The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  “You can’t turn back now. You’d hurt Mack’s feelings.”

  “I don’t want to turn back,” Shannon said soothingly. “I want to go with you—to Nason Peak to meet Mack, Tubby. But I don’t want to smash up the G-Three and hurt our friends. I want to come over and join you. We’ll all meet Mack together, wipe the slate clean all at once.” Martin’s face twitched.

  “But you can’t, Lane. You’re out there and we’re here—”

  “I can, Tubby. I’ve figured out how. You remember when I crashed the Turtle?”

  “I remember. That was Titus Conway’s fault, too.”

  “I know. Listen, Tubby. Out there in Morgreb Gap, where I crashed, there’s a nice island in the swamp. An easy spot to land on. Let’s land there, you and I. I’ll show you the way. It’s easy to find by that patch of green fog. We’ll land there and I’ll beam Venus Spaceport where we are and tell them to come and pick up the G-Three.

  “But meantime, I’ll rush over and get into your ship and we’ll blast off again—off for Nason Peak and Mack.”

  Shannon held his breath until his lungs ached. The G-3 quivered to the tension of his hands on the manual controls. He could see Tubby Martin’s face twisting, working, trying to figure it out.

  “You can’t find it, Lane. And Mack doesn’t want me to delay. He’s telling me to hurry. I’ll go on alone—”

  “No, wait! How about those fifty-eight passengers Titus Conway murdered when his rotten mush crashed the Turtle? Are you going to let him forget them? We’ll land on my island, show him how fifty-eight people look who died hating him, cursing him. He won’t want you to land there, Tubby, because he’ll be afraid!”

  “That’s right, Lane. Fifty-eight ghosts ought to have a chance to see him tremble and hear him scream for mercy. You show me where, Lane. I’ll come down.”

  Shannon was trembling, shaking so that he could hardly control himself. He’d done it. Tubby Martin was going to land. Please heaven, there is an island there to land on and Tubby can hit it, Shannon prayed.

  “Down, Tubby,” he said, as though to a child. “Down under five hundred and fight the wind. It’s awful in Morgreb Gap. Remember? Pump out your air vanes and ride them downwind. I’m going down now. You follow.”

  “I’m following, Lane.”

  * * * *

  Down! Down! Thundering jets and suddenly the big ship heeling over, twisting to the tug of the screaming wind. Fog shredding away, making crazy, demoniac figures in the gray light, dancing and posturing, beckoning Shannon down the chasm of the Gap.

  He held a cross-wind course, fighting drift and lashing wind, to reach the calmer area at the south rim. Guiding Tubby Martin with low-voiced encouragement and advice.

  Everything was memory, now. Shannon had to remember just where he was, just how hard the wind blasted at him when he had at last turned east before it. The green fog might not be there any more. It might be such a narrow patch that they could thunder past only a few yards from its edge and never see it.

  “Downwind now, Tubby. Ride the wind and decelerate to a bare lift-velocity. Watch for the green fog.”

  It was there before Shannon realized it—that seething wall of ugly, poisonous green. He barely had time to do the thing he was doing at the moment. Then he was wriggling hurriedly into his bulging space-suit, clamping down the helmet, opening air valves.

  Shannon got the face-plate shut and sealed a moment before the G-3 plowed into the blinding fog. He had already cut off his own screen, maintaining contact with Tubby Martin through the audio unit.

  “I’m in the fog, Tubby. In the green fog. Going down for a landing. The moment you hit the fog, nose down and brake. Come in as gently as you can. I’ll be waiting for you—in the fog.”

  Heaven, put some solid ground under my keel, Shannon prayed. Then—

  “I see the fog, Lane. I’m diving into it now.”

  Shannon jumped. He hadn’t realized Tubby Martin was as close to his tail. If he had guessed wrong now, it was the end of everything.

  Shannon brake-blasted once more, felt the big ship ride almost motionless and then drop. There was a grinding thud, an impact that jarred his teeth.

  He was down, safe, resting on level ground.

  “I’m coming down, Lane.”

