The 19th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Charles V. De Vet

  Then, “I’m sure you’re wrong,” he said, but there was an excitement in his voice: The kind of excitement that pleased him. “If you’re game let’s find out,” he urged. “As soon as we get the chance well break into one of the sealed huts and see what’s there.”

  IV

  The next day Lutscher was missing. Tang had gone to the space ship for a box of cigars and when he returned he found that Lutscher’s hut had been freshly sealed. As he stood, uncertain what his next move should be, one of the mahutes came up and took him by the arm.

  He allowed the mahute to lead him to another hut nearby. Inside he found all of Lutscher’s possessions and his own. The furniture had been carefully placed in the same positions it had occupied in the original hut. But Lutscher was nowhere in sight.

  During the time it took Tang to smoke one cigar he debated with himself. If they were holding Lutscher prisoner he should be in no immediate danger. Each sealed hut had air vents in the top that were never closed. If they had killed him then no amount of haste could help him. On the other hand, he decided, perhaps they were subjecting him to some ritualistic torture. He rose to his feet and buckled on his gun. He’d have to try to get into the sealed hut. If the mahutes hadn’t killed Lutscher he might still be able to save him.

  Once outside Tang found the mahutes maintaining their guard. He walked toward them and they bunched themselves ahead of him. He drove his shoulder against the nearest one. The native reeled aside but made no effort to strike back. The other mahutes pressed forward, bearing Tang back by the very weight of their numbers. He’d have to use more drastic measures.

  He drew his gun but he doubted that they were intelligent enough to recognize it as a weapon. Pointing the gun at the feet of the nearest mahutes he squeezed the grip and held it tight while the lethal ray burned the sand to a bubbling, smoking caldron. The mahutes stared stupidly at the molten spot, moving back only when the heat scorched their legs.

  Tang forced them to either side until he had cleared a path to Lutscher’s hut. Taking advantage of their distraction he dashed forward and turned with his back to the hut.

  The mahutes did not hesitate. They rushed him in a body.

  That left him no choice, Tang realized. He shot the first to reach him in the leg. As the native stumbled and fell, others climbed over his body to get at Tang. He shot a second and a third and still the mahutes came on. He tried to hold them back by playing the gun’s beam at their feet but they walked into the beam and fell dead or mutilated. Several of the inevitable accompanying clobers died with them.

  Soon the blood and the slaughter of the single-minded natives sickened Tang and he loosened his grip on his weapon. The mahutes grabbed him by the arms and legs and carried him away from the hut, making no attempt to disarm him. They deposited him some yards away and went back to their posts. Other mahutes came up and carried off the dead and wounded. Tang cursed and staggered into his own hut.

  For a long while he sat with his head in his hands, lost in a gray obsession. Lutscher had undoubtedly caused the interference of the mahutes by the picture he had given them of Tang being insane. But whatever the reason, as a fellow human, it was his duty to rescue Lutscher, if at all possible. But there was a limit to what lengths he would go to do it. After all, was the life of one criminal worth that of all the mahutes he would have to slaughter, or even of the ones he had already killed? The decision was a hard one.

  He heard a noise and looked up. A mahute was standing in the doorway. In his arms the native held one of the little dough ball pets. He set the clober on the floor and withdrew.

  A peace offering? Tang didn’t know, but he decided to wait. Perhaps he would have a better chance to rescue Lutscher later.

  What he needed now was some way to communicate with the mahutes. If he only knew Lutscher’s secret. For a moment he debated eating the native food. Perhaps that was the necessary first step. But his whole nature shrank from the thought. The risk of making himself an addict was too much to ask—at least until all else failed.

  The clober was company. And it seemed to crave affection. It frisked about Tang’s feet until he picked it up and held it in his lap. As he went through his troubled thoughts he idly stroked and fondled the little pet.

  Tang set himself on a schedule. Once every hour he walked to the door and looked across to Lutscher’s hut. Always the situation remained the same.

  Late that night he finally fell asleep. The little clober crawled up on the bed and curled into the crook of his arm.

