Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Jar."

  "There, I knew Professor Zalpha was off the beam," I yelp at Wurpz. "This is what is causin' the earthquakes."

  "Come, schwine," the creep says. "I will show you something. The tomb of my ancestor. Then to the museum to show you how he arrived in Subterro in the year 1945. This is the city of Adolfus. Mach schnell! Heil Hitler. I am Agrodyte Hitler, grandson of the Liberator."

  The short hairs on the back of my neck start crawling down my spine. We leave the Mole and walk along a big square paved with a mineral we never saw upstairs. Thousands of inhabitants of Subterro hiss at us and click their long black fingers. We walk up a long flight of steps and come to a cadaver memorial and on the front there are big letters and numerals in what looks like bloodstone that says: ADOLPH HITLER. 1981.

  "Jar, Earthmen, mortal enemies of Subterro's hero, you thought he did not escape, hah? Come, we go to the museum."

  We do. In a glass case is an antique U-boat. "I can't believe it," I says to Zahooli.

  "Neither do I. We never took off. They have us locked up in the booby hatch in Metropolita. We went nuts."

  "He escaped in a submarine, bringing three of Nazi Germany's smartest scientists with him. He brought plans showing us he could split the atom. He brought working models." The creep laughs mockingly. "We have certain elements down here also. Puranium, better than your uranium. And pitchblende Plus Nine. It will power our fleet of submarines that will conquer Earth. It is nearly der tag! We will leave through the underground river that our benefactor found three miles below the surface of the ocean near Brazil. It spirals down through this earth and empties into Lake Schicklegruber eighty miles from here."

  "And Hitler took one of those Subterro dames as a mate, huh," I says. "It figures. He was not human himself."

  I get another cuffing around but I am too punchy already to feel anything. The next thing I know I am in the Subterro clink with Wurpz and Zahooli. D'Ambrosia says maybe we will get released from the strait jackets soon and get shock treatments and find ourselves back in Metropolita in our favorite night spot.

  "We have to be dreamin' this," I keep telling myself. The guard looks in at us and he has little slanting eyes.

  "How did Jap beetles get here?" I ask Wurpz. I shiver. I think of all the Subterro subs pouring out of a hole under Brazil and sinking all Earthian merchant marines, and shooting guided missiles that will land all over the U.S. They could have rays that would reach up over a million miles and wash up space traffic.

  Then we get another jolt. They bring us our chow and say it is angleworm and hellgrammite porridge as that is what the Subterro denizens live on mostly. There is a salad made out of what looks like skunk cabbage leaves. We found out later that Hitler's brain trust had made an artificial sun for the Subterrors and they had been given greens for the first time and increased in size over a hundred per cent.

  "We have got to escape," I says to my pals.

  "That is easy," Zahooli sniffs. "First we have to break through the walls here, get to the Mole which can't never move again, and then fight off maybe six million creeps. We would git reduced to cinders by ray Betsys the minute we hit the street."

  I sigh deeply and reach into my knapsack. I find some lamb stew and tapioca pudding capsules and split them with Zahooli and Wurpz. Then I come up with a little box and glance at the label. It says, URGOXA'S INSECT POWDER--Contains Radiatol.

  I get up nonchalantly and call the guard to the barred window. Beetlehead sticks his face in close and asks what I want. I empty some of the powder into the palm of my hand and then blow it into his face. The Subterro sentry's eyes cross. His face turns as pale as milk and he collapses like a camp stool.

  "Eureka!" I yelp. "We are in business, pals."

  I hide the box of bug powder when I hear two other creeps come running. They start yakking in Universa and in bug language both. Agrodyte Hitler appears and looks in at us.

  "What happened, Great One?" I ask very politely.

  "We will perform an autopsy," Hitler's grandson says, and turns to another beetlehead. "Open the door," he says. "I am showing my guests something before we exterminate them. Too bad about Voklogoo. Most likely a coronary entomothrombosis. Achtung! Raus mitt!"

  "It means get the lead out in old Germanic literature," I says to Wurpz and Zahooli.

