Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

by Mike Resnick

  With his knife, Tarzan scraped at a half-buried wall of stone near the edge of the amphitheater. His wide blade revealed deep engravings in the stone: marks that represented the worlds encircling the sun, the larger rings of their orbits, and sharp triangle-shapes of the vessels that sailed between worlds.

  Again he studied the ancient drawings and remembered the celestial engine at home which showed the alignments of those planets, and he had no doubt in his mind that his ancestor was correct. The engravings were clear, showing the movements of planets and indicating that when the planet Mars should be close to Earth and in just such an alignment, the ships of the Martians would fly to Earth.

  Clearing more debris from the wall, Tarzan saw additional, more detailed drawings that the other John Clayton had mentioned but not copied: human captives being driven into the triangular ship, pictograms that showed them being forced to serve creatures with many tentacles and a confusion of eyes, and then being devoured by those monsters.

  There was more, and Tarzan no longer had any reason to doubt the prophecy of his ancestor: if the Martian scout ship could get through, then the invaders would send an armada, intending to rule the Earth as overlords, as superior to humans as humans were to anthropoid apes.

  Tarzan opened the well-thumbed diary, which he’d carried in his arrow quiver. What worried him most was his ancestor’s warning, “They have a mind ray which can render you servile and mindless. Under its influence you will be unable to resist the enemy. Humans fall under this ray, but animals seem immune, and it was with the help of my faithful—” There a large stain blocked out the rest of the story, picking up much later with, “And thus, the space menace defeated, in peace and honor I travelled to England, bringing this warning to my fellow men, which, alas, none of them would believe.”

  An alien mind ray. Tarzan wondered if he was human enough to fall under the influence of invaders, or if he still carried enough of the jungle within his heart and mind. Regardless, he must make sure that others stood ready to defeat the Martians and save Earth from subjugation.

  If the mechanical celestial sphere was accurate, the initial ship would land tonight. He had very little time to gather his allies.

  First, he explained the situation to Sheeta, as much as possible in the panther language. She understood that he would be fighting, and she knew to help him, and also that she was not to eat any of the animals of Earth, not in this battle.

  Next, he visited Tantor the elephant, his old friend. The great gray beast remembered him, and Tarzan needed only moments to explain the situation, for elephants are as wise as humans. Tantor promised Tarzan that he would gather those creatures that were the elephant’s fast friends: some tribes of monkeys, some birds, large snakes that slithered through the grass, and a tribe of wise old elephant matriarchs.

  Meanwhile Tarzan went in search of Akut’s people, the anthropoid apes who were descended from the ones who had raised him. At first, he worried that the new tribe leader would not remember him, and Tarzan would have to fight once more for his supremacy, but when he approached the tribe by a river, after the first moment of alarm in which the apes gathered children to themselves and flitted to the upper branches of trees, they recognized him and called out, “Welcome, Tarzan, defeater of Kerchak, lord of the jungle and friend of Akut.”

  Tarzan answered them by explaining that a great evil was coming from the sky and that they must defeat it. They were fearful of the news, but angry when he described the threat further. The entire tribe agreed to meet him by the amphitheater at moonrise.

  Confident in his growing army, Tarzan went through the jungle on his own, to the nearby native village. When he’d been but a boy, he had convinced these savages that he was a supernatural entity, and they had appeased him by leaving out food as well as arrows poisoned with a fast-acting mixture. He feared that they’d fallen out of the habit after so much time had passed, but he found the arrows there in the little hut they’d built to revere him, and also fresh food.

  Back home in England, Lord Greystoke would no more dream of eating leftover scraps than he would dream of sharing his dogs’ kennels. Here, though, a different law applied. He ate the food; then he collected the poison-tipped arrows and returned through the high branches to his treetop cabin, where he restrung the bow he had taken long ago from a defeated enemy. He was preparing for a war against another world.