  He awoke twice during the night. Each time, by the light of his flash, he could see the patient mahutes keeping their vigil. And each time he returned to his bed the clober crawled back into its sleeping place in the crook of his elbow. He found himself growing quite fond of the little beast.

  The third time Tang awoke he saw, through the slit in the eye he opened, that it was daylight.

  Father? For a moment Tang thought he was still dreaming. Had he heard a voice? He lay quietly, his mind still not functioning too clearly.

  Father? the voice came again. But was it a voice? Now that he thought of it he was certain that there had been no actual sound. It was more like an audible thought.

  A faint inkling of what was happening penetrated his consciousness. He remained quiet, deliberately keeping his mind in its drowsy, slow-functioning sleep fog. And then he caught the call in all its inflections. The sense-impression he caught was not father, exactly; rather it was a compound picture of benefactor, loved one, guardian.

  And Tang was certain the mind picture had been communicated to him by the clober at his side. He had made his first telepathic contact with the planet’s denizens!

  For a half-hour after he arose Tang was unable to reestablish contact with the little dough ball. Then he realized that he was trying too hard.

  He sat down and forced himself to relax. His mind gradually calmed and made itself receptive. Food? Hungry? the clobers thoughts reached him.

  Tang rose and walked to the door. The mahutes had left a small bundle of shoots at the side of the hut, as they had done every morning for Lutscher. He brought several of them in with him.

  All during the morning he spent his time perfecting his ability to catch the clober’s thoughts. By noon he had it mastered. The little beast’s intellect was quite rudimentary, registering its need for food, desire to sleep, for affection, and love for its benefactor, himself.

  When it became hungry again at noon Tang tried his next experiment. Lutscher had been able to communicate with the mahutes, and quite probably with Bunzo. He should be able to do the same.

  Food…hungry, the clober broadcast. Tang looked at it, and in his mind commanded it to go out the door and get a tree shoot. At the second attempt the little pet turned and obeyed!

  So far so good. Now to try his luck with the mahutes.

  He went to the door and tried to project his thoughts to the passing natives. He failed. An hour later he came back in, tired and discouraged. His head ached with a dull pain that seemed to be trying to force its way through his skull. He let his body sag across the bed. The clober climbed up and joined him.

  Suddenly he had the answer. The natives were never seen without an accompanying clober. And Lutscher had had his Bunzo. They were unable to make direct telepathic contact: It had to be done through the clobers!

  He sprang to his feet and went outside, with the clober clutched in his arms. A mahute was passing in the packed-sand street. Directing his thought to the mahute, but through the clober, Tang thought, Stop. The mahute stopped!

  Go, Tang commanded, and the mahute went on. Success.

  He made one more test. The next mahute to pass was carrying a load of shoots. Leave them by my door, Tang directed. Without hesitation the mahute turned and deposited the shoots.

  Next Tang felt for the mahute’s thoughts and caught them readily, but they were almost purely functional, bearing little resemblance to the activity of a reasoning intellect. There was no chan
ce of his learning anything of Lutscher’s whereabouts there. However he had succeeded in what he set out to do.

  Now for the final step. He went inside and buckled on his sidearm.

  V

  Suddenly the clober squirmed in his arms and a chaos of mad, slobbering, disconnected thoughts washed against Tang’s mind and staggered it with their very morbidity and black, hopeless fear.

  For a moment he stood mentally numbed, desperately striving to sort the hodgepodge of impressions into a semblance of lucidity.

  But they hit him, wave upon wave, as tangible as physical blows, and he fought the nausea they brought as he read them. I’m dead…like a spider…wasps! My God, this can’t be happening! The bastards, bastards, bastards. Move. I’ve got to move! I can’t! The thoughts ran together like the incoherent mass of a madman’s ravings.

  Then the mind Tang was hearing seemed to halt, as though it felt a new thing. Sammy? Sammy? Can you hear me?

  “I hear you!” Tang burst out, speaking aloud, but remembering, distractedly, to keep the clober in the forefront of his mind.

  Then come and kill me. For God’s sake, come and kill me!

