Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920

by Sam Moskowitz (ed. )

  At that ruse the foremost bear hesitated. He reared and brushed his muzzle with his formidable crescent-clawed paw. Polaris might have shot then and ended at once the hardest part of his battle. But the man held to a stubborn pride in his own weapons. Both of the beasts he would slay, if he might, as he always had slain. His guns were reserved for dire extremity.

  The bear settled to all fours again, and reached out a cautious paw and felt along the path, its claws gouging seams in the ice. Assured that the footing would hold, it crept out on the narrow way, nearer and nearer to the motionless man. Scarce a yard from him it squatted. The steam of its breath beat toward him.

  It raised one armed paw to strike. The girl cried out in terror and raised the rifle. The man moved, and she hesitated.

  Down came the terrible paw, its curved claws projected and compressed for the blow. It struck only the adamantine ice of the pathway, splintering it. With the down stroke timed to the second, the man had leaped up and forward.

  As though set on a steel spring, he vaulted into the air, above the clashing talons and gnashing jaws, and landed light and sure on the back of his ponderous adversary. To pass an arm under the bear's throat, to clip its back with the grip of his legs was the work of a heart-beat's time for Polaris.

  With a stifled howl of rage the bear rose to its haunches, and the man rose with it. He gave it no time to turn or settle. Exerting his muscles of steel, he tugged the huge head back. He swung clear from the body of his foe. His feet touched the path and held it. He shot one knee into the back of the bear.

  The spear he had dropped when he sprang, but his long knife gleamed in his hand, and he stabbed, once, twice, sending the blade home under the brute's shoulder. He released his grip; spurned the yielding body with his foot, and the huge hulk rolled from the path down the slope, crimsoning the snow with its blood.

  Polaris bounded across the narrow ledge and regained his spear. He smiled as there arose from the foot of the slope a hideous clamor that told him that the pack had charged in, as usual, not to be restrained at sight of the kill. He waved his hand to the girl, who stood, statuelike, beside the sledge.

  Doubly enraged at its inability to participate in the battle which had been the death of its mate, the smaller bear waited no longer when the path was clear, but rushed madly with lowered head. Strong as he was, the man knew that he could not hope to stay or turn that avalanche of flesh and sinew. As it reached him he sprang aside where the path broadened, lashing out with his keen-edged spear.

  His aim was true. Just over one of the small eyes the point of the spear bit deep, and blood followed it. With tigerish agility the man leaped over the beast, striking down as he did so.

  The bear reared on its hindquarters and whimpered, brushing at its eyes with its forepaws. Its head gashed so that the flowing blood blinded it, it was beaten. Before it stood its master. Bending back until his body arched like a drawn bow, Polaris poised his spear and thrust home at the broad chest.

  A death howl that was echoed back from the crashing cliffs was answer to his stroke. The bear settled forward and sprawled in the snow.

  Polaris set his foot on the body of the fallen monster and gazed down at the girl with smiling face.

  "Here, lady, are food and warmth for many days," he called.

  All-Story Weekly

  July 13-August 10, 1918

  wwvwuwwt

  PALOS OF THE DOG STAR PACK

  by J. U. Giesy

  Palos of the Dog Star Pack and its two sequels, by J. U. Giesy (James Ullrich Giesy), are unquestionably among the most appreciated novels in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition to appear. What is distinctive about Giesy is the flavor of the occult that permeates so much of his work, despite the fact that he was a medical doctor and a man of science. Giesy's friend and literary collaborator, Junius B. Smith, a practicing attorney, had a fellowship in the American Academy of Astrologians and worked toward having astrology accepted as a true science.

  J. U. Giesy was born "near" Chillicothe, Ohio, August 6, 1877. At the age of thirteen he moved with his family to Salt Lake City, where he was to spend most of his life. He graduated from the Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, in 1898 and spent his internship in Salt Lake City. During World War I he was a captain in the medical corps, and after the war was a major in the medical reserve. He trained six hundred men a year during World War I as an officer at Plattsburg Training Camp, Salt Lake City, a camp which he organized in 1916.

