The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “You mean the law was actually closing in on her?”

  “It would depend on Waterfield. He said if the Conclave backed the Mercury Ambassador, he’d go the limit to get Zukor sentenced. I don’t know what’s happened since we raced off for Africa.”

  “Then Poppendorf and ‘Doctor’ Millrock accompanied the shipload of released inmates—”

  “And went right to work on them, as soon as they landed in Banrab, trying to buy them over to be heroes for Zukor. It might have worked if they had succeeded in killing Green Flash. They postponed that job until they reached Banrab. and there we were waiting. So Purple Wings upset that! And you can guess the rest. You know, Green Flash and Purple Wings are a combination you can’t beat. Poppendorf and his doctor were in a minority. So what I started to say was. . . if we need any help here, undoing the damage of the Mogo giant, Green Flash will be glad to bring his whole wingman tribe over and join forces with us.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  George Hurley bounced up through the wilderness of hairs so fast lie almost tumbled down the giant’s cheek. He held tight to a tuft, shouting into the mike and motioning to the helicopter to come back.

  They picked him up and he rode straight to Captain Keller’s office, so excited he could hardly talk. When he reached Keller, all he could say was, “Chocolate! Chocolate!”

  That was all he needed to say. In a matter of minutes the helicopter swung past the giant’s face and, by a twist of George Hurley’s wrist, succeeded in dropping a barrel of chocolate syrup in the giant’s mouth.

  The action brought noticeable results. It established a more congenial communication between guest and host than had previously existed. Faz-O-Faz at once learned one of Earth Man’s words, “Chocolate”

  “He’s asking for more,” Hurley observed, as if the others in his party didn’t know.

  “Tell him we have more to give him but it isn’t here,” Captain Keller communicated.

  George relayed the message in the Mogog language. The giant appeared interested enough to raise his eyebrows and grin. People living on the other side of the city who thought they had heard a blast of thunder out of a clear sky were quickly informed by radio that it was Faz-O-Faz uttering the word “Chocolate!”

  “Tell him to follow you out into the country and you’ll have more for him,” Captain Keller called.

  George Hurley tried hard. In his best Mogo, he pleaded the case of abundant chocolate to be found elsewhere.

  The giant’s answer would long be remembered by the people of the New Earth capitol, who had watched their guest spend his days in soggy silence. At last Faz-O-Faz was quite in the mood to make a reply, and he answered George Hurley straight from his indolent heart.

  The mutterings were soft and fluid, like drums in the sky. George Hurley interpreted the Mogo words.

  “He says he is our guest. We must bring the chocolate to him.”

  Photographers in helicopters caught the action on film. The giant produced from his pocket the same sixty-foot canvas. He spread it on the ground at the edge of Cliff Park, and pointed to its printed promises of hospitality. Then in his sky-drum Mogo, he repeated his request. Bring the chocolate to him.

  He spent the rest of the evening repeating the word “Chocolate” each time he felt like speaking. George Hurley and Captain Keller went into a huddle and admitted they couldn’t win. Then Hurley, stubborn as he was, had the helicopter take him back into the air and deposit him in the giant’s ear with a loud-speaker. For hours to come he would doggedly tell the giant that there were whole mountains of chocolate to be had elsewhere.

  He stopped his propaganda only when he became so hoarse he could scarcely speak. The giant was resting quietly in his usual pose. George listened to the program that was going on at the farther edge of the park. It was the finish of a contest, and to his amazement an important little business man, Jay Sanderson had come up with an idea which everyone believed might win the prize. At least it was worth trying.

  In order to see what was happening, George quickly tied together several lengths of the giant’s rope-like hair, made a loop, and allowed himself the luxury of swinging far out on the shell of the giant’s ear. From this vantage point he saw the helicopter pass the giant’s mouth, tossing in a barrel, as before. Whether the barrel contained chocolate syrup or not, Hurley couldn’t tell—but he saw, by the flood lights, that something else was being hurled in. It proved to be a smoke tube, connected to pumps and a sizable supply of smoke.

