by Don Wilcox
“Paul Keller,” Glasgow corrected.
“Oh? You mean to be chivalrous to the woman. Why?”
“Shall we have another drink,” said Glasgow, “to the future wife of the Director?”
“Wife?”
“Wife.”
“You intend to marry Katherine Keller? You’re in love—”
“Love is another rash word, like murder,” said Glasgow. “Katherine Keller is a smart woman. She would be useful to me.”
The waiter came with another tray of drinks, but Madame Zukor waved him away. She swung her cape of white wingmen’s feathers about her.
“I’ve a strange feeling that someone is watching us, Garritt. Let’s change tables.”
She led the way up the steps to a balcony that led to a hanging garden. “You could never be sure of Katherine Keller,” she resumed. “You wouldn’t dare trust her.”
“Skip it,” said Glasgow. He glanced back at the lower level and now he was aware that someone had been watching—a couple—the young man and the girl who had rescued him from Gret-O-Gret.
“Don’t look now, but the Venus Express has arrived,” Glasgow said.
“That husky lad with the sharp brown eyes and the girl in blue?”
“Right. They’re the ones I told you about. I gave him a knockout drop before I borrowed his ship. Like taking milk from a baby.”
Madame Zukor gave an uncomfortable “Umph!” The couple she saw were not the tired looking pair Glasgow remembered from a few earth days before. A handsome couple, as alert as a hungry wingman on the prowl. “I wouldn’t underestimate them, Garritt. Let’s move on.”
They walked into the artificial garden of silver trees and glass flowers. “I would be wearing this flashy red dress,” she mumbled. “There’s an exit down this way.”
Then—”Mr. Glasgow!”
Garritt Glasgow and his sister hurried on.
“MR. GLASGOW!”
Glasgow turned, pretending surprise.
“Mr. Glasgow, I want a word with you. Remember me?”
“Why, it’s George Hurley. How are you, young man? You’re looking much better than when I saw you last.”
Glasgow greeted him like a long lost brother. “Much, yes. And Miss Pantella! I was just telling Madame Zukor of your splendid favor. I’m so glad to meet you.”
“Too glad,” said Anna Pantella dryly. “Don’t overdo it.”
“If we seem to intrude,” said George, very businesslike, in spite of the traitor’s cordiality, “all we want is one missing space flivver.”
“Your ship. Of course. My boy, you’ll be happy to know that your ship got me here in record time. I’ve already begun to line up favors for the earth. I have high hopes. Already I have a promise from Madame Zukor—”
George Hurley swallowed hard as he took in this very slick-looking woman at close range. So this was Garritt Glasgow’s sister. She had started to whisper something to Glasgow, and failing, now retreated to the other side of a fountain. Glasgow amended his statement.
“ ‘Er—Madame Zukor prefers that I do not mention her contribution. But fortunately I’ve contacted her in time. Her ship leaves for Mars in a few hours, you know. The American social season opens on—”
“We only asked about the space flivver,” said Anna Pantella.
George nudged her as a warning not to be too abrupt. The splendor of Madame Zukor had momentarily dazzled him—her sharp dark eyes, her glittering jewels, her white-feathered cape hanging from the shoulders of her red dress. The evidence of wealth was, if anything, exceeded by the talk of wealth. Madame Zukor was introduced and she and Glasgow were at once speaking in terms of millions. It gave George a sickening sensation to contrast his own comparative poverty. How he had struggled to save the thousands that had purchased his new space flivver. His wonderful ship. The pride of his life. A poor thing, indeed. It was a speck compared to their wealth. They must have thought nothing of it. People of their social standing wouldn’t have taken his ship without good reason. They had only borrowed it.
Anna yielded to George’s hint and spoke more agreeably. “The folks in Banrab wondered what you’d be able to accomplish here. They’ll be glad to hear. Some of them stayed to fix up the camp.”
Glasgow and his sister listened attentively.
“Did they believe—I mean, did they understand all that I told them?” Glasgow asked.
