Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Come in, doc."

  The broken door creaked as she pulled at it. Instantly from inside came a voice. "Who's there? Keep out of here! I warn you, I got a gun!" It was a weak, shaky voice with a frenzy of desperation in it.

  "It's me, Tom," the girl said softly. "It's all right, I've brought the doc."

  The boy lay on an old blanket on the bare wooden floor of an empty room. He was dressed in trousers and shirt, a shirt with one shoulder torn and a crude, bloody bandage there. Beside him there was an empty, broken wooden box, with a lighted candle, a pitcher and glass of water. Nearby, another blanket was spread. On the floor, in a corner, there were a few articles of food, tinned goods and a loaf of bread.

  "Oh, hello, doc, I guess I'm glad Jenny got you." He was a slim, masculine version of the girl--a good-looking boy, with black hair clipped close to his head.

  His face was pale and drawn; his lips bloodless. His dark eyes, fixed on me as I knelt down on the blanket beside him, were glistening with fever.

  "I'm all right, doc." He tried to smile. "I cut myself. Just an accident, doc."

  He was far from all right. He had been stabbed in the shoulder, just missing the lung. He'd lost a lot of blood; but for a healthy young fellow, it didn't seem a dangerous wound, if infection was kept out of it. But he couldn't have stayed here very long, neglecting it.

  "Not too bad," I said cheerfully. "But you were right in getting me, Jenny. Have you any fresh water?"

  There was a rusty old pump in a corner of the room, but it worked. That kid was stoical. I guess I hurt him plenty. But in fifteen minutes or so, I'd done all I could with emergency cleaning and a fresh bandage.

  "Okay," I said. "Now we'll talk. You two kids have got to--"

  I didn't get any further than that. I was too startled. There was a lumpy place under the blanket. I chanced to notice a little end of fabric sticking out. I reached, pulled at it. It was prison garb.

  "Oh," I murmured. "I see. That's--"

  Again I stopped. I was looking into the shaking muzzle of a little black gun which the boy had drawn from under the blanket up by his head. I was certainly dumb not to have gotten that gun away from him when I first came in.

  "Now, now," I said, "don't be silly. I won't do you any harm, Tom."

  "You're damn right, you won't!" he snarled. "You get out of here! Oh, I'll pay you all right! Jenny'll drive you home! But you ain't goin' to turn me in, because I won't be here by the time you can get the cops!"

  "Tom! Tom!"

  That girl could have cost me my life. It was nip and tuck whether that kid's shaking, feverish finger pulled the trigger or didn't. It didn't. The girl shoved away his arm so that I reached, grabbed the gun and twisted it from him. I tossed it, sliding, across the floor. That was another fool trick of mine. I should have dropped it into my pocket.

  "Now," I said, "you listen to me, you two. You're okay, Tom, if you get the right treatment. A transfusion, maybe. That wound's got to be fixed up properly. I'm not asking you how you got it; I'm taking you to the Pleasant Grove hospital--"

  "No! You're crazy! You know damn well that I broke out of jail! I won't go back! I got things to do! You can't--"

  I let him rage. "You'll die if you don't go," I said. "Infection will get in that shoulder. It's there now, very likely. Suit yourself, if you want to sit here and die--"

  That got the girl. She flung herself down by her brother. "Tom, you listen to him! I ain't goin' to let you die! You listen to him!" Then she turned to me, clung to me. "Doc, he's a good boy. They put him in jail for killin' a man in a robbery! But he didn't do it--"

  "Jenny, you shut up!" the boy growled.

  "I won't! He's right, Tom! You gotta go back! You can't jus' keep runnin' from the law--not when you're hurt! Doc, if you knew all about it, you'd stand by him! They had no right to send him up! It was my husband did it--"

  "Jenny, you shut up, I tell you!"

  But he couldn't shut her up now, and she babbled it out. She was married to a fellow named Greer, Jim Greer. A man about thirty, a seasoned criminal.

  "He's got a record under some other name," the girl was saying. "I know it damn well, by a lot of little things he said. Anyway, he got Tom into this robbery thing. Jim killed the man. It wasn't Tom, he never even had a gun."

