by Don Wilcox
“It’s a wonder they didn’t singe your feathers till your backbone showed.”
The meeting ended with a short, pointed speech by Green Flash.
“We’ll have to be patient, comrades. If any of you prefer to live on Venus, it’s up to you to watch your chances. Maybe you can stow away on some cargo ship. But you do it at your own risk. My advice is that all of us make our homes here on the earth. There’s plenty of room, and plenty of resources. The sooner we can feel settled, the better.”
“What’s the answer on the giant?” someone asked. “Is he friend or foe?”
“We were tricked into attacking him by someone we have no reason to respect. I’ve yet to see any reason to make a foe of the giant,” Green Flash said. “But I’ll give you a rule. You can try it on him, and you can try it on any group of people you’re in doubt about. Put them to a test by doing them a favor. A favor extended to strangers is always a test. It shows you’re willing to play fair and be a friend. What they are will show up soon.”
After that day Green Flash and Purple Wings watched the giant and knew that he was sick. He tried to rise up, but the most he could do was to come up on his elbows. Most of the day he spent sleeping on his belly. The warm sun blazed down on his back, revealing a few small patches where the hair had burned off.
They soared high above him. A few other wingmen joined them. Occasionally his huge purple and orange eyes looked up and must have seen them, but he made no gesture of attack or defense.
“He should have a drink of water,” Green Flash mentioned. “He must be very thirsty. Can any of you think of a way to bring him water—enough water to wet his lips?”
No one found an answer. It wasn’t going to be easy to do a favor for such a huge creature, no matter how much they might wish to be friends. And, as Green Flash knew, the wish was not too whole hearted. A few wingmen were going to be nursing stripped wings for many days to come. Among them was Black Cloud, sullen and bitter.
“All this favor business is thinner than ether,” Black Cloud was telling a small crowd of winged soreheads that evening when Green Flash came back to camp. “Do you think that damned walking mountain is going to forget we tossed bombs at him? About as quick as I’ll forget the way he blew my head off.”
Green Flash walked into the circle angrily. “Why didn’t you listen to me on the ship, Black Cloud? I warned you not to do other people’s murders.”
“Nobody can listen all the time,” Black Cloud retorted, making a scornful mouth. “You’re always blowing. You must be related to the giant.”
Green Flash walked up close enough to breathe in Black Cloud’s face.
“Stop your trouble-making. We’ve got too much to do. We’ve got to work together.”
“Shut your teeth before I smash you.”
“You’re in no shape to do it, Black Cloud.”
“You think not?” Black Cloud slammed out with a fist that barely grazed Green’s jaw.
The breathless wooof came from the ring of winged spectators. Green Flash walked into Cloud, his hands up in a gesture of restraint until Cloud’s fist flew out again. That one caught Green on the cheekbone and rocked his wings. The crowd, suddenly breathless, slid back to make room. The look in Green Flash’s eye said there was about to be a fight. Green Flash walked in fast and this time his fists were streaking. Quick thumps sounded from Black Cloud’s jaw and midsection. The blow that did it was never seen. Black Cloud quietly collapsed.
“Enough,” he moaned, barely raising a hand as he sank. Green Flash caught him in time to prevent his falling on his bad wing.
“You’ll stop your trouble-making,” Green Flash said through his teeth.
“I’ve stopped . . . already.”
CHAPTER XXIV
There were three persons aboard George Hurley’s space flivver that morning when it swung up toward the pink clouds just before daybreak.
George was at the controls. The previous night-s conversations were still echoing in his ears. He wondered whether any of the wingmen who had been eavesdropping there in the darkness alongside the great white box had recognized him. Probably not. Most of the time he and his party had been in darkness. So it was just a question whether the wingmen had recognized his voice from his one previous encounter with them—the fracas that occurred in the doorway of the “Wingman Hospital,” on Venus. Just in time. That brief tussle had left him with a healthy respect for all muscular two-legged creatures with wings.
