by Don Wilcox
“Oh, Melvin, don’t try to fight them. You don’t know what you’re saying,” she cried. “They’ve, drugged you until you’re out of your head.”
“Come away from there,” Pibbering said. “You’re interrupting.”
She might not have heard him. She was sobbing over Melvin now, as if trying to plant some ray of hope in his tortured mind. “Have faith, Melvin. I’ll get you out of here yet, somehow—”
“I don’t want to get out,” Melvin said.
“You’ve got to get out. You’ve got to tell the whole world about this dreadful business.”
“I tell you I don’t want to get out. I like it here.”
The girl began to draw back, looking at him strangely. She gave a little shocked cry: “Oh, Melvin, they’ve harmed you.”
“They have not. I feel fine. I never felt better.”
“Don’t let them make a slave out of you, Melvin.”
“But I want to be a slave!” He rose suddenly. “Well, why doesn’t someone get me a uniform? How am I going to march with the other slaves if you, don’t get me a uniform?”
“Sit down!” Pibbering ordered.
“I won’t sit down. I want to inarch!” He turned and strode toward the big open door at the end of the corridor. Along the way, he saw exactly what he had demanded—a red and yellow uniform hanging by a cell door. He hurriedly put it on. Then he strode through, the open door and fell into the first marching line that came by. “They can’t tell me not to!” he said. “I want to be a slave and I’ll be a slave!”
As Melvin afterward learned, everyone who had hoped Dr. Pibbering’s experiments would succeed, considered this a moment of final triumph. Kozmack could hardly refrain from shouting. The doctors and attendants held back breathlessly, to make sure the victory was real. Dorothy was lost in tears, and when the young Dr. Dean tried to comfort her, she recoiled from his touch.
Kozmack should have been completely satisfied, but he wasn’t. His wealth was back of this whole laboratory, and he owned every doctor in it. Whatever they might advise, his own word was law. If he wanted to try new experiments, it was up to the doctors to serve his whims. Even Dr. Pibbering.
“But my dear Kozmack,” Pibbering protested, “these one hundred and twenty-eight slaves are the finished product. They’ll serve you to their last breath, just as they stand.”
They were standing at the moment. At Kozmack’s request, a halt had been ordered. Standing in the ranks
With them, Melvin Bolt could hear conversation that ensued between old doctor and the political firebrand.
“Are you telling me what I want and what I don’t, want?” Kozmack snarled, squaring his great shoulders. “You know I’ll carry out your orders, Kozmack. I was simply advising—”
“But for me you wouldn’t be alive,” Kozmack said. “I’m protecting you and paying you—”
“I’m at your service, of course. I was merely advising—”
“That one hundred and twenty-eight slaves are perfect as they stand. I don’t deny it,” Kozmack said. “They stand well. But they’re only a handful. You can make a million more like these. These hundred and twenty-eight are expendable in the interests of science. If we don’t try we’ll never know but what we could make them over in the pattern of that last one—that hundred and twenty-ninth—Melvin Bolt. Can’t you make them all like him?”
“They were different to start with,” Pibbering tried to explain. “They responded to milder treatments.”
“But you see that he has more fire than the others. He would fight, but not like a machine. He would have cunning and wit. He’s sharper. One look tells you he’s far more dangerous. If I had an army of men like him, every command from me would rip the enemy to shreds. Can’t you make the others like him?”
“I doubt it,” Dr. Pibbering said. “You’re stalling. Do you have enough of the serum made, up?”
“Possibly.”
“And you can get more where that came from?”
“No. It came from John. I had invested a lot in John. He’s dead now, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately, you say? I don’t like the implication of that remark, Pibbering. And I don’t believe that that one dishrag of a man could be your only source of this new medicine. You’re trying to get around me, Pibbering. I hereby order you to inject these one hundred and twenty-eight men with the new medicine.” Melvin saw the old doctor weave as if he had been struck. “All of them?” His scarred, twisted, mouth quivered strangely.
“All of them.” Kozmack slapped his pistol pocket with a savage air. “At once.”
