The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves

by Festus Pragnell

  Maybe the Prof’s synthetic-jiggery-pokery was just able to make Cerebellums, or little brains that do the instinctive work but not Cerebrums, the big brains where thinking is done. Maybe when he talked about putting brains in his synthetics he only meant Cerebrums.

  But what’s the use of me trying to guess what that blighter meant to do? Wait until Usulor’s scientists have examined those synthetics that were recovered in good order, and then perhaps we’ll know.

  Anyway, I suppose that Prof. had to have some sort of brain in his synthetics or else they would just have died on him. And he must have kept them under some sort of influence, electric-magnetic field or something, to keep them only just alive, hearts only just beating. And when I threw those switches I must have cut off the field, set those hearts beating faster, waking up those Cerebellums, and letting those synthetics get down from their shelves.

  The Prof. seemed to go mad. He screamed. He hurled the glass of sulphuric acid at me and tried to push the nearest synthetics back onto their shelves. But of course they did not understand him, though he raved at them. They just looked at him, wondering. They were bigger than he was. And more were getting down every minute.

  I think he was trying to get to the switch.

  And that glass of sulphuric. I saw it coming, and got out of the way. It hit a synthetic, smashed, and burning acid splashed over at least a dozen of them.

  A moment or so later there was an awful lot of noise there. Remember the story of Jason? The feller who planted the dragon’s teeth. From each tooth there grew a fully-armed warrior. Jason threw a stone into the middle of them. The man hit by the stone hit the man he thought had hit him. The man he hit hit the man he thought had hit him. Till they were all fighting.

  Well, this was something like that.

  Here were a dozen people in pain who hadn’t ever been in pain before. And a dozen lungs were yelling that hadn’t ever yelled before. And a dozen Cerebellums were looking round to find who done it and give him a headache. Those Cerebellums had enough sense for that.

  Some of them did a dragon’s tooth. They hit the synthetic nearest them. Others figured it out better, and made for the Prof. Some came for me.

  The Prof. didn’t wait. He gave a yell and dashed out by a door.

  THEN there was a mix-up.

  Well, I’ve seen many different kinds of fighting. Air-raids, bombardments, burning cities, the round, rolling, transparent tanks of Mars, warplanes, fighting flies, fighting snakes, fighting apemen and all the chemical and scientific weapons of warped Martian genius. The fighting flies were the most horrible of all.

  I’m not squeamish, not now. Mars has cured that.

  But the fighting of those witless synthetics made me feel sick.

  Imagine it.

  They used no weapons. The use of knives, sticks or stones would have been far beyond what dim intelligence they possessed. They just used hands, feet, nails and teeth to rip, tear and gouge. They had no idea of defense, or even of avoiding blows. Pairs of synthetics just stood up and—well, never mind. Those self-repairing bodies took an awful lot of killing.

  But I saw at once that if any of those synthetics got hold of me there would be no more Don Hargreaves.

  They would not have been difficult to avoid, if there had not been so many of them. One would dash at me, and fall over something in the way. Falling, he would bump into another, and in another moment they would be fighting. While I watched another hand would almost close on my shoulder. I would wrench it away just in time. Then one would fall over me, and in a moment be locked in a death-grapple with the one he fell against.

  Many were spilling out into the passages and corridors. Many who fell were walked upon by the steadily growing throng still climbing or falling down from the shelves. Till the steady increase in numbers mounted so that the pressure of them tore machinery and apparatus from the floor, smashing bottles and loosing torrents of deadly acids and starting one big fire into which those nearest were irresistibly pushed until piling bodies put out the fire.

  I climbed to the top of the tiers of bunks, just out of the reach of clutching hands. As the framework under me collapsed under the pressure I moved further back.

  Still synthetics were getting down.

  I saw many synthetics crushed and killed by the simple pressure of bodies round them. And synthetics take a lot of killing.

  By now thousands had spilled out of the doors, going everywhere.

