6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction

by Edited by Groff Conklin

  He reached the doorway. He thought he saw a momentary glow of light behind him as if the disk in the Other World had become a doorway, and light from the Other World sky shone for an instant into the lobby. But then he was outside.

  At first he ran. But people stared, and he knew that if he ran on he would be stopped forcibly and questioned, and that while he panted out his utterly impossible story he would vanish before his captors’ eyes in a pool of quicksilver, as Nancy had vanished.

  He slowed to a fast walk. Sweat poured out on his skin. Once he turned and put the peephole to his eye and saw the spidery thing turning swiftly to pursue him over the clear lawn of the villa of the Other World.

  It was nightmarish. It was worse. He felt stark panic. But there was a sure refuge if he could find it-

  Twenty yards, and he dared to turn again. His actions were peculiar, and a demand for an explanation of his actions would be utterly fatal. But the device had to go around a massive plantation of shrubs on the villa lawn. He hurried, in an agony of haste, yet not daring to hasten too much.

  Then he reached the subway entrance. As he swung to descend, someone coming up the stairs bumped into him. His hat fell off. He did not try to retrieve it. He plunged downward, but in spite of himself his head jerked around.

  He saw his hat disappear in a curious coruscation, as of a pool of quicksilver.

  As Sam rode back to New York underground, he felt cold all over and shivered violently, even while he sweated profusely. He sweated so much, indeed, that other passengers on the subway train looked at him oddly because he wiped his face so often.

  ~ * ~

  In the Other World there was moonlight. It came down through the trees with a harsh bright radiance such as it seemed no mere moonlight could possess. But when Dick found an open space through which he could see the sky, the moon appeared wholly like the orb which circles Earth. The stars seemed the same, too. There was a Milky Way, and there were large bright heavenly objects which had the appearance of planets. It seemed unbelievable that the Other World could so completely resemble Earth in all its conformation and still not be the same.

  The night noises were wholly unlike those of the world of men. The cries in this jungle darkness sounded strangely like bells, from tiny shrill nearby tinklings to single, deep-toned, far-away tollings as of illimitable grief.

  But Dick had not gone far before he heard noises with which he felt almost familiar. They were beast-cries. But they were not the meaningless howlings of mere brutishness. Somehow he knew that they were the cries of ruhks. He had enough knowledge of this Other World, now, to guess at what would happen.

  When the red-beard told his story—if the first man Dick had met hadn’t babbled out his tale first—a coldly merciless hunt would begin for Dick. Ruhks would logically be entrusted with the night-search. They would find his trail entering the stream. And when no trail appeared on the farther side, the ruhks would divide. They would hunt through the jungle on either bank of the stream, both upstream and down, for the spot where he had come out.

  The one thing that could go wrong, of course, was that his scent might be detected in red-beard’s cart. If that happened, red-beard would die, and Dick soon after.

  But he heard the ruhk cries in the night. The compass direction was wrong for beasts actually on his trail. They had, then, gone on to the spot where Nancy had come into this cosmos. Dick heard them calling to one another from separated places. He’d guessed their tactics, and what he heard confirmed his guess. He headed for a point between the separating parties of those who sought his trail. This was a world of slaves and masters and there would be no system of swift communications. A man does not do skilled work under the lash. A slave telegrapher is unthinkable, and slave telephone maintenance crews are unimaginable. When human beings are classed as animals, only the labor of animals can be had from them.

  So Dick went on through the darkness. The noises all about him compounded themselves into a sort of muted bedlam. There were the sounds as of bells, and at startling intervals something made a noise as of drums, and now and again the hunting ruhks howled their reports of futility. Dick reached the stream and waded it. A little beyond, he blundered into thick, squashy vegetation with a scent like that of garlic, only more pungent, and his feet crushed the pulpy leaves and he reeked of the smell as he went on. He was offensive to his own nostrils. But even so he smelled the reek of a slave-pen a good half-mile downwind from it. He veered aside.

  Presently he heard the lapping of waves through the darkness. He pressed forward cautiously. The glitter of moonlight on water warned him, and he went very tentatively down the last steep slope to the East River. The shore was wilderness. The water was completely tranquil. He waded into it and began a cautious march along the shoreline. Here there was little or no breeze. His scent would not be carried far, and that out over the river. He waded for a very long time, keeping from ten to thirty feet from the water’s edge. Twice he disturbed private affairs of the inhabitants of the jungle. Once there was an ecstatic splashing in the water before him, and he advanced with care, and something sputtered alarmedly and flashed up the beach—he did not see it clearly, but it was very long and furry—and went crashing to safety among the trees. The other time was when he came on an animal fishing. It prowled upon the beach, staring absorbedly into the river, and as Dick came near it plunged from the beach and with a sweeping motion of an extraordinarily long paw sent a two-foot fish writhing through the air toward the land, with an accompanying shower of moonlit drops of spray. Then Dick loomed up and it fled. He heard the beached fish flapping convulsively as he went by.

