So, carefully working our way round to the side where there were no people, we managed to get on board. We would not have done it so easily if the ship had been properly guarded, of course, but it was not. I suppose, in that secret cavern, Belangor saw no reason why guards should be kept round the ship. Served him right for being so careless.
So, Belangor’s ship carried some cargo he hadn’t contracted for. And it didn’t take us long to find hiding places. When a space-ship is stocked up for a journey there are always plenty of hideouts among the stores, fuel containers, air purifying plants and what-nots generally.
We passed a radio set on the way, with a printed copy of the latest news, just tapped out, lying beside it.
“Gosh, look at that, Vans!”
“THIS is Usulor, Emperor of Mars, speaking,” I read.
I could just imagine that mighty voice roaring the words out of the loudspeaker, but on the paper, of course, it was just ordinary, cold printing.
“I have a message for Belangor, known as Belangor, the Butcher, renegade Martian and slaughterer of the people of Venus. Are you listening, Belangor? Then hear me. I have you in my hand. The whereabouts of your secret hide-out on Mars is known to me. Its position is,” here he gave a latitude, a longitude and a depth below the surface. “Is that right or is it not, Belangor? Then know that I have you in my hand, and that that hand is about to close.
“I also know that my son-in-law, Don Hargreaves of Earth, and his friend and guardian, Vans Holors, are temporarily in your power. Note this, Belangor, and note it well. Unless these two are returned to me alive and unharmed you will regret it, Belangor. Note well. I say you will regret it, Pirate of Venus.”
“So you are my guardian, eh?” I said to Vans.
“Well, ah, bodyguard actually. You see, the Princess was a bit nervous about you. She said to me, ‘You know, Vans, that little husband of mine, Don, is a bit adventurously inclined. I want you to attach yourself to him quietly. If he goes anywhere see that you go with him to protect him. He trusts you! So I agreed to, but promised to say nothing to you about it.” The massive Martian almost blushed in embarrassment.
Me, reckless! The ideas these women get! Then I laughed. It was my bodyguard who had blundered me into danger, and protecting my bodyguard had been one of my chief worries ever since I arrived in this place. Vans didn’t think so, but never mind that blunderhead’s opinions.
We hid ourselves in the pirate ship, me, my “bodyguard” and our two steeds, the zekolos. We found supplies of food and water, and made ourselves at home for a day or so. Of course, iron crates and pipes do not make exactly the best blankets or pillows. We couldn’t cook but had to eat everything cold. We could talk only in low voices and had to be always watching the zekolos to make sure they didn’t wander off and give us away. But apart from these and other minor annoyances it was not too bad.
WE COULD hear vigorous activity going on round us, and once or twice heard pirates talking to one another. Most of it was not interesting.
“Can’t you get those something’d elastic men to load the ship quicker? The boss is in a towering rage,” I heard one voice, one day.
“I’ve never known him in such a hurry,” grumbled the other.
“Haven’t you heard? Our hideout is known to the Emperor of Mars,” said the first, excitedly.
“And so what?” growled the second, unimpressed.
“Usulor’s army will be here soon!”
“Oh, yes? After they have tunnelled through two hundred miles of solid rock,” said the second, scornfully.
“What about the shaft leading to the surface of the planet?”
“That goes up at such an angle that it reaches the open over three hundred miles away from here. And it’s well hidden. Oh, I’m losing no sleep over the chance of their finding that. Or over the chance of their sending an army down it. Why, it would be suicide. We’d blow up both ends of the shaft and leave them to suffocate.”
“All the same, the boss is clearing everything out of here. Fair stripping the place. All the treasure, proceeds of hundreds of years of work.” (Loot, piracy and murder, he meant.)
“I reckon the boss wants to transfer it to his other hideout on Earth’s moon. They say it’s an even bigger and better place than this. It’ll take several trips to transfer all the stuff and the people.”
“What about this Earthling, Don, and that wrestler?”
