The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  The scientist smiled and the others laughed, more at Uncle’s manner and accent than his words.

  “What’s more,” said Uncle Keller, “Joe’s the Bellrap city clerk, and I’m the clerk’s clerk, and we figure Bellrap can do with some free advertisin’. Ring the bells for Bellrap, that’s our motto—”

  “S-s-sh! You and I are talking too much,” said Joe. At the same time, amid his confusion, he was asking himself, “Now where did I leave that silver loving cup? Somewhere in Donna’s space ship, or—”

  “Come this way, Joe,” said Donna. “You and Uncle must join Axloff and his father in a feast Ruffledeen has prepared.”

  Joe feasted, but he felt uncomfortable—as if he had been plunged into a convention of Donna’s boyfriends. However, the dinner became a rollicking affair. Troubles, the scientist said, could be met later. Now was the time for merriment and song. Uncle Keller furnished much of the merriment, Joe his share of the song.

  Ruffledeen walked past the camp.

  The scientist nodded to the chef as he passed. Ruffledeen may not have noticed. Like a stray cat he cast curious sidewise glances. Someone called a compliment to him. His feast was perfect. He did not respond. He only stroked his wavy purple whiskers and, walked on.

  To his assistant cooks he spoke in private. Presently they gathered up their portable kitchen and followed him out of camp.

  No one was surprised at this. In fact no one but Joe seemed to pay any attention. For it was Ruffledeen’s mysterious way to cook for anyone he wished, as long as he wished. There was no contract between him and the Venus scientist. On another day he might be found serving his fancy dishes to the people of any river village, or to the young judge from “Up North,” or to Donna’s hardboiled old uncle, Londeenoko.

  Joe watched the purple-whiskered chef wander away, followed by his two assistants. As often before, Ruffledeen was carrying a poison apple. It seemed to be his favorite habit.

  “Will he come back?” Joe asked looking from Donna to Axloff, and then to the wise-eyed Axotello.

  “Who knows?” said Axotello. “Who cares? We never lack for food in this bountiful forest.”

  His handsome, eleven-horned son said, “No, father, we never lack. But some of us are better equipped to catch our food than others.”

  Axotello smiled faintly. “My son never ceases to enjoy his advantage of having horns. He is always afraid a falling apple will injure me. For my part, I do not mind the thump of the largest blue apple. My head is hard. The only apple I fear is the orange-colored one. And I would fear it even if I had horns. But I never sit beneath it. I leave that to my careless son.”

  Axloff looked up, then, and to his chagrin, discovered he was sitting directly beneath one of the dread fruit. He moved, and everyone laughed.

  They laughed more, a moment later, when a large blue apple dropped and struck his father squarely on the head, and upset him from his seat.

  It is your turn to move,” Axloff laughed.

  “No,” said the scientist, quietly amused. “The law of chances will not put another apple directly above my crown—”

  He was looking straight up, and his words broke off abruptly. Everyone looked up. Joe saw, through an opening between leafy branches, what all the others saw. He heard the low steady roar.

  “What a bird!” Uncle Keller mumbled.

  It was a black metal object flying above the forest tops, below the clouds. It was shaped like a narrow oblong tube with triangular wings tight against its sides.

  “That’s no bird,” said Joe. “That’s the flying house that took our Martian friend for a ride.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Within a few minutes the scientist’s camp was on the move. By late afternoon it was established in a deeper and darker part of the valley, not easily observed from overhead.

  Axotello was not convinced that the ship portended any harm for him. He had made no enemies. But he preferred to carry on his work out of sight. Off and on, through the years, he had carried out experiments in this land. By keeping off the well-beaten trails along the river, he had seldom been molested.

  But now it was well known that a band of horn thieves were at work. Joe and Donna, as well as Ruffledeen had seen the evidences with their own eyes.

  The scientist listened to these reports with great interest. If a Mercury gang had come to Mars to pillage, there might be great trouble in store.

  But Axotello himself did not say, “Let us get together and fight these desperadoes and put a stop to their ugly game.”