  Then, less than a quarter-mile farther on, the moonlight showed him a small wharf going out into the water. His eyes were well-used to the moonlight now. He saw a boat tethered to the wharf. Its thwarts were occupied by drooping, naked rowers. There were two ruhks on the wharf, squatted on their haunches like wolves or dogs.

  Dick went quietly ashore. He made certain of his two tear-gas bombs and swung the sawed-off shotgun around and threw off the safety-catch. He had fired three shots from an automatic pistol and had been lucky. But one does not want to depend on luck when it is dark and animals may be charging. A sawed-off shotgun is better.

  He went as silently as possible along the beach. But he touched a brushwood branch, and one of the ruhks turned its head. Dick was still. Presently the ruhk yawned and looked away. Dick went on. He did not really hope to reach the wharf undiscovered, of course—

  He did not. A ruhk stared in his direction and stood up quickly while he was better than two hundred yards away. Dick broke into a run toward the wharf. Fortunately, the beach here was all of ten feet wide.

  He was in full stride when both ruhks were up and staring keenly at him from their positions on the stem of the wharf. They could not see him quite clearly because of the background of brush behind him. One of them yelped questioningly. Since he was not another ruhk he should have been—to the creatures of this world—a fugitive. That he ran toward them instead of away was unsettling. He covered nearly fifty yards before the ruhk yelped again. Seventy-five before it snarled. A hundred before both animals trotted ashore to intercept him. And the ruhks were slave guards. They felt contempt for men. They stood poised and waiting while he plunged on still nearer. It was not possible for them to be afraid of him. It was unlikely that they would even feel the need for caution.

  They stood on the wharf-stem, snarling in indecision. Dick was actually within seventy yards before the first of them emitted a high howl and plunged at Dick.

  He pulled the trigger of the sawed-off shotgun when it was twenty yards away, and practically tore it apart. The other leaped crazily aside into the brush. Dick ran on, leaping over the dying creature, and whirled as the second ruhk leaped from behind. The riot-gun crashed again. At such short range, the heavy pellets hit in a compact mass of destruction and then caromed outward from each other with all the effect of an explosion.

  Dick reach
ed the planks of the wharf as a beastly howl came from the trail which led to this landing-place. He saw four-footed figures rushing toward him, and tossed a tear-gas bomb, and ran out to the end of the wharf as the bomb created a cloud of mist around the shore end.

  Human figures cringed, below him in the boat. He saw dull, animal eyes and matted shocks of hair and naked bodies on which the moonlight shone. This was a galley. At one time it had been an oared cutter of a United States warship, and doubtless its disappearance from its proper place on Earth had caused some concern. Now a dozen chained men slumped over their oars upon its thwarts. They looked up at Dick, and cringed. He heard scrabblings on the wharf-planking, and fired furiously. A beast screamed. There were splashes. Dick fired again. Ruhks, plunging toward him, had run into the nearly stationary wall of tear-gas, and were blinded. Some went overboard. A man in a white, knee-length robe came stumbling out of the tear-gas cloud. He carried a spear and there was a pistol slung about his waist, but he wiped streaming eyes and tried to see—if only so he could run away.

  Dick moved savagely toward the tear-gas and shot the gun’s magazine empty. He came back carrying the spear and the overseer’s pistol. With the sharp blade of the spear he sawed at the ropes which held the boat to the wharf. It floated free and he jumped down into its stern. None of the dozen chained men stirred. They simply looked at him in numb terror.

  “Row, damn you!” raged Dick. “Get away from here!”

  There was a splashing nearby. A blindly swimming ruhk snarled in the water. Dick killed it in cold ferocity. He turned back to the rowers. He opened his mouth to threaten them again. But suddenly the oars were beginning to dip, and suddenly they fell into cadence, and suddenly the boat swept away from the wharf and began to move out into the river. And Dick felt a dozen pairs of eyes staring at him incredulously.

  “Look!” he snapped. “Somebody back on the real Earth has found a way to come through to this world, and how to get back. I came through to find a girl who’s been kidnapped as I suppose you were! Play along with me and you’ll get back too!”

  There was silence. The rowers pulled automatically. They were living automatons. On the shore near the wharf there was a snarling, yelping tumult. Ruhks created a monstrous din. Then one of them seemed to silence the others and emitted high, keening cries which would carry a vast distance over the water on a night as still as this.

  Then one of the rowers said dully:

  “Telling ‘em. They’ll give us to the ruhks, now!”

  A man near the bow cursed. The rowing kept on. Then another man said, marveling:

  “He killed a ruhk!”

  Dick said sharply:

  “I’ll kill some more!” He held up the overseer’s pistol. “I’ve got an extra pistol. Who wants it?”

  More silence. Then a voice said in a whisper:

  “Could kill ruhks with that.”

  “Or overseers,” said another in a hushed tone.

  “Could kill anybody,” said yet another, as if dazed. “With a pistol, a fella could kill ‘em ...”

  Babbling. Sudden, lustful babblings. The oars stroked irregularly, Dick barked at them as the babblings rose to uproar.

  “Silence there!” Instant stillness. These men were cowed to where they were hardly men. The rowing took up its regular cadence once more. “There was a girl vanished from New York three days ago,” said Dick harshly. “She wasn’t taken to the slave pen back yonder. Where was she taken?”

