The Science Fiction Megapack

by Bova, Ben; Brown, Frederic

  “Go away. Go away. Leave me alone.” And the dead ecstatic face never changed.

  “Smith!” Yarol’s voice was desperate. “Smith, listen! Smith, can’t you hear me?”

  “Go away,” the monotonous voice said. “Go away. Go away. Go —”

  “Not unless you come, too. Can’t you hear? Smith! Smith!”

  He hushed in mid-phrase, and once more the ancestral prickle of race-memory shivered down his back, for the scarlet mass was moving again, violently, rising.

  Yarol pressed back against the door and gripped his gun, and the name of a god he had forgotten years ago rose to his lips unbidden. For he knew what was coming next, and the knowledge was more dreadful than any ignorance could have been.

  The red, writhing mass rose higher, and the tendrils parted, and a human face looked out — no, half human, with green cat-eyes that shone in that dimness like lighted jewels, compellingly. . . .

  Yarol breathed “Shar!” again, and flung up an arm across his face, and the tingle of meeting that green gaze for even an instant went thrilling through him perilously.

  “Smith!” he called in despair. “Smith, can’t you hear me?”

  “Go away,” said that voice that was not Smith’s. “Go away.”

  And somehow, although he dared not look, Yarol knew that the — the other — had parted those worm-thick tresses and stood there in all the human sweetness of the brown, curved woman’s body, cloaked in living horror. And he felt the eyes upon him, and something was crying insistently in his brain to lower that shielding arm. . . .

  He was lost — he knew it, and the knowledge gave him that courage which comes from despair. The voice in his brain was growing, swelling, deafening him with a roaring command that all but swept him before it. A command to lower that arm — to meet the eyes that opened upon darkness — to submit — and a promise, murmurous and sweet and evil beyond words, of pleasure to come. . . .

  But somehow he kept his head. Somehow, dizzily, he was gripping his gun in his upflung hand — somehow, incredibly, he was crossing the narrow room with averted face and groping for Smith’s shoulder. There came a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness, and then he found it and gripped the leather that was slimy and dreadful and wet — and simultaneously, he felt something loop gently about his ankle, and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through him, and then another coil, and another, wound about his feet. . . .

  Yarol set his teeth and gripped the shoulder hard, and his hand shuddered of itself, for the feel of that leather was slimy as the worms about his ankles, and a faint tingle of obscene delight went through him from the contact.

  That caressive pressure on his legs was all he could feel, and the voice in his brain drowned out all other sounds, and his body obeyed him reluctantly — but somehow he gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung Smith, stumbling, out of that nest of horrors. The twining tendrils ripped loose with little sucking sounds, and the whole mass quivered and reached after, and then Yarol forgot his friend utterly and turned his whole being to the hopeless task of freeing himself. For only a part of him was fighting now, only a part of him struggled against the twining obscenities, and in his innermost brain the sweet, seductive murmur sounded, and his body clamored to surrender . . .

  “Shar! Shar y’danis . . . Shar mor’larol —” prayed Yarol, gasping and half unconscious that he spoke forgotten prayers that he voiced years ago as a boy, and with his back half turned to the central mass, he kicked desperately with his heavy boot at the red, writhing worms about him. They gave way, quivering and curling themselves out of reach, and though he knew more were reaching for his throat from behind, at least he could go on struggling until he was forced to meet those eyes.

  He stamped and kicked and stamped again, and for one instant he was free of the slimy grip as the bruised worms curled back from his heavy feet, and he lurched away dizzily, sick with revulsion and despair as he fought off the coils, and then he lifted his eyes and saw the cracked mirror on the wall. Dimly in its reflection he could see the writhing, scarlet horror behind him, that face peering out with its demure girl-smile, dreadfully human, and all the red tendrils reaching after him. And remembrance of something he had read long ago swept incongruously over him, and the gasp of relief and hope that he gave shook for a moment the grip of the command in his brain.

  Without pausing for a breath, he swung the gun over his shoulder, the reflected barrel in line with the reflected horror in the mirror, and flicked the catch.

  In the mirror, he saw its blue flame leap in a dazzling spate across the dimness, full into the midst of that squirming, reaching mass behind him. There was a hiss and a blaze and a high, thin scream of inhuman malice and despair — the flame cut a wide arc and went out as the gun fell from his hand, and Yarol pitched forward to the floor.

  Northwest Smith opened his eyes to Martian sunlight streaming thinly through the dingy window. Something wet and cold was slapping his face, and the familiar fiery sting of segir-whiskey burnt his throat.

  “Smith!” Yarol’s voice was saying from far away. “Northwest! Wake up, damn you! Wake up!”

  “I’m — awake,” Smith managed to articulate thickly. “Wha’s matter?”

  Then a cup-rim was trust against his teeth, and Yarol said irritably, “Drink it, you fool!”

