The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves

by Festus Pragnell

  Because I recognized the air-bubbles in which we had had all that trouble with the space-birds when Wimp and I were on our honeymoon. Remember?

  “Strange ship overhead,” called Vans, at a telescope.

  We looked. It was Grumbold’s ship. It had been all I could do to land safely on Deimos. I had been unable to keep a proper look-out. Even if I had it would have made no difference.

  “No matter,” said Hektorum, still trying to make the best of things. “In its camouflage this ship In almost invisible.”

  “Yes, when it’s in space,” I said. “Not against the bright coloring of Deimos.”

  Coming down towards us, from the big ship above, were three space boats. We were in a trap, a trap we had made ourselves.

  We looked at each other. Wimp, I could see, was thinking of the fat, conceited Prince Grumbold, who would certainly make love to her if he caught her.

  Suddenly she caught hold of Hektorum’s broad sleeve. Pulling it up, she uncovered a plump forearm and gave it a stinging slap.

  “You messer!” she barked.

  I had to admire Hektorum’s poker face. Not a muscle moved to show his feelings. His face went a bit red, but nobody can help that.

  Nor could he control his lachrymal glands. A round, colorless object appeared at the corner of one eye and ran to his mouth. One from the other eye chased it. So did others.

  Weil Hektorum was in tears.

  THE big ship above kept her guns trained on us. Well-armed pirate ship though ours was, we were helpless. None of our guns could be turned that way. The ship was built for fighting in space, not on the ground.

  “How do, Belangor,” said our radio, softly so that none could overhear. “This is a friend speaking. Prince Grumbold. You may have heard of me.”

  “Aha!” said Hektorum, perking up surprisingly. “Our identity is mistaken. Now that is quite understandable. We are in Belangor’s pirate ship. Belangor may even have another such ship somewhere. He thinks we are the Pirate.”

  “Obviously,” I said.

  “We will outwit them yet,” said Hektorum. “Princess, will you hide in this cupboard?”

  By now the space-boats had landed, and several men, ray-guns hanging carelessly on their arms, were banging on the air-locks.

  We let them in.

  “Well!” said Prince Grumbold, as he lowered the helmet of his space-suit. “I hardly expected to find three ladies here. What a surprise!”

  You know, I had got so used to seeing Vans and Bruny in female clothes and Wimp in men’s clothes that I had quite forgotten we were all in disguise.

  “Where is your master, Belangor?” went on the fat Prince.

  Hektorum collected his wits very quickly.

  He opened the cupboard door a little way and called loudly, pretending the door opened into a large room, “Master Belangor! A distinguished visitor is here to greet Your Highness!”

  Quietly he whispered, “Come out, Princess. It’s safe. He won’t recognize you in your disguise.”

  Wimp came out.

  “Well!” said Grumbold, “this is a pleasure! I am happy to meet so famous a space rover! Perhaps we can even be of service to each other. Who are these?” He waved a hand at us.

  “Lady friends of mine,” said Wimp, trying to talk like a man.

  Grumbold looked at us. He understood that, of course. But he must have thought Belangor’s lady friends far less good-looking than he would have expected, except for me. And strangely assorted sizes too, from my seven stone to Bruny’s three tons. He must have thought the terrible butcher of the space-lanes strangely womanish, too. But he was so feminine himself that perhaps he did not notice it.

  “I’ve often wanted to meet you,” gushed Grumbold. “A fine ship this of yours. Wish I had one like it As good as invisible in space. When I saw rocket-exhausts flaring without being able to see where they come from I could not believe my eyes at first, till I realized it must be you. When you crashed I was almost glad, because it meant we should meet, and perhaps we could team up.”

  “I can use some help,” said Wimp, keeping her voice deep.

  Grumbold was on the wrong foot, too.

  CHAPTER V

  The Vamping of Grumbold

  THE fat Prince soon had us all on his own ship. Getting Hudells there was not easy, as Grumbold had no space-suit anywhere near big enough for him, but they managed it by bringing a space lifeboat right into the airlock of the Ace of Spades ship. Me they put into a full-sized suit, and I rattled round in it like a pea in a bucket.

