Synthetic Men

by Ed Earl Repp

  Then Kaley’s voice tugged at Dave’s attention. “Funny that young upstart of yours didn’t come along,” he probed thoughtfully. “I’d better have a look, Garth. It would be convenient to have the whole gang right here where we can finish them at our leisure.”

  Desperation snagged through the young scientist. He shot a wild look about. The stairway was devoid of shelter. Kaley’s steps thudded nearer. With a groan of despair, Dave swung under the rail of the stairway and grabbed the edge of the step. He swung down.

  Underneath the staircase were a number of ragged bolt-ends. Gripping a pair of them firmly, he let himself dangle there a good thirty feet from the floor.

  Kaley could be heard to pass down the stairs a flight and then pause. At last, when blood was trickling down the physicist’s arms from the gashing of ragged metal, he returned.

  “No sign of him,” was his decision. “Give that wheel another quarter turn. Garth. I want this—”

  His words broke with the slamming of the door. Instantly Dave had scrambled back to safety. Without a second’s pause, he raced back down the stairway and plunged into the tunnel, closing it behind him.

  He was sick with the dread that he could not reach the Jovians in time to save them and Helen from cremation. Stronger still was the certainty that he could never get help back to save his father and the old prospectors from a horrible end . . .

  CHAPTER VI

  The Last Attack

  The tunnel had grown almost unbearably hot even before he reached the caverns. He stumbled along in a half-daze, sweat oozing from his tortured body, and his lungs spasmodically caving and swelling with each rasping breath.

  Helen was the first to see him when he staggered into the main room. “Dave!” she cried. She came running across the cavern to him. And even in the poor light, he could see the wild desperation in her face. Worry, pain, terror, burned in her eyes.

  For a moment Dave held her tightly in the circle of his arms. Then Marnok’s excited words brought him back to reality.

  “What’s happened? The heat—it’s killed a dozen already! Did you find–—”

  “We found Kaley and Garth in the control room,” Dave bit out. “They captured them but didn’t see me. Garth has the power on to the four-hundred foot point for small weapons. They’re trying to burn you to carbon from the surface.”

  “Four—hundred—feet!” the ruler gasped. “He’ll ignite the whole Tower! The walls are insulated to stand only forty units. That power is equal to sixty!”

  “But in case he doesn’t cremate the lot of them,” Dave suggested tersely, “I propose we get back and take the city while the Korlons are out. Or—are you ready to fight yet?”

  Marnok’s eyes dropped. “We have been weak,” he said. “Fighting was unknown to us. But we are ready now! Tell us what we must do.”

  Fifty voices—voices that dinned in Dave’s mind, though the cavern was almost silent—greeted his statement. Crude weapons and rocks were brandished by eager Jovians. They crowded the exit tunnel so that Dave could scarcely control them.

  So they advanced, Dave and Marnok in the lead, Helen and the Jovian women in back. Five more died from the cruel, blistering heat of the smoking walls before they had reached the Tower of Light once more.

  They poured from the trap door like ants. The thunder of their charging up the stairs shook the tower. Dave sprinted in the front of the phalanx. The entire Tower of Light was softly aglow with the overload of Arthonite upon it. The column that had been bronze now gleamed like burnished gold.

  Then suddenly Dave was shouting a warning as the door to the control room flew open. Brand Kaley and the monster, Garth, stepped out with pistols in each fist.

  They commenced firing without warning. Half a dozen screaming shots burst among the invaders. Dave felt the death concussion of one of the bolts buffet him. Ten of the Jovians tumbled over the side of the stairs. Now a change came over the faces of the defenders. Garth glanced at his weapons, shaking them. Unexpectedly, he flung them at the attackers. The answer sprang into Dave’s mind.

  The overload on the tower burnt out the delicate mechanism of the guns!

  Three hurtling shapes burst from the room behind them. Bill Harrigan launched a headlong dive at Garth, his big hands outstretched. But the giant Korlon nimbly sidestepped the prospector and gained the room. Kaley followed him. The great door thundered shut. Bars clattered into place.