  Smith swallowed obediently, and more of the fire-hot segir flowed down his grateful throat. It spread a warmth through his body that awakened him from the numbness that had gripped him until now and helped a little toward driving out the all-devouring weakness he was becoming aware of. He lay still for a few minutes while the warmth of the whiskey went through him, and memory sluggishly began to permeate his brain with the spread of the segir. Nightmare memories . . . sweet and terrible . . . memories of —

  “God!” gasped Smith suddenly, and he tried to sit up. Weakness smote him like a blow, and for an instant the room wheeled as he fell back against something firm and warm — Yarol’s shoulder. The Venusian’s arm supported him while the room steadied, and after a while he twisted a little and stared into the,otber’s black gaze.

  Yarol was holding him with one arm and finishing the mug of segir himself, and the black eyes met his over the rim and crinkled into sudden laughter, half hysterical after that terror that was passed.

  “By Pharol!” gasped Yarol, choking into his mug. “By Pharol, N. W.! I’m never gonna let you forget this! Next time you have to drag me out of a mess, I’ll say —”

  “Let it go,” said Smith. “What’s been going on? How —”

  “Shambleau.” Yarol’s laughter died. “Shambleau! What were you doing with a thing like that?”

  “What was it?” Smith asked soberly.

  “Mean to say you didn’t know? But where’d you find it? How —”

  “Suppose you tell me first what you know,” said Smith firmly. “And another swig of that segir, too, please. I need it.”

  “Can you hold the mug now? Feel better?”

  “Yeah — some. I can hold it — thanks. Now go on.”

  “Well — I don’t know just where to start. They call them Shambleau —”

  “Good God, is there more than one?”

  “It’s a — a sort of race. I think, one of the very oldest. Where they come from, nobody knows. The name sounds a little French, doesn’t it? But it goes back beyond the start of history. There have always been Shambleau.”

  “I never heard of ’em.”

  “Not many people have. And those who know don’t care to talk about it much.”

  “Well, half this town knows. I hadn’t any idea what they were talking about. And I still don’t understand, but —”

  “Yes, it happens like this, sometimes. They’ll appear, and the news will spread, and the town will get together and hunt them down, and after that — well, the story didn’t get around very far. It’s too — too unbelievable.”

  “But — my God, Yarol! — what was it? Where’d it come from? How —”

&n
bsp; “Nobody knows just where they come from. Another planet — maybe some undiscovered one. Some say Venus — I know there are some rather awful legends of them handed down in our family. That’s how I’ve heard about it. And the minute I opened that door, awhile back — I — I think I knew that smell. . . .”

  “But — what are they?”

  “God knows. Not human, though they have the human form. Or that may be only an illusion . . . or maybe I’m crazy. I don’t know. They’re a species of the vampire — or maybe the vampire is a species of — of them. Their normal form must be that — that mass, and in that form they draw nourishment from the — I suppose the life-forces of men. And they take some form — usually a woman form, I think — and key you up to the highest pitch of emotion before they — begin. That’s to work the life-force up to intensity so it’ll be easier. And they give, always, that horrible, foul pleasure as they feed. There are some men who, if they survive the first experience, take to it like a drug — can’t give it up — keep the thing with them all their lives — which isn’t long — feeding it for that ghastly satisfaction. Worse than smoking ming or — or ‘praying to Pharol’.”

  “Yes,” said Smith. “I’m beginning to understand why that crowd was so surprised and — and disgusted when I said — well, never mind. Go on.”

  “Did you get to talk to — to it?” asked Yarol.

  “I tried to. It couldn’t speak very well. I asked it where it came from, and it said — ‘from far away and long ago’ —something like that.”

  “I wonder. Possibly some unknown planet — but I think not. You know, there are so many wild stories with some basis of fact to start from, that I’ve sometimes wondered — mightn’t there be a lot more of even worse and wilder superstitions we’ve never even heard of? Things like this, blasphemous and foul, that those who know have to keep still about? Awful, fantastic things running around loose that we never hear rumors of at all!

  “These things — they’ve been in existence for countless ages. No one knows when or where they first appeared. Those who’ve seen them, as we saw this one, don’t talk about it. It’s just one of those vague, misty rumors you find half hinted at in old books sometimes. . . . I believe they are an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to man that, when they are discovered, the discoverers keep still about it — forget them again as quickly as they can.

  “And they go back to time immemorial. I suppose you recognized the legend of Medusa? There isn’t any question that the ancient Greeks knew of them. Does it mean that there have been civilizations before yours that set out from Earth and explored other planets? Or did one of the Shambleau somehow make its way into Greece three thousand years ago? If you think about it long enough, you’ll go off your head! I wonder how many other legends are based on things like this — things we don’t suspect, things we’ll never know.

  “The Gorgon, Medusa, a beautiful woman with — with snakes for hair, and a gaze that turned men to stone, and Perseus finally killed her — I remembered this just by accident, N. W., and it saved your life and mine. Perseus killed her by using a mirror as he fought to reflect what he dared not look at directly. I wonder what the old Greek who first started that legend would have thought if he’d known that three thousand years later his story would save the lives of two men on another planet. I wonder what that Greek’s own story was, and how he met the thing, and what happened. . . .

