Five Stars: Five Outstanding Tales from the early days of Stupefying Stories

by Aaron Starr

  “Of course,” said Right. “What other commodity could you provide, that is totally unique to your homeworld?”

  “What else could we be referring to?” asked Left.

  “What about art?” asked Darrel. “Or music? Or philosophy? Examples of the human viewpoint?”

  Right sighed. “Oh, not another Mona Lisa!” it exclaimed.

  “Everybody does that one,” said Left, shaking its head sadly.

  Darrel was at a loss. “What would you do with a billion humans?” he asked.

  “Most would be quick-frozen, of course, to guard against a sudden drop in the quality of human breeding stock,” Left explained. “You’d be surprised how valuable a species can find itself to be, when genetic errors start to crop up in a few million years.”

  “It’s something of a long-term investment,” confided Right.

  “The others,” Left continued, “would be bred to serve in specialized roles for those who could afford them. Like rodent hunting, or companions to aging citizens.”

  “Pets?” Darrel asked. “We’d be pets?”

  “Oh!” gushed Right suddenly. “We could do toy breeds! Think of how adorable those would be!” It held its long-fingered hands about a foot apart, indicating the adorable size it was envisioning.

  Darrel slid his chair back a bit from the table, turning his numb left arm to one side, so that the back of the chair no longer propped it up.

  “I’ve got to go get a…pencil,” he said, swallowing hard to clear his throat. “I’ll need to take notes for the leaders back home. These are such wonderful ideas, I don’t want to forget any of them!”

  “Of course!” said Right. “Since we’ve already agreed in principle, you wouldn’t want to call down the wrath of the Interstellar Trade Commission with a simple mistake, now would you?”

  “That would be a disaster,” said Left, visibly alarmed. “The member species of the Commission are very unforgiving.”

  “And hungry,” said Right. Left nodded with urgent agreement.

  “Quite right,” Darrel said, sliding the chair back and rising. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  With a measured step, and a silent word of thanks that the Cone of Silence masked his racing heartbeat, Darrel walked back to the alien Transit Module that had brought him, and closed the door.

  A moment later, the two aliens watched in silence through the wide windows as the tiny craft left the station. With a bright flash, the module sped off, moving many times the speed of light.

  ¤

  Left and Right looked to each other, faces impassive. Then Left broke out into peals of laughter, pounding the surface of the table.

  “That was so awesome!” it said. “Did you see the look of that guy?”

  “I was worried we’d need to get him a new pair of shorts,” said Right. “I thought he was going to die when you put on that glove!”

  “The earhole-muffs were great, too,” said Left, still chuckling. “I’ve never seen anyone’s arm turn so blue before!”

  “He sure was a good sport,” said Right. “It was almost a shame to—”

  A shadow fell over them from the bright light of the entryway from which they’d come. The two fell quiet instantly.

  “Was that a Newcomer’s Module that just left?” asked the figure who stepped into the room. “And why have you two got all the lights on? You’re wasting electricity!”

  Right looked down, abashed. Left shuffled his feet.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said.

  “It was, wasn’t it?” the older alien snapped. “Well, just you wait until your father hears about this! Having a laugh at the Newcomer’s expense, are we? We’ll see about that! You two are grounded for a week!”

  “Aw, Mom,” started Right.

  “Don’t you Aw, Mom me,” Mom said, voice severe. “We invite them here for a reason! You better hope I can catch up them before they reach their home system, or there’ll be hell to pay!”

  With that, the taller figure left, and, moments later, another small craft was visible in the same patch of space, quickly accelerating in the same direction as the newcomer.

  “Aw, shucks,” said Left, despondently. “We were only having a little—”

  His words were cut off by a gentle bell coming from the guest entrance. The two stared as the door opened wide, admitting a tentative creature that looked very much like a large blue caterpillar.

  “Greetings,” said Left.

  This is it, the caterpillar thought excitedly. First Contact with alien life!

