by Don Wilcox
The Mashas, waiting for her to speak, believed that they were about to attack the fortress.
But Flora believed that they were going to be put aboard ships, not for battle, but to seek another planet for a new colony.
Why had Marsch shifted his stories? She must have wondered. Was there still another plan?
“Even Marsch doesn’t know,” Kipper whispered to me. “He thinks his ships are going to take them off to be sold as slaves. But he’s going to be fooled.”
“How do you know?” I said. “Isn’t he all set?”
“He thinks he is, but he’s overlooked one important fact. There’s a more powerful trickster in the game—the White Head.”
Flora was starting to speak. It was a breathless audience.
“I have been brought all the way from the earth to speak to you,” she began slowly. “On the earth I have helped many people who are trying to regain a solid grip on life. Mr. Marsch has told me that you consider yourselves outcasts, and he thinks that you deserve some sort of victory to salve your injuries from two centuries ago.”
“Yes! Yes!” Half the crowd jumped to their feet, waving their arms and shouting in a fervent affirmative.
She quieted them, “As I was about to say, I do not agree with Mr. Marsch. I think you have your own good world here, and I think it is childish for you to nurse your injuries of long ago. I think that Mr. Marsch and your own leaders are doing you a disfavor to stir your old resentments—”
A volley of boos thundered through the room—a chorus that Marsch and his associates joined. They shouted her down, and she stood there, facing them. She had said all she dared. They would have mobbed her if she had said more.
But just at that moment, as Marsch was moving up to the platform shaking his fist at her, someone entered from a door just beyond, and his entrance stunned the mob into silence.
It was the White Head.
He was mostly skull, all right—and that was the way I had remembered him from before. A barrel-sized white skull growing out of a keg-shaped body.
From neck to toes he was dressed in a skin-tight green silk costume. Dark green, yet shining. His arms were short blocks of muscle and his feet were like a lion’s pads. He gave an impression of fearful power—an unworldly power that was a strange blend of life and death.
As he moved closer to the platform, I thought his huge white skull was almost luminous. Its light cast a pallor over Flora’s face. Perhaps no one noticed that she climbed down and moved back into a corner. That ghastly white skull held everyone’s eye.
The rows of huge white teeth parted, and the deep, hollow translucent eyes seemed to be taking in the face of every person in the crowd.
The White Head paused beside the cubical platform, and when he extended his arm to press against its side it collapsed into a little cloud of dust and was gone.
The surrounding torchlights grew dimmer, and the great skull grew brighter, until there was nothing in the whole room except deep shadows and a glowing white skull.
The skull tilted and turned, and its jaw moved and it spoke.
“Come” That deep-cistern voice filled the whole underground world. “Come. The ships are ready. The time is NOW!”
CHAPTER XX
I would have depended upon Kipper in that moment, but Kipper was gone. What was about to happen was more than I could conjecture. But somehow I knew that Kipper was right, there was a more sinister plan on foot than Marsch’s scheme of converting Mashas into slaves.
The Mashas were following in double time, running down through the black tunnels to the concealed plaza where the ships were supposed to be ready for the take-off.
The White Head had stood beside that exit, pointing the way, and Marsch himself had led the procession. With him had gone the full-sized officers who were, as I knew, pilots for the ships. But before half of the assemblage of pygmies had joined the rush and disappeared through the tunnel, the White Head raised a hand to hold back the rest of the crowd. There would not be room for all at this time, he had said. And with that he had disappeared down the exit after the last of the procession.
I wanted nothing more than to go to Flora and give her a safe ride back to the fortress. But would the fortress be safe? Whatever the White Head’s scheme might be, or Marsch’s, it was a cinch there were going to be some angry pygmies as soon as they discovered that this whole movement didn’t lead to a direct attack. They were ready for power, and heaven help any man or god or demon of death that might stand in their way.
The torch lights flared up as I was creeping down through the remaining crowd. The pygmies began to scream. It wasn’t like a roomful of women screaming, it wasn’t like anything but a roomful of Mashas screaming. They scattered out of my path, shooting at me and throwing stones. They would have brought the roof down on themselves and me if they could have done it.
But I reached Flora, and the fright faded from her face at the sight of me.
“Thank goodness!” She was already running, motioning me to follow. “Hurry. If anyone can do anything, you’re the one.”
“What’s happening?” I chased after her, and in a moment we found an opening up into the outdoors. “Where are we going? Do you know?”
She climbed on my back, slapping me first on one side and then the other to direct me as we snake-galloped across the rolling mounds.
“I should have known that Kipper’s hunch was right,” she sang in my ears as we whizzed through the night breeze. “See, over where that tiny red light is? That’s where it’s happening. That’s where the ships are supposed to fly out.”
We were making the right kind of progress in the right direction, and a truck would have had to go some to keep pace. I only hoped that the mounds wouldn’t cave in under my beating feet. They were frequently breaking through with a heavy thump as my hind feet kicked away from them.
“The ships aren’t flying yet,” I puffed. “Maybe there’ll be time.”
