6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction

by Edited by Groff Conklin

  A wounded ruhk came staggering down the trail and out upon the wharf. A member of the galley-guard walked casually toward it. It smelled divinity. It staggered feebly toward him, making noises which told of disaster at the slave pen.

  The sentry killed it.

  Meanwhile the second cutter went on up-river well past the villa, and cut straight across like the first, and landed most of its crew. And Dick’s plan went forward.

  It was simple. Men moved through the jungle to make a great half-circle behind the villa, far past the range of human guards. There would be ruhk patrols there. The ruhks would detect the men and instantly become subject to them. In ones or twos, they would be killed as they groveled. In greater numbers, they might be led back to the cutters and their boat-guards on the shore. Or they could simply be commanded to go to the boat guards and obey them. They would do so.

  As the night wore on, there were no more ruhks patrolling the forest behind the villa, and it did not matter if there were. There was a single shot from a slave pen where gardener-slaves were imprisoned. And after that a line of freed slaves with a strange smell on them went through the jungle to where a cutter waited with firearms for every man who wanted them. Every man did, and many women, too. But the villa did not take alarm.

  In the villa, the master was not disturbed. He was, at worst, annoyed. A man had been found spying upon the villa through an interdimensional window. Later he was found free on Manhattan Island, with arms in his hands. He had escaped capture. He had left a note for someone, pinned to a tree trunk with a dagger-thorn. Apparently some independent experimenter had discovered that there was an Other World and had managed to reach it and arranged to communicate with fellows still on Earth. When this fact was discovered, a note from an Earthling companion could not reach the thorn-pinned message without attracting attention—hence the discovery must still be a secret on Earth. The master of the villa had astutely commanded that this companion be seized. The number of persons in the secret would be learned from him, and where they were to be found. If practicable, they would be brought to this Other World and given to the ruhks as a suitable reward for their meddling. If there were many, the measures long ago decided upon for use in case of a discovery by Earthlings would be used.

  No word had reached the villa of the capture of either cutter or even of the capture of the galley—which had taken place with Welfare Island screening the battle from the villa. The master of the villa was merely annoyed. He had not been kept informed by the regular procedure of events as they happened. Some overseers would be given to the ruhks for this inefficiency!

  When the galley crossed the river during the last hours of darkness, it was loaded to the limit with beings who had been civilized men one, two, five or seven years before. Now they were half-naked, hairy, murderous incarnations of vengeance. And every man had a modern repeating rifle with ammunition for it, and those with experience in such matters had hand grenades besides.

  Runners to the two cutters learned of the number of men they had freed and armed. Strong parties went inland just in case anybody tried to leave the villa on the land side.

  Then the sun rose. It lighted a world of green forest and blue waters and seeming infinite peace.

  There was the tiny, popping sound of a single shot. Then the army of former slaves moved on the villa.

  From nearby, the villa was very splendid and very spacious. It was built of brick in the style of gimcrack magnificence most approved of some sixty or seventy-five years ago in these same United States of America. In a parasitic race such as the slavers from antiquity there would be no racial culture nor racial art in any form. The gardens were vast, intricately laid out and tended with infinite expenditure of labor. There were trees bent and trained into preposterous resemblances to animals and to men. There was statuary looted from Earth, and there were sunken gardens, and reflection pools which reflected nothing in particular.

  Over this lawn and into these gardens the freed slaves surged. There were shoutings here and there where a man with past experience in combat led some others toward the villa and guided them so they were not exposed to fire from the windows.

  A sudden crackling of rifle fire from the huge mansion. No parley, of course. The slaves could not be treated with. There could be no terms of surrender. In all probability the master of the villa did not even think of it. After all, in five thousand years some slave revolts must have been attempted and one or two may have attained to some success. Certainly overseers knew there could be no surrender for them. They were frightened, to be sure, and they were doomed and knew it. But they made no vain attempts to delay the attack which nothing could delay.

  They shot from the upper windows. Slaves fell. But there was instinctive discipline among the attackers. Not everywhere, but in spots. Groups of men flung themselves down behind flower beds and hedges, and a single flash of a gun from a window brought storms of lead. Those volleys smashed the glass and the sash and filled the opening with death. This was a tactic the defenders, who did not know combat but only murder, could not cope with. Many robed men died from these volleys fired by the quite impromptu combat units of the attackers.

  The horde of hairy avengers infiltrated the gardens. There was an elaborate maze of clipped hedge in which fifty men crawled to within a hundred yards of the house. There were tall beds of ornamental plants which sheltered dozens more. There were screens of shrubs. There were fountains whose stone basins were bulletproof breastworks. There were graceful terraces which were cover.

  The sound of shooting became a steady, popping noise. There was little other sound. The slaves filtered forward here, and trickled closer there, and when a shot came from the house there was a hail of lead in reply.