  Love came to him in 1904, and he was married December of that year in San Francisco to Juliet Galena Conwell and enjoyed a fine lifelong relationship with his wife. He was a member of the American College of Physical Therapy and an associate editor on the staff of CALIFORNIA AND WESTERN MEDICINE, as well as serving as one of the editors of ARCHIVES OF PHYSICAL THERAPY X-RAY AND RADIUM.

  Though he began to write in 1910, his first sale was a collaboration done in 1911 with Junius B. Smith, then practicing in Salt Lake City. Smith claimed that his grandfather was a brother of the Joseph Smith who founded the Mormon church. The early Semi-Dual stories of the collaboration were mailed from Dr. Giesy's offices at 714 Kearns Building, Salt Lake City, and the usual rate of payment was about two cents a word.

  Giesy expressed a touch of impish humor in a series of short stories concerning Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, who invents devices for exploding dynamite at a distance, for antigravity, and for invisibility and manages to involve a delightfully corruptible Irish cop in each of them. The Wicked Flea (WEIRD TALES, October, 1925) was the last in this series, where Zapt greatly enlarges an objectionable insect.

  As early as 1927 J. U. Giesy published a hardcover western, The Valley of Suspicion, from Garden City Publishing Company. In his later years he turned entirely to westerns under the pen name of Charles Dustin: Hardboiled Tenderfoot, Bronco Men, and Riders of the Desert Trail, all appearing from The Dodge Publishing Company in the early 1940's.

  The line of demarcation between fantasy and science fiction and even between the supernatural and science fiction was not as sharply drawn before 1920 as it is today. J. U. Giesy, who wrote detective novels in which knowledge of the occult was used to solve crimes, did not hesitate to employ a similar device for space travel in Palos of the Dog Star Pack. The occult serves as a means of getting to another world, and the spiritualistic concept that the "soul" or intelligence lives free of the body plays an integral role, yet this novel and the two sequels that it inspired were clearly science fiction in their delineation of the action and romance on a planet around a star many light years from earth. The early chapters of Palos of the Dog Star Pack presented here, in consequence, offer the reader an utterly strange and unfamiliar literary mood.

  1. OUT OF THE STORM

  IT WAS A miserable night which brought me first in touch with Jason Croft. There was a rain and enough wind to send it in gusty dashes against the windows. It was the sort of a night when I always felt glad to cast off coat and shoes, don a robe and slippers, and sit down with the curtains drawn, a lighted pipe, and the soft glow of a lamp falling across the pages of my book. I am, I admit, always strangely susceptible to the shut-in sense of comfort afforded by a pipe, the steady yellow of a light, and the magic of printed lines at a time of elemental turmoil and stress.

  It was with a feeling little short of positive annoyance that I heard the door-bell ring. Indeed, I confess, I was tempted to ignore it altogether at first. But as it rang again, and was followed by a rapid tattoo of rapping, as of fists pounded against the door itself, I rose, laid aside my book, and stepped into the hall.

  First switching on a porch-light, I opened the outer door, to reveal the figure of an old woman, somewhat stooping, her head covered by a shawl, which sloped wetly from her head to either shoulder, and was caught and held beneath her chin by one bony hand.

  "Doctor," she began in a tone of almost frantic excitement. "Dr. Murray —come quick!"

  Perhaps I may as well introduce myself here as anywhere else. I am Dr. Geo
rge Murray, still, as at the time of which I write, in charge of the State Mental Hospital in a Western State. The institution was not then very large, and since taking my position at the head of its staff I had found myself with considerable time for my study along the lines of human psychology and the various powers and aberrations of the mind.

  Also, I may as well confess, as a first step toward a better understanding of my part in what followed, that for years before coming to the asylum I had delved more or less deeply into such studies, seeking to learn what I might concerning both the normal and the abnormal manifestations of mental force.

