The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “That’s what killed Lane. It wasn’t the crash. Poor kid. Sheebler left him unconscious at the controls, and when he woke he found the ship was shooting into space. Sheebler had set the ship off to cover up his crime. He doesn’t care what happens to his passengers. I’m convinced of that now.”

  Ray’s anger set him pacing across the floor. So the people bound for Mars were entrusting their lives to a murderer, a poisonous gold-grabber, who would fill a dead ship with paid passengers before shooting it out into the void.

  “Lane fought for his life,” the girl continued. “He treated the wound as best as he could, but death gained on him all the way. Somehow he hung on and struggled at the controls until he brought the ship to a stop on Mars. A few hours later he died.”

  There was a long silence as the thoughts of the two paid tribute to the heroism of Lane’s brief career. The low roar of a distant space ship rocketing into the skies brought them back to the present.

  “You’ve got to quit Sheebler now!” Ray took the girl into his arms almost fiercely. “He’s throwing lives away. He might transfer you to a condemned ship anytime.”

  Vivian shook her head. “I have a long record of service—”

  “What does that mean to a beast like Sheebler? He’d do it without batting an eye.” He shuddered to think what peril hovered over this pretty girl. Didn’t she realize she was tempting the fates? She was brave—as brave as they come, ready to give her last ounce of energy to help frantic people to safety—and yet a helpless pawn of a treacherous space-ship magnate gone mad in his hunger for power.

  Vivian’s dark eyes gleamed strangely. She was trembling. Her manner frightened Ray.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “Does Sheebler know—that you know he murdered Lane?”

  “Yes. One of his men reported it to him.”

  Ray gasped. “God! Then you’ve got to quit. He knows you’ve got the goods on him. You could blast his business sky high. He’ll send you off into space the first chance—”

  “No. I’m safe.” Her tone of assurance puzzled Ray. “I’ll go on with it.”

  “But you can’t,” he persisted. “I can’t let you. For my sake, please—”

  “For your sake I’ve got to go on being a space-ship hostess just as if nothing had happened. How else can you arrange to get your receiver to Mars?”

  They searched each other’s eyes. “My luggage is never inspected,” she explained. “In a few trips I could smuggle all of the small model receiver through. The rest should be simple.” Ray now understood what the heroic girl was offering to do. If the small model receiver could be smuggled past Sheebler’s inspectors and if one of Buchanan’s engineers could get through to Mars to reassemble it and find a source of power to operate it, a big problem would be solved. Parcels of material could be shot through space at once. The big receiver itself could be delivered to Mars, piecemeal.

  “It’s wonderful of you, Vivian. But I can’t let you take the chance. Especially now that Sheebler,—”

  “I haven’t any fear of Sheebler, Ray,” she said confidently.

  “After what he did to Lane—”

  “It so happens that Damon D. Sheebler is in love with me.”

  “Vivian!” Ray was stunned. The cold face of the famed man came into his mind—the greedy eyes that shone like a viper’s, the surly lips. That heartless devil dared to think of beautiful, young Vivian Carruth. Ray was inflamed.

  “I’ve suspected it for some time,” said Vivian in an impassionate voice. “But now I know. We had our first talk today and he made it very obvious that he has been interested in me all along. He had just learned that I was Lane’s sister and he had a pretty story fixed up to try to square things. As if things could ever be squared. But I listened. Every word was revolting, but I couldn’t afford to betray my feelings. Not with a smuggling job before me. I’ve got to keep his confidence until that’s done. You’ll let me do it, won’t you, Ray? Then I’ll quit.”

  Ray was reluctant to make the decision that was before him. “Are you sure he doesn’t suspect anything?” Vivian was sure. “He’s never seen you and me together. He trusts me completely. You’ve got to let me go ahead with it, Ray,” she pleaded. “It’s the one thing I can do. If you and Professor Buchanan succeed in making your great vision come true, I want to have had a small part in it.”

  “Small part!” Ray caught the girl’s shoulders and drew her to him. “If you get that small receiving set through for Professor Buchanan, you’ll have removed the biggest obstacle that confronts him.”