  Fighting down the shock that threatened to overwhelm him Tang dashed from the hut, still clutching the little clober. They wouldn’t stop him this time, he vowed.

  A semblance of reason came to him before he reached Lutscher’s hut and he halted. There was something he should try, he realized, before he began killing. He looked down at the clober and then sent his message at the mahutes. Go back to your huts! he commanded. They made no move to leave.

  Then he understood that he was unable to contact the whole group at one time. It had to be done individually.

  Return to your home, he directed, concentrating on the nearest mahute. Silently it turned and left. Tang repeated the order to another. Again and again until he was alone.

  There was no time to waste. He aimed his pistol to fire at a tangent and blasted a hole through the wall of Lutscher’s sealed hut. He crawled in.

  The sight that met his eyes was one that Tang knew he would see in his nightmares the rest of his life.

  On the ground against the far wall lay the hide of one of the large clobers. He recognized the dark fist-shaped mark on the hide’s side as having belonged to Bunzo. Standing on the hide was one of the young stick-insects, its sharp little face ugly with some emotion and its mouth casing drawn back from its pointed teeth.

  At Tang’s feet lay Lutscher. He was muttering hoarsely to himself, and in his eyes that glared at the ceiling was madness—stark, terrible madness!

  The flesh had been torn from Lutscher’s left arm, stripping it to the bone. A shiny, gelatinous coating, covering the raw meat of the shoulder, seemed to have stopped the blood flow. Great chunks of flesh had been torn from one hip, and his teeth showed through where Lutscher’s cheeks had been.

  The ankite insect moved toward them and Tang beamed the ugly little head from its body.

  Lutscher muttered something and Tang knelt at his side. God help you, he thought. “Is there anything I can do, Bill?” he asked softly.

  “It’s too late to help me now,” Lutscher rasped feebly. “But there’s no pain, Sammy.” He seemed rational now, but Tang knew it would not last for long. “Just kill me, Sammy. And get out while you still can.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of the ankites came…when was it? Yester—yesterday?” Lutscher’s whispering voice broke on the last word and he seemed about to slip back into his madness, but he drew a deep breath and went on talking.

  “The ankite bit me. It must have injected a poison. I couldn’t move. They sealed me in with Bunzo. Soon after Bunzo screamed and burst. You see the set-up now, don’t you Sammy? The clobers are like cocoons on Earth. I think metamorphosis is the word. The ankites emerge from the clobers, like butterflies come from cocoons. And the poor, stupid mahutes feed them, care for their clobers, and then furnish the pièce d’occasion for the transformation feast.” He laughed, and the utter lack of mirth caused a spasm of sickness in Tang’s stomach.

  “And you…” Tang started to say.

  “And I… To the ankites I’m just another mahute. I’m like the spider that the wasp paralyzes and brings to its nest to be consumed by the young while it’s still alive. Lutscher’s voice rose to a shrill whisper. “Sammy! Kill me. Please! I can’t take anymore!”

  “I’ll get you back to the ship,” Tang said.

  “I’m too far gone for…” Lutscher stopped. His eyes seemed to try to smile, “Go ahead, Sammy,” he said. “Try.”

  Tang put one arm under Lutscher’s shoulders and the other under his knees and lifted him off the ground.

  Lutscher’s body came unhinged in the middle. A groan started in his throat and blood gushed from the raw places on his body. Tang put him down and Lutscher’s mouth opened and a long sigh came out. He knew they would never be able to hurt Lutscher again.

  Tang’s mind had gone cold now. There was little he could do for Lutscher, but what little he could do, he would. He drew his gun and sprayed its beam up and down the length of Lutscher’s body until nothing remained except a charred lump. At least he’d furnish no more meals for the ankites.

  On the way back to the space ship Tang met exactly eight of the stick-insects. He counted them.

  “One for you, Bill. Two for you, Bill,” he counted as he burned each one down. Nothing he had ever done gave him as great a sense of fierce satisfaction.

