Astounding Stories, June, 1931, Various [10 best books of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Various
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"So it's you, my sooty friend!" he snarled in English. The Plutonian, accomplished linguist, replied:
"As you see. You don't look very happy, Mr. Morones."
Morones regarded him impassively, his eyes frosty.
"That explains everything," he said at last with cold deliberation. "First Sammis, then Boyd. Going to finish me next, I suppose?"
The Plutonian twisted the end of an eyebrow and smiled.
"Interested in them?"
"What'd you do with the bodies?"
The Plutonian jerked his thumb carelessly. "The river you call the Blue is swift and deep. But before you follow them there is certain information I wish to get from you. Where is the soldier who came to visit you?"
A crafty light came into Morones' face.
"He is not far from here, waiting for me."
lear, in his cramped hiding place, could not help feeling a warm glow of admiration for Morones' nerve, because Morones thought him well on his way to Earth.
"Nargyll, what did your master do with the visitor?"
"Drove him back to the Green Star," Nargyll said promptly.
"And the oxygen tanks. Did you empty them?"
"I let them hiss." Nargyll's grin was sharkish.
"News to you, eh, Morones? Your[384] officer's corpse has probably dropped into the sun by this time. Tell me, why did you drive him off?"
Morones sagged perceptibly. To gain a little time he said truthfully:
"I knew I should be blamed and ruined for life. I didn't know you were here, damn you! I hoped to get this mess with the natives straightened up before he'd come back with reinforcements."
"Yes. Well, you owe some months of life already. Your presence here has been more or less embarrassing, but I had to let you live or I'd have had the whole I. F. P. here to investigate. Now that you've failed in keeping them from getting interested you may do me one more service." The black giant grinned.
"I've often wondered at the Earthman's prestige all over the solar system. Even to-night, soft and helpless as you are, these natives fear you. You will, therefore, be an object lesson in the helplessness of Earthmen."
orones was pale but courageous. With contempt in every line of him he watched some of the less frightened chiefs, at the command of the Plutonian, push aside some of the blazing blocks of fungus on the stone, to make room for his body. At last he raised his hand.
"Frogfolk!" he cried, "if ye do this thing, the Lords of the Green Star will come. They will come with fires hotter than the sun; they will blast your rivers with a power greater than the thunder of the ringstorms; they will fill your caves with a purple smoke that turns your bones to water—"
Shrill cries of fear almost drowned out his words. All the Mercurians had seen evidences of the dreadful power of the Earthmen. They began milling around, then stood rooted by the roar of the Plutonian's voice.
"Lies! Lies!" he bellowed. "See, they are weak as egglets!" He stepped down, picked Morones up by one shoulder, and held him, dangling, high over the heads of all. Morones clawed and tore at the brawny arm. He made a ludicrous picture. Soon the simple natives made a sniffling sound of mirth, and the Plutonian, satisfied at last, set him down again.
"He tells truth!" The Old Wise One had climbed to the top of the stone block. "The Lords of the Green Star have their power not in their bodies, but it is great. It is greater far than the frogfolk. It is greater than the Lords of the Outer Orbit. They will come even as the surly one has said, and great shall be our sorrow. It is not yet too late. Release him, and deliver to him the white sap. Seize this evil one—"
The feeble, fickle minds were being swayed again. In a gust of impatience, the Plutonian stepped down, seized the aged chief's skinny body in his great black hands, and snapped him in two. There was a tearing of tough cords and tissue, and the two halves fell into the fire.
For an instant the Mercurians were stunned. Then some of them vented hissing sounds of rage, while others prostrated themselves on the floor. The black giant watched them narrowly for a moment, then turned his attention to Morones. He seized him by the arm and drew him slowly and irresistibly to him.
he murder of the Old Wise One had been done so quickly that Olear was unable to prevent it. Had he been able to use his ray weapon he could have burned the Plutonian down, but it had been bent at one of the narrow turns of the crevice he had come down. The need for extreme lightness in weapons was rather overdone in those early times, and a little rough handling made them useless.[385]
So now Olear, weaponless except for the service knife at his belt, began the hazardous undertaking of climbing among the stalactites to a position approximately above the Plutonian's head. The job required judgment. Some of the stone masses were insecurely anchored and would crash down at the lightest touch. Some were spaced so closely together that he could not get between them. Others were so far apart that it was difficult to get from one to another.
Yet he made it somehow, and unnoticed, for all eyes were turned on the tense drama being enacted below. From almost directly overhead he saw Morones being drawn upward.
"You saw," the Plutonian was saying triumphantly in Mercurian, "—you saw me unmake your Old Fool. And now you will see that a Lord of the Green Star is even softer, even weaker—"
Morones, in that pitiless grasp, turned his face to the hateful grinning visage above him. In his last extremity he was still angry.
"You devil!" Morones shouted. "You may murder me, but they'll get you! They'll get you!"
"Who'll get me?" the Plutonian purred silkily, deferring the pleasure of the kill for another moment. Morones was having trouble with his breathing. His red face lolled from side to side, his eyes rolled in agony. Suddenly he saw Olear. Unbelieving, he relaxed.