  "It is curtains," D'Ambrosia gulps. "In about five minutes we will be residue."

  The Neofeuhrer is like all egomaniacs before him. He wants to brag. We get into a Subterro Jetjeep and drive about twenty miles through the underground countryside to the entrance to a cave guarded by some extra tall Subterrors. Hitler the Third leads us into the spelunker's nightmare and we finally come to a big metal door about eighty feet long and twenty feet high.

  Agrodyte pushes a button and the steel door lifts. Then we walk up a flight of steps to the top of a dam and take a gander at a fleet of submarines that makes Earthian pig-boats look like they belonged in antique shops.

  "We will take you for a ride in one," the dictator of Subterro says. "After that I will turn you over to the executioner."

  "We need lawyers," Wurpz says.

  We cross a thin gangplank and enter the sub. The lights in it are indirect and are purplish green. Hitler Number Three shows us the telepathic machine, the radar, and the viso-screen that pictures everything going on upstairs on Earth, and on Mars, Jupiter and all other planets. There are four other beetleheads on the sub and they carry disintegrators.

  "These Subterro U-boats," our genial host brags, "can go as fast in reverse as full speed ahead, as the situation warrants. They are alive with guided missiles no larger than this flashlight I have here, but one would blow up your Metropolita and leave hardly an ash."

  He looks at me, and then goes on: "We will proceed to the lock that will raise us to the underground river and cruise along its course for a few hundred miles. It is the treat I should accord such distinguished visitors from the outside of Earth, nein?"

  The skipper of the Subterro sub pulls a switch and there is a noise like three contented cats purring. The metal fish slides along the surface of the underground lake and comes to a hole in a big rock ledge.

  We see all this through a monitor which registers the scenery outside the sub within a radius of three miles. The sub slides into the side of the rock, and then is lifted up to the underground river that winds and winds upward like a corkscrew to the outlet under Brazil. Every once in a while a blast of air that smells like a dentist's office goes through the sub from bow to stern and I ask why.

  "There is such terrific potency to the power we use from our puranium," Hitler Number Three says, "that we purify the air every few seconds with formula XYB and Three-fifth. The basis of the gas is galena."

  I nudge Wurpz and Zahooli as the Neofeuhrer goes over to converse with his crew. "It is our big chance," I whisper. "You watch how they run this tub for the next few minutes. Then when I cough three times you be ready. I do not know how much powder it will take to knock off the big bug as he is half human. Once I blow this insect powder at the same time as the purifying blast is to take place, you two be ready to jump Agrodyte. I noticed that a small purple light flashes on over the monitor just before that stuff turns loose. It is a warning so the beetleheads can take deep breaths."

  "Sep," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I take back all the insults of the past five hours. Shake."

  "I am doin' that already," I says. "We have to work fast while we are in the underground river."

  We wait. The Neofeuhrer comes walking back to where we are sitting. The purple light flashes on, and I count to three. Just as the blast of air loaded with XYB plus cuts loose I throw all the bug powder left in the box into the current. Hitler Number Three breathes in a big gob of it and buckles a little at the knees.

  "Grab him!" I screech. "Don't let him yank that disintegrator loose. Hit him with anything you see, pals!"

  I see the other beetleheads collapse like they had been hit with bulldozers and I know now
that insecticide is more dangerous in Subterro than all the radioactivity harnessed up on six planets.

  Agrodyte Hitler, however, has some moxey left in him as he has two of his hands around Wurpz's throat, the third around Zahooli's leg and is reaching for a ray Betsy with his fourth. He grabs the disintegrator just as I belt him over his ugly noggin with a wrench about two feet long and which was certainly not made of aluminum or balsa wood.

  "Himmel!" the Neofeuhrer gulps. "Ach du lebensraum!" He has to be hit once more which is enough and we tie him up with rope that looks like it was made out of plutonium filaments.

  "Well," I says. "We have a sub from Subterro. Wurpz, you just sit there at the controls and make sure that needle on the big dial don't move as I am sure this creep has it on robot so that this tub will automatically follow the course of the river."