  Less than an hour after he left Lutscher’s remains he blasted off the planet. He hated to think of the three months he would have to spend alone before he reached Gascol 11.

  DELAY—TEMPORARY

  Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, Nov. 1957.

  Dolores had dimples on her knees.

  As he shaved, Ken Albrecht observed her in the mirror. She sat on the small table and swung her legs, smiling all the while at his reflection in the mirror. Once her glance traveled down to his bare upper torso. “You’re a handsome brute,” she said.

  Albrecht ignored the remark. “What’s your last name?”

  “Pollnow.”

  She continued to swing her legs, and Albrecht watched the dimples wink on and off in the mirror as he went on shaving. “Just what does this hostess service of yours include?”

  “The Port of St. Paul does its best to see that visitors to Earth are properly entertained. I hope my assistance this far has been of some help.”

  Albrecht grunted.

  With her head Dolores indicated a bundle at her side. “I bought you a suit of clothes, and a cloak for evening wear.” She glanced at the trousers Albrecht wore, and at his shirt hanging on the back of a chair at his side. “These are a bit more colorful than what you’re wearing, but they’re the height of Earth fashion at the moment. How do you like your room?” she asked with another of her quick changes of conversational topic.

  Albrecht paused in his shaving and glanced around at the room’s cramped furnishings. A bed, wide enough to sleep two, but narrower than he was accustomed to; two straight chairs and an adjustable-back armchair; a wash basin, with a small medicine cabinet above, the table on which Dolores sat; and a curtained shower in one corner, were economically spaced in a room no larger than twelve by fifteen feet. There was no closet. Clothes had to be hung on hooks on one wall.

  “It would seem you could have found something a little less crowded,” he observed without complaint.

  Dolores’ eyes widened in mild reproof. “Have you forgotten that this is Earth, the most densely-populated planet in the Federation of Human Worlds? A room like this is considered generously large.” She continued swinging her legs.

  Albrecht pulled the abras-brush sharply away from his cheek and muttered under his breath. The dimples had taken his mind from the job at hand and the brush had worn a pink, smarting, spot on his right cheek.

  Dolores laughed and Albrecht felt a slow flow of blood rising to his face. He tried to cover his em
barrassment with a show of gruffness. “Any particular reason why you’re still here? Didn’t I pay as much as you expected?”

  Dolores chose to ignore his lack of courtesy. “No pay was necessary. This is part of my job. Your tip was generous.”

  “Then why are you hanging around?” Albrecht quickly decided that the best way to get rid of her was to be unpleasant. He was tired and irritable from his space flight, and right now he wanted to relax more than he wanted feminine company.

  Dolores looked hurt. “Don’t you like me?”

  “You’re very charming. Perhaps tomorrow…or the day after…” Albrecht let the sentence hang with its unvoiced suggestion. Dolores continued to smile, seemingly unaware of the hint behind the words.

  Albrecht tried again. “I’ll have to change clothes. And as I see no way that I can do it in privacy, with you here…”

  Dolores nodded agreeably. “Don’t mind me.”

  Albrecht walked to where she sat and put his hands under her shoulders. Lifting her from the table he carried her to the room’s entranceway. He set her down beside the door, opened it, and gently but firmly propelled her out into the hall. “It’s been nice,” he said.

  Dolores wrinkled her nose spitefully at him as he closed the door.

  * * * *

  Ten minutes later, Ken Albrecht discovered that his wallet was missing. He hadn’t been carrying much money; he had taken the precaution of depositing most of it in the inter-world bank at the airport. But the wallet had contained his passport.

  He finished dressing, tucked a small flat pistol in his armpit, and hurried outside the huge apartment building. In a street flanked by double rows of almost identical buildings he hailed a cab and was driven back to the spaceport. At the information desk, he was informed that the director of spaceport personnel was a Mr. John Wrestler.

  Wrestler was a stout man in his late fifties, with a pinkly bald head and pink hair, and an incongruously black, pointed mustache. Beneath the mustache his lips formed two raised ridges—as though padded underneath—and dipped into the hollows of hairless cheeks. It was a totally humorless face.