  “And you as well?”

  Ray smiled and shook his head slowly. His thoughts had leaped from the invention to another dream that once held sway. It seemed remote now—that vision of a haven of safety for two—somewhere on Mars. Would it ever be attained? He glanced at the sky darkened by the massive scarfaced moon and wondered. Great was the barrier of space to be overcome, and narrow the margin of time. His ingenuity was pledged to fight these forces of nature in behalf of humanity. Suppose he should win. How little it would mean if he lost his personal battle. The menace of human treachery lurked before him, hidden like a coiled snake somewhere in the maze of events ahead.

  “If that viper Sheebler ever lays a hand on you—”

  “He won’t, Ray. I’ll keep out of his reach. Don’t worry. As soon as I get your goods through to Mars I’ll walk out on Interplanetary Lines for good.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Buchanan’s Success

  Professor Buchanan in his famed speech at the Conclave had given the earth exactly two hundred and forty days to go. The weeks were slipping by swiftly. The earth’s deadline was rapidly approaching, if the professor’s judgment was to be trusted. Several astronomers concurred in his opinion; moreover, his predictions of several storms of meteorites had proved accurate. Before half of the two hundred and forty days were gone a paralyzing fear seized the masses of waiting people.

  The notorious Sheebler himself fell victim to the creeping fear. In private he watched his moonometer with a fearful eye. It told him the satellite was gathering speed at an accelerating rate. He ceased to report the moonometer readings to his employees. It was time to keep an iron hand over every pilot, hostess, ground man, office worker. Undercurrents of panic were being generated among them which he must suppress. He must keep them working to the last.

  One day a space ship failed to return from Mars. It was not an obsolete ship—all of these had long since gone to their doom. It was a new ship, operated by a crack pilot. An ill omen. The next day the incident was repeated; and the following day three more ships failed to come in to home port. Pilots and hostesses were being drained from service by fear. They were deliberately staying on Mars—while thousands of good pay customers were still waiting on earth.

  Sheebler pressed a button. He would nip deserters in the bud. His loyal, brightly uniformed thugs would turn the trick. One to each space ship would do wonders to keep the ships on schedule.

  When Vivian had packed the last parts of the small model receiver into her luggage and taken leave of Ray, she thought she was departing from the

  Earth for the last time.

  “I’ll be waiting for you on Mars,” she had told him.

  Their parting had been brief.

  “When we get our giant transmitter working I’ll come and find you,” he said simply. “If the deal falls through—well, don’t wait too long.”

  She boarded the space ship as usual and knew her luggage would give no trouble. But when a hulking, sinister looking person known as Clayface strode up in his purple uniform and addressed her with, “Hi, Baby. I’m keepin’ you company and makin’ sure you get a round trip,” her heart sank. So she was to be chained to her job—chained to Sheebler to the finish. A dismal outlook. If she only could have told Ray. But at least she would get the baggage through. That was the important thing.

  A few days later there was great rejoicing among a group of engineers and inventors at Oil Plains. The s
mall model transmitter began to hum, and the objects which rolled into it would vanish.

  Where did they go? Plainly they were dissolving instantaneously. Could the electrical impulses which they set in motion be brought back into focus at Mars? There were moments of tense waiting.

  Then, nine and one half minutes after the sending began, the radio telegraph operator gave a loud whoop. “Here it is!” he shouted as he rushed to the group waving the telegraph tape. “ ‘Everything coming in fine. Congratulations to Professor Buchanan. We have entered a new age.’ ”

  Ray Lattimer was thrilled to the toes. He was the first to shake hands with the wet-eyed Professor Buchanan. He shook hands with everyone he passed on his way to the radio telegraph, and there he turned loose his elation in a message of congratulations to Vivian. Her pluck had turned the trick.

  He addressed the message to her in care of the American Colony Headquarters and comforted himself with the thought that it would reach her promptly.