  Aaron Bradford Starr is best known to readers of Stupefying Stories for his short stories “First Impressions” (Nov. 2011), “Seven Minutes to Bangor” (Dec. 2011), and “Cog Noscenti” (Mar. 2012), but around here we like to think of him as the artist who did the awesome covers for our Sept. 2012, Mid-Oct. 2012, and July 2013 issues, as well as the forthcoming August and September 2014 issues and the long-awaited THROWBACKS! anthology.

  P.S. Aaron also did the cover for this book.

  Sennacherib

  by David W. Landrum

  The sandstorm blew up out of nowhere and engulfed them. They had to find the shelter of rocks, cover the trucks, take shelter, and wait it out. The supply of gas shells they were bringing might arrive late. Of course, Lieutenant Rupert reflected, conditions like this would slow the Turks as well.

  It had been miserable duty. They had to wear gas masks as they drove in the desert heat. When they came near likely ambush sites, the soldiers with them had to dismount and fan out through the black rock and sand dunes to look for the enemy. This made for slow going. Besides the caissons loaded with shells, they were pulling six artillery pieces. Their convoy included supply trucks and medical support.

  The wind howled. Sand made a fine grinding sound against the metal and glass of the trucks. Soldiers and drivers hunkered inside. The wind-driven particles did not get into their sheltered area in the cabs and the backs of the trucks, but they wheezed and coughed as the fine dust filtered in to coat everything. After five hours—which seemed an eternity—it let up. There was enough daylight to go on. They had kept the sand out of the engines well-enough that all their vehicles started and they went on their way. They ran six hours until nightfall, pitched camp, and settled for a good night’s rest.

  Rupert wrote in his log. They had arrived at Outpost Six-C and found the site abandoned. They could find no trace of a camp ever having been there. Of course, he thought, when experienced soldiers broken camp they left no traces. He closed the book and walked outside.

  For a moment, he took in the beauty of the scene. A full moon stood above the vast, silent expanse of desert. Stars filled the sky, bright and numberless, pulsating as if to some regular rhythm of song. He saw Giles studying the constellations.

  He went over to him.

  “Giles, are we where we are supposed to be?” he asked.

  Giles, who knew the stars from years as a sailor, looked up.

  “Well, I think so. But the stars aren’t right.”

  Rupert laughed. “Not right? How could they be not right?”

  “They’re at odd angles. They seem to have shifted. I’ve been noting their exact positions in case we get lost so we can find our way back. Tonight they look off by good distances. I feel like I’m looking at what Ptolemy might have seen—or someone before him. The most startling thing is that the star Thuban, which is part of the constellation Draco, is where Polaris, the North Star, ought to be. I’ve never seen the sky look exactly like this.”

  “I only hope we can get where we need to go.”

  Giles said something about thermal distortion and parallax views. Rupert listened politely for a time, excused himself, and then went back to his tent and to bed.

  ¤

  They got up early and made their way down the road, which was hardly a road at all, toward their destination. They could not make radio contact with headquarters. The land seemed empty until they turned a corner and came upon a structure not on their
maps.

  The infantry soldiers guarding the trucks dismounted and established a perimeter. Rupert and Philips, his second-in-command, studied the edifice in front of them with binoculars.

  It looked like a fortress of some sort—mud brick walls and crenulations, sand heaped against the ramparts so ladders could not be placed against it. The place looked deserted. Neither of them detected motion, though they did see smoke rising from inside the walls.

  “What do you think?” Rupert asked.

  “I’m stumped. Maybe the Turks built it and then abandoned it—burned their supplies before they left.”

  One of the NCOs returned. They had patrolled the surrounding area and found nothing. No ambush, no signs of activity, “Other than a lot of camel tracks and camel dung,” he said.

  “Bedouins,” Rupert mumbled. “Maybe they raided the place. Maybe its inhabitants fled. We’ll check it out. Looks like something is hanging on the walls.”

  Philips peered a long moment through his binoculars.

  “I see it. Cloths of some kind, padding. I don’t know. Maybe laundry hanging out to dry. Maybe animal skins soaked in water as a protection against flaming arrows or naphtha. Let’s have a closer look.”