  * * *

  THE thing had happened only a year ago. Nothing very novel; you read about things like that often. They'd broken into a rich man's home, made away with jewelry and cash. But the victim caught them at it, got killed. In the getaway, Tom had been able to hide some of the loot in the garden. Jim Greer had gotten away; but Tom was seen by the gardener, who had taken a shot at him, brought him down with his leg full of buckshot.

  "An' Tom took the rap for the whole thing. Second degree murder," the girl said. "He could have squealed on Jim--Jim was the killer!"

  "He would have lied out of it," Tom said. "Anyway, Jenny had a baby coming. I couldn't very well drag--"

  "I see," I said. "So you went up for the killing too. And this Jim Greer--"

  "I thought he loved her," the boy said. "I thought he'd treat her right."

  "My baby died," Jenny said. "He died when he was born, an' Jim--he wasn't there--he was drunk. He never did come back to me. He's got a girl somewhere else, over in Mechanicsville, I think. Anyway, I'm through with him."

  And she had told her brother, in the jail, about it. "I had to get out," Tom said. "See? I just had to!"

  "To get revenge on him?" I suggested.

  "No, no!" Jenny gasped. "Tom didn't want to hurt him!"

  "The hell I didn't," Tom muttered. "I got out of the jail. Never mind how, it was one of those lucky breaks, me and another guy, but they caught him right away. That was last night--"

  "He wanted to get hold of Jim, an' maybe make him confess an' take the murder rap," Jenny put in. "Anyway, I live in a little house in Palenburg--me an' another girl, an' she's away for a week. I'm workin' in a factory there."

  She had phoned her husband, persuaded him to come to her cottage. Then Tom had jumped him.

  "He hadn't treated Jenny right, that was the main thing," Tom was saying. "So I asked him what the hell he expected to do about it."

  And this fellow Greer had retorted that what he wanted was his share of the loot Tom had hidden after the robbery.

  "Can you beat that?" the boy demanded. "To hell with the murder rap I took for him, to hell with my sister, all he wants is some money!"

  In the fight, Tom had been stabbed. Greer had fled, fearing that the neighbors had been aroused by the noise. But they hadn't been. Tom and Jenny had come here, where she had hidden him, bringing him food; hoping he'd get well so they'd he able to get away....

  "I've got the money," Tom was saying. "Doc, give us a chance. She stole that car in Palenburg tonight. That's okay, we won't hurt it. We'll jest beat it somewhere, Jenny an' me, an' we'll leave the car where it'll get found. I swear it, doc, give us a chance!"

  Just a couple of kids, all mixed up. You read about lots of them like that.

  "This fellow Greer," I said. "You don't think by any chance--"

  I didn't finish. Somehow a sudden uneasiness had jumped me. My mind went back to that noise in the woods as the girl and I came here. Thinking back to it now, it did seem that I could remember there had been a car behind us on the way here. Then I had forgotten it.

  * * *

  I MET Jenny's eyes. "I thought he was around my house today," she murmured suddenly. "I thought I saw him, but I wasn't sure."

  Had Greer trailed us here? I felt suddenly trapped--the three of us here in this lonely little shack, and a killer outside.

  It was no idle, crazy hunch! I had no time to get up from the floor. The door creaked. A figure loomed in the doorway, a big burly man with a gun in his hand, leveled at us.

  "So here we are again!" he said. "Nice little family party, an' the doc to fix you up! Ain't that sweet?"

  Tom lay stiffened on his blanket, with his fevered, burning eyes on
the advancing figure. I sat numbed beside him. Jenny was sitting on the other aide of Tom, staring with a hand upflung to her mouth.

  "Okay," Greer said. "Now, let's have that money, Tom!"

  "You--you damned--"

  Across the room, on the floor, I could see Tom's little revolver where I had flung it. It could have been a million miles away, for all the chance I had of getting it.

  "Come on, where is it?" Greer demanded. Then he saw an impulsive gesture of Tom's hand toward the head of the blanket. "Okay," he said. "So that's where it is--"

  He stooped, reached for it. As it happened, his gun was pointed at me. Tom didn't think of that; I doubt if he thought of much at anything. Wild, fevered, with a rush of frenzied strength he rose up on the blanket, grabbing for Greer's throat. The gun went off. By good luck, the bullet didn't go into my chest. It went into my left arm with a stab like a white-hot poker. Greer straightened and staggered back.

