by Don Wilcox
Bracket had given his age as twenty five. He was a sandy haired chap with quick brown eyes, a sensitive face, and a clever tongue,
“What were you doing there in the arsenal?” the police officer had asked him when Meetz and Ambassador Jewell had arrived to review the case.
The boy had replied, “How did I know it was an arsenal? I’ve never been here before.”
“The building is plainly marked. If you read English, you must have known.”
“I came along to see the sights,” Dick Bracket had replied. “I got up before daybreak this morning because I was eager to see this city straight through the day. I wanted to see it come to life at dawn. I wanted to know whether the Venus milkmen were as noisy as the ones back in Kansas City. I wanted to know whether there were hardboiled streetcar conductors that yelled at you—”
“That’s all very interesting, young man, but why did you enter that arsenal?”
“Curiosity. That’s all. I wanted to walk into every building that was open, just to see what there is to see.”
At this point the Ambassador had added a question. “Didn’t you know that the American embassy would treat your whole party to a tour?”
“I wanted to get ahead of the others.”
“Oh.”
A certain wordless communication had flashed between Captain Meetz and his assistant then. The Ambassador had caught it, and it had echoed back to trouble him.
“So you wanted to get ahead of the others . . . And they found you in the arsenal, counting the rifles and inspecting the six big guns.”
“Only six?” the boy had come back like a snapping whip. Then Captain Meetz had taken over.
“Dick, this was a mistake. I believe it was due to thoughtlessness on your part. And too much curiosity. I am convinced that you are honest in stating that you simply wanted to see everything. I know that you couldn’t have had any particular motive in examining the weapons of defense that belong to this capital. Am I right?”
“You’re always right.” The boy had smiled.
Ambassador Jewell had gestured to the police officer. There was no use making a mountain out of a molehill. And so the case had been dismissed.
All at once Ambassador Jewell was jerked out of his thoughts by a very curious sight—A chase was taking place right over the hill-tops. A group of about a dozen winged men were flying at top speed. They were being pursued by a red and blue airplane.
“My stars!” Ambassador Jewell cried. “What goes on?”
He jammed on the brakes and stopped just in time to see the formation of birdmen break up. The winged creatures were clever, all right. At once twelve or fourteen of them were going in twelve or fourteen different directions. The big plane couldn’t possibly double back quickly enough to match their dodging. The best it could do was to try to follow one of them, and just as it was about to overtake its quarry, the winged fellow deftly dropped to the ground for a landing. By this time the rest of the gang reformed and drew the plane off in another direction.
“My stars!” the Ambassador repeated. “Captain Meetz can’t allow this to go on. We’ll have more grief from those wingmen now than ever.”
He turned his car around in the middle of the highway and sped back to the capital at full speed.
CHAPTER VII
Stupe Smith with his party returned to the landing field just as the sun was setting. Against the flaming sky he saw another red and blue plane descending, and at once he understood. That would be Selma Stevens returning from a test flight.
“There’s good news, Hefty,” he observed. “That means we’ll be ready to take off with both planes early tomorrow morning.”
Hefty gave a surprised grunt. “Don’t we even get a day to look over the city?”
“We’ll paint the town after we win our prize,” Stupe said.
Hefty might have known. His boss was all business. Work first, pleasure afterward—that had been Stupe’s policy on the rescue trip in the Andes and on a previous adventure over the Arctic.
“So we pick up and move at dawn tomorrow,” Hefty agreed without argument. “You think our dear captain will have everything ready?”
Stupe gave a confident toss of his head. “Meetz says he’s ready to back me in any plan I recommend.”
At the dinner table that night all of the party were assembled and for half an hour they thought of nothing but the delights of Venus foods. Stupe was confident that everything was getting off to a good start, though he had not yet sprung his news about tomorrow’s move.
The spaceship had been rolled into a hangar that afternoon. The two planes were being serviced and loaded with the first batch of goods—that share of it which the wingmen had not stolen.