"I'm seein' things!" he breathed.
"Who'll get me?" persisted the Plutonian, applying a little more pressure.
"The I. F. P.!" Morones gasped.
"Well, you little son-of-a-gun!" Olear thought, and then he jumped.
He landed a-straddle the neck of the Plutonian, which was almost like forking a horse. One brawny arm seized a horn. The other, with a lightning-swift dart, brought the point of the long service-knife to the pulsing black throat.
"Put him down!" Olear spoke into the great pointed ear. "Easy!"
Back on his feet, Morones began bellowing at the Mercurians. Utterly demoralized, they fled pell-mell. Morones came back. He said:
"Nothing to tie him up with."
"That's all right," Olear replied, studiously keeping the knife point at exactly the right place, "I'll ride him in. Get going, you, and be tactful when you go through the door, or this sticker of mine might slip!" With extreme care the Plutonian did exactly as Olear ordered him to.
t was necessary to radio for one of the larger patrol ships to take Olear's enormous prisoner back to Earth for his trial. The officer testified, of course, and the Plutonian was duly sentenced to death for the murder of the old Mercurian. Execution by dehydration was decreed, so that the body would be uninjured for scientific study; and to-day it is considered one of the finest specimens extant.
In his testimony, however, Olear so minimized his own connection with the case that he received no public recognition. It was not until some months afterward, when Morones, on leave, rode back with a shipload of translucene, that the whole story came out, emphatically and profanely. Olear finally consented to speak a few words for the Telephoto News Co. As he stepped off the little platform deferential hands tried to push him back.
"You haven't told them who you are," protested the announcer. "Give your name and rank."
"Aw, they don't have to know that!" Olear rejoined, keeping on going. "They know it's one of the Force. That's all they have to know. Besides there's a blackjack game going on and I'm losing money every minute I'm out of it."
[1] In their various languages, almost all solar races call Earth "The Green Star." Although conditions on Mercury are unfavorable, Earth can be seen from the dark star, on mountain tops, during occasional dispersals of the cloud masses.
[2] The Mercurians had no conception of time before the Earthmen came. A "phase" is the time between calls of the freight ships, and is therefore variable; but in those days it was about six or seven months.
[386]
The Exile of Time PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL By Ray Cummings
"Look!" exclaimed Larry.
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
here came a girl's scream, and muffled, frantic words.
"Let me out! Let me out!"
Then we saw her white face at the basement window. This, which was the start of the extraordinary incidents, occurred on the night of June 8-9, 1935.
My name is George Rankin, and with my friend, Larry Gregory, we rescued the girl who was imprisoned in the deserted house on Patton Place, New York City. We thought at first that she was demented—this strangely beautiful girl in long white satin dress, white powdered wig and a black beauty patch on her check. She said she had come from the year 1777, that her father[387] was Major Atwood, of General Washington's staff! Her name was Mistress Mary Atwood.
It was a strange story she had to tell us. A cage of shining metal bars had materialized in her garden, and a mechanical man had come from it—a Robot ten feet tall. It had captured her; brought her to 1935; left her, and vanished saying it would return.
We went back to that house on Patton Place. The cage did return, and Larry and I fought the strange monster. We were worsted, and the Robot seized Mary and me and whirled us back into Time in its room-like cage of shining bars.[388] Larry recovered his senses, rushed into Patton Place, and there encountered another, smaller, Time-traveling cage, and was himself taken off in it.
But the occupants of Larry's smaller cage were friendly. They were a man and a girl of 2930 A.D.! The girl was the Princess Tina, and the man, Harl, a young scientist of that age. With an older scientist—a cripple named Tugh—Harl had invented the Time-vehicles.
e had heard of Tugh before. Mary Atwood had known him in the year 1777. He had made love to her, and when repulsed had threatened vengeance against her father. And in 1932, a cripple named Tugh had gotten into trouble with the police and had vowed some strange weird vengeance against the city officials and the city itself. More than that, the very house on Patton Place from which we had rescued Mary Atwood, was owned by this man named Tugh, who was wanted by the police but could not be found!
Tugh's vengeance was presently demonstrated, for in June, 1935, a horde of Robots appeared. With flashing swords and red and violet light beams the mechanical men spread about the city massacring the people; they brought midsummer snow with their frigid red rays; and then, in a moment, torrid heat and boiling rain. Three days and nights of terror ensued; then the Robots silently withdrew into the house on Patton Place and vanished. The New York City of 1935 lay wrecked; the vengeance of Tugh against it was complete.
Larry, going back in Time now, was told by Harl and Princess Tina that a Robot named Migul—a mechanism almost human from the Time-world of 2930—had stolen the larger cage and was running amuck through Time. The strange world of 2930 was described to Larry—a world in which nearly-human mechanisms did all the work. These Robots, diabolically developed, were upon the verge of revolt. The world of machinery was ready to assail its human masters!
Migul was an insubordinate Robot, and Harl and Tina were chasing it. They whirled Larry back into Time, and they saw the larger cage stop at a night in the year 1777—the same night from which Mary
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