by Don Wilcox
“What got here?”
“The big blow-up.”
“But why? What kind of something was it?”
George tossed his head with an air of superior knowledge. “You wouldn’t understand if I told you. It’s all mixed up with astronomy.”
“I know all about astronomy,” Anna Pantella declared.
“I mean the mathematics would get too deep for you. You wouldn’t follow.”
“Mathematics is my specialty,” she said lightly. “I’m a regular walking calculator.”
“Well—ah—to begin with—” George had begun to perspire. He glanced at his watch. “Great guns! We’ve got to get back. The Express will arrive and find nobody home. We’ve got to get there ahead of them.”
“Why?” Anna asked. “You gave them the location. I want to spin around the earth to see the sights before we go back.”
“Nothing doing.”
“Just once, please . . . please, Big Boy.”
The touch of her fingers on his arm made him writhe with anger.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Am I poison or. something? I’ve never been considered exactly repulsive. In fact, my class voted me the most popular girl. Maybe you’re afraid of girls. Is that it?”
George Hurley set his jaw. “I’ve already told you how it is.”
“You’re sure touchy.”
“Maybe so. But if the Venus Express arrives ahead of us, and those folks see you and me get out of this ship together—right away they’ll get ideas.”
They flew into the earth’s atmosphere. The ship had coasted gracefully into its air cruising speed of 810 m.p.h. It skimmed through patches of sun-edged clouds and leaped over mountains of steam that oozed up from ugly breaks in the earth’s crust.
The ever-changing scenes were fascinating, George had to admit. He swung wide over what had been the continent of North America, taking advantage of the afternoon sunshine. He wouldn’t mention to Anna that darkness would make a landing on Africa difficult for the next eight hours.
“The Venus Express will stall for time, too,” he thought. “Everyone aboard will want to see more of this torn-up land.”
So thinking, he cut his speed and dipped closer to the surface. His female passenger had gone to the small observatory at the end of the companionway. He could see her turning the telescope back and forth, taking in the sights. It was a spectacular show and it might have gone on for hours if Anna hadn’t called, “They’ve landed!”
“Landed? Who?”
“The Venus Express.”
George looked back at her, wondering what the gag was. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the instruments.
“You’re seeing things,” he said. “I surveyed this strip of land three days ago and there was no chance of a landing. Besides, we’re ten miles too high to see a space ship on the surface. All you’d get through the telescope would be a speck.”
“It’s a space ship, all right,” Anna Pantella repeated stubbornly.
“You’re dizzy,” George shouted back. “It must be a cloud. Do you know how to apply the dimensions gauge to an object? Lever C. On your right.”
“Sure, I know.”
“All right, I’ll swing back over that strip and you apply Lever C and catch the dimensions of your space ship.” George cut the speed still lower, banked the ship and retraced his course.
“Okay, what do you get? A cloud or a mountain?”
“It’s a space ship,” said Anna.
“How long is it?”
“Thirteen miles . . . Gee! Thirteen miles! I must be seeing things.”
“Huff!” George snorted. He touched the accelerator and the ship leaped so quick that Anna bumped her head against the rounded rear windows. The next thing he knew, she was stamping into the control room with angry tears in her eyes.
“All right, you can be mean if you want to,” she said. “But I saw it and I measured it right. I saw someone unloading the ship, too. The big box he unloaded was over a half mile long.”
“Whoever heard of a box a half mile long? Why, that would be enough surface to land a space ship on!”
The girl nodded slowly, challenging his eyes. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. If my brother from Venus was here with his space ship, he could do it.”
CHAPTER VIII
The great orange and purple eyes of the giant Gret-O-Gret were moist with tears. What a disappointment! The planet he had come to claim had been ruined.
He had flown his thirteen-mile ship around the planet twice to survey his claim. That had been enough. He knew what had happened. The raw, steaming mounds of earth, the crushed cities, rivers and lakes flooding over the shaken land seeking new beds, all growing things blasted and beaten to death—the whole conglomerate picture added up to one awful fact.