A strange mood of silence held sway tonight over the Fiddle brothers and their confidante, Selma. The daylight robbery would be a black mark on their record, they knew, if the story got out. But they believed that Selma wouldn’t tell. Perhaps it would be days before the goods were missed.
“I can be as innocent as an angel,” Jake had whispered just before dinner, “But you, Bull, you’ve been wearin’ that guilty look ever since you stole sugar from mom’s cupboard.”
“As an angel, you’re about as innocent as one of those devilish winged men,” Bull retorted.
The two Stevens girls who had flown with Stupe were full of lively chatter about their day’s adventure.
“You should have been along, Sis,” they said to Selma. “What are you so quiet about?”
Selma dodged the question. The truth was, her brain was still whirling over the afternoon’s chase. She had intended only to follow those winged robbers far enough to see where they hid the goods, but the chase had turned out badly for her. One by one, they had succeeded in breaking away from the flock, each to hide his share of the loot among the wooded hillsides. The more they had eluded her, the angrier she had grown. At last she had headed her plane straight for them, fully intending to knock a few of them down.
And then it had happened. A highway had come into view unexpectedly, and there, five hundred feet beneath her, she had seen that certain red and silver car. The Ambassador’s. Had he seen her?
At the close of dinner Stupe Smith rose and tapped his glass for attention. Briefly he outlined his plan of action. His words, Hefty thought, were more than eloquent. They were a promise of swift achievement. And they were a supreme bid for cooperation.
“Every word and every action of Captain Meetz convinces me,” Stupe said, smiling toward the man who was technically his superior, “that I will have every ounce of support I need. We are off to a perfect start. So far as I know not one thing has happened to mar our record of good conduct.”
He paused, taking in everyone’s gaze. He thought that Selma Stevens winced under the quick glance from one of the Fiddle brothers.
“My plan for tomorrow is to set up a camp on the shore of the Southeast Ocean, half a day’s flight from this capital. The site has already been selected—a green valley about two thousand miles from here. This will give us a base of operations much nearer the region that Mr. Vest is believed to have visited. Captain Meetz, does this plan meet with your approval?”
The captain gave an enthusiastic, “Yes, yes. Most assuredly.”
“There is one difficulty we may encounter,” Stupe went on. “Beyond the Divide we ran across many bands of men with wings. We sighted several thousand of these—great brown flocks of them flying low over the hilltops. They may give us trouble. But if we don’t trouble them first they may not bother us.”
“Ugh!” Bull Fiddle said, as if something had kicked him in the stomach. His involuntary ejaculation caused everyone to turn, and he was forced to say something. He faltered. “Did you say men with wings?”
Jake, at his side, nudged him and tried to take the awkward situation out of his hands.
“We can shoot ‘em, can’t we?” Jake blurted. “I mean if they come around stealing or something.”
At this suggestion every
one around the table began talking in the low tones of suppressed excitement. Stupe rapped for order. At that moment Ambassador Jewell entered, looking very grave. The room went silent.
“Captain Meetz . . . Mr. Smith . . . Members of the Wellington expedition . . .”
The Ambassador tall and austere advanced to the table slowly. There was an alarming light in his eyes, Stupe thought. Something must have happened.
“I have come to give you a word of warning. Are all of your members present, Captain Meetz?”
The captain counted fourteen persons including himself. “All present,” he said.
“Good. What I have to tell you will not be pleasant. But it is for your own good.” The Ambassador signaled someone at the door. “Bring in our exhibit A, please.”
Two attendants wheeled a white skeleton into the room. It had been wired to a dark metal frame, mounted on a three-wheeled base. Towering six and a half feet from toes to forehead, its chalky bones shuddered weirdly as it moved up to the table.
“Wings!” someone exclaimed.
The skeleton was almost, but not quite human. Skull, ribs, pelvic bones, arms and legs—these parts were familiar. But in addition there were the bony frames of two outspread wings.