  True, he could have brought a rifle with him and used that against the invaders. But he was more familiar with bow and arrows, and with its flash and explosion a rifle would give away his position. Yes, the arrows would be better.

  He worried that the poison in the arrows would be ineffective against creatures from another world. But then he remembered the pictographs of the invaders devouring humans, and he reasoned that if the monsters could eat humans, then they must succumb to poisons of Earth.

  * * *

  When the moon rose over the ancient amphitheater, Tarzan was ready. Waiting in the crook of a tree above the ground, he felt and heard the animals of Earth nearby, also ready.

  Before long, high above, there appeared a wheel of fire falling from the sky, a contraption that tumbled and made a sound just at the edge of hearing. Tarzan heard the first keenings of fear from the gathered animals, and he gave the shout of the great anthropoid apes, urging them to stand firm.

  As the wheel of fire descended and finally came to rest in the amphitheater, Tarzan could tell that the supposedly natural arena had been designed to accommodate the otherworldly vessel. The triangular ship smoked, exuding acrid fumes; its walls were made of a black metal with a green sheen, and it gleamed wetly for all it had been on fire just moments before.

  The ship remained quiet for an agonizing moment, and Tarzan wondered whether to command his animals to advance on it and stomp it flat before the invaders could emerge. But he reasoned that any such ship that could cross the vast space between the worlds must be hardier than the hooves and claws of the animals of Earth. He bided his time.

  Then a tower emerged from the top of the contraption, emitting a light that seemed no natural light, but a glow that he perceived from the back of his brain rather than through the eyes. Tarzan stared at it, felt dizzy, but could not stop looking. Its effect on him was similar to what he had seen of a bird when faced with the hypnotic stare of a serpent. For a long, indefinable moment, he remained frozen on the tree branch, his eyes fixed on the light, and his mind filled with only a vague apprehension of danger and the stillness of death.

  In vain, the tribe of anthropoid apes called out to him and asked what to do. In vain, Sheeta nudged him. In vain, Tantor let out a loud trumpet to demand his attention. But he could not respond. Instead, at the back of Tarzan’s mind, he had a fuzzy recollection of the mind ray that his ancestor warned would render humans docile. Humans. He struggled, but he could not fight off the influence of the ray.

  Then the Martians emerged from their ship, hideous things that brought a wave of nausea even to his fogged brain. Tentacled bodies that slumped and lurched forward, with dark, oily skin that oozed a slime, leaving a trail behind them. And clusters of eyes that had looked upon alien skies which they had conquered, and sideways maws ringed with needlelike teeth, ready to suck and chew. They wished to be the new overlords of Earth, and their pulsing signal sent out an irresistible summons across the jungle.

  Tarzan’s stupor lasted an indefinite time, perhaps days, as he struggled—and then humans began to emerge from the jungle, making their way through the thick underbrush, battering down a new path. Natives both male and female, some of the women carrying little babes on their hip, utterly ignoring all of the wild animals gathered there by Tarzan. Instead, they marched forward singly or in groups, summoned by the terrible mind ray. And the hideous Martians waited there in front of their open ship to receive them as slaves, or as food.

  He might have remained frozen forever, but then among the mass of dark-skinned natives clad in skins and tribal ornaments, he saw a figure clad
as an English lady, and as the eerie moonlight fell upon her face, Tarzan recognized the beautiful features of his wife, Jane.

  Two greenish-black horrors slithered forward to grab the slender arms of Jane Clayton, seizing her. She was too frozen to struggle as they began to drag her toward their sinister vessel.

  Even though he was human by blood, the son of John Clayton Greystoke and the Lady Alice Greystoke, Tarzan of the Apes was not merely human. He was as much the adopted son of Kala the anthropoid ape, and his brain had been filled with habits and thoughts formed throughout his early life when he roamed the primeval forests of Africa—thoughts that were not bound by civilization.