  "So that's the idea, is it?" he roared. "Okay, you asked for it--the whole damned three of you! His gun spat again, at Tom, this time, but it missed his head, the bullet hitting the floor with a thud.

  I guess one acts without conscious thought in a thing like that. My instrument bag was beside me;

  it was open. I reached in, found a scalpel and clung to it. Greer was near me. I rose up in time to knock his arm as he fired again. And then I slashed with the scalpel--ripped it across his throat.

  I better not go into details. That slash, with all the wild strength I could put into it, wasn't anything like a surgeon's delicate incision. Greer went down. I don't think he lived more than a minute or two....

  A little later, I had Tom down in the big limousine, lying on the back seat, with Jenny sitting beside him. They'd get Greer's fingerprints from the body. His true identity would be established. His old prison record would be pinned to him.

  Silently, with my left arm hanging limp, I drove the stolen car out of the woods, heading for the Pleasant Grove hospital. Doctors often have tough days. But I sure didn't want any more like this.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE WHITE INVADERS

  By Raymond King Cummings

  CHAPTER I

  A White Shape in the Moonlight

  The colored boy gazed at Don and me with a look of terror.

  "But I tell you I seen it!" he insisted. "An' it's down there now. A ghost! It's all white an' shinin'!"

  "Nonsense, Willie," Don turned to me. "I say, Bob, what do you make of this?"

  "I seen it, I tell you," the boy broke in. "It ain't a mile from here if you want to go look at it."

  Don gripped the colored boy whose coffee complexion had taken on a greenish cast with his terror.

  "Stop saying that, Willie. That's absolute rot. There's no such thing as a ghost."

  "But I seen--"

  "Where?"

  "Over on the north shore. Not far."

  "What did you see?" Don shook him. "Tell us exactly."

  "A man! I seen a man. He was up on a cliff just by the golf course when I first seen him. I was comin' along the path down by the Fort Beach an' I looked up an' there he was, shinin' all white in the moonlight. An' then before I could run, he came floatin' down at me."

  "Floating?"

  "Yes. He didn't walk. He came down through the rocks. I could see the rocks of the cliff right through him."

  Don laughed at that. But neither he nor I could set this down as utter nonsense, for within the past week there had been many wild stories of ghosts among the colored people of Bermuda. The Negroes of Bermuda are not unduly superstitious, and certainly they are more intelligent, better educated than most of their race. But the little islands, this past week, were echoing with whispered tales of strange things seen at night. It had been mostly down at the lower end of the comparatively inaccessible Somerset; but now here it was in our own neighborhood.

  "You've got the fever, Willie," Don laughed. "I say, who told you you saw a man walking through rock?"

  "Nobody told me. I seen him. It ain't far if you--"

  "You think he's still there?"

  "Maybe so. Mr. Don, he was standin' still, with his arms folded. I ran, an'--"

  "Let's go see if he's there," I suggested. "I'd like to have a look at one of these ghosts."

  * * * * *

  But even as I lightly said it, a queer thrill of fear shot through me. No one can contemplate an encounter with the supernatural without a shudder.

  "Right you are," Don exclaimed. "What's the use of theory? Can you lead us to where you saw him, Willie?"

  "Ye-es, of course."

  The sixteen-year-old Willie was shaking again. "W-what's that for, Mr. Don?"

  Don had picked up a shotgun which was standing in a corner of the room.

  "Ain't no--no use of that, Mr. Don."

  "We'll take it anyway, Willie. Ready, Bob?"

  A step sounded behind us. "Where are you going?"

  It was Jane Dorrance, Don's cousin. She stood in the doorway. Her long, filmy white summer dress fell nearly to her ankles. Her black hair was coiled on her head. In her bodice was a single red poinsettia blossom. As she stood motionless, her small slight figure framed against the dark background of the hall, she could have been a painting of an English beauty save for the black hair suggesting the tropics. Her blue-eyed gaze went from Don to me, and then to the gun.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Willie saw a ghost." Don grinned. "They've come from Somerset, Jane. I say, one of them seems to be right here."