  “What’s in this? A baby?” I heard them ask as they carried me.

  Anyway, they got us aboard somehow, and blasted off to Phobos. Our first train had gone to the wrong station. Now we were going to the right station, but in the wrong train. Proper mess-up.

  I got real disgusted with Vans. He entered into the spirit of this sickening affair almost as though he enjoyed it. He seemed to like pretending to be a woman. He grinned and ogled and made eyes at Grumbold. “Isn’t he a lovely man?” he gurgled at me. Real disgusting I call it. Anybody less conceited than Prince Grumbold would have got three or more members of his crew to kick the shameless hussy out of the cabin. But Grumbold lapped it all up like a cat lapping up cream. Twice he disappeared into his wardrobe and came out with more scent and face-paint on him.

  “You two seem to be getting on quite well,” said Wimp.

  “Oh, but Captain, hasn’t he got lovely eyes!” gurgled Vans. “I hope you are not jealous.”

  Wimp wrinkled her nose when Vans spoke of “Lovely eyes.” For a moment I thought she was going to say something about “swollen-headed, sissy barrel of lard,” and spoil everything; but what she did say was, “All right. If you want to leave me and go to the Prince you’d better go right ahead. I guess there are plenty of girls about with better looks and more sense than you. But don’t think you can throw me over and then come back to me again afterwards. Because after this I’ve finished with you see?”

  “Oh, Captain, do you really mean it? Can I really go to the Prince?” Vans exclaimed, clapping his silly hands.

  “If he is fool enough to take you,” snapped Wimp.

  “I am,” said Grumbold, grinning a slimy grin. “At least, I mean I’ll take the lady.”

  “Fool enough” was right, because anybody but a fool could have seen that the “lady” was not a “lady” at all, but just about the most muscular he-man in Mars.

  “In that case,” put in Hektorum, “perhaps we had better get our business talks done as quickly as we can.”

  “Who are you?” Grumbold asked.

  “I am Pirate Belangor’s chief assistant, gunnery and ray-expert and left-hand man,” Hektorum told him.

  “That’s right,” Wimp backed him up. “I have every confidence in the judgment of Rumkektor,” said Wimp, inventing the name in a hurry.

  “Then, if we are to team up we must get to work at once.”

  “What’s the hurry?” asked Grumbold. “Plenty of time, isn’t there?”

  “Your headquarters, Prince, are now on the little world known as Phobos. Am I right?” asked Hektorum, sharply-

  That shook Grumbold badly.

  “I thought nobody knew that. But I suppose the great Pirate has ways of finding things out?” he stammered, nervously.

  “Very many ways, Prince. But in this case we did not need to use our most elaborate secret service system. The information was fairly shouted at us on all sides.”

  “Was it really?” Grumbold had gone the color of chalk, under his paint.

  “I think,” Hektorum went on, “that you can expect an attack from the forces of Emperor Usulor in another month.”

  GRUMBOLD’S color came back.

  Hektorum had got him scared. “That gives us time. We have defenses on Phobos—”

  “That is exactly what I want to talk to you about. Are your defenses ready? Are they capable of meeting what Usulor will bring against them?” Grumbold looked weary.

&
nbsp; “I leave these things to my assistants. You must see the Professor and the Captain of the Guard.”

  “Then you will give us authority to inspect the guns and rays and make the necessary alterations?”

  “Certainly,” said Grumbold, dashing off the necessary papers.

  “We thank you. Now, Master Pirate, which would you sooner inspect first, the ground defenses or the defenses of the ship?”

  “We haven’t got to Phobos yet, you fool,” barked Wimp, nearly giving herself away. “I mean, it would be better to inspect the defenses of the ship first.

  When we have done that we shall no doubt have reached Phobos. We shall then be able to put on space-suits and look over the defenses on the ground at Phobos itself. Come.”

  “Charmed,” said the Prince, bowing them out. Then he turned to Vans.

  “Oh, Prince,” said Vans, smiling under lowered eyebrows, “this place is so public, don’t you think? Couldn’t we go somewhere quiet and have a little talk? Somewhere where we are not likely to be disturbed?”