“Certainly. Why not?”
“I was afraid they might be skeptical until they saw the giant for themselves.”
Anna’s answer put Glasgow at his ease. “As soon as George wakened up and began to talk, well, they began to plan for trouble, like you said. They know we may have to fight off more than one giant.”
“And the Kellers?”
“And the Kellers,” Anna confirmed.
George was proud of the way she had demonstrated her grasp of the situation. Glasgow and Madame Zukor appeared to be completely satisfied.
“I’m calling a big meeting for tomorrow,” Glasgow said. “I want you two to be there, to answer a few questions in front of the microphone.”
With that, Glasgow and Madame Zukor waved good-bye and hurried off through the garden. George sat on the edge of the fountain and scooped a handful of water to mop his brow.
“Come on,” said Anna. “This is no time for a shower bath.”
“Where we going?”
“It’s just a tiny hunch,” said Anna, “but I want to follow Madame Zukor.”
A moment later they caught a cab and followed the Glasgow car through the softly lighted streets and out through the avenues of government buildings to a row of prisons. With their lights dimmed, they approached within a block of a certain entrance where the Glasgow car had stopped.
CHAPTER XIV
The large barnlike room contained five hundred wingmen from the mountains and plains of Venus. They were wingmen who had committed offenses against the American colony on this planet. A few of them were murderers and creatures of violence. Others had merely trespassed on the colonists’ property, or broken windows, or committed minor thefts.
Laboratory subjects, they were called.
Prisoners? No, not according to the doctors. They had been brought here for observation and care. But there was a limit to how much the doctors could do in reconstructing them. Some of the doctors doubted whether they should be considered morally liable for their crimes. Months of debate had ensued over this point. And meanwhile, with no guiding principle of treatment yet established, the superintendent of the “Wingman Hospital” had simply marked time. The guards had furnished the “patients” with food and water and a chance to exercise. What more could be done?
This sort of prison life was bad for many of the wingmen. A few lost their minds and became completely irresponsible. Others showed violent criminal tendencies. The newspapers of the Venus capital continually carried ads, “Wanted, guards at the Wingman Hospital. Must be strong and alert and familiar with the use of firearms.”
It was after midnight, according to the clock at the end of the room, when one of the larger wingmen was awakened from his light sleep by the sound of voices. He understood the English words perfectly.
“I don’t want any dillydallying,” the visitor was saying. “I want the facts quick. Either I can use some of them or I can’t.”
“It’s like I say,” the guard answered. “You’ll have to go to the superintendent. But I don’t think he’ll let you—”
“If I can convince him that they’ll come back in better condition than they went out—”
“Sure I see your point.”
“That’s what the hospital wants, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s like I say—”
“All right. All right. Give me the facts. Are they killers? Can they be managed? Are they obedient?”
The wingman knew that the whole room was quietly awakening. The light shuffling of feathers. The light tapping of talon-like fingers on the bars. The soft swish of bare feet as wingmen shifted their p
ositions cautiously to look to this end of the room. They might pretend they were still sleeping, but they were quietly alert, trying to overhear the conversation.
“He means to take some of us,” the large green-winged inmate whispered to his nearest neighbor. “Listen. This may be our chance.”
His companions passed his whisper on to their neighbors. “He means to take some of us. Watch your chances.”
From cage to cage the whispers passed. The inmates knew the word had come from Green Flash. And they respected his leadership. He had not taken up any of the erratic actions that led to madness.
Like all wingmen, Green Flash possessed a body that resembled the bodies of the human foreigners who had come from the earth, with the additional physical equipment of a pair of wings. Wingmen’s back and shoulder muscles were heavier than those of humans; their voices had more of a metallic, bird-like quality; and their wings gave them a certain majesty of motion which made the humans seem jerky and awkward in comparison.
