Short fiction collected, p.108
Short Fiction Collected, page 108
“Mice is plural. Singular mouse,” explained Newell. “Once infested Earth, but could never adapt to other planets, and were eventually exterminated.”
“Good idea, extermination,” said Bulkley heavily. “I’d keep you, of course, sweetheart,” he told her. “But I’m beginning to think I won’t need Newell or your father any more.”
“You have a tendency to turn to murder to solve your problems, Bulkley,” said Newell. “But this time I’m afraid you’d only complicate them. If you want more of those dragon’s-teeth seeds, you’ll have to keep me around.”
“I wonder. You talk a little too much about murder, Newell. Almost as if you wanted to dare me. And our little school teacher friend here seems to be daring me in another way. I’d hate to disappoint her.”
He put a rough hand on the girl’s arm. Newell started toward him, only to find himself seized in the firm grip of two plant-creatures.
Bulkley said, “Take it easy, Newell. There’s nothing you can do.”
The girl said sharply, “Take your filthy paw off me.”
That was the only encouragement a man like Bulkley needed: He laughed, and pulled her toward him.
What happened then amazed and startled Newell almost as much as it did the other man, although not so painfully. The great body of the man seemed to leap into the air and fly into the wall. He landed with a thud, and sank to the floor, dazed and half unconscious.
Newell tried to leap forward toward the flashlight that had slipped from Bulkley’s belt. But as he did so, the two plant creatures pulled him back. Rough twigs with bark-like surfaces tightened about his arms and held him helpless.
Despite his frustration, he had a feeling of elation, as if he had watched a miracle happen. How in the name of space had the girl done that to Bulkley?
Her expression was unruffled, and her lips were smiling again. “I told you I had other talents,” she said.
“What diabolical trick was that?” asked Newell.
“One of the bits of knowledge I picked up while studying the ancient customs of Earth. It was known in its day as—let me see—jiu jitsu. The principles are simple enough, but the results are startling to a modern race which has long forgotten most of what it knew about physical combat.”
Bulkley was picking himself up from the floor. Suddenly, as if he had convinced himself that what had happened to him the first time was only a bad dream, he rushed at her again.
THIS TIME he landed against the furniture and bounced off to the wall so violently that Newell hoped the man’s skull was cracked.
“The greater the effort he makes, the harder he lands,” explained the girl. “That’s one of the beauties of jiu jitsu.”
Bulkley’s skull was a little too strong for plastex. He picked himself up, hesitated for a moment as if to attack again, and then thought better of it. “Get back to your own hut,” he told her hoarsely. “I’ll attend to you later.”
The girl left, her manner prim and dignified, the manner of a school teacher who has just given an unusually stupid pupil a lesson.
Bulkley glowered after her, and then turned to face Newell. “Wipe that smile off your face,” he ordered, in a rage.
“I wasn’t smiling at you, my friend. I was just pitying you. You really were a pathetic sight.”
“Keep your mouth shut, damn you!” roared the man.
“You’d better be careful from now on, Bulkley. That girl is dangerous. Too bad we don’t have an X-ray machine here. You may have a serious concussion.”
“I’m all right, and mind your own business.” He turned to the television set, and Newell realized that he intended to get his favorite program, hoping perhaps that Indra herself would appear. But the set did not light up.
“You probably smashed the insides when you landed against it,” said Newell hastily. He stared into the set. “Whew! Everything’s in a mess in here.”
This time Bulkley cursed bitterly, emitting a long string of oaths that to Newell had novelty and interest, if not charm. Finally he turned away, and sank into his chair.
A little while later he went into his room, and dropped off to sleep.
But Newell stayed up. He thought for a while of the girl, and then of Bulkley, and what he could possibly do to free himself from the man’s grip. If only the plant-creatures were less alert! He was glad to see that they hadn’t responded to the girl’s motions when she had thrown Bulkley head over, heels. That was because she had moved suddenly, and her motions had been on a small scale —the shift of weight from one foot to another, the use of one arm for leverage, the other for a gentle push. If he moved like that, perhaps he would be able to put something over on them. He brooded for a long time, trying to find a way.