All the doctors and attendants went to work a few minutes later. The big open room became a strange sight as the uniformed men sat dazed and sleepy.
Melvin watched with wonderment an hour later as they began to come to their feet. He wondered if they were goings through the same weird feelings He had experienced. For his own part, the false exhilaration was beginning to wear off. He looked about, wondering what had happened to Dorothy. He began to be filled with a strange remorse for the sharp answers he had given her. How deeply hurt she must have been.
She was watching, too. She was doing her best to ignore the attentions of Dr. Dean. What irony, Melvin thought that she should let herself show her hatred for Dean, when he was probably the only one now who could save her from the trouble she’d walked into.
“I’ll not last long,” Melvin said to himself. “The way things are going I’ll follow in John’s footsteps within a few days, if not hours. And these other slaves—they’ll get themselves shot up, most likely, if the serum hits them the way it did me. But after the smoke has cleared, there’ll still be the young bug-eyed doctor and Dorothy. And if she doesn’t play her hand right, he’ll think back to last night—”
His thoughts broke off sharply as he watched the trail of uniformed slaves rising and roving across the room. He looked about, wondering what had happened to Dr. Pibbering.
The other doctors and attendants were, on hand. Pibbering was nowhere in sight.
“What happened to the doctor?” Kozmack was saying, prancing about. “Those slaves are coming to life.”
“He must have gone to his office,” Dr. Dean said.
“Find him.” Kozmack ordered. “He should be here.”
Dean passed the order on to others. In a moment the agitated Kozmack had sent most of the staff off one way or another to find Dr. Pibbering and get Him back here at once.
Melvin looked at His uniform. He sensed the restlessness of the other uniformed slaves. They were moving toward the door in a body. They were unarmed, but they had the look of wildly defiant men.
Kozmack marched up to meet them.
“Halt!”
They showed no signs of having heard the order.
“Halt! Halt, I say! HALT!” More than a hundred men marched forward in a defiant wall.
“Halt—or I’ll shoot you down! Come a step closer and you’ll die!”
Three times his gun went off. The three foremost slaves stumbled and fell to the floor. The others came on.
They trod over their dead comrades and marched ahead. They marched in no order—just a wall of mad humanity defying the order to halt.
Three more times he shot. Three more fell. Others fell too, as the guards opened up with firearms. But the mass of men came on. Kozmack, backing away from them, stumbled into a laboratory table. The men crowded into him. Melvin saw his arms flailing wildly; he saw the table go over, and the broad-shouldered Kozmack with it. A flash of fire, from the test tubes flared upward. The table crashed. The flickering blue blaze under a gleaming crucible fanned out in long fingers of red and yellow.
Glass crashed. The men still marched as the dry of halt rang out against the din.
Through the puffs of white smoke and blinding fire, Melvin found Dorothy. Her hand was reaching toward his. She tried to shake her other hand free. Dean Stetcher was clinging to her for dear life.
Melvin never remembered striking the
young doctor, only Dean’s falling backward, his fish-like eyes half closed.
Then Melvin was following Dorothy to the trap door. They slipped into the aperture and went spiralling down.
Melvin never knew when the girl fainted; he only knew that he clung to her tightly, that her head was tight against his chest, that they, were spinning down and down endlessly. Then suddenly, they were out in the open air in an alley filled with shouting people. Firewagons were on the way, and everyone was pointing to the mountains of smoke that exploded up from the top of the building.
Someone helped them to their feet, saying conversationally, “At least you folks came through with your faces on straight. The other guy that came out this chute had his mouth on crooked. Didn’t wait to answer any questions, either. Just, grabbed a taxi and beat it.”
Melvin and Dorothy made no such quick getaway. They stayed to answer a thousand questions, and the more they told the more the police and reporters were mystified.
When, at last, in the quiet of Dorothy’s home, Melvin had a chance to talk, with her alone, there were still plenty of questions to be answered.
“What I don’t understand is why I should have wanted to be a slave, even if I was doped. But I really didn’t—I just said it to be contrary.”
