The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves

by Festus Pragnell

  “Why doesn’t he use the television? My portable set would relay your message, whatever it is, in an instant. And what are you, a woman, doing in the uniform of a soldier?”

  He had penetrated her disguise, at least partly. Don’s deathray flashed out, focus turned right back, intensity at half strength. The officer fell unconscious at once, and so did the soldiers in front of them.

  Most of the marching men had turned the next corner, and before they realized what had happened and turned to attack the two, Don and Wimpolo had run round the next corner and jumped into the window of the first house. The soldiers could not stay to search long: their presence was needed to help their hard-pressed comrades in the thick of the battle.

  The house was empty. Through the window they saw apes pass, hunting for men, and they saw men pass, hunting for apes.

  An ape-man crept toward a soldier. The ape aimed the ray, lever full on. He pressed the button. But the soldier did not fall. Instead, he turned and fired at the ape with a thread ray pistol. The ape fell, a hole as neat and round as a penny drilled in his chest. A small cloud of dust, looking like smoke, floated in the air.

  A sudden thought made Don try his own deathray. It was out of action. Bommelsmeth had turned on his blanketing ray, which short-circuited deathray boxes. But his own soldiers still had their threadray pistols, which were unaffected. It was Bommelsmeth’s trump-card for just such a situation as this.

  “Now the ape-men will all be killed before long,” Don said.

  “There is one way we might possibly help them,” Wimpolo said.

  “What is it?”

  “If we could put out the lights of the city,” said Wimpolo. “That would create confusion and give the apes an advantage.”

  “Can we do it?”

  “If one is short-circuited it will put them out over a large area,” she said. She turned to the zekolo and pointed upwards. “Break, destroy, kill,” she said. But the creature only snapped its pincers together, not understanding. It could see no one on the roofs to kill.

  “Give me your sword,” she said to Don. Then, to the zekolo, “Climb, carry me.”

  At once a pincer lifted her onto its back, and another reached out to grip the wall above. Soon it was going up like a spider, carrying her.

  Don watched, heart in mouth. If a soldier saw her now he had no deathray to defend her with. The street lights stuck out from the roofs of the buildings, at an angle. Wimpolo’s figure was draped across one, the zekolo holding her in case she fell. She looked very small up there, but her shadow was enormous. He heard his sword ring against something. There was a sudden burst, a flash of flame, and fragments fell in the street.

  Suddenly the place was in darkness.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Bommelsmeth Again

  VANS HOLORS put on the uniform of a dead soldier, and when the confusion began he walked boldly into the city. The guards at the gate were too busy to challenge him.

  His army had melted into the confusion of the streets and a thousand obscure scraps raged in dark corners. More than half had been killed outside the city, he reckoned, but innumerable recruits had joined it inside. Vans had lost what little control he had over them. They were shouting, “Death to all humans!” and he knew that they would ray him down as soon as they saw him.

  Vans did not like this sort of fighting, this peeping round corners and hiding in doorways and on roofs to aim deathrays. So that when an officer demanded to know who he was Vans felt quite happy as he struck the man a sideways blow with his flat hand, cracking his skull. That was how fighting should be done, Vans thought.

  “You should not be so inquisitive. Got your ears boxed,” he said. “That’ll teach you not to ask awkward questions.”

  He stepped over the body and walked on.

  But he had to use his deathray several times before he went very far. He was wearing his badges upside down and in the wrong places. They were mixed up, too. It was as though an Earth soldier wore a Sergeant’s stripes on his arm, a Captain’s badges on his shoulder, and on his head the hat of a Midshipman in the navy. Every soldier who came near him knew at once that there was something wrong. Vans was very puzzled at this. He thought his disguise perfect, yet these men all saw through it at once.

  He saw a soldier coming toward him. Anticipating the man’s suspicion, he flicked the deathray switch. The soldier did not fall, but came on. For a second or so Vans, who hardly knew fear, was frightened. Was the man immortal, impervious to the deadly ray? Then he remembered Bommelsmeth’s blanketing ray, and realized that the deathray had become discharged.