  Flame and fury burst out of the green wall above and behind Shannon. The blunt, scarred nose of the G-l poised, then dropped. The transmitter cut out. Shannon could hear nothing, but through the port he could see the shadowy space-craft plowing along the ground, spurting green-tinged flame. It stopped at last no more than a hundred feet away.

  The fog down here was not as thick as Shannon had first believed. But suppose the green fog was a deadly poison. Suppose they were all dead or dying in the G-l from its effects. But that could hardly be, for Shannon himself had lived through it—somehow.

  He tumbled out of his ship, encumbered by the bulky suit, and went staggering across broken, rocky ground. Fingers of the green fog danced and writhed from tiny cracks and fissures around him. He thought he saw forms, human forms, darting through the green fog close by.

  Then the G-l’s port was opening, the blank face of Tubby Martin appearing. He stood in the port, clutching at the lock seals, swaying a little. Shannon gathered all his muscles, ran a dozen shambling steps and launched himself at the reeling figure.

  He crashed into Tubby Martin, fumbling with gauntleted, steel-shod hands to pinion the madman’s flailing arms. He could see Martin’s mouth open around screams he could not hear. They went backward, crashing to the G-l’s floor with Shannon on top.

  The madness lent Tubby Martin a terrific strength. Shannon was hampered by his bulging space-suit. They rolled and fought. Martin lashed out with kicks and blows, his mouth shaping ghastly, silent shrieks, his eyes wide and flame-filled.

  Somehow, a lucky kick rolled Shannon aside. Tubby Martin tore loose, got to his feet and raced out the port. Shannon scrambled upright, staggered after him. He could see the chunky figure vanishing into the wall of green fog. Saw it waver, fling up its arms and then vanish—straight down.

  Shannon got there moments later. It made him a little sick to see where Tubby Martin had disappeared in the bubbling, seething quicksand that rolled endlessly against the lip of the rocky island. In a moment, the bubbles stopped coming up to the surface of the mud.

  Shannon turned and stumbled back to the G-l. Tears were streaming down his face, burning his cheeks inside the helmet. But it was better this way. Back on Earth, there would always be the shadow of those two guards shot down in the kidnapping. Nothing could have wiped that deed away. Maybe Mack Drummond wasn’t up on Nason Peak, after all. Maybe he’d come down to meet his friend halfway.

  CHAPTER XI

  Journeys End

  Marla and Titus Conway lay on the cabin floor, staring up at Lane Shannon, shaping soundless words with their lips. Shannon shook his head, closed the G-l’s locks and began to exhaust the air inside.

  When the air had been completely changed and every filament of green gas sucked out, he opened his face-plate.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, oh yes! Lane! Lane! You saved our lives!”

  “Uh-huh.” Shannon’s face was suddenly cold, his bearing noncommittal. He found a knife and cut away the ropes from their wrists and ankles.

  Titus Conway was trying to speak, getting only incoherent croaks through His emotion-dried throat. Shannon ignored him, beyond helping them both stand up.

  “You don’t feel any ill effects from the gas?”

  “The green fog, you mean?” Marla asked, wincing at the pain of returning circulation. “No. Except that the sweetish smell is a little sickening. What is it?”

  Shannon shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Someone who knows chemistry will have to answer that one. But it seems to act the way some of tho
se old-time barbiturate drugs used to, not dulling consciousness while you’re in it but wiping out all memories of that period afterward.

  “I figured it had to be something like that, because I must have spent nearly five weeks in it and couldn’t remember a thing. Still, I couldn’t take chances, so I wore my suit and breathed canned oxygen until I was sure.”

  “This—” Titus Conway found fragments of his voice. “This is where the CC-Four crashed? You actually couldn’t remember?”

  Shannon ignored the question.

  “If you two are all right,” he said coldly, “I’m opening the lock again. We’re going for a little walk outside.” He led them out into the green fog again, stumbling across the smoking plain, leading them toward something he had glimpsed only vaguely while chasing Tubby Martin. They came to it presently.

