The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  The four ends of the scarf had been tied together to form a small parachute.

  “I told you it was her scarf!” Harden shouted to his companion. “I told you she was the one who had dropped the tell-tale down to us, so we could find our way out of that damned maze. Now, pig-head, admit you were wrong.”

  It was obvious there had been argument between them on this point. “Well, maybe she did drop that gadget down to us,” the engineer admitted. “Maybe she did drop down the tell-tale the old priests used to find their way through the maze. But if that is so, why in the heck did she suggest we be put there in the first place?”

  “To save our necks,” Harden said. “Keogh was going to have our throats cut. If she hadn’t suggested we be put in the maze, he would certainly have had us killed. Isn’t that right?” Harden demanded, turning to the girl.

  She was smiling now. The tension was leaving her face. “That’s right,” she said. “I recognized you the minute you came bursting into this chamber. But—Keogh was in the next room. There were several Martians with him. If I tried to help you, he would overhear me. The only thing I could do was turn my gun on you.”

  “See!” Harden said to the engineer. “See!”

  “Um,” Red Ambrose rumbled in his beard. “I made a mistake. Well, I am glad to admit it. Lady, I had you figured wrong. I hope you will forgive me.”

  She did not know the name of this red-bearded giant, but that did not matter. She was more than willing to forgive him.

  “Now,” Red Ambrose said, looking at the piles of treasure, “what next? I don’t mind admitting that I could use some of this stuff, if we can carry it out.”

  “We’ll take what we can carry in our pockets,” Harden said bluntly. “And get out. As for me, I’ll be only too glad to get out alive.”

  “Take what you want,” the girl said. “It belongs to anybody.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The End of Searching

  Harden and Red Ambrose sat on the terrace of the best hotel in Mars City. Shaved, their hair cut, wearing new clothes, they looked like prosperous citizens from Earth visiting the Red Planet on vacation. They had eaten and slept and eaten again and slept again. The hollows in their cheeks had filled out, their eyes had lost their fevered glaze.

  Dusk was falling over Mars. It was the best time of the day on the Red Planet. Soon night would bring the chilly desert winds. But now the little heat of the day lingered, lending a pleasant warmth to the air.

  Red Ambrose sighed. “Looking at us, you wouldn’t think that three days ago we—” He gestured toward the horizon.

  “Don’t mention it,” Harden said. “I don’t want to ever hear of the place again.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t going to mention it out loud,” the engineer said. He raked a horny thumb across the head of a match, applied the light to the end of his cigar. Soon clouds of fragrant smoke were drifting through the thin air.

  “Where are you going from here, Harden?” Red Ambrose asked at last. “With that hunk of stuff we found piled up in Keogh’s hangout, all put into packing cases and everything, we got enough bucks to do what we please for the rest of our lives. What are you going to do with yours?”

  The packing cases that Harden had seen in Keogh’s place the first time he had been there had yielded a rich reward. Keogh had already managed to loot a vast hoard of treasure from the temple. He had carefully packed it ready for shipment. Harden and Red Ambrose felt they were logical heirs to it.

  “What am I going to do?” Harden mused. “I’m going to visit Earth. I’ve never been there, you know, and I kind of want to see what the place is like.”

  There was yearning in his voice, and something of sadness. The green hills of Earth called to him across the depths of space. He would see them, see the whole planet. There was pleasure in the thought. But there was another thought in his mind, and it brought sadness.

  Red Ambrose sensed what his companion was thinking. It was something the engineer would never mention. Harden had come here looking for a girl. And had not found her.

  “Ah, well—” Ambrose said. “Ah, well—” He looked up. Then rose hastily to his feet.

  Marion Gray had come out on the terrace. Harden drew out a chair for her and she sat down. She lit a cigarette, looked silently out over the city to the desert.

  “I suppose,” she said at last, “you will soon be leaving for Earth?”

  “Yes, yes,” Harden answered. “That is my plan.”

  He liked this girl, he liked her better than any girl he had ever known, except one. He liked her for what she was. He liked her in spite of the fact that she had never chosen to explain what she was really doing here, why she had gone to Keogh in the first place. It was a delicate subject, one on which he did not feel justified in asking questions. If she chose to tell him, all right. If she chose to keep silent, all right.

  “I don’t suppose I could interest you in staying on Mars a little longer?” she suddenly asked.

  “You might,” Harden answered. “This is not exactly a healthy place for me, but you might interest me in staying a little longer, if you are good at persuading.”

  * * * *

  He spoke lightly, his voice a slow drawl in the gathering dusk. Leaning back in his chair, he took a slow drag at his cigarette, watched the girl from eyes that were careful not to let her know he was watching her.

  She smoked in silence. “I’ve got a job to do here,” she said at last.

  “A job?”

  “Yes.” She snubbed the cigarette in the tray. “A job. I need someone to help me do it:” She looked straight at Harden. “Not just anyone can help. The man I need to help me must be trustworthy, and strong, and able to keep his mouth shut.”