  Now a much bigger fire was arising, fed by the chemicals, the oils, the rubber, the plastics and the wooden fittings of the laboratory. The smoke thickened.

  I saw that I must get out of here, or be choked by smoke and roasted by fire. But how? Between me and each of the doors was a solidly packed mass of synthetics.

  Then I saw how. A desperate plan, perhaps. I could walk on the heads of the crowd!

  I launched myself. My foot landed on the heads of one synthetic. A leap, before he could take hold of me. I landed on the shoulder of another. Another leap. On another head. On through smoke and flames.

  One missed spring and I would have become just one of that doomed crowd.

  I reached a door, and ducked under. I was in a passage.

  They were thinner here. I missed a leap, because the man whose head I aimed at was walking fast. I landed on the ground.

  A synthetic gave a weird sort of cry and rushed at me, hands outstretched.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Giant’s Clean-Up

  PRINCESS WIMPOLO, Olla and the six guards arrived at the entrance to Prince Grumbold’s caves. “Where’d that Ptero go?”

  “Up there! Dozens of Pteros’ caves up there!”

  “How can we land there?”

  “I see a landing-place!”

  The auto-gyros made for the rocky shelf where Vans and I had landed. That was exactly what Grumbold had planned they should do. Now scores of the fat Prince’s retainers should have rushed out and captured the Princess, according to the plan.

  But that plan had been slightly sabotaged.

  As the Princess’ little party neared the shelf a number of men came dashing wildly out of cavern mouths. They fled madly into the cave where Vans and I had been imprisoned a little while before, and locked themselves in. Late comers tried to follow, but were barred out.

  “What is the matter with those men?”

  “Land and find out!”

  “Did you see how they were dressed?”

  “It looked to me like the uniform of the personal guards of the rebel king, Sommalu.”

  “But Sommalu is dead.”

  The eight little auto-gyros buzzed down to a landing on the little shelf. Other men and women were now coming out of the cavern mouths, people with blankly staring eyes and oddly expressionless faces. Some walked straight out of the caves and straight over the edge of the shelf, just as a baby just learning to walk might do. They fell without a cry, soundlessly. The guards saw that they were unarmed.

  “Where is Prince Don?” rapped one guard, menacing the nearest synthetic with a deathray.

  The synthetic stared stupidly.

  “Where is Vans Holors?” snapped another guard.

  “Whose are those Pteros?”

  “Who are those men in a forbidden uniform?”

  “What’s the set-up here?”

  Questions ripped thick and fast. But no synthetic answered.

  “I’ll make you understand plain Martian! Take that and wake yourself up!”

  A guard struck a synthetic a stinging slap on the cheek.

  The synthetic looked surprised, and then slapped back.

  There was a snap. The guard fell with a broken neck.

  The guard’s mate swung round a deathray, pressed the lever.

  The ray had no effect at all on the killer.

  The synthetic, gurgling with delight at the result of the interesting action just learned, tried it on one of his mates.

  In a moment the two were fighting one of the ghastly battles of th
e synthetics.

  A dazed guard reported bewilderedly to Princess Wimpolo.

  “These men seem to have no intelligence whatever, Your Highness. And they are impervious to our weapons.”

  “Best get into the air,” said Wimpolo.

  But synthetics were between her and her plane. In any case the throng was now so thick that taking off was impossible.

  “If many more of these people come out of the caves we shall all be pushed over the edge,” said Wimpolo.

  “MY gorilla!” cried Olla, suddenly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My chimpanzee! My orangoutang! We are saved!”

  “Meaning your husband?”

  “Surely! I heard him! He was saying, ‘Out of the way, you babyfaced pie-can!’ Vans! Vans!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “Here we are Come and help us!”

  “What can your husband do?” growled Wimp. Rather sourly I fear.

  “I hear you!” roared the mighty voice of Vans inside. “I come!”

  “Yes,” roared another, still mightier voice. “We come!”