  It was the Turtle, the old CC-4. Not smashed into twisted girders and buckled plates but resting quietly, whole and undamaged, except for the blast-torn stern assembly of its gigantic body.

  Titus Conway made strangled noises in his throat, gaping at the apparition. Marla gasped sharply, then moved toward the big space ferry, watching Lane Shannon from the corner of her eye.

  A side port of the ferry was open, leading into the keel space, where hooded tractors stood nose-to-tail in the gloom. Up a steel ladder, a hatch was open into the passenger deck. Shannon began to climb this ladder and the others followed.

  They reached the passenger deck and stepped out onto the rusty floor plates. A tattered, bearded scarecrow popped up from one of the seats, stared and began to shriek.

  “Saved! Saved! They found us! We’re saved at last!”

  More scarecrows appeared, stumbling out of the darkness to swirl around Shannon and his companions, pumping his hand, beating him feebly on the back.

  “We thought you’d crashed, man,” one of the figures croaked. “We waited and waited for the help you were going to bring.”

  “What?” Shannon’s legs were suddenly shaking under him. He leaned against a broken seat, feverishly counting the figures. Forty-three men and women—forty-three of the fifty-eight passengers who had trusted him on his maiden flight.

  “What?” he gasped again. “You mean I went for help? In the lifeboat? You’d better tell me about it. This fog—it blanks out memories. I couldn’t remember where I’d been or how I got back.”

  * * * *

  A gaunt giant whistled.

  “No wonder!” he exclaimed. “We landed here safely but hard enough to wreck the communibeam transmitter. Exploring, we found this was a little patch of solid ground, an island in the midst of quicksand with no way to get off.

  “You were the only one who could fly, so you went for help. Nobody went with you, because we couldn’t be sure you’d make it against the wind. We’ve been waiting ever since, penned here by this devilish mud.”

  “But food!” Marla gasped. “How did you—”

  The scarecrow nodded toward Shannon.

  “He did it. Rigged a condenser to get water from the fog out beyond this green stuff. For food, he showed us a whole cargo of canned edibles meant for the plantations. We cut it thin and made it last.”

  Conway was clutching at Shannon’s arm.

  “Shannon, listen to me! You’ll get your flying license back and there won’t be any prosecution over piloting illegally. I’ll give you a job in my organization—”

  “The evidence of this ship and these people,” Shannon cut in coldly, “will get my license back. And I don’t want a job. I already have one—beating you to a standstill on Venus freight. We’re at war. Remember?

  “This interlude is an armistice, maybe—but not a treaty of peace! I’ve come to know you too well, Conway. But there’s something you can do, if you want to save yourself a lot of trouble about all this.”

  “Wh-what is it?”

  “I’m getting a list of men you kicked out, blacklisted the way you did me, and for no more reason. They’re bitter, but most of them are good men. I’m hiring all I can. I’ll send the rest over to you to get their jobs back.”

  Purple began to wash up over Conway’s jowls and his neck corded. Then the anger subsided and a crafty look slid into his eyes.

  “All right,” he said agreeably. “I’ll hire them back—and compensate them for the time they were off.”

  Shannon ignored the sly look. He turned away, herded the shabby castaways back out of earshot. For a long time he talked earnestly, while Marla stared and her father fidgeted. Finally he came back, still wooden-faced. Marla stepped in front of him and put the palms of her hands against his jacket, looking up at him.

  “Lane, you know now I wasn’t at Venus Freight Line as a spy. Do you think I’m quitting now, switching my allegiance to the other side, just because I still love my father?”

  An incredulous light was growing in Shannon’s eyes.

  “You’re not quitting? There’s a fight ahead, tougher than any we’ve yet faced. I’m going to make Venus the strongest freight line in interplanetary commerce, but it’ll mean war every step of the way. Your father is ready to promise anything now, but wolves don’t turn into lambs. Once back on solid ground and we’ll be right where we started.”

  “I don’t care,” Marla told him. “As long as it’s a clean fight, a fight for the right dream, I want to be a part of it—on your side, Lane.”

  Shannon suddenly laughed exultantly. He turned, put a gauntleted hand against Titus Conway’s furious face—and pushed.