  "We are sure takin' a powder," D'Ambrosia yelps. "Look at the monitor!"

  We see fish gaping at us from the screen that even Earth citizens with delirium tremens never saw, and I look quite anxiously at the instrument panel.

  "A thousand miles per and we are climbin'," I says. "I am glad this Hitler used old Germanic on his subs, and that I majored in it once. I--er--I am gettin' arthritis all at once! The bends! Uh--er--look, peel them suits off the other creeps and fast, Zahooli, as I bet they can be inflated and made into compression chambers. They have got connections that plug into something."

  We pull on the suits which were too big for the beetleheads and for a good reason. More bends than there are in the Ohio River are with us before we plug into the right socket. The suits bulge out until our feet almost leave the floor. I grin through my helmet at Wurpz.

  The sub keeps purring and purring. The altimeter registers four thousand feet. It is a caution, an altimeter in a sub. Two hours later we shoot out through a hole deep under the coast of Brazil and I know we are in the ocean as the monitor shows some old wrecked ships about three miles from us. We disconnect the Subterro anti-bends kimonos and peel them off. Agrodyte Hitler is moving two of his arms when we climb toward the surface.

  "Hah, we will make a sucker out of history," I says to Wurpz. "And wait until we show this creep to Professor Zalpha and Exmud R. Zmorro."

  We come to the surface and contact an Earthian Franco-Austro atomic luxury liner. The skipper's pan registers on the viso-screen. "This is Septimus Spink," I says. "Commander of Inner Spaceship Magnificent Mole. I have come from the center of Earth with a captured Subterro submarine and Agrodyte Hitler, the Neofeuhrer. Over and out."

  The universe goes into a cosmic dither when we slide into a berth in Hampton Rhodus. Thousands of citizens hail us as we ride to Metropolita in a Supercaddijet. Behind us in a truck trailer made mostly of transparent duralucite is our captive, the descendant of Adolph Hitler and three dead Subterro beetle people.

  "Well, you won't give up so easy on a Spink from now on," I says to Zahooli. "We are heroes and will get medals. First thing we have to do, though," I says to Coordinator One sitting in the jet sedan with us, "is to take care of the hole Earth has in its head. All we have to do is drop that new bomb down the tunnel we made and it will wash up all those subs that are left and most likely cause a flood that will inundate Subterro. What do you think?"

  The brass is still tongue-tied. "One thing I must do and that is see that a certain insecticide manufacturer gets a plug on Interplanetary TV," I continue. "Ha, we took the bugs out of this planet. It should work quite smooth from now on."

  "I still believe in reincarnation," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I have the darndest feeling I've been through almost as big nightmares with you before, Sep."

  * * * * *

  Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022, Junius XXIV--Professor Apsox Zalpha, eminent professor of cosmogony, and Exmud R. Zmorro, leading news analyst of seven worlds, have entered the Metropolita Neuropsychiatorium for a routine checkup. They emphatically denied that it was connected in any way with a lecture given recently by Septimus Spink, first man to explore inner space, at the Celestial Cow Palace in San Francisco. Both men expect to remain for two weeks. "Of course there is nothing wrong with either of us," Professor Zalpha told your correspondent. "But if you see a beetle, please do not step on it. It could be somebody's mother."

  * * *

  Contents

  CHAIN OF COMMAND

  By Stephen Arr

  By going through channels, George worked up from the woodwork to the top brass!

  "George," Clara said with restrained fury, "the least you could do is ask him. Are you a mouse or a worm?"

  "Well, I have gone out there and moved it every night," George protested, trying to reason with her without success.

  "Yes, and every morning he puts it back. George, so long as that trap is outside of our front door, I can never have a moment's peace, worrying about the children. I won't go on like this! You must go out and talk some sense into him about removing it at once."

  "I don't know," George said weakly. "They might not be happy to find out about us."

  "Well, our being here is their own fault, remember that," Clara snorted. "They deliverately exposed your great-great grandfather Michael to hard radiations. George," she continued fervidly, "all you have to do is to go out and ask him. I'm sure he'll agree, and then we'll have this menace removed from our lives. I simply can not go on like this another minute!"