His ship was now bound for Banrab. He would report to the committee, and to Glasgow if the latter had arrived.
George wasn’t too happy about the prospect. Neither was Anna. She kept dabbing make-up on her face, trying not to look worried.
The hop could have been made in an hour or so, even at the comparatively slow cruising speed of air travel along the planet’s surface. But George preferred to take the long way around. He and Anna needed to talk. As an excuse they mentioned to their one passenger that she undoubtedly wanted to see some more of the ruined earth, so they would do a bit of zig-zagging over the continents.
“That’s very courteous of you,” Katherine Keller said. “Believe me, Paul and I are terribly shocked over what has happened.”
George writhed uncomfortably. He felt beaten because he had not brought Paul Keller along. He was going to have to talk fast when he faced Glasgow again. To all appearances he had let his man get away. “This is going to look bad, Pantella,” he said, as soon as the two of them had a chance to talk alone. Their passenger had gone to the window aft, for a sky view of the passing scenes.
“Glasgow probably thinks you’ve already shot him.”
“And he probably thinks that the wingmen have erased the giant by this time.”
“Yeah,” Anna gave a low laugh. “Big Shot Glasgow is going to need soothing syrup. He’ll probably blow a fuse.”
“I can’t decide,” said George, “whether to make up one big lie to tell him, or try to get by on several little ones.”
“It’ll have to be good. And it’s a cinch the truth isn’t good.”
“But Katherine Keller won’t be tongue-tied. He’ll go after her to check our story.” It was a dismal prospect. The four of them had carried on a discussion most of the night, and Paul Keller and his wife had done some fast talking.
“If only we knew whether we can believe any part of their story—”
“That’s the trouble. We don’t dare,” said George. “I know it sounds good. But all we’ve got to go on is Glasgow’s orders. We were sent to bring the culprit in—”
“Or kill him—for a sweet bonus.”
“And instead of doing either, we return with his wife and a bright promise that he’ll be available later. We had him.”
“And let him walk out on us.”
“Because of an emergency. He had to look after a sick friend.”
“That sounds beautiful,” Anna said sarcastically. “Wait till we tell him the sick friend was the giant that they want to see dead. We’re going to look like a pair of saps, Big Boy.”
George groaned. “I’m the sap. You can keep out of it.”
“Haw!” said Anna. “If I let a guy like you down when you’re in trouble, what a sap I’d be.”
There was one streak of light that shone through their fog of the blues. Both Paul Keller and Katherine had insisted that they would welcome a trial or an investigation of any sort. They were eager for it. They wouldn’t feel comfortable until they had it.
“All we ask,” Paul Keller had said during their talk, “is a fair chance to present our own story. Give us any right thinking judge and we have nothing to fear.”
With those words, Keller had almost convinced George. If the flivver could have taken off at once, with the four of them, neither George nor Anna would have had much reason to fear them. Guilty or innocent, they would have been brought back to headquarters without handcuffs or gun wounds. And George would have appeared in the light of a successful sky cop. The rest would have
been up to Judge Lagnese.
But just before the take-off, Paul had pulled a fast one. “Sorry, folks. I can’t go now—not until I can get Gret-O-Gret back on his feet. You go with them, Katherine, as a sort of hostage, so they’ll know I’m not trying to get away. They’ll give you good taxi service, Katherine. I’m sure you won’t have to use this pistol . . .”
The firearms as well as the arguments had all found their way into the hands of the Kellers. As soon as Paul had made his exit, carrying a rope ladder for descending from the box top.
Katherine had ordered the airlocks closed. And so George and Anna, both trying to appear completely confident, accepted these swift maneuvers as kindly suggestions, and did as they were told.
“Banrab, here we come,” George called into the speaking tube.
Katherine Keller came forward, and the three of them watched the dark scorched mountains rise up around them as they descended into the low, grassy landing place. Katherine gave a sigh of relief. “At last, a stretch of land that missed the blast.”