  For ten minutes the Jovians battered at the door with rocks and fists, before they gave up. And then it was only because Marnok, glancing down into the city, saw the Korlon hordes returning!

  In an instant they were racing down the steps once more, with Dave’s shout ringing in their ears: “Get out of the city. In the open we may have a chance!”

  At least, the Korlons had no weapons either, now. But the Earthmen could not help wonder, when they compared the Jovian slender forms with the rugged, brute bodies of the monsters . . .

  A shout beat up from the Korlons when they caught sight of their fleeing enemies. Four hundred strong, they swerved down the streets after them. Apprehension built heavily in Dave Weston. His father and the older Jovians were weakening fast. Somehow, he must find craft to supplant brawn.

  Up ahead yawned the open gate of the city. Courage seemed to warm his veins with the sight of the broken, weird landscape of the desert. Out there they could lead them a chase for hours, dodging, weaving, doubling back. Dave settled on a desperate chance.

  Working close to Marnok, he panted: “Lead your people down the next side-street. We’ll decoy the Korlons outside. Wait a few minutes, then go back and try to break into the tower. It’s our only chance.”

  Marnok nodded grimly. As soon as a corner had separated them from the view of the monsters, he led his faithful band back into the heart of the city. Dave, his father, Helen, and the two old timers sped on into the maze of peaks and hollows. The drumming roar of pursuit was, paradoxically, a satisfying sound in their ears.

  But Dave had not counted on his father’s being so wasted with his horrible week in the caverns. Twice he fell and had to be helped to his feet. At each stumbling stride, the Korlons slashed the gap smaller. Helen was as lithe and fleet as an antelope. Bill and Mac blew like grampuses but kept up their end of the deal. Just after the five of them won the top of a plateau, a new element rose up to stagger them.

  From the Tower of Light came a hissing roar. A huge pit appeared at the side of the runners. Charles Weston groaned. “The long range gun! We haven’t a chance!”

  “I’d give my hopes of findin’ a pay streak a mile wide to have one chance at Kaley,” gasped Mac Barwell. “Bad News’d fill him so full of lead he’d sink in his own tallow.”

  “It’s just like I said,” Harrigan pronounced dolefully, “things alius turn out for the worst. You can’t beat bad luck; when it’s on you, it’s on you.”

  The Korlons stopped, giving them an opportunity to rest. But rest was denied them by the earth-shaking force of the Arthonite bolts. Time and again they were all hurled to the ground. Dirt covered them from head to foot.

  Helen struggled up from a particularly narrow escape. “Maybe we could make it out of the valley,” she suggested.

  “And be shrivelled up like ants on a hot stove,” Dave grunted. “It looks like the game is Kaley’s. Marnok couldn’t have reached the tower yet.” On the point of struggling on again, he panted wearily, “Dad, you decide. Shall we spend our last minutes ducking Kaley’s cannon-shots, or end it quick by leaving?”

  Charles Weston swayed on his feet. His face was gray with horror. But his reply was never to come. For suddenly an eager light kindled in his tired eyes. “Look!” he shouted. “The tower—it’s on fire!”

  All eyes swung to the slender spire.

  Mac Barwell swallowed.

  “Wash my britches in sheep-dip!” he hackled. “It looks like a branding iron left in the fire too long!”

  The description was an apt one. The rings of Arthonite glowed
with an unearthly green light, while the tower itself had become a ruby red. The heat of it was terrible to contemplate.

  Silence, complete and empty, blanketed over Lost Valley. The Korlons slowly turned to watch the thing their greed was doing. Hungry flames licked up and down the side of the Tower of Light. The tall windows melted, the molten glass creeping like tears down the walls.

  The great tower commenced to warp, to bend and buckle. Then two tiny figures appeared at the top of the structure. They leaped, arms and legs flying wildly. Halfway to the ground, they struck one of the Arthonite rings. Twin puffs of white smoke went up. It was as though a pair of luckless flies had run into a live wire.

