Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Very often, Mike had been tempted to destroy the giggling Hector. Martians were not noted for their intelligence. They were willing enough, but childish in some ways. Now, for example, Hector sighted a buzzard circling nearby, and turned the ship from its course in a mad attempt to run down the frantic bird. Powell spoke sharply and profanely. Hector subsided without even a meek protest.

  In a way, Mike was attached to his man-of-all-work. He had picked him up on Mars, during the annual carnival at Tycho City, the time the Earthquake shook down half the metropolis. His assistant cameraman had fallen down a crevasse, which closed above him; and Mike badly needed someone, anyone, to pack his equipment as he raced about, filming shots of the toppling city for Summit Newsreels. He had seen Hector Chasing a dog along a crumbling street, and promptly captured the Martian. Ever since, the two had been together, filming Earth, Mars, Venus, and whatnot.

  HECTOR didn’t mind anything, even being dragged into a depilatory to have his shaggy growth of body hair removed.

  “That’s so you’ll look less like a gorilla—maybe,” the cameraman had explained; and Hector shook with exquisite merriment.

  However, the Martian was, in his way, rather vain. Many a hirsute Redland maid had twined fond fingers in the bushy mop that hid whatever countenance he might have had. Among the ladies of his tribe, Hector was accounted a handsome man. For him to shave his face would have lost him his crowning glory. Also, Hector implied, it was indecent. A modest man doesn’t ever expose his face in public.

  Hector’s richest possession was a collection of mirrors, which he would stare into for hours, ruffling his whiskers and indulging in a gruesome display of Narcissism. Still he was loyal, if not very bright, and he could follow orders.

  “We’re here, Hector,” Mike said, casually lighting a cigar. “Wheel out the gyros.”

  The helicopter props began to revolve, slowly lowering the craft to the mountainous region directly below. Powell gathered his equipment, checked his cameras, and pointed out to Hector the exact spot where he wanted to dismount. Beyond a low ridge was a crudely-built hangar; the plane dropped out of sight of it. The wheels bumped the ground.

  Powell jumped out. “Okay,” he told Hector. “You know what to do, eh?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Check with me.”

  The timepieces tallied almost to the second.

  “Good. Do exactly as I told you. If you slip up, I’ll strangle you with your own whiskers.”

  Hector shrieked with laughter. Giggling, he somehow got the plane into the air and precariously wobbled off. Powell looked after him, scratching his head.

  “How things like that could ever survive to evolve, even on Mars—” he mused, and then gave up. Time was going swiftly. Carlin Eberle would be starting his space flight soon. And that was something that had to be canned. Powell hiked up toward the ridge.

  As he topped it, he saw beneath him a low, wide valley. In its middle was the hangar. For almost half a mile around the structure was a flat, empty plain girdled by a wire fence. A knot of figures were gathered at a knoll some distance away, outside the barrier. Powell moved toward them, his long, rangy figure eating up the distance with swift strides.

  The sun was setting as he reached the mound. Cool purple shadows folded over the mountains.

  “Here’s the Brain,” somebody said. “Hello, Brain.”

  “Greetings, vultures,” Powell said absently. “Am I late?”

  “Mike Powell is never late,” the same voice observed.

  It came from a small, remarkably pretty young woman with crisply curling red hair, and the explosive gleam of disintegrating radium in her green eyes. She wore jodhpurs and a khaki blouse. As she greeted him, she held a camera, which she was preparing for action.

  “Sue Clark!” Powell said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  The girl bowed. “One of your rivals and competitors, among so many others. No chance to get a scoop here, Brain.”

  “Summit Newsreels gets scoops anywhere. Summit Scours the System!” Mike declared. “We even get to Ganymede.”

  Sue Clark winced. “That was a dirty trick,” she accused hotly. “You bribed my pilot to go off the course. No wonder you scooped me!”

  “Calm down,” a deep voice said. “He won’t scoop us tonight. Right now, Powell’s just one of the boys.”

  But the voice had a hopeful quality, as if he were praying. There was ample reason for him not to believe his own statement.

  DESPITE the fact that Mike Powell was one of the few men to have a newsreel by-line, he was well known only among the newsgatherers of the System. But, in that exclusive circle, the name of Powell meant something. It meant a scoop, in capital letters.