Green Flash had been an excellent fighter. Before his capture he had made a reputation for himself as a stubborn defender of wingmen’s rights. Now he closed his big green wings tightly to make himself look as small as possible. The visitor was casting an eager eye at the rows of cages. Green Flash didn’t want to be identified as something particularly dangerous.
“Do any of these wingmen speak English?” the visitor asked.
“A few of them. Like a parrot, you know. They echo us guards. You hear a lot of swearing around here when they’re wide awake. Especially around feeding time.”
“But they don’t know what they’re saying? Is that it?”
“You can’t tell for sure.”
“They have their own language, of course.”
“Sure.”
“Have you learned it?”
“Why should I? What I don’t know don’t hurt me. Let ‘em talk. I’m not taking orders from them.”
“All right. All right. The point is, they don’t understand enough of our language to give them any advantage, I hope. For instance, they’re not able to get what I’m saying right now—are they?
The visitor wanted to make sure on this point. Green Flash, taking in every word of the conversation, chuckled to himself.
“It’s different with different wingmen,” the guard said. “I think some of them do understand. And I think that when some of them yell at you, ‘Let me out, dammit!‘ that they know damn well what they’re saying. But I can’t prove it. And the doctors haven’t got around to proving anything yet.”
The visitor shook his head, not too well pleased. “If they’re all different, I’d better pick my flock by hand.”
“Well, you take that big boy over there with the green wings.”
Green Flash saw that the guard was pointing to him.
“That fellow looks bad, and they say he made some trouble when they captured him. Any animal will fight when he’s cornered. But he’s an ideal prisoner—er—inmate. I’ve never heard him say a word.”
“Never talks, eh?”
“Probably just plain dumb. I don’t think he understands a word of English, and he’ll probably never learn.”
Green Flash snorted to himself. This was good. So they thought he didn’t understand a word of English! Dumb, was he? Ha!
“I could tell you things, Mr. Guard,” Green Flash said to himself. “I could tell you the name of your wife and how many kids you have and which ones of them stole jelly out of the cupboard last week. By the way, one time when you scolded them for stealing jelly, I was the one who had been in the family cupboard. But you’ll never know about that.”
The visitor’s conversation with the guard had failed to reassure him. Green Flash saw the nervous twitches at the corners of his eyes. He was a small man with a birdlike face and his voice was thin and hard. He was strangely bold, however, in spite of his nervousness, and he showed an eagerness to come close to the cages and flash his defiant black eyes at inmates, as if to say, “I can make you march to time, and don’t you ever doubt it.”
One of the wingmen suddenly screeched out, “Pipe down or I’ll scratch your eyes out!”
That was one of the mad ones. Green Flash instantly hissed a “S-s-s-sh!” and the hiss began to pass around the room. It was like a concert of mockery for the next few seconds. Then suddenly everything was silent again. Except for the low voice of the guard.
“That was one of the mad ones. They don’t like him. That was their way of quieting him.”
The little visitor stood defiantly, taking in the whole wide-awake room, then centering his glare on the one evil wing-man who had threatened to scratch his eyes out. Green Flash thought, “Pay no attention, you. If you’re smart you’ll let it pass. The guard told you. The fellow’s mad.”
But Garritt Glasgow was envisaging the time that he might have to face these creatures in the open, with his authority put to a test. Would he be able to handle them with his own personal persuasion—plus adequate weapons?
To Garritt Glasgow, it was an issue that needed to be settled here and now.
“It’s all so much bluff,” the guard was trying to reassure him. “Pay no attention.”
“Let me borrow your whip.”
The guard yielded the twelve foot blacksnake, and Glasgow paced up to the cage and thrust his whiphand through the bars. “Now, you double damned beasts, let’s have one more squawk out of you if you want your feathers ripped off.”
“Pipe down or I’ll scratch your eyes out!” the demented one shouted again
Green Flash wished he could have choked that cry off. But the violent wingman was three cages away. Green Flash shuddered. He knew what was coming now. No wingman would be able to prevent it. Only the guard might. But would he?
