The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales

by Frank Belknap Long

  Straight down out of the sky the disk swooped, a huge, spinning shape as flat as a buckwheat cake swimming in a golden haze of butterfat.

  But the disk didn’t remind Jimmy of a buckwheat cake. It made him think instead of a slowly turning wheel in the pilot house of a rotting old riverboat, a big, ghostly wheel manned by a steersman a century dead, his eye sockets filled with flickering swamp lights.

  It made Jimmy want to run and hide. Almost it made him want to cling to his sister, content to let her wear the pants if only he could be spared the horror.

  For there was something so chilling about the downsweeping disk that Jimmy’s heart began leaping like a vinegar jug bobbing about in the wake of a capsizing fishboat.

  Lower and lower the disk swept, trailing plumes of white smoke, lashing the water with a fearful blow. Straight down over the cypress wilderness that fringed the opposite bank, and then out across the river with a long-drawn whistling sound, louder than the air-sucking death gasps of a thousand buffalo cats.

  Jimmy didn’t see the disk strike the shining broad shoulders of the Father of Waters, for the bend around which the Natchez Belle had steamed so proudly hid the sky monster from view. But Jimmy did see the waterspout, spiraling skyward like the atom bomb explosion he’d goggled at in the pages of an old Life magazine, all smudged now with oily thumbprints.

  Just a roaring for an instant—and a big white mushroom shooting straight up into the sky. Then, slowly, the mushroom decayed and fell back, and an awful stillness settled down over the river.

  * * * *

  The stillness was broken by a shrill cry from Pigtail Anne. “It was a flying saucer! Jimmy, we’ve seen one! We’ve seen one! We’ve—”

  “Shut your mouth, Pigtail!”

  Jimmy shaded his eyes and stared out across the river, his chest a throbbing ache.

  He was still staring when a door creaked behind him.

  Jimmy trembled. A tingling fear went through him, for he found it hard to realize that the disk had swept around the bend out of sight. To his overheated imagination it continued to fill all of the sky above him, overshadowing the shantyboat, making every sound a threat.

  Sucking the still air deep into his lungs, Jimmy swung about.

  Uncle Al was standing on the deck in a little pool of sunlight, his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face set in harsh lines. Uncle Al was shading his eyes too. But he was staring up the river, not down.

  “Trouble, young fella,” he grunted. “Sure as I’m a-standin’ here. A barrelful o’ trouble—headin’ straight for us!”

  Jimmy gulped and gestured wildly toward the bend. “It came down over there, Uncle Al!” he got out. “Pigtail saw it, too! A big, flying—”

  “The Harmons are a-comin’, young fella,” Uncle Al drawled, silencing Jimmy with a wave of his hand. “Yesterday I rowed over a Harmon jug line without meanin’ to. Now Jed Harmon’s tellin’ everybody I stole his fish!”

  Very calmly Uncle Al cut himself a slice of the strongest tobacco on the river and packed it carefully in his pipe, wadding it down with his thumb.

  He started to put the pipe between his teeth, then thought better of it.

  “I can bone-feel the Harmon boat a-comin’, young fella,” he said, using the pipe to gesture with. “Smooth and quiet over the river like a moccasin snake.”

  Jimmy turned pale. He forgot about the disk and the mushrooming water spout. When he shut his eyes he saw only a red haze overhanging the river, and a shantyboat nosing out of the cypresses, its windows spitting death.

  * * * *

  Jimmy knew that the Harmons had waited a long time for an excuse. The Harmons were law-respecting river rats with sharp teeth. Feuding wasn’t lawful, but murder could be made lawful by whittling down a lie until it looked as sharp as the truth.

  The Harmon brothers would do their whittling down with double-barreled shotguns. It was easy enough to make murder look like a lawful crime if you could point to a body covered by a blanket and say, “We caught him stealing our fish! He was a-goin’ to kill us—so we got him first.”

  No one would think of lifting the blanket and asking Uncle Al about it. A man lying stiff and still under a blanket could no more make himself heard than a river cat frozen in the ice.

  “Git inside, young ’uns. Here they come!”