  Though he had struggled in vain against the force, this sight gave him a strength that no other force did, and he clawed deep into his own uncivilized animal heart to shake off the blind blankness of hypnotism. Just as his love for Jane had made a man out of the savage creature who had been reared in the jungles, now his love for his woman sparked a fierce fury in his ape-mind, a need to defend his mate.

  As the creatures hauled his mesmerized and vulnerable wife into their alien ship, Tarzan at last managed to shake off the soporific effect of the ray. He arose with a cry that commanded all his animals to follow him. He jumped into the arena, racing toward Jane, just as she stopped and shuddered, as though suddenly waking at the sound of his voice.

  But Tarzan was not fighting alone. Monkeys swarmed forward to jump onto the entranced natives, knocking them to the ground and preventing them from boarding the ship. Birds of prey swooped in to harass the flailing tentacles of the startled Martians. Sheeta and two other sleek panthers bounded forward, driving a Martian to the ground, tearing greenish-black skin with their sharp claws and spilling alien blood as well as slime. The aliens chittered and shouted, astonished at this unexpected and improbable resistance.

  Still fighting off the cloying effects of the mind ray, he was only vaguely aware of Tantor’s companions charging into the arena with deafening bellows. With a loud trumpet, a clever female elephant, supported by others, had charged up the sloped wall of the alien ship. With her trunk, she reached out and snapped the antenna from the hull.

  In an instant, like the silence following a loud clap of thunder, the confusion was gone from Tarzan’s mind. At the same time that the gathering natives stirred to life, awakening to their situation with fear and confusion, Tarzan shouted out an encouragement to all the animals. He plunged after his wife into the darkness of the alien ship, calling out in the tongue of the natives of the region, “These are cruel slavers from another world! They seek to imprison you—fight them!”

  The creatures of Earth fought together, banding into a wild army that fought back against invaders from another world. In an army of fur, feathers, scales, and fangs, they struck at the scout ship that had landed in their jungle. Birds fiercely pecked holes in the metal skin of the vessel, and snakes slithered through. Howling, the great anthropoid apes pounded the ship and tore at the many-tentacled aliens with brute strength. Tantor and his elephant army crushed through the hull to free the few natives already in the ship. Sheeta’s tribe gloriously crushed the aliens in their fierce jaws, then spat out the foul-tasting Martian flesh.

  Tarzan, though, fought his own battle, following his wife’s cries through the interior of the Martian vessel to an inner chamber in which a blazing glow shone from a vast apparatus surrounded by monsters who held Jane captive. They drew her toward the crackling glow, and now Jane fought back, trying to pull herself free of the tentacles, kicking, but in vain. Tarzan saw the shimmering blaze—and he wondered in horror if the assembled aliens meant to roast and devour Jane even now.

  He let fly with his arrows so swiftly that he seemed to be everywhere at once. The poison-tipped shafts flew true, each one piercing an alien’s slimy hide. He watched them slump one after another. Yes, indeed, the toxin was as deadly to Martians as it was to the creatures of Earth.

  The invaders were in disarray, and Jane finally broke free of one captor, disentangling herself from the tentacles and lashing out with her boot to knock one of the aliens away; Tarzan shot it. But the other monster still held her, drawing her close and retreating toward the crackling glow, as if it meant to immolate itself along with her. Tarzan could not hit the Martian without the risk of hitting his own wife.

  Instead, yelling a defiant roar of one of the great apes, Tarzan flew at the alien, his knife unsheathed. With a brutal slash, he severed the tentacle that held his Jane. Slime spurted, but she threw herself away, dropping to the floor. Tarzan plunged closer, ripping the knife down to hack off tentacles. The thing’s sideways maw snapped at him, trying to lock needle teeth onto Tarzan’s tanned skin. For a moment, the remaining tentacles held him fast in a death grip, and the jaws snapped shut, trickling silvery venom.

  But he bit and he clawed and he broke his arm free to raise the knife high. He brought it down, plunging the sharp point into the mass of staring eyes. He drove the hilt as hard as he could, shoving the blade deep into what must have been the Martian’s brain. The alien shrieked, and greenish-blue ooze spurted out. The heavy, slime-coated creature slumped in an ungainly heap on the floor.

