The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  If Ballinger had said, “Send Ronnie Conwell up in a rocket ship, tell him to cruise into the sun’s corona and bring me some photographs from the inside.”

  Ronnie would probably have done his best to accommodate. You don’t mind walking into the world’s most dangerous jobs if you believe in the man you work for. Ronnie believed in Ballinger and would have gone to hell for him. And now it seemed he had done just that.

  Clayton got his share of the hellish ordeal all in one dose. He went blundering back toward the east bank where they had left their clothes.

  Ronnie had tried to talk him out of it. Now that it was daylight the Venus Oojaggs would be gunning for them.

  “Those savage boys will perforate you, you know that,” Ronnie had warned.

  “I’ll steal a mudboat,” Clayton boasted, “right under their noses.”

  “You’ll never get away with it in the light. They’re the fiercest Earthman haters in all Venus. What do you want, suicide?”

  “I’ll take my chances and I’ll see you later.”

  “Where?”

  “Back in the U.S.A. in some nice quiet cocktail lounge.” Clayton said it with a harshness that made Ronnie know his partner was all fed up.

  “You don’t mean you’re quitting!”

  “How’d you guess it?”

  “You can’t do that, Clayton. We’ve got to find that city!”

  “Listen, Ronnie. Where in our contract does it say we’re supposed to turn into mud turtles and flap through, this slime?”

  “We have a job to do. We’re being paid well. And. Ballinger will remember.”

  “Ballinger!” Clayton spat the word. “They call him ‘the Magnificent’ ! He wouldn’t be so damned magnificent if he had to wade through this mud puddle. Why didn’t he mark it on our maps?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t he call us in and talk with us before he started us off on this wild goose chase?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I know,” Clayton said. “It’s because he’s too high-hat to talk with the men that work for him. We’re just so much dirt to him. Can you see him loggin’ through this mud the way he expects us to do? Hell, no, he’s back on Earth nice and safe, up in his skyscraper penthouse, sipping cocktails with the ladies;. All right, I’m through. You can stick if you want to. I’m going back.”

  “I’ll carry on,” Ronnie said coldly. “All I can say is, I pity you for quitting.”

  “The pity is mutual,” Clayton said. “Goodbye, sap!”

  Ronnie had watched him plod back across toward the morning sun. Through the occasional bunches or shrubbery that poked up through the current of mud, Ronnie kept sight of him all the way back, and soon, could see him clambering up the east bank to the knoll where they had hidden their clothing.”

  Ronnie’s breathing almost stopped then; from the sight his eyes’ witnessed. Clayton was not the only figure silhouetted against the pink ball of the rising sun. A knot of Oojaggs swarmed up from the other side of the knoll. Clayton was running. The Oojaggs headed him off. The chase came back over the top of the knoll.

  A dozen of them, pounded him down with clubs. Through the morning stillness Ronnie could hear the faint echoes of Clayton’s last cries.

  So that was the Oojaggs’ first murder of the morning. A swift one, unceremonious, and final.

  Ronnie was deeply angry with himself. Why had he let the poor guy turn back? If he had tried, harder—if he had talked more stubbornly—if he had threatened—

  “My fault! My fault!”

  For minutes that was all Ronnie could say to himself. Then, clinging to a bit of island that protruded above the flow of the mud stream, he turned over in his mind the foggy mixture of causes that lay back of this tragedy, and he found himself saying, “If Ballinger could just have called us in and talked with us, and told us about these dangers. If!”

  There! He was doing it t too. He was hurling the blame back at Ballinger, the same as Clayton had done a few minutes before. The poison of Clayton’s remarks had taken root that fast. And because Clayton had met death, one’s natural sympathies tended to upset the logic of one’s thinking. No, Ronnie wouldn’t let his thoughts go off on such spiteful tangents.