“Mox-O-Mox has done it!” Gret-O-Gret moaned.
The heat of revenge swept through Gret. A panic of murderous desires seized his six hearts.
It was then that he landed his ship. He must get control of himself. He must have a few hours of rest. Time to absorb his inner storm. Time to weep.
He landed as the single sun was setting. He went through his motions automatically, walking around in the ship, peering out through the windows, finally opening the air-tight door for a breath of the earth’s atmosphere.
“Explosives,” he muttered to himself at the first whiff. His sensitive nostrils knew the fumes of the more destructive Mogo bombs.
He took a few steps outside the ship. He was breathing too fast. Was it his anger, or was the air of this land too thin for his lungs? Or was it a faint odor of death that repelled him?
He walked back into the ship and placed his hand on a box.
“Gifts for the little people,” he said bitterly. He lifted the box and carried it outside. He might have placed it on the highest hill as a magnet for the little people of this land—but all of that vision had flown. (In his plans, he had delighted in a vision of little people thronging up the hillside, each person accepting a gift of food from far-off Mogo land as a token of friendship.)
He was breathing hard. He set the box down near the ship and returned, heaving noisily. He left the door slightly open so he could get used to the strange air gradually, and he readjusted the ship’s atmosphere control to meet the emergency of incoming air.
Then, breathing easily once more, he bowed his great head and wept a few giant tears. He mumbled softly to himself as he remembered the photographs of this beautiful land he had studied through a microscope, when he had examined the contents of the insect-sized space ship. He thought of his three little guests and how they must have fallen to their death during his fight with Mox.
If he had not been weeping and mumbling to himself, he might have heard the faint whine of an approaching space flivver. But at that moment something strange happened near his fingertips.
A little flash of fire showed against his brown shirt. Just a spark. Then it was gone.
He watched with wide eyes, thinking it would come again. The only unusual thing he saw was a teardrop that had caught on his orange sash.
Then he saw. Two little people! The two little friends he had been weeping for! They were climbing down the side of his shirt. They were running toward the teardrop. They were clinging to the weave of his sash, bending to the tear drop—drinking!
“Careful, Paul!” Katherine had cried as the two of them climbed down the giant’s shirt toward the tear drop. “Don’t make me fall. I’m too weak to fall.”
“He sees us!” Paul said. “The pistol shot got his attention. If he’ll watch us for a moment we’ll make him understand.”
They clambered to the edge of the tear drop, a twenty-foot pool of liquid soaking into the orange cloth of the giant’s sash.
“Oh, Paul, do we dare think it? Suppose it’s poison!”
“He’s watching us, Katherine. He’s recognizing us. That’s all that matters.”
They pretended to drink. The liquid was thick and sal
ty to their lips. They turned to look up into the face of the giant, bending toward them. His orange and purple eyes hovered only a quarter of a mile above them, looking down with compassion. He began to murmur in soft tones, punctuated by curious gurgles of surprise.
“He can hardly believe we’ve come to life,” Paul said, helping Katherine up from the muddy tear pool. “He’d be amazed if he knew how we’ve managed to keep alive in his clothes all this time.”
“Don’t talk about it. It was too terrible.”
“He’s talking to us. He’s telling us he’s glad. Wave at him, Kathy.”
“I’m too weak. I could faint.”
The giant’s hand came down and gently picked them up. Clinging to his fingers-of-fingers, they rode high over the floor of the space ship and came to a stop on the glass shelf that joined the wall of windows.
If they had looked out into the semi-darkness at that moment they might have seen a space flivver landing on the surface of the box which the giant had taken outside. But they were famished for food and drink, and just now Gret-O-Gret was serving them two bowls as large as horse-tanks, brimful of what they needed most.
They drank gratefully. They took only a little food at first. It was such a happy relief to be discovered again that Katherine only wanted to sit with her head in her arms.