  When back to the whirlwind of labor. The decks were cleared for fast action. The mammoth receiver bound for Mars, now almost completed, lay in great stacks of parcels near the small model transmitter. Swiftly his crew went to work. Ton after ton of machinery shot into the mysterious sausage grinder to dissolve into radio waves.

  “It won’t be long now,” said the professor, his visionary eyes gleaming triumphantly.

  Ray returned his smile, but his mind was elsewhere. Why hadn’t Vivian answered his radio telegram? Surely she was safe on Mars; he tried to put the worry out of his mind.

  Still no word by the end of the week. What could have happened? Ray pounced on the radio telegrapher. “Find Vivian Carruth for me,” he demanded. “She’s somewhere on Mars—I think. And I want to be sure of it.”

  “That’s what you told me yesterday,” said the operator, “but I’ll keep trying. By the way, here’s another bulletin from the Mars astronomers.”

  Ray glanced at it and knocked it aside. Every bulletin from the American astronomers on Mars announced a greater bulging of the moon and warned that an early crack-up appeared inevitable. One didn’t have to read Mars bulletins to know that. The moon told that to the naked eye. Predicted fissures had appeared and were showing deeper day by day. The millions of people who watched these changes were tormented by the mania of fear.

  Never in history had there been such a concentration of people as now gathered at Oil Plains. Streams of population from all over the world took up transient headquarters in the shadows of this industrial city, waiting for the great promise to materialize.

  The organization of this ever-growing multitude was naturally flimsy. Some lawlessness and plundering were to be expected under such a temporary arrangement. Yet, surprisingly, there was a spirit of order, for every national group had been assigned to a given area; and most of these groups maintained a semblance of government backed by national soldiers.

  The groups cooperated well. Nations that had been at each other’s throats for centuries forgot their grievances under the threat of common destruction. They waited a common fate—either collective deliverance or collective death.

  When individuals became impatient there was a convenient safety valve—the roads that led to Interplanetary Lines. The headquarters of the colossal space-ship monopoly were only fifty miles away. The underground highways and railways connecting Interplanetary with Oil Plains became the most active traffic arteries in the world, as the volume of impatient ones grew.

  The Shifters, as they came to be known, were always on the go. Any new rumor could set them into motion in the opposite direction. If they heard that the inventors had bumped into technical difficulties they shifted to Interplanetary and joined the endless queques that fought for space-ship tickets. If they heard that the price of tickets had tripled, they bounded back to Oil Plains. At the rise of a moon with new threats on its swollen face, they flew back to the space-ship center again.

  Sheebler grew fat on Shifter business. He would sell the same reservations over and over again. He seldom missed a trick.

  Once a destructive meteorite dropped into one of the outer camps at Oil Plains, killing several primitive tribesmen who had come from a far-off land. “The falling stones have found us!” The contagious superstition played into Sheebler’s hands. Rich Oriental princes went scurrying to him for reservations, depositing their fine jewels into his treasury.

  His wealth multiplied to proportions undreamed of. Millionaires, kings, treasurers of financial empires, thieves—all poured gold into his hands as the fear of tomorrow’s death seized them. Any price for immediate passage! Sheebler’s eyes began to gleam strangely. A maniacal gleam. Two passions were clashing desperately within him—to flee and to stay.

  To flee, for a torturing fear lashed him constantly. Every glint of the ghastly moon at night, every gray shadow it cast at noon day shrieked, escape!—escape!—pack the treasure into a space ship and get off to Mars before it is too late! His maddening fear would not let him sleep. Through the dead of night he paced through his underground vaults, counting and recounting the boxes that were waiting for shipment.

  But whenever he emerged from his treasure catacombs to see the lines of fear crazed people—to hear them cry at him to take their money and deliver them to Mars, the other passion recaptured him. He must stay—stay to the last minute and bleed these silly people to the finish. Stay until the moon scorched against the earth’s atmosphere, then fly to safety with his untold riches.

  He heard that the giant transmitter of Oil Plains was nearly ready. If it should be successful his harvest would end. If it should fail—

  Night after night he sent forth bombing parties instructed to commit sabotage on the giant machine. They could not get through. He lashed them with vituperation and sent them back. They did not return. His man power was dwindling. He was losing his grip on his workers—and on himself.