  “Who do I think I am to think such thoughts about Ballinger, the Magnificent, when I’ve never even met the guy?” Ronnie’s jaws tightened. “I’m one little cog in a big wheel. I’ve got my orders. My job is to find a city, and see what the hell’s gone wrong with the doctor that Ballinger planted in that city. The doctor may be dead, or he may have deserted, the same as Clayton. My job is to find out. The map said the city was this way. My job is to keep going.”

  That was Ronnie’s speech to himself. His nerves stiffened and he cancelled Clayton out of his mind and went on his way.

  That was when the gunfire sounded from across the muddy way, Ronnie ducked for cover. They were after him.

  Through a sprig of vegetation he looked back and saw five or six Oojaggs rowing into the muddy stream in a flat-bottom boat. They must have spotted him. They had found the hidden clothing on the bank, no doubt. This and the tracks down to the stream had assured them that another Earth victim was somewhere around and they meant to find him.

  He moved swiftly through the stream toward a little ten-foot island of sorts. It was only a nob of bushes that had withstood the flow of the stream, but it would offer momentary concealment. If he could make it.

  A spray of vegetation was sliced away by a bullet, and the gunfire roared across the stream. They had spotted him all right. He tried to hurry. His footing was strangely smooth, as if he were walking over a floor of stone—a gently arched floor under five-and-a-half feet of mud. The warm flowing substance surged against his naked body, skimmed over his shoulders and kissed his chin. He held his pistol just above the surface.

  Then he saw something that froze his blood.

  Something moved into view along the surface of the stream, directly between him and the approaching boat.

  It was a Venus water slitter!

  The six Oojaggs had already seen it, that was why they had stopped firing. It was swimming upstream, a splendid specimen of a swamp monster, at least fifty feet long.

  The Oojaggs crouched, down in their boat and allowed it to drift slowly with the stream. They had no wish to tangle with the monster. Fifty yards separated them, and something less than that distance lay between Ronnie and the huge serpentlike creature.

  Its head, held with a proud arched neck several feet above the level of the mud flow, was bright yellow with blue and green markings. It wore an armor of arrowhead-shaped spines down the length of its back. Nature had equipped it for fighting. Ronnie had seen water slitters before only in pictures. He knew of their prowess in Venus swamps. They moved like water snakes; they could fight with the ferocity, of a tiger.

  Ronnie clung to the edge of the little clump of vegetation, his feet kicking about for a more secure anchor. He had been seen by the men, and he strongly suspected he had also been spotted by the beast. The glistening of its opalescent eye betrayed a nervousness of manner.

  It looked toward the boat. It gave a quick darting movement in that direction. Then it flashed its eyes toward the clump of vegetation where Ronnie waited, and came gliding across the surface toward him.

  The pink of its nostrils and mouth showed bright. Sunlight flashed from the deadly ivory knives that were its fangs. Ronnie hadn’t meant to move a muscle, but the stalks of grass beside his upraised pistol trembled from the current. The creature came on, now only a few yards away. Twitches of nervousness ran the length of its green and golden spine. The kick-like action brought it into a half-coiled position. Its head lifted higher, and the drift of the current helped to swing its tensed long body toward Ronnie’s hiding place. It drew into position for the strike. The smell of its breath was in the air. Its hideous pink lips stretched back angrily and it sprang.

  Ronnie’s ray pistol aimed for the lower jaw. The lav
ender blaze cut a sure hard line through jaw and brain. The jaw dropped and a beastly groan welled up from the deep throat. The wounded head slipped forward—but, wounded or dead, the monster struck for. Ronnie with all the force of its steel-tight body.

  Ronnie dived.

  He plunged down into the creamy mud, kicking, hard, grabbing for anything that would help him to stay down under as long as the thrashing of mud went on above him. Wounded or dead, the water slitter was, pounding the surface of the stream with the fury of a hurricane.

  Ronnie fought to stay under. His lungs were growing tight. His hands scratched at the bed of the stream for anything that would help him stay down. He caught onto a projecting rock, it pulled loose, he snatched at other rocks. Everything was breaking out of his grasp, and suddenly—

  He was going down!