“The ships won’t fly!” Flora said. “That’s what Kipper tried to tell me. He’s sure—”
“Why not? What’s the game?”
“It’s the White Head’s game. Not even Marsch knows. Marsch believes—”
“When did you see Kipper?” I demanded.
“When? What’s the difference!”
“Are you sure Kipper IS Kipper?”
It didn’t sound like I was making sense, but suddenly a cold suspicion shot through the length of me and all at once I was slowing up so fast that Flora had to cling to my neck for dear life. I stopped, turned my head, and tried to face her in the dark.
“What is the matter with you?” she cried. “Go on. It’s White Head’s crimes we want to stop. He’s not putting those pygmies on ships. He’s pouring them into the transformation waters—concentrated water that will get them, for sure. Kipper said so. He’s going to run them through the vat, and right down into the de-composing mill that will eat their flesh right off their bones. As fast as they change into new forms, he’ll catch their skeletons. It’s a regular skeleton’s assembly line, I tell you. Why don’t we go? Are we going to let Kipper fight it alone?”
My retort must have made her too weak to say anything more, but the wild suspicion had flared up through me, and I had to say it.
“I think it’s Kipper that’s double-crossing the whole gang of us! I think Kipper IS the White Head!”
“Go! Please go!” That’s all Flora could say. I thought she was fainting. But I obeyed. With my two serpent eyes fixed on the growing red light I flew into top speed and raced like a ship through space.
CHAPTER XXI
An assembly line for polished skeletons—that’s what it was!
We found our way into a lower level, by following the guides of sight and smell and sound and feeling. Especially sound. I had learned to put an ear to the ground, and catch the directions of the throbbing vibrations that beat faintly through the length of my body. With sounds beating from many directions, I was soon convinced that the
procession was finding its way down, and down, through certain subterranean channels that were alive with electrically powered apparatus.
And now Flora and I followed a dark tunnel that promised a flare of amber light around the corner. We heard the gentle hum of machinery. We crawled, on and on, Flora pressing down close over my shoulders to dodge the arched ceiling, and I dragging my arms and legs. At last the tunnel curved into a high-ceilinged chamber whose orange rock walls gave the amber glow to the string of white lights beyond.
Whiter and whiter the way became, and louder and louder the rumble, until, presto, through the open doors we saw it with our own eyes. A train of freakish skeletons.
I haven’t the heart to describe these strange monstrosities. No two were the same. Very few presented any semblance of balance or symmetry. A hundred highly varied monsters, if sliced into several parts and reassembled with each other by accident, couldn’t have matched this weird pageant of bones.
The line was moving slowly—slowly enough that one might count ten before the next skeleton emerged from the black circular opening at our left.
“The pygmies—transformed!” Flora said in an awed tone. “They’re walking into it, one after another, thinking they’re on the way to the attack!”
We plunged ahead, up the stairs, across a balcony, up another stairs, over a catwalk, down a ramp—we were like a pair of bullets ricocheting between walls. In the back of my mind I was marveling that someone or something had organized enough pygmy slave labor, in secret, to construct such an elaborate set-up. Yet I knew that if my friend Kipper was the White Head, he had been here for long enough time to accomplish seeming miracles.
Whoever had done it, that powerful person had had the patience to wait, and to keep the secret air-tight, until the magic waters of this region had been converted into something so potent that even the Mashas would fall victim. And rather than let the secret leak out to Masha Land, he had devised a scheme for putting a large share of the population through with one swift stroke.
In my heart I was sick to think that the White Head must be Kipper. I compared the size, mentally, of the two creatures. Without the huge skull, the White Head’s body would be the size of Kipper’s. The skull might be a mechanical contrivance, in spite of its seemingly perfect operation. Or it might be the real thing—who could tell in this land of quick changes?
As to the time that I had seen the two creatures, I could not recall any instance of having seen both at once.
Then there was Kipper’s unusual versatility of manner. He could easily have several voices, with a skull to aid his resonance. And he had seemed a person of such self-confidence, as if he went his own way, carried his own purposes in deep concealment, and feigned an outward manner of light-heartedness.
And yet they certainly would have touched the hot brand to Kipper that night if I hadn’t come along. Would he have taken it? Or would he have changed instantly into the White Head and bowled them over with some show of power?
“We’ll find the White Head up this way!” Flora said. “One more stair, and through that narrow copper door. Kipper told me!”
“Maybe Kipper showed you!”
I said it angrily, spitefully. Something told me that if Kipper knew his way all through these mysteries, he was a part of this sinister world, no question about it.
“Are you angry with me because I want to help Kipper stop these atrocities?” Flora said. She swung off my back and stood there on the step, glaring at me. My words had stung deep. The light glanced off the copper doorway just above us, and it glinted in her eyes dangerously. We were both panting, and all at once I could hardly speak for anger. But I managed some savage words.