  Jimmy’s heart skipped a beat. Down the river in the sunlight a shantyboat was drifting. Jimmy could see the Harmon brothers crouching on the deck, their faces livid with hate, sunlight glinting on their arm-cradled shotguns.

  The Harmon brothers were not in the least alike. Jed Harmon was tall and gaunt, his right cheek puckered by a knife scar, his cruel, thin-lipped mouth snagged by his teeth. Joe Harmon was small and stout, a little round man with bushy eyebrows and the flabby face of a cottonmouth snake.

  “Go inside, Pigtail,” Jimmy said, calmly. “I’m a-going to stay and fight!”

  * * * *

  Uncle Al grabbed Jimmy’s arm and swung him around. “You heard what I said, young fella. Now git!”

  “I want to stay here and fight with you, Uncle Al,” Jimmy said.

  “Have you got a gun? Do you want to be blown apart, young fella?”

  “I’m not scared, Uncle Al,” Jimmy pleaded. “You might get wounded. I know how to shoot straight, Uncle Al. If you get hurt I’ll go right on fighting!”

  “No you won’t, young fella! Take Pigtail inside. You hear me? You want me to take you across my knee and beat the livin’ stuffings out of you?”

  Silence.

  Deep in his uncle’s face Jimmy saw an anger he couldn’t buck. Grabbing Pigtail Anne by the arm, he propelled her across the deck and into the dismal front room of the shantyboat.

  The instant he released her she glared at him and stamped her foot. “If Uncle Al gets shot it’ll be your fault,” she said cruelly. Then Pigtail’s anger really flared up.

  “The Harmons wouldn’t dare shoot us ’cause we’re children!”

  For an instant brief as a dropped heartbeat Jimmy stared at his sister with unconcealed admiration.

  “You can be right smart when you’ve got nothing else on your mind, Pigtail,” he said. “If they kill me they’ll hang sure as shooting!”

  Jimmy was out in the sunlight again before Pigtail could make a grab for him.

  Out on the deck and running along the deck toward Uncle Al. He was still running when the first blast came.

  * * * *

  It didn’t sound like a shotgun blast. The deck shook and a big swirl of smoke floated straight toward Jimmy, half blinding him and blotting Uncle Al from view.

  When the smoke cleared Jimmy could see the Harmon shantyboat. It was less than thirty feet away now, drifting straight past and rocking with the tide like a topheavy flatbarge.

  On the deck Jed Harmon was crouching down, his gaunt face split in a triumphant smirk. Beside him Joe Harmon stood quivering like a mound of jelly, a stick of dynamite in his hand, his flabby face looking almost gentle in the slanting sunlight.

  There was a little square box at Jed Harmon’s feet. As Joe pitched Jed reached into the box for another dynamite stick. Jed was passing the sticks along to his brother, depending on wad dynamite to silence Uncle Al forever.

  Wildly Jimmy told himself that the guns had been just a trick to mix Uncle Al up, and keep him from shooting until they had him where they wanted him.

  Uncle Al was shooting now, his face as grim as death. His big heavy gun was leaping about like mad, almost hurling him to the deck.

  Jimmy saw the second dynamite stick spinning through the air, but he never saw it come down. All he could see was the smoke and the shantyboat rocking, and another terrible splintering crash as he went plunging into the river from the end of a rising plank, a sob strangling in his throat.

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p; Jimmy struggled up from the river with the long leg-thrusts of a terrified bullfrog, his head a throbbing ache. As he swam shoreward he could see the cypresses on the opposite bank, dark against the sun, and something that looked like the roof of a house with water washing over it.

  Then, with mud sucking at his heels, Jimmy was clinging to a slippery bank and staring out across the river, shading his eyes against the glare.

  Jimmy thought, “I’m dreaming! I’ll wake up and see Uncle Joe blowing on a vinegar jug. I’ll see Pigtail, too. Uncle Al will be sitting on the deck, taking it easy!”

  But Uncle Al wasn’t sitting on the deck. There was no deck for Uncle Al to sit upon. Just the top of the shantyboat, sinking lower and lower, and Uncle Al swimming.