  Tarzan panted, and he looked around to realize that the chamber was now filled with the creatures of Earth. All the other aliens lay dead.

  As his sweet Jane rushed into his arms, he held her. Seeing himself dripping with alien ichor, he cautioned her, “Careful, my love. I’m covered in alien blood.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. This was a time when Earth needed a savage to defend it,” she said, her hair in disarray and her own clothes stained with slime. “For savage or civilized, you are always the best of men, and the only one I’ll ever love.”

  * * *

  Long into the night around the amphitheater, the creatures of the jungle, for once at peace, celebrated the death of the alien enemies.

  Days later, in quieter times when Tarzan and Jane had returned to the treetop cabin in the jungle, they woke together after a sound and untroubled sleep. In a sleepy voice, Jane mused with a self-deprecating laugh, “And to think I came to Africa to save you from these aliens.”

  “And you did, my dear.” He wore only his breechclout and barbaric ornaments, yet he had the manner of the most respected nobleman. “But for the sight of you, I would have remained hypnotized by the creatures, and I and all my friends would have perished. Just as your love saved me from a life of eternal savagery, so did your presence save me from alien enslavement.” He smiled at her. “Now let us enjoy our days here in the jungle, so I can remember who I really am, while we wait for the ship that will take us back to England—and to Jack. In the meantime, let me share with you my jungle domain, just as you have shared civilization with me.”

  “Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. When he fought, his methods would have brought a flush of shame to the face of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward.”

  The Mucker and The Return of The Mucker tell how Billy Byrne was changed from the rough and tumble Chicago street fighter Burroughs describes above to a civilized man, by his love for socialite Barbara Harding. At the end of the first book, Billy even leaves her, knowing it would never work out for them. He asks that she marry her fiancé, Billy Mallory. The best-selling team of Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens write of the day after Billy Byrne leaves. According to them, the couple weren’t quite through with each other.

  —Bob

  The Two Billys

  A Mucker Story

  Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens

  He was no damn coward. Had he been, the dark-haired, muscular mucker named Billy Byrne c
ould not have survived a West Side of Chicago upbringing. He had grown up hard and fast in the neighborhood that ran from Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street, where being a coward was the greatest of all sins.

  Not only was Billy not a coward, he had felt fear but twice in his young life.

  The first had been as a lad barely into his teens. He was afraid neither of his opponent, Coke Sheehan, nor the outcome of their knuckle-duster. But during the brawl—a dispute over Sheehan welching on paying him money owed for a robbery the two had pulled together—Billy had hit the other boy in the head with a brick, rendering Sheehan unconscious and possibly croaking him.

  The possible croaking of Sheehan itself had not scared the mucker, not really; but the idea that the coppers and a judge might make him swing at the end of a rope for it, well, that was damned unsettling, and had sent him briefly into hiding. The brick-bashed Sheehan had survived—too tough and dumb to die, most likely—and eventually Billy had returned to the streets.

  The second occasion that had brought Billy that blue funk called fear was right before and during round one of his first prizefight against a top-notch brawler talked about as the next heavyweight champion. So the fight drew a big crowd that hooted and hawed through the introductions of what they figured to be a sorry mismatch, and the jeering went on for the first three minutes as the would-be future champ battered Billy.

  Yes, Billy was afraid. Not of losing, nor of his opponent—it was that damned crowd. This brand of fear was simple stage fright, and soon Billy overcame that emotional fog to mop the floor with the “future champion.” The mucker sent the palooka back to the farm in the fifth round.

  And yet this mucker unafraid of even the Maylay headhunters of Daimyo Oda Yorimoto stood there in his sweats on the floor of Professor Cassidy’s gym with trembling fingers—fingers unfolding a note just handed him by a messenger boy about as threatening as a newborn pup.