  “What are you doing with that box?” demanded the soldier.

  “Oh!” said Vans, trying to smile disarmingly, “I didn’t see you there. I was just testing the valves. I had the lever at safety.”

  “It’s not at safety now,” said the soldier. “It’s at full, lethal strength. I believe that you tried to murder me.”

  A hard, calculating look came into the man’s eye. His left hand moved.

  “He’s got something in that pocket,” thought Vans, and his left hand shot out with a speed that looked impossible for one so slow and heavy. The Martian fell, his neck broken, just as the threadray pistol touched Vans’ chest.

  “That was the closest thing in my life yet,” thought Vans. “What is this funny pistol with the tiny ray that burns?”

  He experimented with it, pressing buttons, and gasped in amazement as he saw a house on the other side of the street, cut in halves diagonally, collapsed in thunder and smoke.

  “Burning ray,” he decided. “Hand generator. Dirty way of fighting.”

  He wondered why it was so cold to handle, and why it started no fires. Things melted away in smoke and dust, but no fire broke out when the ray was turned off. Cold fire, he thought. Queer.

  SUDDENLY he came on a triple fence of barbed wire. Inside the wire were Vans’ neighbors from Selketh. Above them the ray-producer, like a searchlight, pointed down. As yet it had produced no apparent change in them. They wondered why they were kept here, obviously subjected to the effects of some mysterious force.

  A cold rage rose in Vans’ throat. His sparring partners were there, his chums, and a Martian girl he was sweet on, standoffish though she was. He would show her what sort of a fellow Vans Holors was.

  It would not be easy, though, to get the better of over a dozen guards at the gate in the wire. The situation needed careful handling.

  He put on a broad smile, grinning all over his face. But another man of his own profession would have seen the bleak, stony look in his eyes, and would have known that the grin was a mask. He was going forward to kill, and against odds. His hands were empty, and he walked with a careless swagger. Within the wire fence the people of Selketh whispered to one another, “It is Vans!” Those who were fans of his waited confidently for a miracle. Others, knowing his reputation for poor intelligence, looked for him to be killed.

  Vans knew the faith of his fans. He would not let them down, he resolved. He hoped the girl was watching. She might change her opinion of him, even if he could not keep pace with her friends. Silent, tongue-tied Vans would show her he had his uses, after all.

  “Hey, chums!” he called to the soldiers. “There’s been great fighting, back there. Great fun we’re having. I killed a dozen apes myself. Don’t you find it slow here?”

  The officers in charge gaped in bewilderment at this amazing soldier. Never before had a man of Bommelsmeth talked in this way. What rank was the fellow? According to his queer assortment of misplaced badges, the burly soldier in the ill-fitting uniform held a dozen ranks at once.

  “Who are you? What are you doing?” an officer snapped.

  “I have an important message for you,” said Vans, smoothly. “Straight from the big chief.”

  “I’ll have you shot, calling our emperor the big chief,” barked the officer. “Give your message.”

  Quite slowly and casually, Vans put his hand in his pocket. His h
uge hand covered the threadray pistol completely. The officer tried to snatch the supposed message from him. Vans avoided his hands, brought the ray pistol level with the officer’s nose.

  “Read that! Smell that!” said Vans, in another, exultant voice.

  FOR a fraction of an instant the officer knew that he was straight into the ugly eye of death. Then Vans’ ray drilled through his brain, melting away nerve-cells much too quickly for the slow chemical changes we know as pain. To the officer it seemed that the whole universe dissolved in a great flood of light and a loud roaring noise. There was a hole the size of a penny neatly drilled through his head, and in the air a cloud of cold smoke and steam, smelling like a joint of meat cooking in an oven.

  Without haste, Vans moved the threadray right and left. It cut like a knife. Flesh and bone poured like water. There was much steam, for flesh is mostly water, and a strong smell of cooking. One Martian was cut through the middle, another’s arm was cut off, another’s legs, another’s head. The ray returned and finished off those who were not obviously dead.

  “Have to get mother to sew you together again,” he exulted.