  Instead, ostrich-like, he buried his head deeper in the sand of his own private interests. “Let us move,” he said, “into deeper shadows. I do not want to be annoyed by spies from the air while I proceed with my studies.”

  A little distance from the new camp, Joe rested under an overhanging cliff, free from falling apples. Exhausted from many continuous hours without sleep, he slept heavily until evening.

  When he awoke, Donna was beside him, smiling at him.

  Joe rubbed his eyes, yawned and grinned. “This is a pleasant surprise,”

  “A herd of naggies were grazing along this ravine,” said Donna. “I did not want them to wake you.”

  Joe took her hand. Love is like that, he decided. You think of little courtesies, things you wouldn’t think of ordinarily.

  “Did Uncle Keller get some rest?” he asked.

  “He snored like a broken-down space ship,” Donna laughed. “But now he is at his usual occupation, smoking his pipe, filled with the wool of the naggie. He is also writing in a notebook. See him over there?”

  Joe nodded. Uncle was keeping a record of all expenses, real or imagined, which the Mars adventure had entailed. He had some fanciful notion of presenting a bill to the city of Bellrap, if he ever got back.

  “There he sits,” Joe said, pointing to a clump of trees beyond the camp. “He thinks the Bellrap treasury will pay for all our hours and discomforts, because I’m the city clerk—”

  “And he calls himself the clerk’s clerk. But why should Bellrap pay—”

  “Because I came on official business. That silver cup. I intend to make a public presentation. If I had it here I’d—”

  “Where is it?”

  “I put it—er—let me see—” Joe almost remembered. But something else attracted his attention. “Donna, you’re carrying a gun?”

  “Yes a ray weapon. A gift from the Venus Scientist.”

  Joe felt a wave of warmth sweep through his face and neck. “Donna, I wish you wouldn’t—I mean—well, he’s a nice fellow and all that, but I wish he wouldn’t give you so many gifts.”

  “You Earth men are funny,” Donna laughed. “He is my friend, and if there is trouble from Mercury men, I should not be helpless. You should have a gun too. I would not want you to be helpless.”

  She patted his arm as if to calm his ruffled spirits. But Joe rose now, and straightened to his full height. Not that he was tall. Once she had called him short, and in fact he was slightly under average height. But he felt tall, and stood tall, and he wasn’t going to have anyone call him helpless.

  “I can help myself,” he asserted.

  “Then why do you not help yourself?” she said, and rose to stand beside him.

  “I will,” he snapped. “I’ll tackle these damned desperados single handed, if necessary. I’ll show your people who’s making the trouble. I’ll—”

  “You will help yourself,” Donna repeated.

  Then he took her in his arms and held her, fiercely, possessively. “I’ll help myself,” he echoed, and then he was thinking only of her.

  He kissed her. Her large purple eyes did not close, but watched him intently as his lips blended with hers. He took strength and boldness from her in that prolonged moment.

  “I am going to marry you, Donna,” he said tensely.

  Donna nodded and spoke almost without breath. “I know it, Joe. I’ve known it since—since you won me at the Festival?”

  “Did
I win you? But I was forced to run out—”

  “You won me,” said Donna. “Axloff knew that you won me, no matter how the Festival ended. He knew that my heart went to you. But you must win me again, Joe. You must clear your own name and mine, with my people.”

  Joe’s head was swimming. “If I can, Donna—”

  “If you can, then I will marry you in my heart.”

  “In your heart! What do you mean by that?”

  Donna’s eyes filled with tears, and she tried to bury her head in his shoulder, without touching him with her horns.

  “How can we marry, except in our hearts,” she sobbed softly, “when I have horns and you have none. Where would we live? Who would our friends be?”

  He kissed her forehead and her eyelids. Then he shook her by the shoulders, and again he spoke fiercely.

  “I intend to win you, Donna, whether I can ever marry you or not.”

  Uncle Keller, pipe in mouth, came limping down the ravine, clinging to the wooly neck of a naggie. In the soft twilight, Joe could have imagined it was a white sheep, except for the three perpendicular horns across the top of its head.