  It was Bruny Hudells.

  The two giants came out together. Each had a steel bar in his left hand. Each swing of a bar crushed the metal skull of one synthetic and stretched it on the ground.

  “We found these people could not be harmed by deathrays,” Vans explained. “Nor could our fists hurt them. They nearly had us beat until we found that these clubs could break their heads and stop their Cerebellums from working.”

  They laid about them.

  Vans and Hudells could probably have kept on until every synthetic was out of action. But the steel bars could not. They broke. Synthetics began to close on two warriors, looking ugly.

  “There’s another way out of this, Holors!” roared Hudells. And, picking a synthetic up by the ankles, hurled him through the air. The body flew over the edge, started the three-mile drop.

  And steadily the two giants hurled synthetics over the edge as though they were no more than bags of flour.

  And that is about the end of that story, barring a few odd details. I was easily found, but Prince Grumbold and his tame scientist escaped. On the back of the Pteros I think. And was it a game, getting the enormous Hudells down from that rock shelf! Of course, no auto-gyro that could land there was capable of carrying such a weight. In the end we got a specially big parachute made, and hauled him on a long rope to where he could be dropped in safety. Even then it was a dickens of a job.

  Those synthetic men that were not killed all died in a few hours. Without Cerebrums they could not live long. The Pteros ate the bodies. Pretty indigestible meat, I should think, but it did not seem to do them any harm.

  Oh, and we could not find Hudells’ white powder. It was all destroyed in the wreck of the laboratory. But Professor Winterton is confident of being able to replace it. Says he thinks it is just Vitamin C. The flesh of the synthetics being able to absorb huge amounts of Vitamin C, he says, might partly explain how they were able to repair themselves so rapidly after injury. From what I can make of it Vitamin C seems to behave like glue in the human body, sticking the different parts together.

  I hope it solves the problem that is worrying Hudells, anyway.

  I asked Vans Holors what he thought of all this business, and he said, “All that trouble for nothing! I still have not fought the real Tony Galento! Next time you radio Earth, enclose another challenge to that baby. And this time see the right man gets it. Better send one to Joe Louis, too, while you are at it.”

  I ask you! What can you do with a man like that?

  I WISH those admiring Earth fans of Vans Holors, Wrestling Champion of Mars, would stop sending him gifts of boxing gloves. We don’t have any use for those things. The only thing I can think of to do with them is to put them in museums among “Weapons used on Earth.” And then they look kind of silly, among bombs, machine guns and so on.

  I heard two Martians talking about then once.

  “Do they use those for fighting?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s inside them?”

  “Sawdust, mostly.”

  “What are they for?”

  “So they won’t hurt each other.”

  A long silence.

  Then, “Eh, are you gone daft?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Then what’s inside those bombs? Cotton-wool I suppose!”

  So I took the gloves out. Now only the women use boxing gloves here.

  When I told Vans, he said, “Is there cotton-wool inside bombs?”

  I said, “No. It’s stuff that goes off bang!”

  He thought a minute.

  “Daft, I call it,” he said.

  “What’s daft?”

  “Having your Earth cities out in the open where anybody can drop stuff on them. Why don’t you have then underground, like in Mars, under low cavern roofs, where nobody can drop anything on them?”

  It isn’t any use arguing with Vans. Trying to get any idea into his thick head is like trying to open a burglar-proof safe with a tooth-pick. I’ve found that out.

  “All the same, Vans,” I said, “You can get very fed-up with Martian cities and their everlasting night. You can long for Earth cities with their open skies and daylight.”

  He laughed.

  “Why not take a trip to Phobos, the other moon of Mars. They say the surface is covered with glass bubbles holding air and heat, better even than Deimos. Remember when we went to Deimos?”

  “Yes, I remember all right. The place was full of bugs that ate our clothes off us. We went to sleep and woke up naked.”

  “Nothing like that on Phobos.”

  “I’d like to go to Phobos then, if I could get away from Wimp for a while.”