  Vans seized the massive gate and wrenched at it, not stopping to think that the threadray would have saved him the trouble. His enormous strength tore down the gate at once.

  “Come on out,” he roared. “Vans Holors has set you free.”

  Nobody moved. There were four gates to the enclosure, a dozen guards to each. Vans had attended to only one. At each of the other three soldiers were jumping to their feet in alarm, bringing threadray pistols to bear.

  On a high building like a sort of watchtower two huge ray generators swung round. One was a cohesion-neutralizing ray, the other a nerve-stopping deathray that had been shielded from the discharging beam. A score of threads of red fire struck the ground around Vans, moved toward him. The ground boiled, but there was no smoke. One touched his shoulder glancingly, and he was puzzled that, although the ray was cold, yet, when it touched him, it felt burning hot.

  He was surrounded by the deadly threads of imitation red fire. He ducked instinctively as something seared his head.

  All at once, the light went out. Complete darkness fell over everything, except for those menacing threads of red. Vans dodged through them, for now they were still. The operators of the rays could not see their target.

  The people of Selketh poured out in the darkness.

  “Vans!” called a feminine voice.

  “Olla!” he replied.

  “My hero!” she whispered, throwing her arms round him.

  She had once thought him an uncouth, brutal, ignorant man. Now he seemed to her handsome, witty, dignified, everything a man should be, a man for all girls to worship in dumb admiration. Just that much difference had the evolution-reversing ray made to her. She had lost a little of her refinement. Vans looked different to her now. And she was happy, not knowing of any change in herself.

  DON and Wimpolo went through the darkened city. When they came to the edge of the darkened area Wimpolo pointed to a light and whispered to the zekolo, “Light! Smash!” The creature, having seen Wimpolo perform, knew now what to do. Soon another section of the city was in darkness.

  Searchlights glared, trying to pierce the gloom. They dazzled more than they helped. Little else but headlights on the helmets of soldiers lighted the gloom, an these soon went out. To show them was to ask for a huge stone or an iron club to come hurtling at one out of the darkness.

  In the blackness the apes ruled supreme. They could pick out their foes by smell or by the sound of their breathing. The confused fighting swung the way of the apes again. Presently even the searchlights on the roofs went out, for ape-men, climbing silently up the walls of the houses, overwhelmed the crews of the lights by hurling stones at them, or iron clubs.

  Soon, utter blackness reigned over wide sections of the city. In the dark were none to dispute the reign of the beast. And the zekolo added section after section.

  Abruptly, Don and Wimpolo came upon a company of soldiers, each with a bright searchlight in his hand. They were marching in mass formation, trying to restore some order in the darkened parts of the city. Their lights blazed all round them. An ape hurled a huge stone at them from a rooftop. A searchlight picked it out, and before it could escape a threadray cut out a section of the top of the wall, the ape falling with it.

  “Haven’t you got a searchlight?” the officer in charge snapped at Wimpolo. “It’s as good as suicide to walk the streets with only a little headlamp. Go to the big sub, at once. Lights are being handed out there.”

  Wimpolo hurried along the streets. In the uncertain glare of the flashing searchlights none suspected that she was a woman. On the wall of the buildings the zekolo, like a huge spider, kept pace with her, Don on its back. An ape on a roof poised a stone to hurl at Wimpolo. An arm of the zekolo, stretching incredibly, snatched that ape off the roof and hurled it into the street.

  They reached the docks where the big sub lay. The place was such a blaze of lights that the failure of the city’s illumination was not noticed. They dared not enter the brightly illuminated dock. Soldiers were arriving here, being handed out searchlights, and marching away in squads of twenty, an officer in charge of each squad.

  “I have an idea,” Don whispered.

  He gave the command, “Hoddors!” to the zekolo. The creature slid over a darkened quayside into the water. Its pincers lifted Don and Wimpolo down, onto its back. It swam between mighty hulls. Presently Don whispered the word. They went swiftly over the edge, and dropped into the cargo hold where Don had stowed away on the journey here.