“And that, Melvin, is the answer.”
Do you mean—”
“The hormones they developed from John’s blood didn’t give them a drug that would make you servile, as they supposed. It was a drug that, made you say no to everything anyone suggested. That was John’s most obvious characteristic. I told you—if I advised him one way, he would do the opposite.”
Melvin smiled faintly as his thoughts went back. They had asked him if he wanted to leave the laboratory. No, he had wanted to stay!
“And I, like a dope, tried to persuade you never to become a slave, so you marched in for your uniform.”
“Do you know, Dr. Pibbering must have suspected. That’s why he skidded out. I wonder if he’ll get away.”
“Wherever he is, he’ll read in the papers that the more Kozmack shouted halt, the more the slaves marched. Then he’ll know, for sure. By the way, Melvin,” Dorothy said wistfully, “are you still that way?”
“What way?” Melvin gave her a look, feigning to be on his guard.
“The way you were—ready to do just the opposite of what anyone suggests.”
“What were you going to suggest?” She smiled. “That you mustn’t ever, ever think of making love to me.”
“As long as the Kozmack Cause is dead,” he said with a twinkle, “I’m not afraid of becoming a slave.”
THE MAD MONSTER OF MOGO
First published in Amazing Stories, November 1952
No armament, however deadly, could stop this walking mountain. No force of manpower could stand before him. So the weapons of a world’s survival seemed to be brains, boxcars, and bread.
CHAPTER I
Much of the world’s trouble can be traced to the lazy nogood fellow who lies around all day with nothing to do but get into mischief. It was one of the laziest giants of Mogo who accidentally started all the grief between the Solar System and the Mogo System. He bit into an Earth space ship. Devilish carelessness. He was too lazy to notice that it was a space ship, not some kind of flying insect.
That was the start of a chain of events that led to the complete destruction of civilization on the Earth and to the subsequent race between a space explorer, Captain Keller, and the notorious Madam Zukor, of Venus, to reclaim the scorched planet.
Faz-O-Faz was the lazy giant’s name. He was a shaggy reddish-brown fellow about a mile tall (the average height of the Mogos) and very dusty. He spent most of his time lying on the hilltop. His weight had pulverized the rocks into a nice warm couch of dust, and as a rule the ears of his head were as dusty as the ears on his ankles.
Four years after the destruction of the Earth, Faz-O-Faz still lay on the same hilltop, quite as lazy as ever, snoozing when it pleased him, and enjoying the warmth of the three Mogo suns. Growing hungry from time to time, he would squint into the bright summer clouds in the hope of sighting a bird or an insect passing over. If he could catch a meal out of the air it would save him the trouble of getting to his feet and ambling back to the city for lunch.
A humming sound reached his ears. He raised his head from his folded upper arms, which served as his pillow. His lower arms were free for action. His eyes rolled about hopefully and suddenly he saw—
What a dainty little insect! It was bright red, with thin lines of yellow running from nose to tail. It was moving fast, all right, but retarding—yes, it was a space ship!
Now Faz-O-Faz remembered. The warnings had been circulated for days: An Earth ship would soon arrive. Let no Mogo mistake it for an insect and crush it.
Temptation flashed through the lazy giant’s mind. No one would know . . . His arm twitched.
The little ship was passing over him. He reached up. He thought, could it be that there were tiny people inside? That was the claim of Gret-O-Gret, the great Mogo philosopher. They were natives of a planet in the Solar system, and were said to be highly intelligent. They should make fascinating pets. He’d like to have pets. He’d like to have one.
He reached up, opened his hand, and extended his fingers.
Swiss! Swiss! Two blasts of fire shot out from the ship.
Faz-O-Faz jerked his hand back and put his burnt fingers to his lips to cool them. He muttered an oath. The little ship soared on toward the city of Forty Towers.
For minutes Faz-O-Faz swore, not violently, but lazily. Then he half chuckled. Clever little devils, spouting fire at him! Luckily he hadn’t opened his fingertips to expose his fingers-of-fingers, or he might have lost a few.