  “Oh certainly,” said Grumbold, springing for another door. “Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly!”

  And, as the make-believe lady gave up her last shred of reputation and went into a man’s private room with him, two other make-believe ladies looked at each other.

  “That leaves us alone,” I said. “Reckon we better make our inspection of the ship,” said Hudells.

  “Good idea.”

  “Yes. But you need not walk. I’ll take you.”

  And he put me in his jacket pocket.

  I’VE often asked Vans what happened in the fat Prince’s cabin. But he won’t tell me. “There are some things too sacred to be shared with one’s closest friends,” he says. The big fool! But I notice a grin of amusement come into his eyes. Bits of it he has let drop at various times.

  For instance, “Oh, you’re such a big, strong man,” said Vans. “My little popsy-wopsy! One whole ton of sheer seduction and charm,” said Grumbold.

  Grumbold tickled Vans’ ribs. Vans dodged in a hurry. One touch and he would have been found out. Because no woman, Martian or Earthling, ever had such steel-hard muscles as Vans Holors.

  “Oh Prince! You mustn’t!” said Vans, dodging round the room.

  Grumbold was soon in full chase.

  Vans was playing for time. Presently he felt the space-ship land on Phobos and the rocket-blasts stop. Then he stopped running so fast.

  “Oh Prince! I’m breathless! I can’t run any more!”

  But his eyes smiled a saucy smile of welcome.

  “My own charmer!” breathed Grumbold, breathless himself, as he put his arms round her. Then he looked puzzled. This soft, feminine form was hard as iron under his hands.

  “Oh Prince, you are a one,” gurgled Vans, smacking his cheek roguishly.

  But to have one’s face smacked by the mighty Vans Holors is no joke, even if he is wearing skirts. Grumbold’s eyes went dazed. He sank to the floor and lay still, knocked out.

  “Well!” said Van Holors, in a shocked voice. “I do call that bad manners. Fancy going to sleep while a lady is entertaining you!”

  At least, that is what I suppose happened, from what little Vans has told me.

  After that this disgraceful lady went from bad to worse. “She” went through the fat Prince’s pockets and the drawers of his desk. But what else could one expect from a pirate’s moll? It was Grumbold’s own fault. He should have kept better company.

  Vans was in no hurry. Nobody was likely to come near them for hours. Among other things he found a bottle of choloroform.

  Grumbold’s stirred just as Vans was studying some very interestering papers.

  “What happened?” he mumbled. “Did the ship hit something?”

  “Oh no, my poor darling,” gushed Vans, rushing to him. “You fell in a fit. Here, take a sniff of these smelling salts. Make you feel so much better!”

  Grumbold sniffed. He couldn’t help it. The kerchief was clapped to his face with a grip of steel. The whole universe seemed to swell up like a gigantic soap-bubble, then burst. At least, that is how I felt when I was choloroformed once, and I suppose Grumbold felt the same.

  “Dear me! Now he’s gone to sleep again. I must have given him the wrong smelling salts. Still, it’s such a nice healing sleep he’s in. So much nicer than being gagged and bound and shut in a cupboard. When he wakes he won’t know himself or where he is. One of Usulor’s jails, maybe,” babbled Vans.

  He arranged the limp form comfortably in bed.

  “Looks as innocent as a baby, now. Wonder if I ought to get help?”

  HE FIDDLED with the teleview.

  The Captain of the Guard appeared on the screen.

  “Who are you, woman? And what are you doing there?”

  “Really, Captain! Perhaps the Prince wouldn’t like me to tell you!”

  “Where is the Prince?”

  “Lying down. He said he had a headache.”

  “As usual, eh?” muttered the Captain. “Just when we are likely to need him.”

  “What did you say?” Vans nearly forgot to put on his womanish voice, for once.

  “There is likely to be fighting here soon,” said the Captain grimly. “And a pack of women crawling all over the place!”

  “Oh Captain! You frighten me!

  Why?”