  His rivals called him lucky. But even they admitted, if only to themselves, that it wasn’t luck. Powell had played with film in his cradle, and he saw with the eye of a camera.

  “If a man bites a dog, it’s news,” one disgruntled reporter had once muttered savagely, and achieved notoriety by adding: “And if Mike Powell is on the job, it’s a scoop!”

  For, when the luxury spaceliner Astarte was raided and wrecked by pirates in the Asteroid Belt, Powell alone was there. He’d stowed away on a police ship and canned the shots the authorities were trying to suppress for political reasons.

  When Hanson Birch, the explorer, entered the crater of Vesuvius in a special heat-resistant suit, Powell stole the armor on his return and duplicated the feat. But he filmed it at the same time!

  Dr. deVere Summers made a nearly disastrous flight, aimed at skirting the Sun’s chromosphere. Powell was with him. He almost died of severe radiation burns; but he got his scoop!

  Remember when the madman Flogarth stumbled his crackpot rocket ship beyond Pluto in a crazy try at reaching the speed of light? Naturally you do. For it was Mike Powell who took you along with him, by camera-eye, in his flimsy one-man cruiser race outside the System to film the shattered wreckage of Flogarth’s vessel.

  “That guy isn’t a man,” one of Mike’s rivals had said, after being hopelessly scooped. “He’s a camera—a camera on rockets!”

  That outclassed rival was Lynn Plumb, to whom Mike had just turned.

  “Lynn!” he said with exaggerated friendliness. “Lynn Plumb, in the flesh. Say, this is getting to be a regular reunion.”

  Plumb was Sue Clark’s assistant. They formed a newsgathering team that nobody could beat—except the team of Powell and Hector. Suddenly remembering the Martian, Sue inquired sweetly about him.

  Mike’s face seemed to sag. He looked aside, unwilling to meet her searching gaze.

  “Gone off,” he said embarrassedly. “I sent him to get—er—something I forgot.”

  Sue’s green eyes gleamed. “Why, maybe I can help, Brain. What was it?”

  “You mean it? I’m in a spot. I sort of forgot my telephoto lenses—”

  “Don’t tell me you forgot those! You knew Eberle wouldn’t let us get within half a mile of the ship.”

  The man looked uncomfortable. “It was just one of those things. Last minute call. You know. Have you got an extra lens?”

  “Of course, Brain,” Sue said kindly. From her pocket she carefully withdrew a leather case, opened it, and removed a large gleaming object. “Is this what you want?”

  “Gosh, thanks!” said Powell, reaching for it. “You’re a pal.”

  “Hey!” Lynn Plumb interjected. “Don’t give it to him, Sue.” The man’s plump, round face was startled.

  “I don’t intend to,” said Sue, replacing the lens in its case. She ran a slim hand through burnished red hair. “Go peddle your papers, Brain. Go away and die.”

  “A fine thing,” Powell said bitterly. He appealed to the other cameramen. “Hasn’t anybody got a lens to lend me?”

  RAUCOUS laughter answered him.

  Every one of those present had, at one time or another, been scooped by Powell. They were having their revenge and enjoying it. By this time it was dark. A full moon rose golden above
the mountains. The hangar in the distance remained silent and unlighted.

  It was almost time for Carlin Eberle to take off on his epochal space flight—unless his plans had miscarried. Deliberately the man had shunned publicity. But the underground grapevine had put newsgatherers on the track.

  It was well known that Eberle was planning to make use of a new type of propulsion, something that would revolutionize space travel. It would make rockets obsolete, he hinted. He spoke of lines of force and gravitational repulsion. The cheapest and best rocket fuel would be useless compared to the Eberle method. And tonight was to be the final test.

  A dark figure came into view, loping across the fields from the direction of the hangar. It halted at the electrified fence and called softly. The camera-crew glanced at one another, puzzled. Then, by common consent, they hurried down the mound, gathering near the new arrival.

  In the moonlight they saw a burly, unshaved man in greasy overalls. He looked at them furtively.