  A long pause, and then a voice said fumblingly:

  “We didn’t take her across the river. We ain’t taken nobody across but ruhks an’ overseers.”

  “Then she’s still on Manhattan Island,” rasped Dick. “How many other slave pens there?”

  Another voice, heavily:

  “One up by the hothouses. That’s upriver. Across from Blackwell’s Island—or what looks like Blackwell’s.”

  The use of the name, alone, was an indication of the length of time the man who used it had been a slave here on the twin of Earth. Blackwell’s became Welfare Island many years ago.

  “We’ll head for there, then,” said Dick grimly.

  The rowing went on. It was spiritless and dazed. Dick found a tiller and swung the boat about. A man said humbly:

  “Give me that extra pistol, fella? There’s a overseer I got to kill. He gave my girl to the ruhks. Lend it to me?”

  “I’m getting some more,” said Dick. “First—”

  A man near the bow whimpered.

  “ ‘Nother boat ... It’s got ruhks in it ...”

  Dick strained his eyes. He saw the boat, upstream, coming down, heading out on the wide, moonlit river. It came as if headed for the villa on the other shore, down where the Navy Yard should have been. It was impossible to see the size of the boat, but it could only have come from somewhere on Manhattan Island opposite Welfare. It could have come from that other slave pen. It could be carrying Nancy to the villa now. At least, its crew might know what had happened to her.

  He swung the tiller over.

  “Pull hard,” he directed.

  The two boats neared each other steadily. The other did not change its course. Its rowers—doubtless chained like these—rowed in the steady apathy Dick’s own crew had shown. But now, slowly, a trace of spirit was coming to his crew. Presently a voice whispered:

  “We goin’ to take that boat?”

  “Yes,” said Dick. “I want to find out about that girl.”

  The voice said hungrily:

  “Fella—let me have anyway that spear! I’m dead anyways, now, but maybe—”

  Dick silently passed it to him, and he seized the haft of it without slackening his stroke on the oar.

  The other boat was a hundred yards away. A voice called from it in a language Dick did not know. He did not answer. It was fifty yards away. Twenty-five. Its helmsman called again, this time obsequiously, as if the arrogance of a boat holding to a collision course implied that some mighty personage must be in it. Dick grimly shifted his own tiller as the other boat gave way, to keep collision inevitable. Under his breath he said:

  “Pull hard!”

  The helmsman of the other boat snapped agitated orders. There came animal noises from it. Sounds which were neither yelps nor snarlings, but something in between and somehow conversational. The ruhks in the other boat were calling to supposed fellow beasts in this.

  Then, in panic, the other helmsman swung his boat clean around to avoid a head-on collision, and Dick swerved and crashed along the other craft’s stern. So near, he could see a robed figure at the tiller and two uneasy ruhks balancing themselves as if to spring and regarding him and his craft with anxiety.

  As the stern of his own boat scraped the other, Dick fired twice, point-blank. Then there was screaming, snarling uproar, and a man rose, grabbing at his pistol-holster, and there was deadly battle in the waist of Dick’s boat where a wounded ruhk had sprung on board. Dick fired again, and the thing was ended.

  He called sharply to the other crew: “Hold up, there! Back water! Try to get away and we’ll sink you!”

  The captured craft lay still, its chained rowers shivering and in dread.

  Of course, Nancy wasn’t in it. They’d never heard of her.

  Dick had tried not to think of this possibility, but he could not help it. There were two slave pens on Manhattan Island, but Nancy had not been taken to either of them. She had not been carried to the palace of the masters on the Brooklyn shore in either of the now-captured cutters. Of the remaining possibilities, for her to have been devoured by ruhks because of an injury was most likely, and the bare suspicion drove all thoughts of humanity out of Dick’s mind.

  Certainly the slaves of this Other World knew nothing of her. There was but one way to learn definitely—no, two. If Dick could capture an overseer alive, he might force the man to tell him Nancy’s fate if he knew it. And if that failed, then the palace itself—

  Now, though, he had two dozen men to command. They were
doomed, of course. No slave who had witnessed the killing of an overseer or a ruhk could be allowed to live, because his tale would inspire the others to wishful thinking. More, no slave who had seen an armed free man could be allowed to spread such tidings of hope.

  So Dick acted with the ruthlessness that knowledge justified. He now had twenty-four followers, chained to their seats in the two cutters. He did not free them from their shackles. Instead, with the second boat following docilely because its crew could do nothing else, he made for a point on the Manhattan shore close to that small splinter of rock which lies southward of Welfare Island. As the boats headed for that spot, he took a notebook from his pocket and wrote grimly in its pages. It was a report to Sam Todd. It was a demand for arms. It told very curtly what had happened, but essentially, primarily, emphatically, it was a demand for arms to make a slave-revolt not only possible but successful. Arms with which, by massacre, to make this Other World no longer a place from which thieves and slavers preyed on the world of men. Now that five thousand years of mysteries and crimes were solved, those mysteries and crimes must end. They must!