  Uncle Al had his arm around Pigtail, and Jimmy could see Pigtail’s white face bobbing up and down as Uncle Al breasted the tide with his strong right arm.

  Closer to the bend was the Harmon shantyboat. The Harmons were using their shotguns now, blasting fiercely away at Uncle Al and Pigtail. Jimmy could see the smoke curling up from the leaping guns and the water jumping up and down in little spurts all about Uncle Al.

  There was an awful hollow agony in Jimmy’s chest as he stared, a fear that was partly a soundless screaming and partly a vision of Uncle Al sinking down through the dark water and turning it red.

  It was strange, though. Something was happening to Jimmy, nibbling away at the outer edges of the fear like a big, hungry river cat. Making the fear seem less swollen and awful, shredding it away in little flakes.

  There was a white core of anger in Jimmy which seemed suddenly to blaze up.

  He shut his eyes tight.

  In his mind’s gaze Jimmy saw himself holding the Harmon brothers up by their long, mottled legs. The Harmon brothers were frogs. Not friendly, good natured frogs like Uncle Al, but snake frogs. Cottonmouth frogs.

  All flannel red were their mouths, and they had long evil fangs which dripped poison in the sunlight. But Jimmy wasn’t afraid of them no-ways. Not any more. He had too firm a grip on their legs.

  “Don’t let anything happen to Uncle Al and Pigtail!” Jimmy whispered, as though he were talking to himself. No—not exactly to himself. To someone like himself, only larger. Very close to Jimmy, but larger, more powerful.

  “Catch them before they harm Uncle Al! Hurry! Hurry!”

  There was a strange lifting sensation in Jimmy’s chest now. As though he could shake the river if he tried hard enough, tilt it, send it swirling in great thunderous white surges clear down to Lake Pontchartrain.

  * * * *

  But Jimmy didn’t want to tilt the river. Not with Uncle Al on it and Pigtail, and all those people in New Orleans who would disappear right off the streets. They were frogs too, maybe, but good frogs. Not like the Harmon brothers.

  Jimmy had a funny picture of himself much younger than he was. Jimmy saw himself as a great husky baby, standing in the middle of the river and blowing on it with all his might. The waves rose and rose, and Jimmy’s cheeks swelled out and the river kept getting angrier.

  No—he must fight that.

  “Save Uncle Al!” he whispered fiercely. “Just save him—and Pigtail!”

  It began to happen the instant Jimmy opened his eyes. Around the bend in the sunlight came a great spinning disk, wrapped in a fiery glow.

  Straight toward the Harmon shantyboat the disk swept, water spurting up all about it, its bottom fifty feet wide. There was no collision. Only a brightness for one awful instant where the shantyboat was twisting and turning in the current, a brightness that outshone the rising sun.

  Just like a camera flashbulb going off, but bigger, brighter. So big and bright that Jimmy could see the faces of the Harmon brothers fifty times as large as life, shriveling and disappearing in a magnifying burst of flame high above the cypress trees. Just as though a giant in the sky had trained a big burning glass on the Harmon brothers and whipped it back quick.

  Whipped it straight up, so that the faces would grow huge before dissolving as a warning to all snakes. There was an evil anguish in the dissolving faces which made Jimmy’s blood run cold. Then the disk was alone in the middle of the river, spinning around and around, the shantyboat swallowed up.

  And Uncle Al was still swimming, fearfully close to it.

  The net came swirling out of the disk over Uncle Al like a great, dew-drenched gossamer web. It enmeshed him as he swam, so gently that he hardly seemed to struggle or even to be aware of what was happening to him.

  Pigtail didn’t resist, either. She simply stopped thrashing in Uncle Al’s arms, as though a great wonder had come upon her.

  Slowly Uncle Al and Pigtail were drawn into the disk. Jimmy could see Uncle Al reclining in the web, with Pigtail in the crook of his arm, his long, angular body as quiet as a butterfly in its deep winter sleep inside a swaying glass cocoon.

  Uncle Al and Pigtail, being drawn together into the disk as Jimmy stared, a dull pounding in his chest. After a moment the pounding subsided and a silence settled down over the river.