  Rebellion seethed through his offices and in his space ships. He used threats less and outright murder more. But violence is a boomerang: his own life was threatened by embittered workers. Fear heaped upon fear. He lived by the gun and the force of his mad will. Inwardly he was frightened and sick.

  His eyes fastened upon Vivian as she alighted from a space ship. She and the pilot were followed by Clayface, the hulking uniformed guard. Sheebler called him aside.

  “Your ship will have to do without a hostess until I give you further notice. I’m keeping Miss Carruth here.”

  “What’s the idee?” asked Clayface in a jealous tone. For an answer he took a quick slap across the face. “Shut up and take your orders.”

  As Vivian entered the dining room of the Interplanetary hotel she was aware that it was not Clayface who was following her. It was Damon D. Sheebler. He had regained his smoothest manner. He seated her at a secluded table, ordered dinners, and came to the point. He was transferring her. His nervous condition required the services of a trained nurse; her qualifications entitled her to the position. Her salary would be high, and she would be guaranteed passage to Mars with him in ample time to escape the final collapse. After outlining her responsibilities he added bluntly that she must not expect to go beyond the confines of Interplanetary Headquarters.

  “You mean I’m to be a prisoner here?” she flared.

  “Not a prisoner, my dear. A trusted employee,” he replied in a saccharin tone. “This is an honor to which you are entitled because of your excellent services, your pleasing manners, and—I might add—your beauty. Don’t you think you might learn to like it here?”

  “No,” said Vivian.

  “I advise you to try,” he said warmly. He led her to her quarters. “You’ll be very comfortable here. Unfortunately you will have to be your own housekeeper, as the maids have deserted the Interplanetary Hotel to join the mad crowds at Oil Plains. You’ve heard of the outrageous scheme of Professor Buchanan, I presume.”

  “Yes,” said Vivian.

  “Bubble,” said Sheebler. “Simply a bubble. I wouldn’t
give it a thought. It’s crazy. It’s so crazy it’s funny—millions of people swarming around, simply to be duped. Crowd psychology.”

  Vivian was silent.

  “Well?” Sheebler roared in a burst of temper.

  “Yes, it’s very funny,” said Vivian. “It’s perfectly ridiculous, of course.”

  Sheebler eyed her intently, as if he had caught a false note in her voice. “It would be funny—if it wasn’t for that damned assistant of Buchanan’s” he said sullenly.

  “You mean—”

  “Fellow by the name of Lattimer. Used to be a pilot of mine until his brain began to sprout too many theories. If the professor’s harebrained scheme ever should come to anything—it’ll be on account of him,” he snarled. “And to think I had lots of chances to kill him . . . lots of perfect

  chances—”

  Vivian saw his hand go to his flushed cheek. He was still remembering the blow Ray had once given him. He glared at her. “What are you looking at?”

  “I was—just thinking,” said Vivian quietly; then grasping for words that would allay his suspicions, she added, “Then you believe their machine might work?”

  “No!” Sheebler roared like a beast in pain. “Didn’t I just tell you—”

  “E-E-E-MERGENCY BROADCAST! E-E-E-MERGENCY BROADCAST!”

  Sheebler paled as the heavy voice of the speaker cut in.

  “The giant radio at Oil Plains is now sending people through to Mars free of charge. The first passengers to arrive have just communicated with the Earth, announcing that they reached Mars without injury. Please help to spread the news to everyone. There will be time for all . . .”

  Crash!

  Sheebler had seized a chair and smashed it against the loud speaker. He raced out the door, screaming “Cut that off! Cut that off! For God’s sake—” The air went blue.

  Vivian seized her opportunity. Her suitcase was in the room. She shed her hostess uniform and got into street clothes in no time. She slipped through the corridors. She picked her way, fearful that she would run into Sheebler. Suddenly as the loud speakers choked off, Sheebler’s snarl sounded just ahead of her, “Quick, God’s sakes, give me a hook-up!” he barked at one of his lackeys.