  The giant blinked his eyes as the smoke rolled up over his face. He blew out with a snort that almost ended the meeting. Then, as the smoke kept coming, he inhaled, apparently enjoying the experience.

  For a long moment it seemed that all the smoke had drifted away—then it appeared again from the giant’s nostrils. A cloud curved upward. Again it seemed all gone. And then it came again—through the ears.

  It might have been an interesting sight to the spectators. To George Hurley, clinging to a rope of hair on the shell of the big fellow’s left ear, it was sheer murder. Smoke engulfed him—not just plain ordinary fire smoke, but smoke scented with the rich indescribable scents that came from a dusty ear of a shaggy Mogo.

  George was still kicking and coughing and holding tight when the fog cleared. He would have no more of that! He tried to order the helicopter to come back. But now, near midnight, the program was coming to a close, and everyone had been ordered to be quiet as the results of a contest were read.

  Would the committee give the prize to Sanderson? The giant had moved a little, but had settled back in his old position.

  “Two minutes left to go,” came the voice of the announcer. “If there are no further entries—”

  Then, watching from his perch in the giant’s ear, George Hurley saw what he couldn’t quite understand. Anna was running up to the platform with little Georgie, Junior in her arms. They made way for her and she hurried up to the row of microphones. There she stood, talking to Georgie Junior.

  Suddenly she tickled him in the ribs, and the little fellow chortled.

  He chortled distinctly, saying some funny words he remembered. “Kawoozie-ka-woozie! Keetle, keetle, keetle!”

  The giant Faz-O-Faz suddenly rose to his feet dripping with dust and raced away into the night’s blackness as hard as he could go.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Afterward, George boasted that he must have had pretty fair presence of mind to hold onto his radio. The giant ran all of three hundred miles before he tamed down to a walk. George had scrambled deep into the folds of the ear and anchored himself in the softest, safest place he could find. The smell of smoke bothered him for awhile; then, it seemed, a slight drift of fresh air seeped in through the fleshy wilderness. It was a strange ride, one he would never forget—and he kept telling himself that it had been brought on by the cleverness of his own little George. Junior! Wouldn’t he love that boy—if he got back alive!

  It was dawn before George succeeded in describing his position to the several planes on the search.

  Many hours later he was rescued while the giant slept in the sun on another warm hillside.

  The combined imaginations of Katherine Keller and Jay Sanderson devised a plan that was destined to keep the giant occupied for quite a little time. It was referred to as Operation Chocolate, and it worked pretty well, thanks to the discovery of a two-thousand-foot dry oil well in the vicinity of the giant’s new resting place.

  Cameras, concealed in the terrain, recorded the action, a sequence destined to become a classic in the annals of the New Earth. It was a film to be forever enjoyed by the adults who had endured the prolonged visit of an uncooperative Mogo guest—a film which would arouse vague dissatisfactions among the curious children, who could never quite appreciate such a mysterious case of frustration.

  It began with a view of the sleepy Faz-O-Faz awakening, yawning, shifting his position in the dust of the hillside—then widening his eyes with interest as he discovered a barrel lying on the
ground.

  He broke into the barrel, drained it of its syrup, and looked around. There was another barrel, farther on, and he exerted himself to the extent of taking three steps. Presently he was following a trail of barrels until he came to a veritable pyramid of them, carefully balanced at the top of a chute. The chute led to a well—how deep? The picture offered the information. Two thousand feet—slightly longer than any Mogo giant’s arm.

  As Faz-O-Faz started to pick up another barrel, the pyramid began to roll. Before Faz-O-Faz’s bewildered eyes, those dozens of barrels rolled down the chute and dropped out of sight. The giant looked down in the well, he studied the matter, and after awhile he began digging the soil away with his hands. He dug for several hours. Exhausting himself, he slept. He awakened. He dug. He slept. He dug until a mountain of earth had formed around him, and the cameras revealed that he went right on digging.