  ABOUT half the cargo had been offloaded. The metal plate that Don and the zekolo had pried loose was still open. They went through the hold where the people of Selketh had lain imprisoned, first helping themselves to re-charged deathray boxes from the cargo hold. They were the boxes that Vans and he had re-charged for their break which failed to come off. In here they were shielded from the blanketing ray.

  The door through which the prisoners had been fed was open. They went along a corridor. A sentry, hearing a slight noise, turned. He had time to open his mouth halfway before he fell, his intended shout a mere gurgle.

  They stepped through a door. Another sentry gaped, and fell. Two others were in front of a cabin door.

  “Bommelsmeth’s room,” Wimpolo whispered.

  The two sentries fell, caught unawares.

  Wimpolo laid a hand on the door, opened suddenly. Don walked in, raybox ready.

  A lean man, a haggard, desperate look in his eyes, sat at a table before a huge television view of the darkened city. He wore the regalia of Emperor and overlord of all Mars.

  “You are my prisoner, King Bommelsmeth,” said Don, coming to the point at once.

  CHAPTER IX

  The Return

  BOMMELSMETH stared in open-mouthed amazement at the tiny Earthling.

  “You, you little worm?” he gasped. Then Wimpolo entered. Two deathays menaced Bommelsmeth.

  “I see,” Bommelsmeth said, quietly. “Me, Emperor of Mars, beaten by a tiny man from Earth and a woman.” He laughed a cracked sort of laugh. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Return us in safety to where we came from.”

  “I seem to have no choice,” said Bommelsmeth, with a resigned shrug. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. A party of your people from Selketh are marching here now in mass formation. They escaped from my prison camp, and they are fighting their way here. It has been magnificent to watch. They have nothing but stones and a few threadray guns they have picked up on the way. Whenever they meet any of my soldiers or ape-men they all throw their stones and fire the rays they have together.

  “By standing solidly together they have overcome all opposition so far. But as they reach the dock gates my big shielded ray machines will mop them up. I will give orders that they are to be allowed on board this sub, and that the distribution of searchlight is to go on from other subs. Then the Selke
th people can take charge of the sub, and return home safely in it.”

  “With you as our prisoner?”

  “If you insist.”

  “Very well then,” Wimpolo said. Bommelsmeth operated his television.

  Alert for trickery, Don and Wimpolo watched. Bommelsmeth gave the orders. In the television they saw Bommelsmeth’s men leave the sub. Wimpolo and the zekolo went to the control tower to direct Vans and his little company when they appeared.

  Don was left guarding Bommelsmeth.

  “You needn’t keep that thing pointing at me,” Bommelsmeth said, nodding at the deathray box. “It’s not pleasant, from this side.”

  “You promise not to start anything?” Don asked.

  “I promise.”

  Don turned the box away. At once Bommelsmeth’s hand shot out and threw a small lever in the wall. There was a sort of fizzing noise, and Don knew that his deathray was useless. The blanketing ray had discharged it.

  Bommelsmeth leaped to his feet and threw himself at the little man.

  DON just managed to twist out of the way of the fallen table.

  “Now we’ll see who’s who, little Earth rat,” Bommelsmeth snarled.

  Don snatched out his sword.

  Bommelsmeth backed to the door and locked it. He picked up a heavy chair and hurled it at the Earthling. On its way through the air the chair struck the hanging lamp that lit the cabin. The lamp broke. The cabin was in darkness.

  Don managed to avoid the flying chair, but bruised his legs against the fallen table. He did not know where Bommelsmeth was, or he would have attacked. He could hear the giant’s heavy breathing, and tried to locate it. Bommelsmeth, trying to walk silently, blundered into more furniture and knocked it over. Don tried to creep in the direction of the sound, but more fallen furniture was in his way. There always seems to be four times as much furniture in a darkened room as in a lighted one, and Bommelsmeth had the advantage of knowing his way around it.

  Now the giant seemed to be trying to climb over the fallen furniture in the middle of the room. Don tried to judge where he was to get in a thrust with his sword.