  Red Ambrose, listening, rumbled in his throat, but said nothing. Harden kept silent, too. It was coming now. She was going to talk. She was going to tell him what she was doing here. He wanted to know. Knowing this was desperately important to him.

  “I want a guide,” she said suddenly. “That was one reason why I went to Keogh, because I wanted a guide.”

  “A guide?” Harden choked. “A guide?”

  “Yes. A guide who will take me into the land of serenity!” Harden sat up in his chair, his eyes darting around the terrace, to see if anyone had overheard her. Red Ambrose dropped his cigar and his hand dived into his pocket. There were certain things you did not mention on Mars. The land of serenity was one of them. And you never under any circumstances expressed a desire to go there.

  “Why,” Harden whispered, “why, if I may ask, do you want to go there?”

  It was the last place on Mars where anyone in his senses would want to go.

  “I want to find someone who is there,” the girl imperturbably answered.

  “Someone who is there!”

  “Yes.”

  “And who,” Harden tried desperately to keep his voice calm, “and who is this person you are seeking?”

  “A man,” the girl answered. “A man by the name of Turner.”

  Red Ambrose almost swallowed his cigar. “By gad, Turner! By gad, Harden. By the Lord Harry, Harden! Can it be possible? Can it be possible?” He was pounding on the table with his fist.

  “I want you to guide me into—you know where—and help me find Jimmy Turner,” the girl continued. “Will you do it?”

  Harden forced himself to control his voice. “Marion Gray,” he whispered. “Marion Gray. By gad, it fits! I wonder, I wonder, Miss Gray, if you were ever known by the name of Marcia Groner? The initials are the same and—”

  Startled surprise showed in the girl’s eyes. “Why, yes,” she said. “But how—I escaped from the—from you know where myself. That’s why I came back here, to find the man I love. The business about the Ph.D. was all fake. I was really, trying to—but how—how—how did you know my name?”

  Ha
rden’s fingers went along his cheek, feeling of the scar, wondering how much that had changed his appearance. And he wondered if blonde hair could not be dyed red, and if freckles could not be removed?

  “It won’t be necessary for you ever to go into the—you know where, Marcia. Not now. Not ever. I’m Jimmy Turner, and I came back to Mars to try to rescue you, just as you came back to try to rescue me.”

  There was wonder in her eyes. The wonder grew and grew. Harden would always remember the wonder in her eyes, and the bounding flip-flop of his heart as she came into his arms.

  Red Ambrose looked at them. And grinned and grinned. And then stole quietly away.

  1Derjin-a drug of Mars. Importation to Earth was forbidden.—Ed.

  A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL, by Cordwainer Smith

  Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1961.

  CHAPTER I

  There was a tremendous difference between the liner and the ferry in Mercer’s treatment. On the liner, the attendants made gibes when they brought him his food.

  “Scream good and loud,” said one rat-faced steward, “and then we’ll know it’s you when they broadcast the sounds of punishment on the Emperor’s birthday.”

  The other, fat steward ran the tip of his wet red tongue over his thick purple-red lips one time and said, “Stands to reason, man. If you hurt all the time, the whole lot of you would die. Something pretty good must happen, along with the—whatchamacallit. Maybe you turn into a woman. Maybe you turn into two people. Listen, cousin, if it’s real crazy fun, let me know—”

  Mercer said nothing. Mercer had enough troubles of his own not to wonder about the daydreams of nasty men.

  At the ferry it was different. The biopharmaceutical staff was deft, impersonal, quick in removing his shackles. They took off all his prison clothes and left them on the liner. When he boarded the ferry, naked, they looked him over as if he were a rare plant or a body on the operating table. They were almost kind in the clinical deftness of their touch. They did not treat him as a criminal, but as a specimen.

  Men and women, clad in their medical smocks, they looked at him as though he were already dead.

  He tried to speak. A man, older and more authoritative than the others, said firmly and clearly, “Do not worry about talking. I will talk to you myself in a very little time. What we are having now are the preliminaries, to determine your physical condition. Turn around, please.”

  Mercer turned around. An orderly rubbed his back with a very strong antiseptic.

  “This is going to sting,” said one of the technicians, “but it is nothing serious or painful. We are determining the toughness of the different layers of your skin.”

  Mercer, annoyed by this impersonal approach, spoke up just as a sharp little sting burned him above the sixth lumbar vertebra. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Of course we know who you are,” said a woman’s voice. “We have it all in a file in the corner. The chief doctor will talk about your crime later, if you want to talk about it. Keep quiet now. We are making a skin test, and you will feel much better if you do not make us prolong it.”

  Honesty forced her to add another sentence: “And we will get better results as well.”

  They had lost no time at all in getting to work.

  He peered at them sideways to look at them. There was nothing about them to indicate that they were human devils in the ante-chambers of hell itself. Nothing was there to indicate that this was the satellite of Shayol, the final and uttermost place of chastisement and shame. They looked like medical people from his life before he committed the crime without a name.

  They changed from one routine to another. A woman, wearing a surgical mask, waved her hand at a white table.

  “Climb up on that, please.”