  Seconds later, a thin cry drifted across the valley to their ears. Brand Kaley had died with his wealth unspent.

  The Tower of Light slowly sank in a twisting fall. And as it crashed across the city, a strange thing took place.

  The harsh green light faded. A shadow passed over the watchers. Between them and the city a shimmering, iridescent veil stretched, covering the city like a dome. Dave whirled, afraid of the thing he was to see.

  Behind them loomed the Last Chance Mountains! Clear and gaunt in the late afternoon light, they towered over the valley of death. Everywhere was the familiar, barren aspect of Death Valley. Rock and shrub and mountain range, they testified plainly to the tragedy. With the destruction of much of the Arthonite, the plane had shrunk, leaving them . . . outside the veil!

  They stood there like prisoners awaiting the firing squad. Not a word was spoken. Suddenly Dave awoke to the realization that the Korlons had ceased to move. He peered closely at them. In scattered heaps, they lay over the valley’s floor—dead. Not a limb stirred. With the first ray of sunlight, their bodies had shrivelled.

  A pulse began to pound in his head. “Dead!” he whispered. Then: “Dad! Helen! The Korlons—they’re dead and we’re—we’re alive. The cosmic rays haven’t hurt us!”

  Out of a long silence came Charles Weston’s voice. “Marnok was wrong. It must take years for Arthonite’s weak radiations to affect the body. Thank God for that! But Marnok and his people—I wonder . . .”

  Together they went down the slope and wound through the rocky terrain to the shining plane. Fearlessly, this time, they stepped through it. It was almost dark inside. The gap in the city wall was before them, and they hurried toward it.

  Scarcely had they gained the broad streets when Marnok and a few Jovians appeared around a corner, hurrying toward them.

  The tall ruler seemed tremendously relieved. “We feared for you!” he said. “Had you been left outside the dome when it shrank—”

  Weston smiled. “That is just what did happen,” he explained. “But the only ones who suffered were the Korlons. Marnok, my friend, there isn’t a man of them left.”

  The coppery face lighted up. “I am glad,” Marnok said simply. “For you, especially. There is nothing to prevent you from returning home once more.”

  “But what about yourselves?” Dave asked. “The Tower of Light is gone. What will keep the protective rays from dying out now?”

  “Nothing.” Marnok spoke rather sadly, yet hope still shone in his countenance. “Within fifty years not an atom of the metal will remain. But by that time many Jovians will have been born and reared in shells of lead. They will have been transplanted into your world, to learn new things and teach you all we have learned.”

  Dave nodded understandingly. “We’ll find you some place a little better than Death Valley to live in, too, where you can get water and food without making a lifelong job of it.”

  Charles Weston glanced anxiously toward the outside of the city. Obviously, he was impatient to hurry back and astound the scientific world.”

  Marnok smiled. “We will have many more meetings, you and I,” he told them. “Now we both have much to do. Until you return, my friends—”

  His hand lifted in salute that the others acknowledged in kind. Then they were striding back through the shining veil to look for the burros. Bill was muttering about the long walk confronting them. Then he suddenly remembered something else.

  “God!” he exploded. “Almost had my hands on a hunk of it the size of a battleship, and let it get away from me.

  It’s like I always say—”

  “What use you got for gold?” Mac snorted. “All you’d do is buy burros and rotgut and go lookin’ for more—like always. You got no kick comin’, you cantankerous old varmint. You’re lucky to have a whole skin!”

  The End

  ************************************

  Obituary and Autobiographical Sketch,

  {from Starship, Summer 1979}

  ED EARL REPP DIES

  Ed Earl Repp died February 19, 1979, at the age of 78. Repp was one of the most prolific writers of the SF pulp era. Dick Lupoff, who talked to him late in 1978, writes, “In the course of the interview, he mentioned how he got involved with writing fiction. I.e., in his work as a motion picture publicist, he met a number of novelists whose books had become films.