  He was digging when Gret-O-Gret arrived—and there the picture ended. George Hurley’s little boy thought it was a disappointing film; the giant should have finally got to the chocolate syrup. Older boys thought he should have struck oil. But all that happened was that he rose up, looking very grimy and somewhat sheepish, to discover that another Mogo, one with calm eyes and a kindly face, was saying hello to him.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Gret-O-Gret was greeted at once by the people of the New Earth as the answer to their offers of hospitality.

  Gret looked over the damaged city and the disorganized countryside surrounding it, and realized that what he had feared had surely happened. He related to Captain Keller that, on Mogo, he had missed the certificate of invitation; he had missed a space ship; and he had missed Faz-O-Faz. It had been a simple deduction, putting the three disappearances together. At once he had envisioned what disasters might befall the New Earth from the presence of such a guest. And so Gret-O-Gret had dropped his affairs of state and rocketed to the Solar System.

  The fight between Gret and Faz-O-Faz lasted nine minutes and took place, according to the foottracks discernible from planes, over an area of only eight hundred square miles. Two rivers changed their courses, and one rural town would have been demolished but for Gret’s clever footwork, prompted by the bark of a dog that sounded in one of his ankle ears.

  Gret appeared, an hour or so after his fight with Faz-O-Faz, bearing the ne’er-do-well on his shoulders, a mile above the surface of the land. He succeeded in opening the locks to Faz’ ship, loaded the fellow in, wakened him with smelling salts; he set the ship for automatic flight, got out and secured the locks just before it charged off into the sky.

  At that point, radios announced to the world that the New Earth’s guest had departed.

  And then, to everyone’s delight, the studio bands began playing, “We’ve Got a Great Big Brother . . .”

  And before the sun had set, Gret-O-Gret had rolled up his sleeves and begun removing wreckage, straightening bent girders, smoothing the industrial sites, and preparing the way for a new spree of industrial development.

  Late that night the first load of winged neighbors dropped in from Africa. Several loads were to follow—for Green Flash and Purple Wings had convinced most of the winged tribe that it was a good time to be neighborly to the New Earth people across the sea.

  By the end of the week, five hundred wingmen were flying back and forth over the city, running errands by the shortest routes, pepping up the new cycle of progress that was bursting into life everywhere.

  “Poppendorf?” one of the wingmen said when George and Anna Hurley inquired what had happened to their ex-leaders. “Poppendorf very sick . . . In our hospital . . . Must stay long time.”

  George and Anna understood.

  They remembered the caves with the bars at Banrab. Wherever bars were placed over doors, the wingmen called it a hospital. As this wing-man and others knew, Poppendorf had been “very sick . . . He killed Limpy Lady . . . He be sick for long time.

  And what of “Doctor” Millrock?

  The wingman declared that a doctor belonged in the hospital too. Bars had been provided for Millrock.

  “Millrock send a gift to George . . . This.” And the wingman, serving as messenger, flipped a half dollar in the air and caught it. “He say, have George name it. . . George gets it.”

  “I can name it all right.” George Hurley said, taking the coin revealing its peculiar property to Anna.

  “This was one of his favorites,” George said. “I remember it well. So he wanted me to have it!”

  Anna gave a gasp of surprise. “‘Look, Big Boy, it has my picture on both sides.”

  George smiled. “The so-called doctor was your admirer.”

  The wingman smiled. “Doctor Millrock very mad. Madam Zukor gone to Mercury. She never make him a general.”

  “He’ll do just fine as a doctor, behind the bars,” George said. “Give him my greetings—and what do you think, Anna, shall we send him a barrel of chocolate syrup just for a good will present?”

  “Later, Big Boy. Just now we’re pretty busy.”

  George grinned and rolled up his sleeves. Yes, there was work to be done, and the wingmen as well as the New Earth citizens were in the mood to rebuild. Gret-O-Gret had passed the word along that no one was to worry too much about any measure passed by the Interplanetary Conclave, for he was going to stand by as long as they needed a big brother.