  No one had said “please” to Mercer since the guards had seized him at the edge of the palace. He started to obey her and then he saw there were padded handcuffs at the head of the table. He stopped.

  “Get along, please,” she demanded. Two or three of the others turned around to look at both of them.

  The second “please” shook him. He had to speak. These were people, and he was a person again. He felt his voice rising, almost cracking into shrillness as he asked her, “Please, ma’am, is the punishment going to begin?”

  * * * *

  “There’s no punishment here,” said the woman. “This is the satellite. Get on the table. We’re going to give you your first skin-toughening before you talk to the head doctor. Then you can tell him all about your crime—”

  “You know my crime?” he said, greeting it almost like a neighbor.

  “Of course not,” said she, “but all the people who come through here are believed to have committed crimes. Somebody thinks so or they wouldn’t be here. Most of them want to talk about their personal crimes. But don’t slow me down. I’m a skin technician, and down on the surface of Shayol you’re going to need the very best work that any of us can do for you. Now get on that table. And when you are ready to talk to the chief you’ll have something to talk about beside your crime.”

  He complied.

  Another masked person, probably a girl, took his hands in cool, gentle fingers and fitted them to the padded cuffs in a way he had never sensed before. By now he thought he knew every interrogation machine in the whole empire, but this was nothing like any of them.

  The orderly stepped back. “All clear, sir and doctor.”

  “What do you prefer?” said the skin technician. “A great deal of pain or a couple of hours’ unconsciousness?”

  “Why should I want pain?” said Mercer.

  “Some specimens do,” said the technician, “by the time they arrive here. I suppose it depends on what people have done to them before they got here. I take it you did not get any of the dream-punishments.”

  “No,” said Mercer. “I missed those.” He thought to himself, I didn’t know that I missed anything at all.

  He remembered his last trial, himself wired and plugged in to the witness stand. The room had been high and dark. Bright blue light shone on the panel of judges, their judicial caps a fantastic parody of the Episcopal mitres of long, long ago. The judges were talking, but he could not hear them. Momentarily the insulation slipped and he heard one of them say, “Look at that white, devilish face. A man like that is guilty of everything. I vote for Pain Terminal.”

  “Not Planet Shayol?” said a second voice. “The dromozoa place,” said a third voice. “That should suit him,” said the first voice. One of the judicial engineers must then have noticed that the prisoner was listening illegally. He was cut off. Mercer then thought that he had gone through everything which the cruelty and intelligence of mankind could devise.

  But this woman said he had missed the dream-punishments. Could there be people in the universe even worse off than himself? There must be a lot of people down on Shayol. They never came back.

  He was going to be one of them; would they boast to him of what they had done, before they were made to come to this place?

  “You asked for it,” said the woman technician. “It is just an ordinary anesthetic. Don’t panic when you awaken. Your skin is going to be thickened and strengthened chemically and biologically.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Of course,” said she. “But get this out of your head. We’re not punishing you. The pain here is just ordinary medical pain. Anybody might get it if they needed a lot of surgery. The punishment, if that’s what you want to call it, is down on Shayol. Our only job is to make sure that you are fit to survive after you are landed. In a way, we are saving your life ahead of time. You can be grateful for that if you want to be. Meanwhile, you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you realize that your nerve endings will all respond to the change in the skin. You had better expect to be very uncomfortable when you recover.
But then, we can help that, too.” She brought down an enormous lever and Mercer blacked out.

  * * * *

  When he came to, he was in an ordinary hospital room, but he did not notice it. He seemed bedded in fire. He lifted his hand to see if there were flames on it. It looked the way it always had, except that it was a little red and a little swollen. He tried to turn in the bed. The fire became a scorching blast which stopped him in mid-turn. Uncontrollably, he moaned.

  A voice spoke, “You are ready for some pain-killer.”

  It was a girl nurse. “Hold your head still,” she said, “and I will give you half an amp of pleasure. Your skin won’t bother you then.”

  She slipped a soft cap on his head. It looked like metal but it felt like silk.

  He had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from threshing about on the bed.

  “Scream if you want to,” she said. “A lot of them do. It will just be a minute or two before the cap finds the right lobe in your brain.”

  She stepped to the corner and did something which he could not see.

  There was a flick of a switch.

  The fire did not vanish from his skin. He still felt it; but suddenly it did not matter. His mind was full of delicious pleasure which throbbed outwards from his head and seemed to pulse down through his nerves. He had visited the pleasure palaces, but he had never felt anything like this before.

  He wanted to thank the girl, and he twisted around in the bed to see her. He could feel his whole body flash with pain as he did so, but the pain was far away. And the pulsating pleasure which coursed out of his head, down his spinal cord and into his nerves was so intense that the pain got through only as a remote, unimportant signal.

  She was standing very still in the corner.

  “Thank you, nurse,” said he.

  She said nothing.

  He looked more closely, though it was hard to look while enormous pleasure pulsed through his body like a symphony written in nerve-messages. He focused his eyes on her and saw that she too wore a soft metallic cap.