the group—
But one remark from Axloff reminded him that he had already made his mark as a tough, hard-fighting champion.
“This is the Earth man, father, who fought me to the finish in the festival competitions,” Axloff said.
“I am most proud to welcome you to my camp,” said Axotello. “And may I compliment the good judgment of your Earth city in choosing Donna for honors. You have presented a silver cup to her, I believe.”
“I’m going to present it. That is—” Joe grinned, slightly confused, “I came along to Mars for that purpose. I figured it should be done in public.”
Uncle Keller chimed in, “Joe hankers for an audience whenever he does anything.”