“It was a long ride, Kathy, but our giant friend has brought us back to earth—just as you said he might.”
Paul dampened a handkerchief in the water bowl and bathed her face and arms. She looked up with a hint of a smile that interested him. She didn’t often smile. Normally, her face was the picture of alertness and steely determination.
“Your eyes are red, Paul,” she said.
“Have you been watching the skies again? Is that how you know?”
Paul nodded. He knew the heavens well enough that he had been able to follow the course of Gret-O-Gret’s solitary flight. The very chart the giant had used was, as Paul knew, an enlargement of the one from his own ship. But Paul had also spent many of his waking hours perched somewhere on the giant’s clothing to watch the pageant of stars and planets through the window.
“It must be the earth,” Paul said. He looked to the window. It was now quite dark beyond that vast curtain of glass. But inside, the gigantic shell of the ship was filled with cream-colored light. “I couldn’t get much of a view before we landed this afternoon.”
He hesitated, vaguely disturbed. The brightness of the sun had seemed just like old times, but there had been something unnatural in the cast of the cloudy. He had failed to catch any familiar glimpses of the earth’s surface.
“It has to be the earth,” he repeated, banishing his strange doubts. “There’s no question about it.”
Katherine was looking up into the two great watchful eyes. “We’d better tell him about Glasgow,” she said.
Paul frowned. He wondered if Garritt Glasgow had also succeeded in remaining alive through the long hours of the flight from the Mogo planets. It was no question of being able to remain in hiding. The fabric of the giant’s clothing afforded unlimited opportunities for concealment, and for climbing about. It was a question of food and water.
Paul had not seen Glasgow since the day of their fight, when all three had very nearly fallen to their death.
“Are you sure he’s still with us?”
Katherine nodded. “I’ve told you before that I’ve seen him—through the shadows of the giant’s clothing.”
“But not in the light,” Paul said. The shadows could be deceiving to one who lived in fear. “Have you seen him recently?”
“Yes.”
“How recently?”
“Today. As we were coming into the earth’s stratosphere. You were out in the light keeping watch.”
Paul looked at her sharply. An erratic suspicion ran cold through his spine.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“And borrow trouble for both of us?” Katherine shook her head. “We couldn’t afford it. You’re in no condition to fight him again, Paul. And I don’t believe you’d shoot him if you had a chance. It’s lucky that he doesn’t have a pistol. He wouldn’t be so soft.”
Paul pressed his hands on Katherine’s shoulders—pressed hard as he searched her eyes. “He hasn’t seen you—has he?”
“I—I don’t think so.” She turned and took some food from the bowl. “Here, Paul, eat some more. We both need nourishment. We’ll need our strength. And our wits. We’re in a bad spot, Paul. With or without Glasgow, we’re in a bad spot.”
“We’re alive.”
“We’re alive and we’re back to the earth. Two of us—or three—out of our original ten. Before we have to face our public we’d better know whether it’s two or three. And we’d better know what we’re going to say to the newspapers before we let Garritt Glasgow do any talking!”
Katherine was right about that. A false story from Glasgow could easily climax the series of disasters that had already staggered the Paul Keller expedition.
“We’ve got to talk with Gret-O-Gret,” Paul said abruptly. He began to pace. There must be a way. Not by words. His and Katherine’s Mogo vocabulary was much too limited.
Not by actions alone. How could one’s actions reveal to a giant that a third party was still hiding in his garments?
By pictures, then?
“What can we use for paper, Katherine? I’m going to give Gret-O-Gret some hieroglyphics that will make him dance on all four hands and four feet. Here!”
The giant was observing his every move as Paul began to sketch. The horizontal side of a bowl served as a canvas. Katherine helped him gather handfuls of smudge from the base of the windows that was dark enough to make bold marks.
“Paul, you’re so slow. Now he isn’t even watching. If you’d only—” Katherine’s complaint ended abruptly.