  Rupert decided to lead the troops himself. He left Philips in charge of the convoy, took an NCO named Plaud and three enlisted men, and advanced on the citadel.

  They used move-and-cover tactics, expected fire from Ottoman troops hidden inside, but no sound came from the place. Rupert, armed with a Webley revolver, got to the wall beside the gate first. Two privates joined him. He signaled to them to provide covering fire, took a deep breath, kicked at the gate, and rushed into the stockade, rolling on the ground, expecting to hear and return hostile fire.

  Silence greeted him.

  He stood up. He heard no sound but a faint cracking of flame some distance away. The stench of hot, rotting flesh filled the walled-off area. He gaped to see, in the center of the square, lined up in neat, even rows, a crowd of corpses, staring at him with sightless eyes. They had been impaled: long spears thrust up their anal openings, their protruding points sticking out of their mouths, glistening red with blood in the brutal sun.

  Rupert and the soldiers gaped. One vomited. They listened but heard only the wind and the occasional noise a body made when it sank down further on one of the spears. The others in the squad came through the gate.

  “What in the name of God happened here?” Huber, an NCO, who had led four back-up troops, gasped.

  Rupert only stared.

  “Let’s go on in,” he said. He turned to the pale figure of Huber.

  “Go get Cambridge,” he ordered. “Let’s see what he makes of this.”

  Cambridge was an NCO who had a college education and had taught Ancient Near Eastern history at London University. He knew Hebrew and a little Arabic. Plaud hurried off, glad to be away from the horrific display of naked, tortured men. “Come on,” Rupert said, his revolver held at ready.

  A little past the ranks of impaled men, they encountered more horror—and horror more heartbreaking and intense than what they had just seen. In a pool of congealed blood lay the bodies of possibly twenty women. All of them had been pregnant. Whoever took the city had stripped them naked, cut them open, and torn the fetuses from their wombs. Babies in various stages of development lay next to the mothers. A few feet away, a heap of small corpses rose under the bloody wall against which they been smashed. Further back, other corpses—what looked like dead soldiers and a few more women—lay in the dirt.

  “Turks?” one of the enlisted men asked. His soft question rang loud in the silence.

  “The Turks can be brutal,” Rupert answered, “But they’ve never done anything like this.”

  Philips had come back with Plaud. After getting over the initial shock, he walked around the heap of dead women toward the back of the town. He turned to Rupert.

  “Skins,” he said.

  The others looked at him in puzzlement.

  “These things we saw on the walls weren’t animal skins. They were human skins.” He walked ten yards and stopped. “Here.”

  The others went over to where he stood. They saw a human body—muscle and connective tissue laid bare, all the skin removed. Seven or eight similar bodies littered the ground by the back of the wall.

  “Brutality,” Plaud said. “It defies belief.”

  They heard footsteps. Cambridge approached. Pale, his steps uneven, his eyes darted from the different stations of mayhem. He halted next to the others and looked out at the staked corpses.

  “Flayed alive?” he asked.

  “It would appear so,” Rupert replied. “We thought an educated man like you might have some idea who could have done this. Turks? Bedouins?”

  “Neither,” he answered. “Under any other circumstances, you would think me stark, raving mad. But I can speak without fear of infamy with this witness all around. Only one culture could or would have done something like this: the ancient Assyrians. Commander, we have gone back in time.”

  They stared at him.

  “I thought as much when Giles took me out and showed me Thuban in place of the North Star and all the constellations off by twenty degrees. I did not study astronomy thoroughly, but I know the constellations and their placement in the sky. And being in ancient studies, I know how their positions were different in ancient times due to the polar drift of the Earth.”

  After another long silence, Rupert spoke.

  “Cambridge, you can’t expect us to believe this.”

  Cambridge went over and pulled an arrow from the ground.

  “Who uses iron-tipped arrows? The Ottomans? Even the Arab tribal groups have guns. No one impales enemies on bronze spears. It defines reason, Commander, but we’re back to biblical days.” He looked around them. “And who lives in walled cities anymore? A ridiculous precaution since the invention of gunpowder, wouldn’t you say?”