  “Ask her to come. She’d go anywhere for an adventure.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right, Vans.”

  “Wouldn’t I just!” said Wimp, when we asked her. “But aren’t you forgetting your responsibilities?”

  “How come?”

  “Your synthetic fighting man, Bruny Hudells. Your Professor Winterton from Earth says he can’t do anything for him, and he’s very worried.”

  THAT sobered us. It was bad about Hudells. I told you about him. He had been the victim of a very dirty plot. As I told you, Prince Grumbold, one of the bad eggs of Mars, had a tame scientist. This scientist made a synthetic body and put the brain of Hudells in it. The idea was to win the championship of Mars from Vans, and bring off a lot of other dirty tricks at the same time. Quite a fuss it was while it lasted, but in the end Hudells, who isn’t at all a bad fellow, made up his mind that he didn’t want any more of the funny little ways of Prince Grumbold and his Professor, and made friends with us. But there was a certain white powder that Bruny had to have every day to keep him well. And that was where our plans went wrong. Grumbold’s other synthetic men got loose, and so busted up his laboratory that we could not find a sample of the powder to analyze. And Grumbold and his Professor got away.

  It looked as if Bruny would have to get along without his powder.

  Professor Winterton tried to find the answer. Bruny’s synthetic body, he said, recovered from the most nasty injuries in a few seconds. That proved it must be brimming full of Vitamin C, or Ascorbic Acid. An ordinary human system can use about an ounce of Vitamin C a year, but more when there are any nasty wounds to mend. Bruny, weighing three tons, would need about sixty ounces a year, normally, but to heal his wounds at the rate they did heal, about six thousand ounces, the Professor reckoned would be needed. The white powder must be just Vitamin C.

  But it didn’t work.

  Bruny began to get aches and pains that told him he needed more of his powder.

  “It’s no use,” he said. “There is only one way out. I got to find Prince Grumbold and his Professor and make them tell me the secret.”

  “I reckon,” said Wimp firmly, to Vans and me, “we better get cracking.”

  “We?”

 
“Yes, we.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “Let us send for Bruny,” said Vans. “Hear what he says.”

  So we sent for Hudells.

  CHAPTER II

  Weil Hektorum, Martian Detective

  VAN HOLORS is a big man. Big enough to get by in most places, anyway. He weighs more than a ton. But the synthetic giant Hudells made him look like a very little shrimp.

  Hudells came in and started the ceremonial salute to Princess Wimpolo as the Martian laws lay it down.

  “Keep that stuff for when the public are about,” says Wimp. “We’re in conference now. Sit down.”

  Hudells sat down, looking dazed. The Martian Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses he knew had never been like that. Long ago, when Prince Grumbold’s father had been ruler of Ossalandok, Grumbold had made a rule that all courtiers coming into his presence must bow nineteen times. One miscounted and bowed one short, and had his nose cut off. Another had his ears cut off for bowing one too many. And really it was the Prince who miscounted, not the courtiers.

  And here, in the highest court of Mars, nobody troubled about ceremony. It was enough to drive a simple wrestler daft.

  “About this powder of yours,” says Wimp.

  “Eh, have you got it?” exclaims Hudells, waking up, all eager.

  “Well, no. Not yet,” says Wimp. “Oh!”

  It was quite sad to see the giant sink back onto the seat again like a toy balloon that somebody has stuck a pin in.

  “Something has got to be done about it,” says Wimp, looking very determined.

  “Yes! Yes! What are you going to do, Princess?”

  Hudells could hardly wait to hear her plan.

  “Well, er, I thought you could tell us what we could do,” says Wimp, looking uncomfortable.

  The rubbery face of Hudells became a mile long again.

  “Me? No, not me,” he said, looking blank. When Hudells was in any difficulty he just hurled his three tons of weight at it. If that did not solve the problem then all he could do was to send for somebody with nimbler body and quicker wits than he had.