“Oh, forget them. I reckon they are dead by now. Or soon will be. Either they got drowned in that stagnant lake, or else they tried to return the way they came. If they are still about here they’ll very soon starve to death. That’s a sure thing.”
Which disposed of us very nicely.
CHAPTER IV
Wyandott’s Patrol
SOME time later the loading was finished. We heard exit ports slam, shouted last-minute orders, signal bells and whistles. Then the low whine of rockets, and the ship trembled under us forcefully.
“Vans, we’re off!” I said.
“You’re telling me!” he rumbled.
“Wish I could see out!”
But I could imagine it. The black, speckled ship, shaped like a giant sting-ray, was running on its three wheels along the runways, through and along the tunnel, toward the surface of Mars. Almost level at first, the tunnel would become steeper until we finally burst out into space almost vertically.
I found a porthole, and was able to look out. I had been mistaken when I said there were no portholes. There were, but they had been painted over, only very tiny holes being left, looking, from another ship, like so many stars.
The disk of Mars was falling away behind us, the sun appearing from behind it.
“Vans!” I said sharply, “We’ve been seen!”
A ship, shaped like the pirate ship but painted orange instead of black, was rising after us. A moment later several others came into view.
The fleet of Emperor Wyandott of Venus had sighted its enemy.
EZRIM KOFFIL, leader of the fleet of Venusian patrolcraft, snatched the report from his aide-de-camp and scanned it in one glance. He gave a whistle of satisfaction.
“It is Belangor, at last! Tell the entire fleet to converge upon him at once and attack. We will be rid of this scourge.”
In his rubbery heart were unpleasant qualms. For the Venusians are men of peace, with no love of war and slaughter. But this was grim necessity. He must hide and fight down his sickness at the thought of killing. He must drive himself and his men.
Presently, he saw the rocket exhausts of a ship speeding away from him. Odd, he thought, but he could not see the ship that produced the exhausts. Only the red flares. He wondered if he was going blind. He must have his eyes tested when he got back to Venus. He hoped his men could see the pirate ship, even if he couldn’t.
He began to radio to the stranger.
“Who are you? Answer, or we fire!”
No answer came.
“All right. Let him have it!”
At once the distant exhausts faded and died. Nothing was to be seen. The black vault of space seemed empty, except for the stars.
An odd, uncanny chill ran the length of Erzim Koffil’s elastic body.
“He’s vanished!” he thought. “It’s magic!”
All the gunners on the Venusian ships were in the same confusion.
“What can we fire at? We see nothing,” they asked.
Then an object like a very small space-ship appeared, only three feet across. It was that deadly weapon of space fighting, a radio-directed rocket shell. It streamed across the void and struck one of the patrol ships, penetrating the armor and exploding inside.
“Epheu!” gasped Erzim Koffil. “Shells that come out of nowhere! This is witchery!”
Another shell streamed out. Another patrol vessel was crippled. And another. No shells missed, because the radio-operator, sitting aboard the unseen craft, could direct them right or left, up or down.
“Peuff!” exclaimed Koffil. “I shall
have no sound ships left! This is like sitting in the dark and being shot at. I can’t see my enemy to get at him! Call all the patrol ships off! No sense in getting wiped out without doing any good.”
Then a curious phenomenon caught his eye. Among the stars in the sky appeared a white glowing line. Then another and another. Presently a round luminous object had appeared, a completely new heavenly body where all had been darkness.
VANS and I had scraped the paint off that porthole window.
“There he is,” yelled Koffil. “At him!”
For now, very faintly, he and all his fleet could see, around the new luminous heavenly body, the outlines of a black ship.
“Funny!” Koffil muttered under his breath. “He seems to be on fire. A lot of black smoke is pouring out of his rear.”
The black smoke grew to a vast cloud in which the pirate ship was soon again lost to view.
“A smoke screen!” exclaimed Koffil. “Boys, he’s got us beat. I shiver to think what Emperor Wyandott will say.”