  The logic of his word struck home with Rupert, but he did not want to admit as much—not in front of the other men.

  “There has to be a logical explanation.”

  “That’s what we’re always told,” Cambridge said, his voice suddenly passionate. “But I know this very scene from my studies in the history and language of the ancient Middle East. Men impaled, pregnant women ripped open, innocent villagers skinned alive and their flayed hides hung on the city walls. The only culture cruel enough and rapacious enough to do this was the Assyrians. How in the hell we got in the same century as them, I can’t fathom. But I don’t doubt we’re here—and so are they.”

  At that moment, Stiller, a Corporal in charge of a squad, ran through the gate. “Sir, we’re seeing dust. I think someone is coming up on us.”

  Rupert and the others sprinted back to the convoy. They could see a dust cloud behind a ridge, hear the clanking of metal and the measured tread of feet.

  “Defensive positions!” Rupert shouted. “Blake!” One of his sergeants rushed up. “Take your squad and see if you can flank whoever is coming against us.” Blake nodded and ran to gather his troops. By now Rupert’s soldiers had taken up positions behind the trucks, rifles at ready. A machine-gun crew started to assemble their Vickers when the rhythmic din of footsteps halted. Silence fell. Rupert heard a creaking sound and then a spring and whooshing noise.

  “Under the trucks! Everyone! Now!” he screamed.

  His men dove underneath the convoy trucks. Seconds later, the sky darkened with missiles. Arrows plunged into the sand, glanced off the trucks, and punched through their canvas coverings in a clattering shower. After the fusillade died away they heard the sound of rumbling and cluttering, and a line of running, screaming men broke over the top of the ridge.

  They carried long spears like the ones Rupert and his party had seen in the walled city, and rectangular shields. Their armor—they wore armor—glistened blindingly in the sun. They wore tall helmets, long white skirts, bronze greaves, and leather sandals.

  “Fire!” Ruper
t ordered.

  The sight of screaming armed men charging down a ridge could generate terror in any soldier—but the men here had fought at the Somme and Ypres and fought off night attacks in the trenches of France. They opened fire. The attackers began to fall in droves.

  Rupert did a quick calculation. He had a half-company, sixty-two. Their attackers were coming fast—maybe two hundred of them. The velocity of their descent from the ridge gave them an advantage, even against bullets. His machine-gun crew had not been able to set up. His men kept up a steady rifle fire from underneath and behind the trucks. The attackers fell by the dozens. Yet they kept coming. He could see they would overwhelm them in a moment.

  As he was calculating, Rupert felt an explosion of pain. Left side, he thought. He wondered if it was a bullet but looked down to see several round stones on the ground and on the fender of the truck he had hidden behind. More stones whistled through the air, denting the bonnets of the trucks and breakings mirrors and windshields. Slingers, he thought. He fired his revolver.

  By now the attackers were almost upon them. He could see their faces, the murderous glint in their eyes, their pointed beards. The same men, he thought, who had ripped open pregnant women, smashed babies against walls, and flayed people alive. He heard the clattering of their armor and the creaking of the leather harnesses that held it on. He dropped two of them but knew they would break on their lines any moment.

  “Grenades!” he shouted. When he filled his lungs to shout, it made the wound he had received from the sling stone hurt so badly he almost fainted.

  His soldiers fumbled for grenades, pulled the pins, and tossed them. Explosions rocked the air. The line of attackers, temporarily immobilized with fear, threw down their weapons, turned, and fled. Rupert’s troops lobbed more grenades and opened up once more with their rifles. The attackers disappeared back over the ridge. After a moment, Rupert heard rifle and machine-gun fire. Blake’s squad. In the tension of battle, he had forgotten them. He signaled Plaud to take his squad up the ridge. The sound of gunfire continued off the distance another minute or so and then ceased.

  Rupert sat down. His left upper chest hurt so much he thought he might cry. Anseley, their medic, came running up.