  There is good reading and highly entertaining, I assure you, in the various philosophies dealing with life, religion, and the several beliefs regarding the soul of man. I was therefore fairly conversant not only with the Occidental creeds, but with those of the Oriental races as well. And I knew that certain of the Eastern sects had advanced in their knowledge far beyond our Western world. I had even endeavored to make their knowledge mine, so far as I could, in certain lines at least, and had from time to time applied some of that knowledge to the treatment of cases in the institution of which I was the head.

  But I was not thinking of anything like that as I looked at the shawl-wrapped face of the little bent woman, wrinkled and wry enough to have been a very part of the storm which beat about her and blew back the skirts of my lounging-robe and chilled my ankles. I lived in a residence detached from the asylum buildings proper, but none the less a part of the institution; and, as a matter of fact, my sole thought was a feeling of surprise that any one should have come here to find me, and despite the woman's manifest state of anxiety and haste, a decided reluctance to go with her quickly or otherwise on such a night.

  I rather temporized: "But, my dear woman, surely there are other doctors for you to call. I am really not in general practice. I am connected with the asylum—" "And that is the very reason I always said I would come for you if anything happened to Mr. Jason," she cut in.

  "Whom?" I inquired, interested in spite of myself at this plainly premeditated demand for my service.

  "Mr. Jason Croft, sir," she returned. "He's dead maybe—I dunno. But he's been that way for a week."

  "Dead?" I exclaimed in almost an involuntary fashion, startled by her words.

  "Dead, or asleep. I don't know which."

  Clearly there was something here I wasn't getting into fully, and my interest aroused. The whole affair seemed to be taking on an atmosphere of the peculiar, and it was equally clear that the gusty doorway was no place to talk. "Come in," I said. "What is your name?"

  "Goss," said she, without making any move to enter. "I'm housekeeper for Mr. Jason, but I'll not be comin' in unless you say you'll go."

  "Then come in without any more delay," I replied, making up my mind. I knew Croft in a way—by sight at least. He was a big fellow with light hair and a splendid physique, who had been pointed out to me shortly after my arrival. Once I had even got close enough to the man to look into his eyes. They were gray, and held a peculiar something in their gaze which had arrested my attention at once. Jason Croft had the eyes of a mystic—of a student of those very things I myself had studied more or less.

  They were the eyes of one who saw deeper than the mere objective surface of life, and the old woman's words at the last had waked up my interest in no uncertain degree. I had decided I would go with her to Croft's house, which was not very far down the street, and see, if I might, for myself just what had occurred to send her rushing to me through the night.

  I gave her a seat, said I would get on my shoes and coat, and went back into the room I had left some moments before. There I dressed quickly for my venture into the storm, adding a raincoat to my other attire, and was back in the hall inside five minutes at most.

  We set out at once, emerging into the wind-driven rain, my long raincoat flapping about my legs and the little old woman tottering along at my side. And what with the rain, the wind, and the unexpected summons, I found myself in a rather strange frame of mind. The whole thing seemed more like some story I had read than a happening of real life, particularly so as my companion kept pace with me and uttered no sound save at times a rather rasping sort of breath. The whole thing became an almost eery experience as we hastened down the storm-swept street.

  Then we turned in at a gate and went up toward the large house I knew to be Croft's, and the little old woman unlocked a heavy front door and led me into a hall. It was a most unusual hall, too, its walls draped with rare tapestries and rugs, its floor covered with other rugs such as I had never seen outside private collections, lighted by a hammered brass lantern through the pierced sides of which the rays of an electric light shone forth.

  Across the hall she scuttered, still in evident haste, and flung open a door to permit me to enter a room which was plainly a study. It was lined with cases of books, furnished richly yet plainly with chairs, a heavy desk, and a broad couch, on which I saw in one swift glance the stretched-out body of Croft himself.

  He lay wholly relaxed, like one sunk in heavy sleep, his eyelids closed, his arms and hands dropped limply at his sides, but no visible sign of respiration animating his deep full chest.

  Toward him the little woman gestured with a hand, and stood watching, still with her wet shawl about her head and shoulders, while I approached and bent over the man.