The visitor swung the whip. Two awkward strokes. Then he caught the knack of it and lashed but in a way that meant business.
“That’s enough,” the guard barked.
There were nine others in the cage with the mad one, and the visitor didn’t care where his strokes landed. His victims uttered shrieks of terror and fluttered back in the farthest corner. But Glasgow kept on lashing them.
“That’s the wrong one!” the guard shouted. “Give me the whip! Stop it! That’s a female!”
“Poor little Purple Wings!” Green Flash groaned. He tried to hide his eyes. The innocent little female with the bright purple wings had been cut across the shoulder with one of the strokes, and her prison garment fell to expose her shoulder and breast, with a line of blood trickling down.
She was getting it now. Her feathers were flying. Feathers and blood. Poor little Purple Wings. Green Flash tore at the bars of his cage. That poor little kid should never have been put in the cage with the mad one, in the first place. The whip was beating down on her exposed back. The others had crowded into the corner, forcing her forward.
“Pipe down or I’ll scratch your eyes out!” the mad one yelled again.
Glasgow’s fury knew no bounds.
“Stop it!” the guard shrieked. He hurled Glasgow around by the shoulder and reached for the whip. “That’s no way to—”
Green Flash saw it happen. He wished he could have had a part in it. But the four husky wingmen in another cage proved more than equal to their job. They tugged in unison and wrenched a bar. Screech! That did it. The largest of the four slipped through. Before the guard could whirl to see what had happened, the big brown-winged form leaped the fifteen yards of space and seized the visitor.
If Glasgow had been a large man it wouldn’t have worked. But he was small and apparently weightless in the clutch of the big muscular brown-winged fellow. The wingman seized him and flew. The whip thumped to the floor. The guard staggered backward from the impact of a kick. Snatch, kick, and flutter—the wingman was sailing through the hall toward the open doorway beneath the clock at the end of the room.
“He’s going to make it!” Green Flash said under his breath. “He’s going to bust out, carrying that whip dev
il with him. He’s going to—”
But there was an obstacle in the doorway that Green Flash and all the other open-mouthed Wingmen had not counted on. They had already given way to weird screams of delight when their tune suddenly changed into a deep, low groan. It wasn’t the guard, raising his pistol to shoot. He wouldn’t have dared to shoot, anyway, not when there was a human held in the escapee’s hands.
It was the sight of two strangers in the doorway, a young man and a young woman, blocking the path of escape. Blocking it solidly, too, for the young man was no midget. He must have weighed all of two hundred and thirty pounds.
“Stop him, Big Boy!” the girl sang out, and her voice made five hundred wingmen gasp. “Stop him!”
Big Boy stopped him. The big brown wings beat the air, but the wingman was too late to change his course. The obstacle in the doorway dived and caught his legs, and the three struggling bodies fell to the floor. The tall, athletic looking girl jumped on top of the dog-pile and added her weight. From underneath, the pained voice of Garritt Glasgow cried for mercy.
A moment later five guards from neighboring buildings came running in, pistols ready. The fellow with the big brown wings who had come so near to winning a victory for his fellow wingmen, was tied, arm and wing, and led away to one of the special punishing cells.
Green Flash, watching the whole proceedings with a terrible curiosity, was entirely puzzled by the new turn of events. He was surprised when the little man who had been rescued, and who certainly should have been thankful, quickly turned on his rescuer and demanded to know what he was doing there.
“We figured you might need a bodyguard, so we followed,” Big Boy said.
“Bodyguard! Who appointed you?”
“Don’t answer him ‘til he can talk civil,” the girl said savagely. “Maybe we should have let him and the wingman go ahead and fly. Then he wouldn’t need your space flivver. By the way, Mr. Glasgow, where is that flivver? You skipped off without telling us. That’s why we followed you.”
The guards were as puzzled as the audience of caged wingmen. As if these happenings were not already sufficiently confusing, two more persons entered at that moment—Garritt Glasgow’s sister and the superintendent of the hospital.