  Presently the forward movement ceased. Every bit of cover near the house was filled with men all ready for the kill. Then, suddenly, it seemed that the ground erupted ruhks— the palace beasts. The animals brought to the villa to see their master and smell the scent of godhead had been filled with ecstasy at his sight and smell. Now he sent them out to disperse the rebel slaves.

  They ran into a withering fire. A dozen went down or rolled over, snapping at their wounds. The balance reached the attackers. And then they cowered and quivered in bewilderment, because they could not attack these men ...

  A desperate rush of robed men on their heels. If they could cut through the ring of slaves, presumably thrown into confusion by the charge of ruhks, they could swing sidewise about the mansion, taking the attackers in flank and rolling them up before them, while fire from the windows could begin again.

  Perhaps against some antagonists it would have served well enough. But there was a leavening of former professional fighting men among the slaves. The charge of the ruhks had been a fiasco. The survivors quivered with uneasiness but made no attack whatever once they were among the slaves. Those hard-bitten men ignored them unless to kill them with scornful satisfaction. So the charge of the overseers was no better. Indeed, it was worse, because as the last of them raced out into the open a lobbed grenade fell among them.

  A man with matted red hair stood up, yelling defiantly. He heaved another grenade. It went in a window and exploded inside. Howls of joy arose. Another grenade in another window. A third and fourth—

  And then there was one tremendous roar of fury, and the slaves swarmed into the building from every side and through every opening, grenades blasting a way for them.

  There were noises inside, for a while, but not for very long. In one place there was a nursery suite, and shivering young slave-girls shrilly told the invaders that they were slaves, too, and they were unharmed. Another place a giant overseer stood at bay with a spear, his pistol empty, and a grinning young man with icy gray eyes snapped for others to stand back and fought it out, using bayonet tactics with a rifle that had no bayonet on it against an eight-foot spear. The rifleman won, after fighting his way inside the spear’s length. He killed his antagonist with a gun butt. Some overseers hid, and
were dragged out and killed, and others barricaded themselves in a cellar, not realizing what would happen when grenades with pulled-out pins were dropped down among them.

  There was one room where women of the master race were found, very frail and delicate to look at, splendidly dressed in soft stuffs. They were dead, preferring that to the fate their servants had administered to so many slaves, and which they feared for themselves.

  The last of the fighting took place in what must have been the armory of the villa. The last surviving overseers fought desperately, here. When at last a surging tide of ex-slaves poured in upon them, the reason was clear. Here were the doorways between worlds. Here were the passageways to Earth. And while the slaves battered their way in, the master of the villa had been destroying them. Seared by a flame, apparently the freakish molecular orientation ceased to be. A great bonfire of garments and furniture burned in the middle of the stone floor. And there was a child here, an imperious, wide-eyed six-year-old girl, clinging to a man with the delicate features of that inbred race of masters. There was already but one of the doorways to Earth remaining. But the child’s father, while his servants fought until they were killed, emptied some small bag of treasure. He strung glittering necklaces about the child’s neck. He filled the small pockets of her healthily brief jumper full of gems, and then he thrust her forcibly through a great disk of copper alloy some three feet in diameter. She vanished. And then he heaved the disk into the mounting flames, seized a weapon from the floor, and plunged into the fighting. He, with the others, was dead within minutes.

  ~ * ~

  What followed freedom was inevitably an anticlimax. There were some of the freedmen who—their vengeance sated—demanded immediate return to Earth. There were others—especially women—who bitterly protested against return. Many men, also, were ashamed. And the number who felt that their vengeance was complete grew smaller as hours passed. Most found themselves still lusting to kill more ruhks and overseers, and there were not a few who hungrily discussed the fact that there were other villas in the Other World. There was one up the Hudson near Albany. There was one near Philadelphia, and one near Boston. There were other men in slave pens-

  Then Dick Blair showed the translation of the message in hieroglyphic script he had gotten from a messenger sent to take it up-river. The translation was explicit.

  From Zozer, son of Haton, of the race of lords of men and ruhks, to Khafre, son of Siut, the son of Zozer’s uncle, greeting:

  There is a slave from the land of slaves (Earth, or New York) at large in my land. He came from the land of the slaves by his own contrivance, not by being enslaved. There is one other who remains in the land of the slaves who knows of his coming.

  I have sent ruhks and servants to seize him and to bring his companion from the land of the slaves for questioning. Do you have the news writings of the slave-people near you brought to your interpreters each day to be searched for word of this event or of the discovery by the slave-people of our world.

  If such news should appear, tell all of our race, that they may spread fire and death and pestilence in the land of the slaves, in every house and every city, so that they will forget to think of our land in their study of their own griefs. Do this in the manner arranged in the time of our fathers.

  Do not do this unless the news writings speak of our world.

  Farewell.

  Zozer, the son of Haton, of the race of lords of ruhks and men, to Khafre, son of Siut the son of Zozer’s uncle.

