Up to the Sky in Ships

by A Bertram Chandler

  The night after the conjuring show we played Scrabble as usual. One of us remarked that our table was standing right in the middle of the pentagram, and suggested that "pentagram" would be quite a good word to use, although it would have to be built up from "pen" or 'pent." We were the only ones in the Smoking Room — the others were in the lounge where the life-and-soul-of-the-party -the-party type was maltreating the piano.

  It was an uncomfortable sort of night — hot and sticky, and the ship was lurching just enough to make movement awkward and, for some reason, creaking far more than usual. We hadn't been playing for five minutes when Whitley and Mrs Wade were at each other's throats. She used a word—"leer" — and claimed that it was old Anglo-Saxon for a meeting. Whitley — having looked for it in vain in his dictionary, said that there was no such word and refused to allow the score. There was the inevitable squabble about the American origin of the dictionary, and Mrs Wade, as she always did on these occasions, wished audibly for a real dictionary — the Oxford Dictionary, for example — and told me that my employers had been very remiss in not providing one.

  Anyhow, we played on, and eventually the game reached the stage when there were very few tiles left in the box, and very few squares on the board on which to place tiles—to place tiles and to make sense, that is. It was my turn, and I was able, rather to my surprise, to get rid of four tiles — S, I, O and N went on to TEN to make TENSION. I picked up the last four letters, saw to my horror that I had Q (and I hadn't got a U either), X, Z and the two W's.

  The others played. Whitley put an A on to a vacant I and scored a humble 2; that three toed sloth is to the Scrabble addict what the gnu is to the crossword puzzle compiler. Mrs Wade got a couple of N's with one E and exclaimed, "Thank God for the printer's measure!" Mrs Haldane found another vacant I and added a D to it.

  It was my turn again.

  I looked at the board; I looked at the seven quite impossible letters in their rack. I looked at the board again. What actually happened, I can't tell you. I can't remember picking up the tiles, I can't remember putting them down. But I must have done so. Suddenly, quite suddenly, I was staring at what seemed, even then, to be a most unholy combination of letters.

  "There's no such word!" exploded Mrs Wade.

  "There is so!" said Whitley automatically. "I’ll check in my dictionary."

  "Your American dictionary! Why, you can't even pronounce it!"

  "I can," said Whitley.

  He did.

  There are some sounds not meant to be heard, ever. That WORD was one of them. Whitley slumped back in his chair, deathly white. Mrs Wade's florid complexion faded to a dirty grey. Mrs Haldane, naturally sallow, showed her horror by staring eyes and open mouth. Myself? Well, if I looked as bad as I felt I must have looked overdue for the graveyard.

  And suddenly it was quiet. The normal creakings of the ship's uneasy movement were stilled, the crash and tinkle of the piano in the nearby lounge were no more than a ghostly tintinnabulation, incredibly distant, thin and dreary.

  Overhead, the lights dimmed and faded, glowed faintly with a colour that was neither red nor blue yet, somehow, had the worst qualities of each. And it was cold.

  Over the table, over the board, there was ... something. A mist it was at first — a pallid, greenish mist, swirling sluggishly, congealing slowly. The thing that, at last, stood on the board was not human — neither was it anything else. Its body could almost have been that of one of the smaller dinosaurs ... Almost. Its head was more apelike than reptilian. It stank of burning sulphur.

  "Well?" it asked irritably. "I haven't got all night, you know."

  As it spoke, one horny toe was disarranging the tiles on the Scrabble board, shuffling them.

  Whitley started to laugh. It wasn't hysterical laughter—the man seemed genuinely amused at something.

  Tough guy, I thought. All right — I’ll be tough too.

  "What's the joke?" I asked (I hope) calmly.

  "It is funny, Chief," he said. "Really funny, The pentagram—and I must warn you not to let any part of your bodies get inside it, its function is to step the demon from getting at us—the sacrifice, and then the WORD (I did some research on demonology once, for a novel)"

  "The sacrifice?" asked Mrs Wade. "I can't remember any virgins getting their throats cut in here to-night."

  "Last night," said Whitley. "In spite of the time lag it worked."

  "Last night? Even then there wasn't a sacrifice."

  "There was so. The Old Man's pound note."

  "You called me away from a Poker session," said the demon sulkily. "No less than fifty-two souls in the kitty."

  "That's just too had," said Whitley. The colour was back in his face now. "I suppose that the usual rules are still in operation."

  "We play Deuces wild, of course ..."

  "No, no. Wishes, and all that."

  "Yes. I obtain my release by granting a wish"

  "One wish each," said Mrs Wade.

  "No. One wish. Period. Haven't you heard of the Award?"

  "I wonder if I dare . ..," Mrs Haldane was murmuring. "But ... The Monkey's Paw ..."

  I looked at Whitley, knew that he was thinking as I was, remembering Jacobs' tale of the three wishes, and the mutilated man called from the grave and knocking at the door, and the last wish being used to send him back .. .

  'We shall have to be careful,' said Whitley, then. "A foolproof wish ... Hmm ... My novel . . . Hollywood . . ."

  "I've got a ticket in the Irish Sweep," I said.

  "But you didn't say the WORD. I did."

  "But I put it down."

  "And you," said Mrs Wade to Whitley, "only said the WORD because I told you to."

  "We're all in this," said Mrs Haldane. "I think that we should be able to handle it like civilised people."

  The demon laughed. "When you mortals start using that phrase, the Old Man puts on an extra shift of stokers!"

  The widow ignored this.

  "You'll admit, all of you, that what has happened has happened as a direct consequence of the interaction of the personalities involved. As I said —we're all in this together. The Wish, when it is made, should be something for the common good."

  I could, I thought, give each of the others a quarter share in my Sweep ticket . . .

  "The common good," repeated Mrs Wade. "That's easy." We waited to hear her proposal. "Bring us," she ordered, addressing the demon as though he were a half-witted juvenile deliquent, "a good, ENGLISH dictionary."

  I have never been able to condemn Whitley for throwing that thick, heavy book over the side, and the Scrabble board and tiles after it.