  “Well?” Sue asked. “What’s up?” The man seemed to make up his mind. “Listen,” he said in a whisper, “I got some dope you’ll want to know. About the take-off.”

  “Let’s have it,” Powell said.

  The man held out his hand and looked at it speculatively. “My dope’s worth money. Because if you don’t get it you won’t get any pictures either.”

  “I think he’s bluffing,” Sue said. “Shakedown, eh?” Lynn Plumb grunted, his round face set in a scowl. “No soap, bud.”

  The man shrugged. “Okay. But Eberle isn’t taking off from here. He doesn’t want any witnesses. We moved the ship a few days ago to—”

  “Where?” Powell asked eagerly.

  A grimy palm was extended under his nose. “The take-off’s almost due,” the man said, and involuntarily his eyes flickered up to the east.

  “I don’t know,” Sue said slowly, following his gaze. “Maybe—”

  In the eastern sky, beyond the mountain ridge, white light blazed up with the fury of a volcanic eruption!

  CHAPTER II

  Payment in Bombs

  LYNN PLUMB leaped into action. “Back to the ship, Sue!” he yelled, and snatched up the camera he had put down. The girl was already running fleetly up the mount.

  “I’ll get the stuff,” she flung back over her shoulder. “Start the motor. We may be in time!”

  The others dispersed in flurried haste. Powell ran after Sue, helped her pick up the equipment. She snatched it from him and raced down to where her gyroship waited. The propeller was already turning. Plumb was bouncing impatiently in the pilot’s seat. Sue hurled objects into the cockpit and leaped after them.

  “Hey!” Powell shouted above the roar. “What about me?”

  “Gun her, Lynn. What about you?”

  “Hector’s got my ship! I’ll be scooped.”

  “No!” Sue said sweetly. “Not the Brain. Impossible!”

  She stuck out the tip of a small red tongue at him and waved ironically as the gyroship took the air. All around motors were thundering and pounding. In a single swarm, the planes lifted, darted swiftly toward the white flame still flaring beyond the mountains.

  Powell returned to the fence, where the overalled man waited.

  “Nice work,” he said. “Here’s your other hundred, fella. You’re a good actor.”

  “Thanks.” A bill was pocketed. “I didn’t think they’d fall for it till that light showed up over there. How’d you do that?”

  “I’ve got an assistant,” Powell said cryptically. “He hasn’t much sense, but he knows how to light magnesium flares. When’s the take-off?”

  “Any time now. I better be getting back.”

  “Luck,” Powell said, and waved at the departing figure.

  Grinning broadly, he set up his camera, slipped on an infra-red auxiliary filter, and found a telephoto lens in his pocket. Sue would be far from happy when she discovered the trick. Still, all was fair in love, war, and newsreel work.

  The top blew off the hangar. The walls fell out and collapsed. For a second Powell had a glimpse of a squat, gleaming projectile squatting hugely before him. He bent over his camera, working frantically. In the scanner he could make out no details, but he knew that the lens would miss nothing.

  A blast of roaring, screaming wind tore at his body. The projectile flashed into the skies and was gone.

  That was all.

  The hurricane subsided. Absently, Powell rolled another minute’s film through the grinder, halted, began to put his equipment together. The can of film he locked securely and tucked under his arm.

  An airplane muttered and coughed above him. Hector was apparently returning. Powell waved.

  A bullet whistled past him and dug into the ground at his feet.

  FOR a second Powell had the mad idea that Sue had returned to seek vengeance. Then sanity returned. It wasn’t Sue hovering above him, a dark silhouette in the moonlight, but a killer.

  Powell dropped everything but the can of film. He ran, bending low, dodging the burst of bullets that pursued him. It isn’t easy to aim from a moving plane by moonlight. That fact alone saved Powell’s life.

  He plunged into the knoll’s shadow, doubled on his tracks, and hid under a bush. The dark craft swept around, seeking him out. Bullets spattered with low, murderous thuds into the soil. There was the sharp crack of lead splitting rock.

  Powell curled up into a ball, shielding the can of film with his body, and wondered what in hell to do. The bullets might find him. Then, again, they might not. If he fled, though, his moving body would be a visible target.