  Jimmy sucked in his breath. The voices began quietly, as though they had been waiting for a long time to speak to Jimmy deep inside his head, and didn’t want to frighten him in any way.

  “Take it easy, Jimmy! Stay where you are. We’re just going to have a friendly little talk with Uncle Al.”

  “A t-talk?” Jimmy heard himself stammering.

  “We knew we’d find you where life flows simply and serenely, Jimmy. Your parents took care of that before they left you with Uncle Al.

  “You see, Jimmy, we wanted you to study the Earth people on a great, wide flowing river, far from the cruel, twisted places. To grow up with them, Jimmy—and to understand them. Especially the Uncle Als. For Uncle Al is unspoiled, Jimmy. If there’s any hope at all for Earth as we guide and watch it, that hope burns most brightly in the Uncle Als!”

  The voice paused, then went on quickly. “You see, Jimmy, you’re not human in the same way that your sister is human—or Uncle Al. But you’re still young enough to feel human, and we want you to feel human, Jimmy.”

  “W—Who are you?” Jimmy gasped.

  “We are the Shining Ones, Jimmy! For wide wastes of years we have cruised Earth’s skies, almost unnoticed by the Earth people. When darkness wraps the Earth in a great, spinning shroud we hide our ships close to the cities, and glide through the silent streets in search of our young. You see, Jimmy, we must watch and protect the young of our race until sturdiness comes upon them, and they are ready for the Great Change.”

  * * * *

  For an instant there was a strange, humming sound deep inside Jimmy’s head, like the drowsy murmur of bees in a dew-drenched clover patch. Then the voice droned on. “The Earth people are frightened by our ships now, for their cruel wars have put a great fear of death in their hearts. They watch the skies with sharper eyes, and their minds have groped closer to the truth.

  “To the Earth people our ships are no longer the fireballs of mysterious legend, haunted will-o’-the-wisps, marsh flickerings and the even more illusive distortions of the sick in mind. It is a long bold step from fireballs to flying saucers, Jimmy. A day will come when the Earth people will be wise enough to put aside fear. Then we can show ourselves to them as we really are, and help them openly.”

  The voice seemed to take more complete possession of Jimmy’s thoughts then, growing louder and more eager, echoing through his mind with the persuasiveness of muted chimes.

  “Jimmy, close your eyes tight. We’re going to take you across wide gulfs of space to the bright and shining land of your birth.”

  Jimmy obeyed.

  It was a city, and yet it wasn’t like New York or Chicago or any of the other cities Jimmy had seen illustrations of in the newspapers and picture magazines.

 
The buildings were white and domed and shining, and they seemed to tower straight up into the sky. There were streets, too, weaving in and out between the domes like rainbow-colored spider webs in a forest of mushrooms.

  * * * *

  There were no people in the city, but down the aerial streets shining objects swirled with the swift easy gliding of flat stones skimming an edge of running water.

  Then as Jimmy stared into the depths of the strange glow behind his eyelids the city dwindled and fell away, and he saw a huge circular disk looming in a wilderness of shadows. Straight toward the disk a shining object moved, bearing aloft on filaments of flame a much smaller object that struggled and mewed and reached out little white arms.

  Closer and closer the shining object came, until Jimmy could see that it was carrying a human infant that stared straight at Jimmy out of wide, dark eyes. But before he could get a really good look at the shining object it pierced the shadows and passed into the disk.

  There was a sudden, blinding burst of light, and the disk was gone.

  Jimmy opened his eyes.

  “You were once like that baby, Jimmy!” the voice said. “You were carried by your parents into a waiting ship, and then out across wide gulfs of space to Earth.

  “You see, Jimmy, our race was once entirely human. But as we grew to maturity we left the warm little worlds where our infancy was spent, and boldly sought the stars, shedding our humanness as sunlight sheds the dew, or a bright, soaring moth of the night its ugly pupa case.

  “We grew great and wise, Jimmy, but not quite wise enough to shed our human heritage of love and joy and heartbreak. In our childhood we must return to the scenes of our past, to take root again in familiar soil, to grow in power and wisdom slowly and sturdily, like a seed dropped back into the loam which nourished the great flowering mother plant.