“How do you know all about this? How does Kipper know—”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” she said. “Kipper is the grandson of the White Head. He told me so. They were shipped from Mars together. The White Head was the only one who was transformed by the waters. Kipper said he was more sensitive, more delicate, and less adapted to the conditions of Mars. He was a scientist, and he discovered that these Space Island waters, saturated with the strange qualities from certain blossoms, could cause all sorts of physical miracles. So he went to work . . . and he became the real power . . . feared and respected like a god . . .
“You’re sure,” I said, “that this is not Kipper you’re talking about?” Something was easing in the long, long chain of tensions through my backbone.
“Kipper told me. Yes, I’m sure. And all these years Kipper has kept watch, not knowing what his grandfather was planning, being afraid to tell, and worrying because he didn’t dare—”
We pushed through the narrow copper door.
The thick, sickening perfumes of blossoms filled my serpent nostrils and for an instant I staggered backward.
The waters were rushing through a sluice. Dark green waters. Deeper in color than the waters of the depressed river. Thickened waters that reminded me of the greenhouses at the fortress.
One after another, the pygmies were dropping down from an open shaft above the sluice. They fell, kicking and screaming. The sluice was deep, and before they could scramble to the surface they were carried on down, out of sight, to one of the lower levels.
“Can you make the leap?” Flora cried to me.
She pointed to the platform on the other side of the sluice. A fight was going on over there. It was an unfair fight, and it wasn’t going to last long. Kipper had a steel bar in his hand. He was trying to slam the White Head over the crown. One telling blow struck. The White Head gave an ugly laugh through his immense white teeth. He had only to fling his hand at Kipper. Kipper would fall back to his knees.
It was only a twenty foot leap, over the water and over the heads of the struggling Mashas. I caught the opposite side of the sluice with my good hands and whipped my tail against the green waters. Then I came up, fast and strong, and ran toward the fighters.
With one hard fling of his hand White Head knocked Kipper off into the water.
I sprang to the edge of the sluice, reached a hand toward the little fellow as he floundered. My arm wouldn’t straighten. I missed him. I caught a glimpse of his fighting face, his gritting teeth—he went on down, then, with the other Mashas.
The White Head was coming at me.
“The switch!” That was Flora’s cry from across the way.
As White Head closed in on me, I felt one muscle after another go paralyzed through the left side of my body. But I had caught Flora’s shout, and I saw what she meant. I whipped my long tail at the wall and struck a row of switches—struck them off!
The pygmies ceased to fall from overhead. I had evidently closed the hopper. Now there would be a chance for someone up there—Mashas or otherwise—to discover what had been happening.
The waters stopped churning, too, and that seemed to mean that the flow of bodies down into the flesh-stripping mills would stop.
It all happened in a flash, and not for one split second did I have any rest from the White Head’s attack. He was putting a freeze on me, but I was walking into him with a good right arm. I flung a blow at his throat.
His mighty skull pinched down on my hand just as I struck. For an instant we hovered on the edge of the sluice as we both fought for footing. But the weight of my paralyzed side threw us over. We fell in together, kicking and striking and biting, and then, as we slipped down through the waters into some lower level I was sure we were locked in a death struggle.
CHAPTER XXII
“I’m the serpent. He’s not the serpent! I’m the serpent!” I had started to climb up over the edge of the circular tank, in which the waters were still spinning like a merry-go-round. And as I came up, I saw that Kipper wasn’t following me; he was running from me. He was going toward that—that forty-foot green-and-purple serpent I I yelled at him. He was taking it to be me, thinking it was a friend. But he was making a mistake. “No! Come away from him! I’m the serpent. I’m Bob Garrison—over here!”
He turned his fighting face toward me for just an instant. Couldn’t he understand? How could anyone have understood. I hadn’t realized, myself, for a moment, just what transformation had taken place.
But as I intoned the words, “Bob Garrison!” and heard the deep rumble of my voice echo through the huge skull that I now possessed, I realized.
In the waters we had been transformed. In our fight, the shock treatment had done its work. And now—I possessed the body of the White Head.
And there in the tank, lashing its ugly tail through the green waters, was the power of these weird laboratories—the power that had been known as the White Head—now in the guise of a legged serpent!
Kipper saw what had happened—just too late.
My words told him, and he was quick enough to know—poor guy—but not quick enough to escape. The big jaws of the serpent closed over his head and snapped the life out of his body in one hard stroke.
I shall never forget Flora’s scream. She simply couldn’t believe her eyes. On the instant I was shot through with remorse for all the suspicious things I had said about Kipper. Would she ever believe that it wasn’t I who took his life in that awful moment?
I have no pangs of remorse over what I did, very soon after the echoes of Flora’s scream had died away.
First making sure that no more Mashas would go through the transforming waters, I turned the switches on again and allowed the serpent to go on through. I remembered that a pedestal had already been prepared for him—that is, for me—and I believed he would look well upon it.
Then I turned to the very weighty responsibilities that awaited me.
It was not as difficult as you might think. The greatest advantages were mine, I soon discovered, because I was the White Head, and there was no one, not even a learned doctor, who did not fully respect my slightest whim. If anything, I was going to have to be very careful not to overplay my power and arouse suspicion.