  "Where?"

  "Willie saw it down by the Fort Beach."

  "To-night?"

  "Yes. Just now. So he says, though it's all rot, of course."

  "Oh," said Jane, and she became silent.

  * * * * *

  She appeared to be barring our way. It seemed to me, too, that the color had left her face, and I wondered vaguely why she was taking it so seriously. That was not like Jane: she was a level-headed girl, not at all the sort to be frightened by Negroes talking of ghosts.

  She turned suddenly on Willie. The colored boy had been employed in the Dorrance household since childhood. Jane herself was only seventeen, and she had known Willie here in this same big white stone house, almost from infancy.

  "Willie, what you saw, was it a--a man?"

  "Yes," said the boy eagerly. "A man. A great big man. All white an' shinin'."

  "A man with a hood? Or a helmet? Something like a queer-looking hat on his head, Willie?"

  "Jane!" expostulated Don. "What do you mean?"

  "I saw him--saw it," said Jane nervously.

  "Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "You did? When? Why didn't you tell us?"

  "I saw it last night." She smiled faintly. "I didn't want to add to these wild tales. I thought it was my imagination. I had been asleep--I fancy I was dreaming of ghosts anyway."

  "You saw it--" Don prompted.

  "Outside my bedroom window. Some time in the middle of the night. The moon was out and the--the man was all white and shining, just as Willie says."

  "But your bedroom," I protested. "Good Lord, your bedroom is on the upper floor."

  But Jane continued soberly, with a sudden queer hush to her voice, "It was standing in the air outside my window. I think it had been looking in. When I sat up--I think I had cried out, though none of you heard me evidently--when I sat up, it moved away; walked away. When I got to the window, there was nothing to see." She smiled again. "I decided it was all part of my dream. This morning--well, I was afraid to tell you because I knew you'd laugh at me. So many girls down in Somerset have been imagining things like that."

  * * * * *

  To me, this was certainly a new light on the matter. I think that both Don and I, and certainly the police, had vaguely been of the opinion that some very human trickster was at the bottom of all this. Someone, criminal or otherwise, against whom our shotgun would be efficacious. But here was level-headed Jane telling us of a man standing in mid-air peering in
to her second-floor bedroom, and then walking away. No trickster could accomplish that.

  "Ain't we goin'?" Willie demanded. "I seen it, but it'll be gone."

  "Right enough," Don exclaimed grimly. "Come on, Willie."

  He disregarded Jane as he walked to the door, but she clung to him.

  "I'm coming," she said obstinately, and snatched a white lace scarf from the hall rack and flung it over her head like a mantilla. "Don, may I come?" she added coaxingly.

  He gazed at me dubiously. "Why, I suppose so," he said finally. Then he grinned. "Certainly no harm is going to come to us from a ghost. Might frighten us to death, but that's about all a ghost can do, isn't it?"

  We left the house. The only other member of the Dorrance household was Jane's father--the Hon. Arthur Dorrance, M.P. He had been in Hamilton all day, and had not yet returned. It was about nine o'clock of an evening in mid-May. The huge moon rode high in a fleecy sky, illumining the island with a light so bright one could almost read by it.

  "We'll walk," said Don. "No use riding, Willie."

  "No. It's shorter over the hill. It ain't far."

  * * * * *

  We left our bicycles standing against the front veranda, and, with Willie and Don leading us, we plunged off along the little dirt road of the Dorrance estate. The poinsettia blooms were thick on both sides of us. A lily field, which a month before had been solid white with blossoms, still added its redolence to the perfumed night air. Through the branches of the squat cedar trees, in almost every direction there was water visible--deep purple this night, with a rippled sheen of silver upon it.

  We reached the main road, a twisting white ribbon in the moonlight. We followed it for a little distance, around a corkscrew turn, across a tiny causeway where the moonlit water of an inlet lapped against the base of the road and the sea-breeze fanned us. A carriage, heading into the nearby town of St. Georges, passed us with the thud of horses' hoofs pounding on the hard smooth stone of the road. Under its jaunty canopy an American man reclined with a girl on each side of him. He waved us a jovial greeting as they passed.