“Yes wings,” said the Ambassador solemnly. “This is the skeleton of a very famous wingman. I have not come to tell you the story of his dramatic life and death. I am showing him to you for a very important reason. Please attend my words carefully.”
The Ambassador waited until the room was deathly still. From somewhere outside the room could be heard soft foot-falls—servants, Stupe supposed, listening at the doors.
“This skeleton was given us by the wingmen themselves as a gift—a gift of bitterness—a gift that symbolized their distrust of us. For this wingman was murdered in the streets of this city by a visiting American. It was an unprovoked murder. I want to warn you that wingmen have heads and hearts, the same as you and I. They do not easily forget.”
Stupe was thinking fast. There was a tension in the air that he couldn’t understand. Had something gone wrong?
The Ambassador’s voice was suddenly husky with repressed anger.
“Today—your first day on this planet—you have already broken the peace. One of you—or some of you—do not know which ones—have already—”
The Ambassador stopped. Selma Stevens had risen from the table and was walking, almost running, toward the door. Her surprised sisters tried to stop her. What was the matter?
“Let me go,” she cried. “I’m ill. Let me—”
“Wait!” the Ambassador shouted, and his voice struck with a weight of authority that fairly paralyzed everyone. “Wait. You’re going to hear what I have to say.”
Selma’s sisters led her back to her seat. She was pale, trembling.
“Before I tell you what has happened,” again the Ambassador’s voice was low and controlled, “let me give you a stern warning about the use of firearms. These winged men know practically nothing about guns. Except for their remembrance of one tragic incident—” he gestured to the winged skeleton—“they have had no contact with firearms. As long as they remain in their present state of innocence they offer no menace. Occasionally they come over the Divide. Sometimes we find them lurking around our windows or on our rooftops. They will steal—yes, indeed. So do not leave any baggage lying around in open spaces where it can be seen from the air.”
The Fiddle brothers were mumbling something in confidence. The Ambassador stopped, waiting for cold silence, then went on.
“They steal your words, too. They’re not dumb. Don’t underestimate their wits. They live as primitively as any ancient caveman, but they have been quick to seize upon our language. But I’m warning you, I do not mean to have trouble with them over these trifles. There are millions of them to thousands of us. The planet was theirs before it was ours. And so we have established an iron-bound code. An iron-bound code, my friends. For our own welfare as well as theirs. It is a criminal act for anyone to commit an act of aggression against a wingman.”
Ambassador Jewell struck the table with his doubled fist.
“Moreover, it is a criminal act for anyone to demonstrate the use of firearms or exhibit firearms in any way within sight of these creatures. And now—”
Again the Ambassador’s voice choked with ill-suppressed fury.
“Let me tell you what happened today. One of you—or some of you—”
A scream from somewhere outside the dining room cut his speech, short.
Instantly a side door swung open and banged against the wall. That was the least dangerous of the ten or twelve banging noises that followed one another in rapid succession. Into the room they came—three winged men, jumping, flapping their wings, and shooting!
Each of the three had a small black automatic pistol. The bullets whizzed in all directions. A picture on the wall went down with a crash of glass. Captain Meetz went down with a terrible groan. The three pairs of big brown wings seemed to be everywhere at once as the creatures charged over the table with their bare feet, and ran from one corner of the room to another.
One of them flapped past the chandelier and knocked down a shower a glass trinkets. He struck the ceiling with a thud, for he had been fascinated by the musical clinking, had looked back and momentarily forgot that there was not an open sky overhead. He flopped downward, thrown off balance, and Stupe Smith leaped for him. The fists flew. The wingman’s pistol dropped from his hand. Stupe kicked it into the corner, at the same time following through with a hard right to the winged fellow’s solar plexus. The wings sagged and the figure slumped.
The girls were screaming. One of them had been hit.