  On one of the beast’s horns an apple barely clung. It looked yellowish as the naggie moved through a shaft of light,

  “A poison one!” Donna gasped. Then she screamed. “Uncle! Let it alone!”

  But Uncle Keller was too intent on his purpose to hear. He succeeded in cornering the naggie and was jerking a handful of “smokin” from its wooly neck, when the beast turned and rammed at him.

  The poison apple burst and spilled its orange liquid over Uncle’s bare arms.

  “Well, by crackies!” Uncle muttered to himself, giving an angry puff on his pipe. “Shower bath without a towel.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Donna gripped the ray gun and moved silently down the slope. Joe was right back of her. She stopped, shuddering, and leaned close to him. She handed him the gun.

  “You’ll have to do it, Joe,” she said. “Make it quick, before he knows we’re here.”

  “Donna, I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t,” Joe whispered.

  “You’ve got to. It is the easiest way for him. In another moment he will be a mad animal—”

  “Let me get a rope and tie him.”

  “What rope would hold him? You would only prolong his suffering. Besides, he will have crashed into trees before you could get a rope. There he goes—no, not yet. Please—”

  Joe moved a step closer and took aim.

  Uncle Keller came up the ravine slowly and stopped in the thin shaft of sunlight to examine his drenched hands. He shook the broken bits of orange-colored apple flesh from his wrists. He held his handful of naggie wool up to see whether it had been damaged.

  The ray gun in Joe’s hand steadied toward the gaunt old man’s heart, but the handful of naggie wool momentarily confounded Joe’s aim.

  “Go ahead,” Donna whispered, choking on her own words.

  “Wait till he puts his hands down.”

  “Go on and shoot. The ray will sweep him clean.”

  “If I don’t—”

  “The villagers will get him on their horns. You couldn’t let a poor, limping old man race against the Ring of Death. Here, I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Joe. His aim was sure, now. He pressed at the trigger, but not quite hard enough. Then Uncle Keller looked up and saw the two of them.

  “Hey, up there!” he called. “Look at this mess o’ poison on my hands. That derned naggie—Joel, Are you aimin’ somethin’ at me?”

  Joe lowered the gun. He looked to Donna. Tears Were streaming from her eyes.

  “Not now,” she whispered. “Wait till he flies into madness. But why doesn’t he? . . . Wait, Joe, there’s something strange . . .”

  They escorted the bewildered Uncle Keller to Axotello. Here, indeed was a case for a scientist’s investigation. For as the minutes passed, he exhibited no symptoms of becoming a “naggie man.”

  “By thunder, Joe, you had me half scared for a minute,” he said, chuckling. “When I seen that gun pointin’ toward my midsection, you looked almost like you meant business.”

  Joe couldn’t say a word.

  The scientist proceeded to fill a test tube from the liquid that he carefully washed from Uncle’s arms and wrists, and. some minutes later, when he fed a spoonful of it to a stray naggie, the beast went mad and stormed off into the forest like a cyclone. But Uncle Keller was not affected.

  “I can’t figure what the fuss is all about,” said Uncle Keller innocently.

  “We do not understand why you have not contracted naggie madness,” said Axotello.

  “Me? Oh, I’m tough,” said Uncle Keller. “I never git nothin’ like that. Never had the measles or mumps er—”

  “I will keep you here under observation,” said the scientist.

  Through the night Donna and Joe tramped together through miles of forest, toward the east. Over and over they, pondered the strangeness of the day’s events. And whenever they came back to Uncle Keller’s narrow escape from death, they were struck by dread terrors of what might have been.

  By morning they reached the bluff where Donna’s space ship was hidden. Within a few minutes they were cruising west, high over the land of big blue apples.

  “Please sit down back there,” Donna said. “A space ship pilot should not allow herself to be kissed while the ship is in motion.”

  “Pardon me,” said Joe. “I forgot we were in motion.”