  THE FIRES OF KESSA

  First published in Other Worlds Science Stories, November 1956

  This was the way to heaven—and lovely women rode the fires of Kessa to the stars. None suspected that it was a rocket ship that flew only to hell!

  CHAPTER I

  The sands shrieked, lashing the walls of desert rock. Berk stumbled on, fighting his way among the drifts, wondering if he would die.

  “In the name of . . . Kessa!”

  His parched lips could hardly mumble the words. Were they to be his last? Strange words for him. He was barely able to remember the name of the god. There had been so many worlds, so many gods.

  Kessa! He had no right to call upon Kessa. He had only himself to blame for coming, himself to blame for landing miles away from his exact destination. But that was his way, never to alarm a primitive people by roaring down on them in a monstrous sky ship. It had been the same when he had come before, many years ago. But crossing the desert had been easy then. There had been no blinding storm.

  He plodded on, exhausted, desperately thirsty, scarcely able to breathe through the protective coverings he had wrapped over his face. In his mind he began to see sand-scoured bones.

  His own. Gleaming white. Then the slow return to dust. Lost in the blowing sands. . . and all because he had come back to this remote world with the intention of keeping a promise he had once made to a small boy.

  If he should die in this desert would traces of his skeleton someday be found by the natives? Would the slight differences between his own bone structure and theirs be noticed? Probably not. Only an archaeologist would bother to observe . . . Berk slumped against a barrier of stone. Already he was half buried in the swirling drifts. His eyes, tortured from the blasts of heat, played tricks. He seemed to see the face of a girl before him.

  A phantom of the desert! The girl’s eyes shone strangely. A band of jewels was over her brow, and her dark hair streamed in the wind.

  It was only a wisp of memory. Something like the daughter of an archaeologist he had piloted between planets long ago. There had been an hour of infatuation, but Berk had never seen her afterward. That’s the way, when the excitement of new worlds gets into your blood. You pass by the old friendships for the new. You ignore the gold to pursue the glitter.

  But the girl and her father had died long ago. This was a phantom.

  Yet the eyes were there, shining strangely into his.

  The wrappings around his face were being pulled apart. A canteen of water was forced to his lips.

  “Drink!” It was a voice he had never heard before, a voice that seemed to still the fur
ies of the wind. “Drink or you will surely die.”

  CHAPTER II

  Berk slept. The scream of the winds lowered and fell silent. He slept with a prayer of gratefulness.

  Sleeping, he talked to himself of his purpose. The fitful dream swept him through the memory that had brought him back to this world:

  Long ago he had come, a space explorer, discovering new worlds. He had found the city beside the sea. In a rude cave-home that overlooked the city he had made friends with a little brighteyed boy.

  The boy’s name was Daunsog.

  Berk had learned to talk with Daunsog. The boy had asked endless questions and Berk had instructed him.

  “Will you come back to see me again, Berk?”

  The years passed (in Berk’s dream thoughts)and Daunsog, grown to manhood, stood tall and straight, peering from the mountain ridge toward the desert wondering if Berk would come back some day.

  The years passed and Daunsog’s life was almost spent . . .

  Berk roused up. The restlessness in his heart would not let him sleep any longer.

  He began to walk again. He swabbed his eyes, shaded them with his hand against the afternoon glare. He brushed the sands from the black strappings of his storm-beaten red military costume. His lungs breathed with new assurance. The storm crisis had passed. She has rescued him.

  Who?

  He wandered among the drifts looking for her. The gaunt towers of stone cast purple shadows across the yellow sands. He saw no one.

  He called and his voice echoed weirdly. There was no answer. A phantom, then? Or reality—a girl of the desert with shining dark eyes and flowing black hair?

  The sun was lowering. He quickened his pace. He was youthful, still in his thirties. His natural spirit of adventure gave him remarkable resilience. In his thirties—yes, in spite of his centuries. The wise spaceman knew how to beat the game of time. Travel in a state of suspended animation. Once on course, he would simply turn off his life for the long leap between worlds. Half a century or more of Berk’s time had gone by since his previous visit.