* * *
“BELANGOR has pulled a fast one with his smoke screen,” I said to Vans.
In one way, perhaps, it was just as well. Because, if the radio-controlled rocket shells of the patrol craft had got the pirate properly we would have gone west with it, in all probability. But now we were in a worse jam. If Belangor got away he would scour the ship to find who scraped the paint off that porthole. And I wouldn’t like to be in the hands of that gentleman when he was in a real temper.
“Stay here, Vans,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out for a stroll.”
I slipped along a darkened corridor, dodging into darkened doorways. Being so small among these giants, I can dodge about among them without being seen where a man their own size would be caught. I was looking for the place where the smoke for the smoke screen came from.
Presently I found it. But there were two men there. I had hoped to find only one.
Seizing a chance, I slipped in and hid under a table.
“What was that noise?” one asked, looking round.
“I heard nothing,” said the other.
They went on working, pouring the smoke out of the ship to enlarge the cloud.
Ten minutes I waited. Thirty. I got badly cramped. The worst part of it was having to be absolutely silent. I wanted to scratch, I wanted to sneeze, I wanted to cough.
At last one of the two went out. I let him get well away. Waiting my chance, I crept out from under the table.
I leaped.
A crack with a spanner on the head of that pirate. He fell backward. I wrenched the funnel of that smoke-machine apart. The smoke poured into the room.
The hole leading outside I plugged with the pirate’s hat and some cleaning rags. Then I ran out, choking in the thickening smoke, taking a chance of being seen, back to Vans.
“Don’t ask questions now!” I told him. “Find the fire alarm system! Make it ring. Make them think the ship is on fire!”
I found an intercommunication ’phone for alarm calls, and bellowed into it, “Fire! An enemy shell has hit the rear of the ship! We are on fire! Run for your lives!”
Fire in space! It is one of the worst terrors known to man. It destroys the air-supply, detonates the fuel-compartments. There would be an instant mad scramble to get off the doomed ship.
Within ten minutes Vans and I were alone on the ship, apart from our unconscious prisoner.
A space ship oddly like the Ace of Spades, not too expertly handled, landed on a smooth stretch of Martian surface and slowly came to a standstill after running around awhile on its three wheels. A Martian ship, summoned by radio, landed alongside, and four space-suited figures came out.
I let them into the black ship.
They were Usulor, Mrs. Holors, a soldier, and—Princess Wimpolo.
She put her hands on her hips and looked grim.
“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“My love,” I said, licking my lips, “I present you with a complete pirate ship, rather sooty perhaps” (I had had difficulty in turning off the smoke), “but in excellent working order and with a fabulous treasure, so I am told, on board. In addition Belangor and most of his men are scattered about the void in tiny rocket lifeboats, and should very soon be all mopped up, and I can lead you to where the rest of Belangor’s men, treasure and equipment are hidden.”
“Not a bad job,” Usulor admitted.
“And that,” Wimpolo said, “is your only excuse for running away from me! All right! See if you get a chance to do it again! Just see if you get a chance!”
As I said before, Festus, you think I am lucky, don’t you? Being married to the first lady in Mars, daughter of Emperor Usulor. You ought to be married to a woman who is nearly ten feet tall and weighs half a ton!
You’d have a different idea of it then.—Don Hargreaves.
THE END
[*] The shape was a cone with a hollow base. The advantage of this shape is that it brings the center of gravity well back, behind the center of drive. The ordinary cigar-shaped spaceship has its center of gravity too far forward. It wobbles, rolls, spins and vibrates, and is difficult to control. It behaves as though it is top-heavy. This ship would be much more stable and comfortable to ride in.
AT PRESENT most of the gigantic people who inhabit the caverns of Mars regard me more or less as a joke. I have to be careful to avoid being accidentally trodden upon as I dodge around between their legs. And I suppose I do look funny at ceremonial dinners, sitting to table in a special high chair like a baby, with my special little cups, saucers, plates, spoons and so on.