  I touched his face and found it cold. My fingers sought his pulse and failed to find it at all. But his body was limp as I lifted an arm and dropped it. There was no rigor, yet there was no evidence of decay, such as must follow once rigor has passed away. I had brought instruments with me as a matter of course. I took them from my pocket and listened for some sound from the heart. I thought I found the barest flutter, but I wasn't sure. I tested the tension of the eyeball under the closed lids and found it firm. I straightened and turned to face the little old woman.

  "Dead, sir?" she asked in a sibilant whisper. Her eyes were wide in their sockets. They stared into mine.

  I shook my head. "He doesn't appear to be dead," I replied. "See here, Mrs. Goss, what did you mean by saying he ought to have been back three days ago? What do you mean by back?"

  She fingered at her lips with one bony hand. "Why—awake, sir," she said at last.

  "Then why didn't you say so?" I snapped. "Why use the word back?"

  "Because, sir," she faltered, "that's what he says when he wakes up. 'Well, Mary, I'm back.' I—I guess I just said it because he does, doctor. I—was worrit when he didn't come back—when he didn't wake up, to-night, an' it took to rainin'. I reckon maybe it was th' storm scared me, sir."

  Her words had, however, given me a clue. "He's been like this before, then?"

  "Yes, sir. But never more than four days without telling me he would. Th' first time was months ago—but it's been gettin' oftener and oftener, till now all his sleeps are like this. He told me not to be scared—an' to— to never bother about him—to—to just let him alone; but—I guess I was scared tonight, when it begun to storm an' him layin' there like that. It was like havin' a corpse in the house."

  I began to gain a fuller appreciation of the situation. I myself had seen people in a cataleptic condition, had even induced the state in subjects myself, and it appeared to me that Jason Croft was in a similar state, no matter how induced.

  "What does your employer do?" I asked.

  "He studies, sir—just studies things like that." Mrs. Goss gestured at the cases of books. "He don't have to work, you know. His uncle left him rich."

  I followed her arm as she swept it about the glass-fronted cases. I brought my glances back to the desk in the center of the room, between the woman and myself as we stood. Upon it I spied another volume lying open. It was unlike any book 1 had ever seen, yellowed with age; in fact not a book at all, but a series of parchment pages tied together with bits of silken cord.

  I took the thing up and found the open pages covered with marginal notes in English, although the original was
plainly in Sanskrit, an ancient language I had seen before, but was wholly unable to read. The notations, however, threw some light into my mind, and as I read them I forgot the storm, the little old woman—everything save what I read and the bearing it held on the man behind me on the couch. 1 felt sure they had been written by his own hand, and they bore on the subject of astral projection—the ability of the soul to separate itself, or be separated, f'om the physical body and return to its fleshy husk again at will.

  I finished the open pages and turned to others. The notations were still present wherever I looked. At last I turned to the very front and found that the manuscript was by Ahmid, an occult adept of Hindustan, who lived somewhere in the second or third century of the Christian era.

  With a strange sensation I laid down the silk-bound pages. They were very, very old. Over a thousand years had come and passed since they were written by the dead Ahmid's hand. Yet I had held them to-night, and I felt sure Jason Croft had held them often—read them and understood them, and that the condition in which I found him this night was in some way subtly connected with their store of ancient lore. And suddenly I sensed the storm and the little old woman and the silent body of the man at my back again, with a feeling of something uncanny in the whole affair.

  "You can do nothing for him?" the woman broke my introspection.

  I looked up and into her eyes, dark and bright and questioning as she stood still clutching her damp shawl.

  "I'm not so sure of that," I said. "But—Mr. Croft's condition is rather— peculiar. Whatever I do will require quiet—that I am alone with him for some time. I think if I can be left here with him for possibly an hour, I can bring him back."

  I paused abruptly. I had used the woman's former words almost. And

  I saw she noticed the fact, for a slight smile gathered on her faded lips. She nodded. "You'll bring him back," she said. "Mind you, doctor, th' trouble is with Mr. Jason's head, I've been thinking. 'Twas for that I've been telling myself I would come for you, if he forgot to come back some time, like I've been afraid he would."