  The swirl of mud into a suckhole was drawing him down!

  Lungs bursting for breath, he was unable to fight back to the surface. Forces were sweeping him the other way. Something had broken through under the river of mud, and the swirling vortex was drawing him down and down . . .

  CHAPTER II

  The magnificent Ballinger moved with an air of leisure through the solarium of his skyscraper penthouse, looking out at the lights, of the great city that stretched away to the mountains and the stars.

  The last of his evenings guests had departed. Only his trusted secretary, Montgomery, remained.

  “Mr. Ballinger,” Montgomery said in his always gracious manner, “if you’re serious about getting away for a short vacation, perhaps, we should make some plans yet tonight. Assuming that you would wish to return in time for the March meeting of the board of directors—”

  “Montgomery, do you see that fine night sky? Beautiful, isn’t it? You’d never guess there was any trouble on other worlds when the stars shine like that.”

  “You’re quite worried about Venus, Mr. Ballinger, as I understand.”

  “Yes. News has reached me which complicates our Venus problem. I believe you know of it.”

  “The continent which contains your city of guinea pigs has undergone a geological change, I understand. A sort of face-lifting?”

  “At one side of the continent, yes. A sinking at the other. Our own coastlines have experienced simpler, slower movements. But the swiftness and severity of this Venus action has probably been attended by some pretty drastic upheavals. In short, I’m very much afraid that the tiny stream which trickled past my city of Zattzones may have gone into reverse.”

  “With a damaging effect?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m worried. To the north were endless, acres of purple mud flats in what the geologists describe as an age-old land. My native Zattzones may have had to move out of a stream of muddy water. At best, they may have had to channel it past the city. Anyway I’m concerned. I feel sure that the long silence from that quarter must be related to this geological change. I don’t know why those Venus authorities can’t come through with faster reports on their own planetary conditions, but you know Venus.”

  “What of the two men you’ve sent to investigate the long silence of our own Dr. Douglas?”

  “I expect to send another man to reinforce them.”

  Montgomery was ready at once to act upon this decision. “Shall I equip another man, then, as I did Conwell and Clayton?”

  “The supply shop will be open at the spaceport. You should be able to get all the necessary equipment together yet tonight, in fact, within the next two hours.”

  “Tonight?” Montgomery considered himself a man of action, and was often surprised to discover how far ahead Ballinger has already carried his own plans.

  “A ship leaves, for Venus at dawn,” Ballinger said.

  “Then you’ve already chosen a man for the job? Can you tell me what size clothes he wears?”

  “The same size as I wear.”

  “He should be here to try on the shoes.”

  “My size will be right.”

  Montgomery turned to study Ballinger’s expression but it revealed nothing. A rather tall man in his middle forties, dark-complexioned, with a dark-thick mustache and heavy eyebrows, he had the look of strength blended with a well-controlled intellectual and emotional reserve. Montgomery held him in high admiration and a little awe.

  “This man you’re sending,” Montgomery said cautiously, “—er—is there any chance that he should be present for your March meeting of the board of directors?”

  Ballinger’s eyes showed a faint smile. “My instructions for the March meeting will be found in the usual place.”

  “I see. And should I draw funds for this man? For the records, it would seem the thing. Unless I have a record of his name and address in order to record everything, including his pay, it would appear highly irregular.”

  “Very well, make a complete record as you did for the other two.”

  “What name shall I use, Mr. Ballinger?”

  Ballinger picked up a scratch pad and a pencil. “What name would you suggest?”

  “John Doe? John Ballinger Doe?”

  “Hardly. Here. See what you can get by scrambling the letters, in the name Ballinger.”

  Montgomery took the pencil, jotted down the letters on the scratch pad and came, up with a new combination.

  “How’s this? A distinctive name, would you say?”

  On the pad were, the letters G-E-L-L B-R-A-I-N. Ballinger smiled. “Do you pronounce the G like a J? Come, now, Montgomery. Your subconscious is showing.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It appears, to reflect a subterranean doubt on my whole plan.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. What would you suggest?”