  “A strange space ship has been seen, coming towards us. Oh, well, if the Prince cannot take charge of our defenses I shall have to. There’s nobody else. Not the first time I’ve had to take over. And then got stormed at for an hour on end when the Prince had slept off his drinks.”

  “Oh dear!” gasped Vans. “Are my friends safe?”

  “If you mean,” growled the Captain of the Guard, sourly, “the Pirate Belangor, his Chief of Staff, his overgrown sweetie who must weigh at least four tons and the little woman from Earth who isn’t much bigger than her thumbnail, they are all right here in the control-room with me now. I only hope the guns the pirate and his chief have been adjusting and correcting will work all right, because we shall be needing them. If all these new ideas don’t work out it’ll be too bad. And when I teleview the Prince he don’t answer. Because he’s busy with a lady and drunk too. And how I’m to keep my authority with the men with strangers walking all over the place producing written letters from the Prince saying they can do what they like and nobody must stop them I don’t know. If you want my opinion—”

  “Dear me, you do have a bad time, don’t you?” put in Vans, stopping him at last. “Poor man! Never mind. Perhaps some day you will meet some nice lady and be understood at last.”

  “Look here!” said the Captain. “None of your trying to vamp me!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. How could you? Yes, my darling?” Vans went away from the teleview for a moment or so, then came back again.

  “The Prince says he wants Mr. Belangor and his three friends to come here to this cabin at once for a Council of War.”

  “What, all four of them? Hooray! Now I can breathe,” said the Captain.

  And so the four of us, with no idea what had happened except that Vans was somehow mixed up in it, trooped to the Prince’s cabin.

  “What’s happened to him?” asked Wimp, seeing Grumbold tucked up in bed.

  “He felt tired and wanted to sleep.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Hektorum. “Get the ventilators going, man. The place stinks of chloroform.”

  “And now what?” asked the giant Hudells. He did not know what was going on, but was ready to use all his three tons to help us as soon as there was something for him to use his weight on.

  “I think I can manage this little matter,” said Vans.

  He went out of the door and set up a wailing noise.

  “Help! Help! Oh do help me!” Guards ran up.

  “What’s gone wrong?”

  “The poor Prince! He’s in a fit! Do something! Get the doctor! Quick! Quick! No, no! You mustn�
��t go in there and disturb him. Get the doctor!”

  “He’ll alarm the whole ship,” I whispered to Hektorum.

  “I don’t quite know what he’s doing,” Hektorum murmured. “But let him alone. Never get in the way of the man with the ball, I say. Vans is wrestling champion of Mars, remember, and his ringcraft is very good. So is his fighting judgment.”

  So, we waited.

  AFTER a while, in came the ship’s doctor. He looked at Grumbold, sniffed the air, which still smelled of sleep-gas, frowned and asked, “How did it happen?”

  “Well,” said Vans, “it was like this. He poked me in the ribs like this,” Vans poked himself, “then I poked him, then he slapped my face, like this,” Vans slapped himself, “then I slapped him like that—Dear me!” Vans caught the falling doctor. “Now you’ve gone to sleep! What is the use of a doctor who goes to sleep at his work?”

  “Just in time,” said Hektorum. “He had seen through your disguise and knew you were no woman. A split second more and I’d have put him to sleep myself.”

  He put the bottle down. “Smelling-salts for the doctor,” said Vans.

  “And start the fans up again to blow the smell away,” said Hektorum.

  “What are we going to do with him? The bed is not really big enough for two.”

  “Then put him under the bed.”

  “Now teleview the Captain of the Guard and tell him to come here for a Council of War.”

  When the Captain of the Guard had been choloroformed, “What now?” Hudells asked.

  Vans started to make out a big paper.

  NOTICE.

  Prince Grumbold is in a very dangerous fever, and nobody must go into this room on any account without my permission. Failure to obey this order will likely result in the Prince’s death, and the culprit will pay the penalty.

  “Now,” said Vans, “if you can find a copy of the doc’s signature among the papers in his pocket and forge his signature to that—”

  “My job, I think,” said Hektorum. When I looked at that forgery, well, I wouldn’t like to leave my check-book around where that detective was.