Still, while it is awkward, living in a world where everything is the wrong size for me, I’m not really lonely. There’s Wimp, of course, and Vans Holors, wrestling champion of this world, whom Wimp appointed as my special bodyguard. Without asking me. Just like her cheek. Still, Vans is one of the best of fellows, even though he can’t be called exactly a swift thinker.
The big boob actually wanted to “pop over” to Earth and “settle Hitler’s hash” as he called it. Quite hurt, too, he was when I told him he could not do it. Any sort of fighting is meat and drink to Vans.
“And why not?” he grunted, bristling and sticking out that mountain of a chest of his.
“Look here,” I said. “You weigh more than a ton.”
“What about it?”
“Have you ever thought what it would be like to a man of your weight to have to walk about in the gravity of Earth? You would hardly be able to move!”
“Ah! So you think, little man. So you think!”
You can always tell when Vans thinks he has scored. He smirks a great smirk.
“What would you say if I told you there was a man already on Earth who weighs twice as much as I do?”
He made my jaw drop. I could see he had something up his sleeve.
“What, is there?”
“Certainly there is. Wait a minute.” He went lumbering along to some old news records, and presently forked out this item. I could see it was several years old.
“Joe Louis beat ‘Two-ton’ Tony Galento in contest for championship of world.”
“There you are!” Vans boomed in triumph. “‘Two-ton’ Tony Galento! That’s a man twice as heavy as me! I weigh only one ton. If a two-ton man can move about on your Earth and fight too, surely a much smaller man like me can!”
IT GOT me puzzled. I admit it. I’d never heard of a man of two tons walking about on Earth. Yet there it was in black and white. I reckoned it was a sort of misprint. Atmospherics on the inter-planetary radio or something. All the same, there it was, plain as a pike, and Vans was pointing at it with his enormous thumb, and I couldn’t argue.
“What’s to stop me going to Earth now?” he roared.
“Well, there’s still the chance of interplanetary diplomatic complications,” I said. “If you went to Earth to fight Hitler you might start an Earth-Mars wa
r.”
He looked disappointed. Suddenly, he roared, “I’ve got it!” and slapped me on the chest in his excitement.
I came to ground about twenty feet away.
“Well, what’s biting you now, you human elephant?” I asked when I had picked myself up and come back.
“If I can’t fight Hitler, what about me fighting this two-ton man? Of course, I’d be giving away a lot of weight, but still, size isn’t everything. I’ve seen many a big man like Galento beaten by a little fellow like me. Did I ever tell you of my fight with the champion of Ossalandok? He turned the scale at close on three tons.”
“Not now, Vans. Some other time,” I said, hastily.
“A bigger crowd turned out for that fight than had ever been known for any fight in Mars. Hudells was nine to one on favorite in the betting.”
“Yes, but about Galento—”
. . . Hudells got hold of a handful of my hair and tried to bash my head on the floor, but I got my feet against his chest and heaved. The hair tore out by the roots and stayed in his hand. Ever since that I’ve kept my hair short . . .
“I doubt if Galento—”
“After we had been bashing each other for seventeen hours without an instant’s pause, Hudells began to get short of breath. I saw my chance, and seized his right ankle in my left hand, like this—”
But I jumped clear just in time. I’ve had some of his demonstrations.
“Exerting all my strength, I picked him up by his ankle, whirled him round my head, and let him go. He sailed above the heads of the crowd and crashed through the outer wall of the building near the roof.”
To Vans, such a feat was not impossible, although it must have been a terrific exertion.
“Was Hudells killed?”
“Oh no. A few synthetic bones to replace those badly smashed and a new lobe to his brain, and he was soon all right again. Wanted a return match. But what were you saying about Galento?”
“He might not be free to fight. Perhaps he has joined the Air Force.”
“Not likely! He’d need a special plane to carry him.”
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 26