  That, George knew, was a misstatement. She could go on like this for hours. He stared at her unhappily.

  "Yes, dear," he mumbled finally. "Well, maybe tomorrow."

  "No, George," she said firmly. "Now! This morning. The very moment he comes in."

  He looked at her silently, feeling harried and unsure of himself. After living here so long, they'd observed and learned human customs and speech--they'd even adopted human names.

  "George," she pleaded, "just ask him. Reason with him. Point out to him that he's just wasting his time." She paused, added, "You're intelligent--you can think of the right things to say."

  "Oh, all right," he said wearily. But once he had said it, he felt better. At least, he would get it over with, one way or another.

  * * * * *

  As soon as he heard the swish-swish of the broom outside his home, he got up and walked out of the front door. He saw that the trap was still off to one side, where he had pushed it the night before.

  "Hello," he shouted.

  Swish-swish-swish went the broom, busily moving dust from one part of the room to another, swish-swish-swish. The man looked tremendous from so close a view, yet George knew that he was just a little, bent, old man, a small specimen of the species.

  George took a deep breath. "Hello!" he bellowed with all his strength.

  The janitor stopped swish-swishing and looked around the room suspiciously.

  "Hello!" George shrieked. His throat felt raw.

  The janitor looked down and saw the mouse. "Hello yourself," he said. He was an ignorant old man and, when he saw the mouse shouting hello at him, he assumed right away that it was a mouse shouting hello to him.

  "The trap!" the mouse bellowed.

  "Stop shouting!" the janitor cried, annoyed. He liked to think as he worked, and he hated loud noises. "What about the trap?"

  "My wife doesn't want you to put it by the front door any more," George said, still speaking loudly, so that the janitor could hear, but at least not bellowing so that it tore his throat. "She's afraid it might hurt the children."

  "Will it hurt the children?" the janitor demanded.

  "No," George replied. "They know all about traps--but my wife still wants it removed."

  "Sorry," the janitor said, "but my orders are to put a trap by every mousehole. This is an atomic plant, and they don't want mice."

  "They do, too!" George said defiantly. "They brought my great-great-grandfather Michael here themselves and exposed him to hard radiations. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

  "I can't help it," the janitor snapped. "I have to obey orders."

  "What
will I tell my wife?" George shouted.

  That stopped the janitor. He had a wife of his own.

  "I guess I can take it up with the supervisor," he finally said.

  "All right," George shouted. "Thanks!"

  * * * * *

  The janitor picked up the trap and moved it over to the front door. He watched, interested, as George promptly pushed it several inches along the wall. Then he turned and busily swish-swished more dust around the room.

  "Well, what did he say?" Clara asked George as soon as he came back into the house.

  "Said he'd take it up with the supervisor," George said, settling down in an armchair.

  "George," she ordered, "you get up this instant and make sure that he really does!"

  "Look," George pleaded, "he said he would."

  "He may have been lying," Clara said promptly. "You go right up to the supervisor's room and see."

  So, George reluctantly heaved himself out of the chair and ran through the mouseways in the wall until he came to the mousehole in the supervisor's room.

  At that moment, the janitor came in and the supervisor looked up, annoyed. He was a fat man, with stubble on his cheek, and he walked with a waddle.

  "There's a mouse in room 112 who doesn't want a trap by his front door," the janitor said simply.

  "You're crazy," the supervisor said.

  The janitor shrugged. "What should I tell him?" he asked.

  "Tell him to come up here and speak to me himself," the supervisor said, feeling very clever.

  "I'm right here," George cried, stepping out of the mousehole and neatly side-stepping the mousetrap beside it.

  "There he is now," the janitor said, pointing.

  "My God!" whispered the supervisor, who'd had some education. "A hallucination."

  "No, a mouse," the old janitor corrected.

  "My wife wants the trap removed," George patiently explained. "She's worried the children might blunder into it."

  "Do you see him, too?" the supervisor asked the janitor incredulously, still whispering.