Stupe turned in time to see Captain Meetz raising his own pistol to shoot. He aimed for a wingman’s heart. The Ambassador took two strides to the fallen captain and gave his arm a savage kick. Another pistol bumped to the floor.
It was little Hefty Winkle who came through with the hidden wallop. A right, a left, and a right to the biggest wingman’s midsection. As the fellow staggered backward, Stupe saw a flash of terror in his very human face. A heavy-boned, dark face it was, with a beak-shaped nose and eyebrows of coarse string-like hair. The terror in the whites of the fellow’s eyes came from his anticipation of falling upon his wings.
“There’s his weakness,” Stupe thought. “Those wings—”
But the fellow recovered himself and ran for the door. One of the trio had already gotten his fill and chased away. With a rapid thump of bare hands and feet, the third picked himself up from the floor and bounded through another door just as Frenchy flung a knife.
The room was such a scene of wreckage as no American Ambassador to the peaceful colony of Venus had ever imagined. Two persons—Captain Meetz and Selma Stevens—had been hurt by the flying bullets. Selma’s forehead had been grazed, and she had been shot through the arm. The captain had caught a bullet in the back. How badly he was hurt no one knew.
CHAPTER VIII
That night within two hours after the dining room “massacres” five members of the party took off for the Southeast Ocean.
Velma, at the controls, found an altitude of twenty, thousand feet and set the plane on a straight course.
“If you ask me,” she said, “Ambassador Jewell was worse hurt than anyone. Figuratively, I mean. Did you see him pacing back and forth? ‘How did they get the guns?’ he kept saying. ‘How did they get the guns?’ ”
“Well, how did they?” Hefty demanded. “It’s a cinch they didn’t get them from us. Our firearms were all packed away in our baggage.”
“How they got the guns is the ambassador’s problem,” said Frenchy. “It’s none of out affair. But what I want to know is, why did they start in on us? What have we done to them? You don’t suppose just because we flew over the Divide yesterday—”
“No,” said Stupe. “They had no reason to be offended over that, in the first place. They couldn’t have known it was us, in the second place. They
could have followed us all the way back to the capital—you know that. It had to be some local band of prowlers.”
“Maybe they’ve got some way of sending messages. The Ambassador said they were smart. Maybe some of the Southeast Ocean tribes telephoned or radioed back to a tribe that hides somewhere around the Venus capital-?”
“Radioed?” said Frenchy. “Do they have radios?”
“Who knows?” said Hefty.
“Well, I’d say it isn’t likely,” said Frenchy. “Folks that go around barefooted and half naked and don’t even wear wristwatches aren’t going to be setting up telephones or radio sets.”
“I don’t know,” said Hefty. “Stupe and I ran across some Hottentots down in the Solomon Islands—”
“They were Bushmen,” Stupe corrected.
The discussion was full of puzzling angles. No one knew what the limitations of the winged creatures might be. It was certain that they possessed a lively human curiosity about American gadgets, judging by the dramatic way they had chosen to experiment with those pistols.
“They talk American and they shoot pistols,” said Velma. “What have we got that they haven’t?”
“Our wings have motors,” said Stupe. “How’s our distance? Are we going to reach our destination before sun-up?”
“Vat’s der matter, Meester Smeeth?” Gypsy Brown asked. “You geeting hungry already yet?”
Stupe laughed. “To tell the truth, I am, Gypsy. But I thought you were asleep.”
“How could anyvan sleep afder all dot excitement?” Gypsy said. Then she lay back in her seat, her face half buried in the pillow. Sometimes her slow breathing almost became snoring, and the party might believe her to be sound asleep. Then suddenly her large brown eyes would pop open and she would add some comment in her rich deep voice to the passing conversation.
She was a woman of perhaps fifty, large and powerful, and reputedly an excellent cook. She had been called “Gypsy” as long as she could remember, she had explained, because as a child she had belonged to one of the roving gypsy bands that populated the war wildernesses that had once been Europe.