  Ballinger took the pencil, rescrambled the letters, and scribbled off a signature. “There—there’s the name of the man who is catching the dawn ship to Venus, written in his own handwriting.”

  The phone rang. It was a message that had been radioed in from Venus.

  The officials there had reported a chance discovery of a murder out in Oojagg Land.

  The victim was a man named Clayton, whose credentials, showed that he was an employee of Ballinger . . . No, the report made no mention of any other name.

  “Well,” Ballinger said, discussing the message with Montgomery, “obviously we’ve planned this deal none too soon. Action, Montgomery!”

  “Action, Mr. Ballinger!”

  CHAPTER III

  When Ronnie Conwell spilled downward through the suddenly formed vortex of creamy mud, all he knew was that he was bursting for a breath of air. His seconds of life were, numbered. Trying to climb back to the surface was a futile fight. The unseen force swept him down relentlessly. The whole weight of the mud-filled river pounded down on him.

  Then, all at once he knew that a blast of air was around him. He heard the splash, and thud of the avalanche of mud echoing in a strange emptiness. Tearing at his mud-covered face with muddy hands, tumbling fast, he burst out of the cloud of thick slime. His lips parted and he drank in air.

  He spat mud, blew mud from his nostrils, beat mud off his face, clawed mud out of his hair. He had tumbled onto a warm floor of some sort—everything was blackness. The heaps of inpouring river rolled him along like an ocean wave beating a swimmer onto the beach. He could see nothing.

  He had smeared his eyes, forced them, open, stared into the pitch blackness. Sight had no meaning. The tunnel, if such it was, seemed to welcome the whole inpouring river; yet, strangely, the break in the ceiling of the tunnel seemed to be clogging shut, closing off. The thudding diminished. The splashing simmered down to seeping and gurgling of thinner streams. Ronnie, on handstand knees, crawled along the warm stone floor knowing” that, miraculously, he had escaped death.

  Groping along, he encountered a barrier, a low stone wall. A pool of water accumulated against the obstacle. He washed the dripping mud from his body. However inky the water must have been, he was thankful for this much of a bath.

  Beyond this bit of wall he c
ould feel nothing. There was only space and blackness. How far might this tunnel extend?

  Cautiously he moved back to explore with his hands the heaps of stiffening mud that had come down with him. What a piece of luck it would have been if he could have recovered his pistol, lost in the fall.

  But that was too much to hope for. After a few moments of groping, he gave it up as a lost cause.

  He listened, wishing he might catch some clue to what had happened overhead. Had the water slitter, in dying, thrashed about and struck the mud boat—or had the canny Oojaggs safely turned back? All of that was in another world from this, he suddenly, realized. The Oojaggs, by this time, had marked him off as a sure casualty and that was that.

  Now, breathing more freely Ronnie tried lowering himself over the bit of wall. He found another floor on the other side, about four feet down. He moved along for several feet. He stopped, aware that sounds were coming from a new direction.

  Light seeped in from somewhere. Outlines of the walls emerged from the darkness. Voices were coming with the light. Ronnie edged toward a darker corner and waited.

  Whatever this place was, it was obviously inhabited. The inhabitants had evidently heard the break-through of the river overhead and were on their way to inspect the damages.

  And then Ronnie knew.

  This was the city he was looking for, that he had set out to find.

  His immediate enclosure might be one room of one building. It might be an arched covering over a roof. If might be a passage from the roof of one house to the attic of another—that really made no difference. The important thing was, this was it—the city of the Zattzones.

  In time he would learn the circumstances of the coming of the muddy river, brought by the geological changes somewhere far below the surface. The continent had settled down to a more comfortable position. The north-flowing rivulet had become a south-flowing channel of mud—and the inhabitants of this deep-rooted little city had stood their ground. They had built conduits, small ones at first, then larger. Then, as the tide of muddy waters kept rising, they had shelved over their lines of buildings, until at last they were lost in a little world of their own underneath!