“Here he comes. He has that big reading glass. He’s watching, Paul. Keep drawing. . .”
Paul drew with the swiftness of an inspired artist. A Mogo giant. Two people clinging to his garment. A third person hiding a little distance away.
“He’s watching, Paul. Don’t stop. Let him know that the third party is dangerous.”
It wasn’t easy. The second idea called for a sketch of the third person attacking the other two. Paul worked with excitement. The giant was studying the pictures closely, and his low rhythmic breathing came to Paul like a warm zephyr that kept returning.
“I don’t think he understands,” Katherine said. “Is there any way you can make it plainer?”
Paul turned the bowl again and began a new picture on a clean patch of wall. Again—three small figures. Two of them—his representations of Katherine and himself—stood hand in hand on the giant’s shoulder. The third was imprisoned in a box with cross-hatch screen walls.
It was slow business. A strange way to spend a strange night, as Katherine observed. But Paul knew it was a worthwhile investment. The bond between a good Mogo giant and the people of the earth was closer than ever.
When Gret-O-Gret turned away from the glass shelf, Paul saw that he was ready to act on the communicated ideas. With searching lights turned on his shirt and sash, he began to survey his garments with the aid of a small instrument. The gadget fitted his hand and looked like a giant-size hairbrush.
“A Mogo delouser, I’ll bet,” said Paul. “Just the thing for Glasgow.”
The fugitive came tumbling out of the shirt front with a terrified howl. The hairbrush affair drew him like a vacuum cleaner and he stuck to its brushlike surface, waving his arms and kicking with one free leg until Gret’s fingers-of-fingers pulled him off.
The giant’s hands motioned Katherine and Paul back out of the way as he set Glasgow down before the food and water bowls.
Between gulps, Glasgow turned to yell at Paul. “I saw you put him up to it, you stinking coward. You’ve told him to put me behind bars, too. Well, we’ll see.”
Katherine tried to draw Paul farther back into the shadow of Gret-O
-Gret’s arm.
“He’s raving,” Paul said. “He’s probably sick with a fever.”
“You’d save trouble if you’d shoot him outright.”
Paul was destined to recall that remark many times, always wondering if his wife had some premonition of the unimaginable terrors to come. But Paul could only turn a deaf ear to such a suggestion. An outright killing—even a captain’s fully justified execution of a bloody-handed traitor—would have been, under the circumstances, the wrong move. The good giant Gret-O-Gret would not understand. All of the faith which had been built up between the best of little people and the best of giants might dissolve instantly.
“You’d save yourself trouble—”
“Quiet, Katherine. Give the giant a chance to handle this.”
Gret-O-Gret had not missed an important part of Paul’s picture message. He now brought forth a bit of flexible black tube that dangled from his hand like a giant-size piece of insulation for an electric cord. Whatever it was, Gret snapped off an end of it. The giant shears that he dropped back into an open drawer sounded like a collision of locomotives. The black segment of cord, Paul saw, was an open tube about as large as a section of sewer main.
Glasgow began to back away from the food bowls, looking for a shadow. He saw what was coming. He started to run. The giant fingers snatched him up, dropped him into the black cylindrical prison, and secured him there by wrapping a bit of fine-weave screen over the ends.
“I’ll get you for this!” Glasgow shrieked at Paul as the hand carried him away.
The black prison was pushed back to the farther end of the glass shelf where the prisoner, supplied with food and water, could be safely forgotten.
Then the very understanding giant of Mogo returned his attention to Paul and Katherine. He seemed to be saying, “Tell me more with your pictures. Tell me what you know of my flight from the Mogo system to your Solar system.” For he placed Katherine and Paul on another shelf where the vast charts spread over the wall like a section of the sky stretching upward from their eyes.
He provided them with suitable drawing materials. Then, looking down at them with his mouth spread with what must have been a pleasant Mogo smile (although Katherine said she would never get used to it) he hummed softly. He was waiting.