  Dick said bluntly:

  “There are other villas and certainly other slaves. This business started in Egypt, and it spread. And the one thing these masters are afraid of is that on our Earth the people will find out about them and come and wipe them out. So if they’re spoken of on Earth, they’ll start to work to destroy it. They won’t wipe out humanity, of course. But they can put a fire in every cellar of every house, in every warehouse, every building, every fuel store, every petroleum tank. They can put germs into all drinking water, foul all food, and spread disease beyond any possibility of our stopping them. They could steal bombs from any store of bombs on earth, and introduce and explode them anywhere they pleased.

  “Nobody could stop them. The price of our going back to Earth is just that sort of catastrophe everywhere there are villas on this world. They wouldn’t destroy humanity, but they’d come damn near destroying civilization before they were through. So—let’s start smashing them up from here. We’ll go upriver and smash the villa up there. We’ll have more men, then. We’ll smash the villas at Boston and Philadelphia. We’ll spread out, smashing the slave pens and killing the ruhks until at least our own country’s safe from their revenge! And maybe we’ll carry on past that. If we destroy every slave pen and free every slave on this world, we can go back to Earth as conquerors instead of victims—”

  He glared about him. The argument was hot. But before sunset of the day of victory, he saw men carrying bodies out of the villa and arranging to bury them, as if there were no question but that life was to go on here. He became busy planning the expedition up-river. It would be a good deal simpler than the affair here had been. For one thing, it would be an absolute surprise. A hundred armed men with the master-scent upon them would be ample. No ruhk would give warning of their coming. No force of overseers would be gathered to oppose them ...

  The tall man who had been a professor of physics stopped him as he left a conference where Sam had made it clear that he was going to be in the expedition up-river.

  “Nobody really plans to go back to Earth,” he told Dick dryly. “I don’t. No man or woman who’s ever been a slave will want to go back. They’d be ashamed. The thing to do is to arrange, very discreetly, for someone to buy bulldozers and tractors and clothes and books and safety razors and canned goods and get them through some doorway to here. There’s gold and jewelry enough in the palace yonder to pay for everything we need. And send us some bismuth. I’ve been talking to your friend Maltby. We can make doorways we can even get small ocean-going craft through. We’ve a job here that’s worth doing. In five thousand years those devils have set up villas in maybe hundreds and possibly thousands of places. They’ve got to be cleared out!”

  Dick said, “Still, if people want to go back ...”

  “They can’t go back right away!” said the tall man. “We put it to a vote. No question. Everybody stays, at least for a while. Actually, I doubt that any of us will ever go. We’ll get to realizing what will happen if Earth ever learns about this planet. Can you picture the stampede of the nations for pieces of this world? Can you picture them dumping bombs through doorways on us, or piling into this world to go dump bombs back on Earth?”

  Dick winced. Then the tall man said:

  “We can stop any war on Earth. I think we will. We’ve had enough of killing and cruelty. I think—”

  “I’ve been talking to several people,” admitted Dick. “They are inclined to think as you do.”

  “Surely,” said the tall man. “But for the time- being we’ll just tell ourselves we’re staying here until we free all the other slaves, and make sure there’s no interdimensional attack on Earth in case we want to go back. We’ll need somebody to buy things for us, and maybe to advise us from time to time. We’ll need somebody around who never was a slave. We’re apt to be pretty extreme.”

  “To tell the truth,” said Dick, “I thought I’d go back with Maltby and arrange for buying the sort of stuff we need here, and—well—get married, and come back ...”

  The tall man nodded.

  That was the way it was. They returned the spidery device to its former storage-place in the villa. It would never again be used to rob Earth. They began to clean up the bloodstains. There were hundreds of things to be done. Dick, himself, had a list of literally thousands of items that would somehow, without creating curiosity, have to be bought for this Other World.

  A cutter rowed them across to the Manhattan shore just at sundown. There was a doorway ther
e which they would ultimately set up in a closet in the house Dick and Nancy would presently acquire for the benefit of the people in the Other World.

  None of the brawny figures with them showed any sign of wanting to go back to New York with them. They were going up-river in the morning, to attack another villa. They grinned when Maltby went back to Earth. He had borrowed Sam Todd’s clothes; Sam was wearing a loincloth and a riot gun and enjoying it. Nancy went through. Kelly went through, with a parcel. Dick went through and they were in New York, in a narrow, smelly small alley only feet from a well-frequented street.

  “Wedding present,” said Kelly. “I picked it up at the first slave pen we took. Thought you might like it.”

  “What is it?” asked Nancy.

  “A crux ansata,” said Dick. “On Earth it belongs to Maltby, but Kelly rates it as spoils of war. He’s right. It is. Maltby shan’t have it. I’ll turn it into a hand-mirror for you to look at yourself in.”