When finally he too went to sleep, he had made up his mind to wait for the right conditions, and then attempt a sudden dash for safety.
It was the roar of an approaching space ship that awoke them shortly before dawn. Newell and Bulkley rushed out of the hut, to stare up and see the faint white exhaust from the rocket tubes far off near the horizon against the fading blackness of the night.
The patrol ship, of course. The patrol ship that would try to cook Bulkley’s goose. He would have to stay for a while.
The ship was coming down at a gentle slope, using the resistance of the atmosphere, as well as its own braking jets, to brake its fall. Its hull gleamed a low red from the heat of friction, then faded into pale gray, the shimmer of heat waves dancing around as it slowed down and made a gradual landing. It settled to the ground in a clearing half a mile from their own plastex hut.
Bulkley’s eyes were glistening with anticipation. “That ship’s all I need,” he gloated. “I capture that and I get off the planet.”
“You’ll never get away with it,” said Newell.
“No? You watch.”
And because he had nothing better to do, Newell watched, with a gathering dread whose intensity grew from moment to, moment.
DAWN WAS breaking. A door opened in the side of the ship, and in the distance two men got out. The two tiny figures carried a heavy gun of some sort unknown to Newell. This they mounted at the side of the ship, ready fox any emergency except that which actually threatened.
Newell opened his mouth to yell a warning, and as he did so, Bulkley signaled an order with his flashlight. A wooden arm closed around Newell’s throat and choked off his cry.
More men were getting off the ship. They moved cautiously, in pairs, and without suspicion of the real danger. They knew that two men had been left on the planet, and that one of them had attacked the freighter. But the planet itself was supposed to contain no wild beasts, no plants whose existence meant peril.
They could see about them now as the pink sun continued rising slowly over the horizon. What they saw seemed harmless—odd perhaps, but not threatening. Brown and white tree stumps stood rooted in the ground near the ship, branches lopped off in a most unusual fashion, so that stump after stump bore a great resemblance to a human scarecrow. They had never seen anything like these stumps before, but this was a new planet to them, and far stranger things were to be seen on other new planets.
With his flashlight, Bulkley shot an ultraviolet signal toward the ship. The captain was expecting no signals, and paid no attention to the response of one of the instruments on his panel. But the brown and white scarecrows sprang into activity.
A pair of them leaped for the nearest gun, tore it from the grip of the startled patrol men who had held it, and turned it on the ship itself. With the sound of firing, a shrill cry of alarm rang out. Terror awoke, and grew at the sudden attack.
The terrain around tile ship became a field of battle. Men fell into the clutches of the plant-creatures and did not rise again. Those that survived the first onslaught raced back toward the ship.
Some of the plant-men were hit too. Newell, the grip on his throat loosened now, could see them running around, their arms, legs, bodies in flames, their faces totally oblivious of such feelings and motions as pain and fear. The sight added the final touch of terror to the surprised patrol crew. Those already in the ship yelled to the others to close the door.
But it was already too late. The plant-creatures were inside the ship now, disregarding weapons fired at them point-blank, hunting down the survivors. Though their wooden bodies were torn and shattered, they were still capable of killing.
Bulkley was gloating, his eyes ablaze with the fervor of the despised man who sees his desperate plans working like a charm. “The ship’s mine,” he shouted. “Do you realize that, Newell? A complete space ship. All mine. I can pack five hundred of my army into it and take them with me to the nearest planetary outpost; nothing will be able to stand before me.”
He was right, thought Newell. The ship was his; the peaceful colonies on unprotected planets lay open to attack. Many a lone-wolf outlaw had dreamed of revenge on society for the wrongs he imagined he had suffered, for the punishments that the innocent had inflicted on him for his crimes. Yes, Bulkley was going to make these outlaw dreams come true.