Two huge birds flew over, obviously trailing the little red ship with curiosity. He reached up and snatched both of them out of the air and devoured them. Lunch over, he closed his eyes contentedly and dozed off, thinking delicious thoughts of the little people from the Earth. Indirectly they had brought him his lunch. He wondered just what they were like. He promised himself that after a brief nap he would stroll into the city of Forty Towers to see how the great Gret-O-Gret received them. If he woke up in time.
CHAPTER II
In the city of Forty Towers many prominent Mogos assembled around the outdoor conference table (which, by Earth man’s rule, would have measured two miles long and more than half a mile wide).
At the head of the table sat Gret-O-Gret. Today he was in a rare mood.
His guests from the Earth would soon arrive, and he was dressed for the occasion. The glass-smooth table top reflected the purple of his robe, and his jewels flashed in the sunlight as his four arms moved in rhythmic gestures.
“My compatriots, I am happy for you to witness this remarkable occasion. When I visited the Earth, I often wished for you. You would have found many things amusing—vet touching. But now, before they arrive—”
Gret-O-Gret bent forward, his tone conveying the imminence of danger.
“—listen carefully. There are certain precautions you must take, otherwise tragedies might result from our carelessness. First, you must remember to speak softly. . .”
The Mogos around the table listened intently.
Their voices, Gret-O-Gret warned, would sound like roaring thunder to the little Earth people, hence they must speak softly. They must not pick up the little creatures, however much they might be tempted. Might they look at the little fellows under a magnifying glass? With care—yes, but they must not focus sunlight on them, or the little creatures would be burned into specks of ashes.
“You’re sure to be tempted to dissect them, to examine their finely shaped brains or discover their fast-pounding little hearts. No, you mustn’t. They’re not like the bifflebugs in our orchards. You’d never get them back together alive. You mustn’t even remove their clothing to see what they look like in their natural state.
You’ll be curious, naturally, but you must re
strain your curiosity out of respect. They are very proud little creatures. They’ll be wearing their special dress uniforms for this occasion.”
One of the Gret-O-Gret’s listeners found this incredible. “You mean these fragile little bugs, no bigger than our finger-tips, wear clothing?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s a very important part of their life.”
Several of the Mogos chuckled with amusement, and the questioner, Blug-O-Blug, gave a cynical groan. “A lot of nuisance, pampering such tiny bugs as if they had intelligence.”
“But they do have intelligence,” Gret-O-Gret insisted. “That’s why I’m preparing you. And by the way, Blug-O-Blug, your voice is much too heavy for their ears. You’ll do better not to speak at all.”
“I’m already speechless,” Blug muttered.
“They’re coming now.” Gret-O-Gret said, catching a radio report. “Remember this is a tour of good will. The leader of their party is the Earth man, Paul Keller, the great explorer who came to Mogo four Earth-years ago. The unfortunate Mogo destruction of the Earth might have turned all Solar people against us if it hadn’t been for Paul Keller. He proved to them that the evil work of our infamous brother Mox-O-Mox, now behind bars, was the work of a Mogo criminal. He made them understand that most of us are men of good will.”
“I hope he hasn’t come to ask us to pay for the damage,” said Blug-O-Blug sullenly. But his remark was lost. At that moment the little red space ship sailed into view over the horizon.
It zoomed downward, cutting a sharp path between two Mogo heads. It settled gently on the surface of the table, cushioning its descent with jets of fire. Then with its mysterious power applied to emerging wheels, it glided toward Gret-O-Gret’s end of the table and stopped.
All of the Mogos, even Blug-O-Blug, remembered to breathe softly. They waited.
In the side of the little red toy with the yellow stripes, a dainty door opened. Tiny two-legged, two-armed creatures marched out, walking upright in stiff military formation. They halted in a perfect line, eight of them. A faint blast of music sounded from a gleaming little bugle. A miniature flag was lifted, and the little creatures all raised their arms at once in a precise salute. They held their pose.