  “Nice fix,” Powell muttered, and discovered that a hard object was digging into his ribs. Cautiously, he fished out a flat brown bottle.

  “Rotgut,” he said, “make me forget, or at least ignore this nonsense.”

  Somehow the sound of thwacking bullets didn’t seem quite so disturbing with raw bourbon burning its way down Powell’s throat.

  Another plane came out of the east. Powell’s attacker hesitated, let out a final spurt of ammunition before scooting off.

  Hector set down his ship near the knoll and emerged, his blue-black, furry head shining in the moonlight.

  “Boy, oh boy!” Mike cried. “Ugly, you’re the most beautiful sight in the Universe to me. Get going. Headquarters, Los Angeles.”

  Hector seemed pleased. His misproportioned body was shaking with merriment. The aircraft veered perilously.

  “Mind the controls,” Powell snapped. “What’s the matter with you, fathead? What kept you?”

  “Killed a buzzard,” he giggled. “Fun, oh boy, you say it!”

  “So you take time off to fly down buzzards while I’m being shot at,” Powell said bitterly.

  But he removed his cap and shied it into a corner. Pulling off his boots, loosening his belt, he relaxed with a deep sigh. The night’s job was over. All that remained was to deliver the can of film to local headquarters.

  The plane passed far above a group of aircraft driving madly in the opposite direction.

  “Summit Scours the System,” Mike declared smugly. Hector applauded with a shriek of laughter. “Oh, pipe down, mop-face. Stick to your throttle. We haven’t checked in the film yet.”

  HE knew it practically was on the screens, though. They flew over Angeles Forest, San Bernardino, and at last Glendale.

  As Powell dismounted, he was still wondering about the identity of his attackers. But that question wasn’t as important as delivering the film. Hector ran the length of the airport alongside him. The Martian’s huge feet, shaped like snowshoes, hit the turf with resounding whacks. A taxi swung out toward the running men.

  “Summit Building,” Powell ordered, scrambling inside. “Burn up the pavement, Bud.”

  The cameraman fell back in a corner, smothered by the tangled awkwardness of Hector, who had managed to squeeze his huge bulk into the automobile. The driver jerked the car into motion.

  At the Summit Building they burst into the main office,
confronted a small, startled man who rose like a frightened jack-rabbit from his desk.

  “Scoop, Nickelson,” Powell stated. “Catch.” He tossed the can of film at the rabbity man, who deftly caught it. Nickelson’s lips twitched in a smile.

  “The Eberle take-off, eh?” he asked.

  “Exclusive,” Powell nodded. “Develop it right now, will you? I’ve an idea—don’t ask me what. Got to see the print first.”

  “Sure,” Nickelson said. “Stick around, Mike.”

  He ran off with the film. Powell sank down in a comfortable chair. With incredible patience, he bit off the end of a cigar, lit it carefully, and began puffing. Hector flapped to the window on his huge feet and looked out down the blaze of light and color below.

  “Nice bonus in this, Hector,” Powell said. “I think so, anyway. What are you mooning at?”

  “Nothing,” the Martian responded absently. “Bonus? Money, hah?”

  “Yeah. Lots of money. You can buy a whole raft of mirrors.” Powell suddenly realized that Hector was gaping at his reflection in the glass of the window. “You’d like that, eh?”

  Hector pivoted. His awkward form exploded into a blinding blur of motion. He charged across the room, lifted Powell, chair and all. Mike lost track of events. He found himself dumped behind a couch in the corner. Then Hector fell on top of him.

  The window smashed in an uproar of light and fury. Flames of hell raved through the room. Everything was tossed around tempestuously. The couch tried to smash Hector and Powell through the wall. The uproar died.

  “Bad, ah?” Hector understated.

  DAZEDLY, Powell picked himself up. The room was a shambles. Desk and chairs were overturned and shattered. The walls were pitted and blackened. The carpet smoldered. The window was gone; in its place a ragged hole gaped. Through this gap came the sound of an airplane’s motor swiftly retreating.

  “Still after us,” Powell said. “See who they were, Hector?”

  “No,” the Martian responded, shaking his somewhat singed head. “Airplane. Man in it. Masked. Trying to throw a bomb in here.”