  “Well, there’s a lot we’ll never know. Wouldn’t the records of that race of — of things, whatever they are, be worth reading! Records of other planets and other ages and all the beginnings of mankind! But I don’t suppose they’ve kept any records. I don’t suppose they’ve even any place to keep them — from what little I know, or anyone knows about it, they’re like the Wandering Jew, just bobbing up here and there at long intervals, and where they stay in the meantime, I’d give my eyes to know! But I don’t believe that terribly hypnotic power they have indicates any superhuman intelligence. It’s their means of getting food — just like a frog’s long tongue or a carnivorous flower’s odor. Those are physical because the frog and the flounder eat physical food. The Shambleau uses a — a mental reach to get mental food. I don’t quite know how to put it. And just as a beast that eats the bodies of other animals acquires with each meal greater power over the bodies of the rest, so the Shambleau, stoking itself up with the life-forces of men, increases its power over the minds and the souls of other men. But I’m talking about things I can’t define — things I’m not sure exist.

  “I only know that when I felt — when those tentacles closed around my legs — I didn’t want to pull loose. I felt sensations that — that — oh, I’m fouled and filthy to the very deepest part of me by that — pleasure — and yet —”

  “I know,” said Smith slowly. The effect of the segir was beginning to wear off, and weakness was washing back over him in waves, and when he spoke he was half meditating in a low voice, scarcely realizing that Yarol listened. “I know it much better than you do — and there’s something so indescribably awful that the thing emanates, something so utterly at odds with everything human — there aren’t any words to say it. For a while, I was a part of it, literally, sharing its thoughts and memories and emotions and hungers, and — well, it’s over now, and I don’t remember very clearly, but the only part left free was that part of me that was all but insane from the — the obscenity of the thing. And yet it was a pleasure so sweet — I think there must be some nucleus of utter evil in me — in everyone — that needs only the proper stimulus to get complete control; because even while I was sick all through from the touch of those — things — there was something in me that was — was simply gibbering with delight. . . . Because of that, I saw things — and knew things — horrible, wild things I can’t quite remember — visited unbelievable places, looked backward through the memory of that creature I was one with, and saw — God, I wish I could remember!”

  “You ought to thank your God you can’t,” said Yarol soberly.

  His voice roused Smith from the half trance he had fallen into, and he rose on his elbow, swaying a little from weakness. The room was wavering before him, and he closed his eyes, not to see it, but he asked, “You say they — don’t turn up again? No way of finding — another?”

  Yarol did not answer for a moment. He laid his hands on the other man’s shoulders and pressed him back, and then sat staring down into the dark, ravaged face with a new, strange, undefinable look upon it that he had never seen there before — whose meaning he knew too well.

  “Smith,” he said finally, and his black eyes for once were steady and serious, and the little grinning devil had vanished from behind them. “Smith, I’ve never asked your word on anything before, but I’ve — I’ve earned the right to do it now, and I’m asking you to promise me one thing.”

  Smith’s colorless eyes met the black gaze unsteadily. Irresolution was in them, and a little fear of what that promise might be. And for just a moment, Yarol was looking not into his friend’s familiar eyes, but into a wide gray blankness that held all horror and delight — a pale sea with unspeakable pleasures sunk beneath it.

  “Go ahead. I’ll promise.”

  “That if you ever should meet a Shambleau again — ever, anywhere — you’ll draw your gun and burn it to hell the instant you realize what it is. Will you promise me that?”

  There was a long silence. Yarol’s somber black eyes bored relentlessly into the colorless ones of Smith, not wavering. And the veins stood out on Smith’s tanned forehead. He never broke his word — he had given it perhaps half a dozen times in his life, but once he had given it, he was incapable of breaking it. And once more the gray seas flooded in a dim tide of memories, sweet and horrible beyond dreams. Once more Yarol was staring into blankness that hid nameless things. The room was very still.

  The gray tide ebbed. Smith’s eyes, pale and resolute an steel, met Yarol’s
levelly.

  “I’ll — try,” he said. And his voice wavered.

  SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY, by Eando Binder

  The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow.

  A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF’s most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways.

  Dan Barstow, first man to cross the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space. Pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jaunt. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared he considered the thirty-seven instruments he’d have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He had been hand-picked and thoroughly conditioned to take it all without more than a ten percent increase in his pulse rate. So he worked as matter-of-factly as if he were down in the Gs Centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he had been schooled for this trip for months.

  He kept up a running fire of oral reports through his helmet radio, down to Rough Rock and his CO. “All Roger, sir ... temperature falling fast but this rubberoid space suit keeps me cozy, no chills ... Doc Blaine will be happy to hear that! Weightless sensations pretty queer and I feel upside-down as much as rightside-up, but no bad effects.... Taking shots of the sun’s corona now with color film ... huh? Oh, yes, sir, it’s beautiful all right, now that you mention it. But, hell, sir, who’s got the time for aesthetics now?... Oops, that was a close one! Tenth meteor whizzing past. Makes me think of flak back on those Berlin bombing runs.”

  Dan couldn’t help wincing when the meteors peppered down past. The “flak” of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small, none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his rocket was small too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side.