The field of battle was empty of enemies now—the few human beings still on it were dead. Bulkley took a step forward.
And the planet shook.
THE GROUND rocked and trembled under foot like a vast heap of jelly. They could feel the vibrations from some distant slide of rock strata. In the forest ahead of them, a row of trees suddenly tipped over, as if toppled by a giant hand.
Bulkley fell, his flashlight flying away from him. Newell, dropping to all fours for his own safety, made a lunge for the flashlight, his fingers closing about it. Bulkley did not notice him.
The plant-creatures had reacted in an unexpected way. Their foot-like appendages became rooted in the ground, held them firm. The wind was rising now, and as sudden gusts came blustering down upon them, they bent before it, springing up again when the pressure was released.
It was useless to try to use the lights upon them now. Newell did not know the combinations of wave lengths to which they responded, and the stimuli from the wind were now so strong as to control their movements. He saw Bulkley rise and turn to him, to shout a few words which the wind carried away, and then take a step toward him.
The ground between the two men opened up. A gulf suddenly yawned between them, a dozen feet wide and a hundred deep. Newell knew from previous experience that the earthquakes were violent, but that the series of shocks was of short duration. In a few moments, Bulkley would recover his wits, and regain control of the plant-creatures. If there was a chance to escape, Newell would have to take it now.
He tried to run, but the wind, now of hurricane force, knocked him down, and he crawled as fast as he could over the heaving ground. He could hear nothing but the howling of the wind, and up above streamers shot out of the sun, while the great disk of the flaming star itself grew dark and gloomy as the vast clouds of dust rose into the air and obscured the light.
He reached the rows of fallen trees, and began to crawl over the tops of them.
Suddenly, as suddenly as it had begun; the earthquake ended. The ground grew firm beneath the fallen trees, the heaving, as of a ship in a violent storm, came to an end. The wind still blew, but not quite with its former force. From second to second he could feel how its strength subsided. Only the clouds of dust still obscured the sun, which he knew from past experience would not regain its brightness for at least a day.
He sank down among the trees. Bulkley would soon be looking for him, desperate because of his need for more dragon-tooth seeds, more soldiers. The seeds which Newell had already prepared would not sprout, as Newell well realized, and the other man’s rage would be something fearful to behold.
In the distance Newell could see the two plastex huts, their sides cracked and twisted. Well, that damage amounted to little. Plastex Powder could be poured into the cracks for repairs, and a twisted hut, although novel in design, was just as good a shelter as one with straight sides.
But the ship—and then he realized why he could see so far ahead of him. The ship had sunk into the ground, which had opened beneath the great hull and then closed again with the power of a gigantic nut cracker. The metal hull was shattered now shattered beyond hope of repair. It was the same thing that had happened to the other space ship long before Newell and Bulkley had arrived on the planet.
He could hear the sound of Bulkley’s cursing. The man could not get off the planet now. He would have to wait for another patrol ship to come searching for the first one. His plans would have to be delayed. And for Newell, delay meant hope.
Bulkley would, he knew, send his plant-creatures to search for him from the moment the man recovered from the immediate effects of the disaster. Newell had to get further away. Only distance meant safety.
HE BEGAN to make his way through the trees, when unexpectedly the sound of human speech came to his ears.
He swung around. Indra was helping her father over a fallen tree trunk. They too had escaped. Bulkley was without human companionship now, alone with his army of plant-soldiers. And he was more desperate and more dangerous than ever.
The old man saw him and a smile broke over the old withered face. Now there was somebody else besides the old gentleman’s daughter to talk to. “Ah, my dear sir,” began Hilton. “I am pleased to see that you too have escaped. It is an ill wind that blows no good.”
“This wind didn’t do half the damage the earthquake did.”
“And those creatures.” The girl shuddered. “The slaughter was sickening. I had to turn my eyes away.”