  “Beat it! Marla and I are taking the weaker folks back to Venus City. We’ll bring help for the rest. Meanwhile, you stay here and write out the fancy promises you’ve been making. I know what you figured, Conway. Once outside this fog, none of us would remember what was said here. We won’t—but we’ll still be able to read!”

  “I’ll smash you!” Conway snarled, shaking with anger. “The fight you got before will be nothing to what you’ll get now! You didn’t know it, but I’ve already set the wheels in motion to grab every piece of Venus freighting. I’ll run at a dead loss for six months, if necessary. Let’s see you hang on that long without a penny’s worth of business! I’ve got the money to beat you.”

  Shannon chuckled pleasantly. “You’ll have quite a bit less when you pay these people for Morgreb Gap.”

  “What?” Conway roared. “You imbecile! I own Morgreb Gap! I own it! Bought it from the government for a song and—”

  “The government,” Shannon said placidly, “sold it illegally. They didn’t own it. Morgreb Gap belongs to these passengers. To get ownership you’ll have to buy it again, from them—at their price. Maybe you aren’t familiar with Venus land claim laws, Conway. Anyone who spends one year on a piece of property becomes the legal owner.

  “These people spent three years here—the first to ever set foot in the Gap. They’d already earned title before you got the bright idea of buying it.”

  “It’s a trick!” Conway howled furiously. “I won’t buy it. I won’t pay them a nickel. Let ’em keep their fool property!”

  “Good!” Shannon whirled briskly on the grinning scarecrows. “You heard that. He rejects your offer to sell. That leaves you people in full possession and ownership of the Gap. You can either accept my cash offer or hold it for exploitation. My advice is to hang on.

  “There’s a fortune for everyone in this green gas. Back on Earth, it will revolutionize medicine and surgery. Our best science hasn’t produced an anesthetic to equal it. You exploit it and Venus Freight Line will carry it. There’s enough business in transporting it alone to outfit Venus with the latest ships and show a profit, whether we get any other business or not.

  “Come over to the ship and we’ll draw up contracts—No, wait a minute! There’s something more important that comes first.”

  Shannon whirled, tipping back his helmet, and took Marla’s arm.

&nbs
p; “I had three years to figure out what happened here and how the green fog must act. I was sure I hadn’t crashed, because your Dad’s own doctors couldn’t find a bump or bruise on me.

  “That was why I led Tubby Martin here. It was the only place I knew where there might be safe landing, yet wouldn’t make him suspicious of a trick. Finding the passengers like this was more than I dared hope for. But I was right about how the green fog acts!”

  And then for the first time Lane Shannon grinned, almost shyly.

  “I’m going to kiss you now, Marla, You won’t remember it afterward, so you can’t hold it against me. Maybe you’ll never give me another chance, but—”

  Marla’s eyes were glowing. She blushed furiously, disengaged her arm and then gave Shannon a gentle shove.

  “Let’s go back to the ship. And for fear you won’t remember this afterward, I want everything you’re going to say to me put down in writing!”

  Titus Conway watched them disappear into the fog. There was a frustrated scowl on his face, but a light of grudging admiration shone in his eyes.

  THE LAST OUTPOST, by Nelson S. Bond

  Originally published in The Blue Book Magazine, October 1948.

  And tell of the signs you shall shortly see;

  Of the times that are now, and the times that shall be.

  Hogg—Kilkenny

  From my study window, with a frank and half-amused curiosity, I watched him coming down the street. He was such a worried looking little man and—unlike the usual run of magazine peddlers of which, to judge by the bulging briefcase under his arm, he was one—so obviously intent on finding one particular address.

  The reason for my amusement was, of course, that in our neighborhood homes have no numbers. Our suburb barely clings to the fringes of the city; it is the rare block that boasts more than two or three dwellings. Thus our houses need no numbers, and we give them none.

  Finally he glimpsed me standing at my study window, and started across my lawn. It was a hot day, and my work was not going well. Under such circumstances, a writer welcomes any interruption. I stepped forth to meet him.