  From their elevation the whole forest land was spread out below them like a vast map. Yellow sunlight and blue shadows highlighted the ridges along either side of the winding Silver River. The falls could be discerned. Farther downstream were the clearings, paralleling the river like cow paths. Joe identified the bend where the dehorned Martian and Rabbit-Face had met death from the same spear.

  Up and down the river the small villages could be seen—mound-shaped houses peeking out like patches of toadstools in a garden of ferns.

  “Sooner or later,” said Joe, “we’ll see a big black bird sailing over those tree tops.”

  “That metal bird may see us first,” Donna remarked.

  Joe’s plan of action was simple. He would force Black-Hair to confess his guilt in public.

  “This ray gun will do the trick,” Joe declared.

  On the night’s hike to the ship he had practiced. It was a unique weapon. On a steady aim, its ray could cut a circular hole, two inches in diameter, through an apple a hundred yards, away, and leave the apple hanging.

  His plan was simple. He would spot the black-metal ship and trail it until it stopped. Then he would wait in hiding until he could catch Black-Hair and Scar-Hands on the ground.

  “I’ll march them in front of your uncle Londeenoko, and Mobar the judge, and all the villagers we can gather in.”

  “And suppose Black-Hair and Scar-Hands refuse to march?” said Donna. “Will you shoot them down?”

  “They’ll march,” Joe declared. “I have a hunch Black-Hair is a coward. The dying Martian spoke of his changing color.”

  “He may be smart enough to know you won’t kill him. A dead man can’t confess.”

  “With this gun I could plug holes through his arm. I could remove his fingers, one, two, three, four, five—”

  “I hope he doesn’t kill you, Joe. He could do it you know, and be a hero. For the dehorning crimes happen to be on your head, not his.”

  Joe drew a deep breath. “If only we could catch him in the act. If—”

  “If only we could have some authority like Londeenoko or Mobar the judge with us when we catch him . . . But on one point I must correct you, Joe. If Black-Hair is who I think he is, he is not a coward. What does be look like? In answer, Joe took pencil and paper and began to sketch. Donna, holding the ship at the lowest air cruising speed, drove down toward the tree tops within a half mile of the river. She was a clever pilot, and dared to skim so low that the morning shadows of the tallest tree
s flicked across the windows of the ship.

  Joe finished his sketch. He turned it upside down.

  “I remember him best the way he looked when I hung him by his feet and jerked his horns off . . . Well, how does he look to you? Pretty fancy sketch, huh?”

  Donna’s lips tightened. “I hate him,” she said.

  “Then he is someone you know?”

  “Too well. He tried to force his friendship on me when I made my trip to Mercury. He was a national hero in the interplanetary colony at that time. He had done some exploring in his ship, The Black Comet, and they called him the Black Cometeer. I was introduced to him at one of the Colony parties—”

  “And you fell for him?” The warmth of Joe’s forehead betrayed his quick jealousy.

  “At first, Joe, I was a bit overwhelmed,” Donna admitted. “But soon I began to suspect him. He had falsified some of his claims. He had held back some valuable information that he owed his government. You see, his secret commercial schemes were already forming.

  “Have you seen him often?”

  “Only once, here on Mars. He followed me back and came to see me when my father was still living. Father was the judge, and it did not take him long to discover that this dashing Black Cometeer meant to steal from Mars. He even invited father to join him. Father quietly persuaded him to leave the planet. But he must have returned recently with this vicious plan. He is evidently stealing horns for the interplanetary ivory trade.”

  “He’s clever,” said Joe. “Aside from you and the scientist’s party, there are probably no people on Mars who do not believe that I started this wave of horn. thievery.”

  “He is clever,” said Donna. “And he will not easily take on the color of a coward.”

  One of the instruments in the control panel had been humming a faint musical note. Now it swelled to an insistent volume. It was the metal detector. The black-metal ship was being approached.

  After a series of switchbacks, they knew the exact spot beneath the leafy forest branches where it was concealed.

  It was an hour’s work to find a suitable hiding place for their own ship within easy walking distance of the Black Comet.