“The slaughter will be repeated with the next patrol ship,” said Newell soberly. “Unless we find a way to stop it.”
The old pedagogue shrugged. “It was very difficult even under the previous conditions, as you well realize, Mr. Newell, to get at Bulkley. It will be doubly difficult now that we have escaped. He will undoubtedly post guards to watch for us.”
“We’ll have to think of ways of getting past them: How is that hypnotic device of yours coming along?”
“Ah I had almost forgotten. Thank you, sir, for reminding me. The fact is, that it is coming along, to use your phrase. Indeed; it is completed. It has not, however, undergone actual test, so I cannot vouch for its effectiveness.” From his pocket he pulled out what seemed like a short blunt plastex tube. “Observe.”
Newell stared at the end of the tube. He could see it begin to glow dully, turn cherry red, orange, white, and then orange and red again. The next time it raced through the spectral gamut of colors from red to violet, faded out, and seemed to retrace its steps. And all the time its intensity ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed, as pulses of energy raced one after the other through the short tube.
He was tired, Newell realized, tired of the horrifying excitement of the battle. He would like to get away from everything, forget the planet, forget Bulkley, forget the plant-creatures. He would like to rest, to sleep.
His head snapped back, and he was suddenly alert. “Take that thing away!” he shouted.
The old man chuckled with satisfaction. “Indeed, sir, this is more effective than I had thought. The combination of color change and intensity fluctuation makes it difficult for most people to resist. The exact rhythm is, of course, of great importance. It is the result of a great many experiments, a great deal of work and thought for which I, sir, cannot claim a particle of credit! The principle was first discovered by a professor of a distant system—”
“Never mind that. Mr. Hilton. The main thing is that it works.”
“Yes, it is, as I say, rather effective, even when used without the adjust of suggestion. If, in addition, sleep-suggestive words or, on occasion, syllables, are employed, successful hypnosis is almost guaranteed. If you are one of those unfortunate sufferers from insomnia, troubled sleep, inability to relax—”
For the first time that morning Newell found something to laugh at. “You don’t have to go into your Dr. Hypno spiel,” he said. “I’ll take your word for it that it works.”
THE OLD man fondled the hypnotic device, like a child with his toy. “I am rather anxious now,” he said. “to get a chance to use this on Bulkley.”
“Later, Father, later,” his daughter told him, and the old man smiled, and seemed to become absent-mindedly lost in his own thoughts, as he wandered away from them into the forest.
Newell turned to the girl, noticing now that in her haste to escape she hadn’t managed to make herself as unattractive as usual. Her clothes fitted the lithe body more snugly and disturbingly. Looking at her now, you could believe that she was the dancer who had appeared on television and aroused the enthusiasm of the inhabitants of an entire planetary system.
But her own mind did not seem to be on her appearance. She was in a serious mood as she said, “We can’t stay out here in the woods for long.”
“You mean because of your father.”
“Yes. He’s only a hundred and twenty, but he’s not in good health. And if the weather should turn bad—”
“You needn’t worry about the weather here. It’s mild all year round, and there’s little rain. It’s the wind that’s dangerous. Even when there are no earthquakes, it sometimes rises to hurricane force, and the falling trees would be deadly.”
“We’ll have to find a cleared space.”
“And we’ll have to watch out for those plant-creatures. Bulkley may send them out looking for us.”
He thought she looked troubled, but he could not read the expression in her eyes behind the lenses. Once more he reached toward her and lifted the octagonal glasses from her face. This time she did not slap him.
“You don’t really need those,” he said.
“They’ve just become a habit,” she admitted.
“Meant to keep people at a distance. But you don’t need them with me. You have your jiu jitsu.”
“Yes, I can always fall back on that.”
“I suppose I risk being thrown, head over heels if I so much as try to kiss you.”
“I’m sure that you realize that it’s happened to others before you.”