Her words sounded genuine enough, George thought. If she had been in league with her husband to sell the earth “down the Milky Way” she was certainly an expert actress.
Anna gazed with starry-eyed wistfulness at the valley that had been her home. “I guess I was the one lucky person in the world when it happened. I’ll never know why it missed me. It got everybody else.”
“Were all of your family lost?” Katherine asked.
“All except one brother in Venus. If it hadn’t been for him I just wouldn’t have had anything to live for.”
“Is that so?” George said not too pleasantly, and then wondered why he had said it.
CHAPTER XXV
The Banrab settlement had changed during George’s absence. Mamma Mountain and Papa Mouse, the billionaire Waterfield, and the others who had stayed to maintain man’s official claim on the earth, had taken to the caves in the mountainside.
“We’re playing caveman,” Mamma Mountain said cheerily as she greeted George and his party. “I always said that man would return to his caves sooner or later. But not Papa Mouse. He’ll return to the trees.”
Papa Mouse, looking comical in shorts and a suntan, immediately acted on Mamma’s suggestion, grabbing her arm and climbing to her shoulder, chattering like a chimp.
“Is this the Banrab camp?” Katherine asked, obviously disappointed. She sniffed at the dank air at the cavern entrance.
“This is it and we hope you like it,” Mamma said. “We’re the only stronghold of civilization on the earth. As soon as the Venus Express comes again we’re going to have electric lights. In the meantime we have circuses—I mean Papa and me. Oh, we’re getting along and we’re making wonderful plans.”
As she led them in, Mamma Mountain talked in her big enthusiastic voice about how the committee was going to start the new earth right and see that only right thinking people—no criminals or morons—would ever be admitted. Then she turned, aware that she had been doing all the talking. George and Anna hadn’t had a chance to make introductions.
“And who might you be?” Katherine gave a faint smile. “I am Katherine Keller, the wife of Paul Keller, the explorer.”
“Oh, my! Oh, my stars!” Mamma Mountain gulped. “You’re—you’re—”
“I’ve recently returned from a long and tragic space trip,” Katherine said. “A friendly giant brought us back.”
“Gi—giant!” Mamma was all out of breath. She tottered and reached out to the wall of the cave for support. “Y-yes, we’ve heard. We—I—”
“I understand that my husband and I may be questioned—”
But Mamma Mountain, three hundred pounds of nervousness, retreated into the darkness of the cave. Little Papa Mouse, his eyebrows jumping, turned and chased after her.
Other members of the cave settlement were equally surprised to find themselves face to face with the wife of Paul Keller, though they were less demonstrative. George felt the weight of the situation as it gathered. Whispers. Strained silences. Oblique glances at the newcomer when there were references to the awfulness of the earth’s explosion. Frank admission of a general fear of the giant.
“We think this Banrab camp is a fair hiding place,” Mr. Waterfield said during the jerky dinner conversation. “We wouldn’t like for the giant to find out where we are.”
It was a straight statement of fact. The fifty-five year old billionaire was a solid person, friendly and fair. His deep eyes gleamed with confidence and purpose, and he dared to look straight at Katherine Keller as he spoke. He kept looking at her a little too long, George thought. Was he accusing her? No, but he might be warning her, perhaps.
Or was he somehow fascinated by her? Katherine had dressed in a neat-fitting green suit that someone had lent her, and had done her hair expertly, so that one had to admit that she was a keen-looking woman. Sometimes she seemed a trifle amused by all the touchy suspicion that surrounded her. Good acting again, thought George.
The very fact that she had seen worlds of space that no other person present had seen tended to put a damper on all conversations, even though the talk didn’t concern her. Several topics were introduced by Mr. Waterfield and others, only to fall flat.
George missed nothing. He could tell that plans had developed swiftly during his absence. There had evidently been enthusiastic discussions of eugenics programs. What sort of physical specimens the new earth should have was to be a matter of conscious policy.
However, the eugenics talk had struck a snag.