  “He met Edgar Rice Burroughs publicizing a Tarzan movie. Burroughs took a shine to him, suggested that he try writing fiction, and specifically recommended science fiction, because 'that’s where the money is.’ Repp also met Zane Grey, and had an almost identical experience with him, except that Grey recommended westerns—'that’s where the money is.'

  “According to the Day and Metcalf indexes, Repp sold something like 55 stories to the science fiction magazines. As far as I know, only one of them is currently in print: “Kleon of the Golden Sun” in the Zebra Books paperback of the FPCI anthology Science and Sorcery edited by Garret Ford.... Repp’s two SF collections, The Radium Pool and The Stellar Missiles, are still available from FPCI also, I think.

  “But most of his writing was in westerns. He showed me bound volumes of western pulp magazines where he filled entire issues under a variety of by-lines, as well as an impressive row of books under the names Ed Earl Repp and Peter Field. His last important writing, he said, was half a dozen screenplays for the old Lone Ranger TV series, although he continued to turn out occasional short pieces of non-fiction (Western Americana) right up to the time of his death.”

  — Richard Lupoff

  MY LIFE by Ed Earl Repp

  I had no special training except newspaper work, publicity and theatrical advertising.

  Two years of high school during which my English teacher—Miss Clements—bless her—declared I would never be able to write my own name. She was right.

  For training all I had was much deep reading of the type of copy I wanted to write and—feature writing for the L.A. Examiner and L.A. Times and Daily News.

  I went on scientific expeditions into the desert and into many digs with Mark Raymond Harrington, noted archaeologist, and on some paleontological searches with groups from Cal-Tech, for story material and experience, resulting in features for the press.

  Via the press route I learned what makes a story and how it is constructed—how when where who and all the details. You write a story with a sympathetic character in fiction. In news you write the truth without the fictional dramatization and flourish. You stay in a straight line and if you get off it your reader is lost. No sale.

  My career evidently was decided for me by an accident and the encouragement of my doctor—the famous Bonesetter Reese of Ohio who corrected my multiple-fractured right arm and saved it from amputation. Since the damage left me out of manual labor or such trades existing today, I had to take up a desk job as a bookkeeper or writer. I always wanted the latter and chose it.

  The opportunity came as a press agent for various movie stars and Warner Bros. studios, the old one on Sunset Blvd. There I met such folks as Bryan Foy, Walt Disney, Jack Warner, Hal Wallis et cetera. I handled publicity for such people as Al Jolson in the first sound picture and John Barrymore in The Sea Beast, I learned more story construction and how to write screenplays. Jolson was in The Jazz Singer.

  When later I wa
s a western novelist, about ten years later—Warner Bros. producer Bryan Foy bought six of my western books for star Dick Foran and employed me to write the scripts. So began my motion picture writing career.

  Going back to the 1920’s, I wrote science fiction and was fortunate to sell my first one to Hugo Gernsback who in return gave me a deal for 24 similar stories per year for Amazing Stories, Amazing Detective and his other publications. That was in 1929 and I did my work in a bedroom as I still do today covering western history which I like since it is so much like my original love of feature writing for newspapers. I enjoyed the personal action of press work, the slam-bang makeup of the editorial rooms in preparing to publish a newspaper.

  Along with science fiction, I wrote westerns and adventure stories, sometimes doing a novelette in a day and a night without pause except to eat, for such publishers as Dell, Street and Smith, Popular and most all of the rest of the pulps under my own and several pen names such as Brad Buckner, John Cody, Peter Field, etc.

  Whoever said writing was a lazy man’s job, is without knowledge or savvy. You work on a yarn, you sweat blood over it and almost die of uncertainty if it will sell or not. It’s a great life if—! ! ! ! !

  I have not done any science fiction since back in the 1940’s and have no desire to do so at present.

  Honestly your space and time could go to a more deserving writer who is now active in serious work. I have no desire for publicity. Have had my day and grant this interview only as a favor to Richard Lupoff a modern, present day science fiction author.

  At 78 I have had a couple of heart bumps along with a lung problem diagnosed as emphysema resulting from years of cigarette smoking. I am supposed to walk lightly and keep my powder dry.