“Mamma Mountain and Papa Mouse tried to joke us out of it,” someone told George on the side. “Mamma claimed that it took more than good physical specimens to take the gaff. And Papa reminded us that last week we’d all have tossed up the sponge and quit if it hadn’t been for Mamma’s three-hundred-pound sense of humor.”
“They’re valuable people,” George agreed. “I hope their feelings weren’t hurt.”
“No. But Papa Mouse said he was going to biff the next person who said the new earth should be open to athletes only.”
The Venus Express arrived at noon the next day and brought a load of surprises. More than three dozen earth persons, male and female, had come to cast their lots with the new earth. Before they had trailed up the path from the ship to the cliff road, word reached the caves that these were recruits which Garritt Glasgow and Judge Lagnese had won at the Venus capital.
“Back to the earth!” some of the girls were shouting, and one of them said, “My parents always told me if I got tired of Venus I knew where I could go.” And another cried, “Hey, where’s the hotel? What did someone say about all the modern conveniences?”
They were a noisy, raucous, heterogeneous lot, George observed. Would the Committee be willing to receive all of them? He trotted down the path to help the men with the luggage. Anna was there, directing them toward the rocky road that had recently been cut in the side of the cliff to give entrance to the largest cave.
“Don’t expect too much, girls,” she said. “We’ve gone primitive with a vengeance.”
“I hear you have giants,” someone hooted.
“The best,” said Anna. “A mile tall and quick on their feet.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Judge Lagnese and Garritt Glasgow were among the last to step down from the ship. George saw that they were quarrelling violently. He lost himself in the chaos of unloading baggage and supplies, and slipped by them unnoticed. He had better postpone his bout with Glasgow until the conditions were as favorable as possible.
Six porters were attending Glasgow and his luggage. Porters in black uniforms with red braid. In addition there was a youngish bodyguard in plain clothes—a man with high shoulders and a square head that was mostly jaw. He carried himself like an athlete looking for a prize fight. George heard Glasgow tell him to “hurry up, Poppendorf” and to get up the trail to find some choice accommodations in the caves.
“And watch those porters so they don’t cart t
he luggage too close to the cliff. Have them set up the power plant right away . . .”
George was fascinated. Garritt Glasgow was really putting on the dog. He might have been a king from the way he was acting. Whatever Judge Lagnese had been quarrelling with him about had evidently become unimportant. In spite of the primitive setting and all of the undignified hustle and bustle, Glasgow was making his own carefully planned entrance. Consciously or otherwise, everyone was being impressed. Uniforms. Noise. Swagger. Loads of rich looking baggage piled everywhere.
“Oh-oh,” George said to himself softly. “There’s going to be a collision on the cliff.”
A collision of personalities, he meant. For he saw a good-looking woman in a green suit sauntering out of the main cave and he knew it must be Katherine Keller.
He hurried up the trail, a few yards behind the group of newcomers who were following in the wake of Glasgow. He couldn’t help recalling the last time he had seen Katherine Keller and Glasgow within a stone’s throw of each other. In Gret-O-Gret’s great Mogo boat. Katherine and her husband had been conversing with the giant. Glasgow had been a prisoner in a cage on the shelf.
Now they were coming together, neither being aware of it.
They were only a few feet apart when their eyes met. George saw the fire of defiance light Katherine’s eyes. She stopped, almost rigid, with a slight upward toss of her head. The newcomers surrounding Glasgow evidently didn’t know her. But there was Mamma Mountain nearby, who kept a suspicious eye on her.
Glasgow dropped a small bag he was carrying and made a quick motion as if to reach for a pistol. He instantly changed the gesture, put his hand to his waist, and bowed.
“Mrs. Keller, I believe!” She nodded and George thought he saw a hint of a smile at her lips.
“You dropped your brief case, Mr. Glasgow.”
Glasgow ignored the case, which someone promptly picked up and handed to him.
“It’s a small world, isn’t it, Katherine?” Glasgow said. His bird-like face twitched as he forced a smile. “And where is your husband? Here, I hope.”