by Don Wilcox
They tried to hush her half-terrorized outcry. The weird sounds came again—a melody that was unearthly—words that were a jumble to untrained ears.
“Get me a space ship,” Katherine ordered. “Someone take me up—”
At that moment word came from the observatory that space travelers who had just landed reported having seen the hugest space ship in the world, they believed—a ship at least fifteen miles long. And a few minutes later they had sighted a second almost as large, following the first.
“They’re hovering over the earth at a point not more than a thousand miles from here. The Grey Plateau. They were communicating in a weird tongue. It must be the deadly giants.”
A few minutes later all of the available spacecraft and aircraft were taking off into the night and moving out, a phantom fan-shaped party creeping stealthily under the stars. In the foremost ship, no other than the Mars boat which had once been pressed into service for an escape from Banrab and had never been returned to Madame Zukor, Katherine Keller sat at the micro-phone directing the other ships. On a wave length that would not intrude upon the conversation between the giants, she spoke to the earth people.
“Yes, it is my own husband speaking in Mogo. I would know his voice anywhere . . . The two boats are circling slowly about a hundred miles above the surface of the earth . . . Follow my directions closely, all of you, so that you won’t be seen. If any bombs start falling, take to the skies.”
At dawn the two Mogo boats, still circling, spiraled toward the surface. They had kept approximately two hundred miles of space between them, but gradually they were coming in closer.
Katherine could understand enough of the Mogo language to relay the strange conversation to all of her listeners. Mamma Mountain sat near her, watching her tense movements. The terror of an earlier hour was less evident now. She was beginning to reveal a curious amusement over this strange phenomenon.
“My husband is imitating a female of Mogo,” she said.
Mamma Mountain shuddered. She couldn’t picture anyone as manly as Paul doing female imitations. But that was what Katherine believed was happening. Something was being used to change his voice enough so that it had taken on the very appealing quality of an attractive Mogo girl.
“Gret isn’t saying a word,” Katherine declared. “The heavy voice you hear is coming from the other ship. That’s Mox. He’s asking the girl to sing it again. There—Paul’s off again . . . Mox doesn’t know the other ship is Gret’s. He thinks the girl has come in it alone, looking for Gret. So he’s making her believe—”
Katherine continued to broadcast, on the private wave, the strange drama. The girl—Paul—was speaking now, asking the occupant of the other ship if he was not Gret-O-Gret!
“But Paul is with Gret-O-Gret!” Mamma Mountain blurted.
“Of course he is—but Mox-O-Mox, in the other ship, is being taken for a ride. Listen, now.” And Katherine gave more interpretations as they—Mox-O-Mox and the unseen “girl”—conversed.
“You remember our letters, Gret,” the female Mogo voice was saying. “I told you I would write love songs for you. You are Gret, aren’t you? I’ve followed the instructions they gave me when I came to the City of Forty Towers to meet you. You know I’ve never really met you. It will be strange to meet for the first time in this far off land, won’t it, my darling Gret?”
Mox had been quick to seize his advantage. He was doing his best to pretend that he was Gret-O-Gret. Any blessing of Gret’s was his if he could steal it. If a girl who had never met Gret thought enough of him to follow him all the way to this lost universe, far be it from Mox to send her back disappointed. After all, Mox had been floating through the skies for a long time without any companionship whatever.
“Mox is talking big, like a man who has just come into a million dollars,” Katherine said, interpreting the lusty booms that sounded in over the speaker. As everyone in the earth’s spying party could see for themselves, the two ships were getting closer together all the time, and were certainly going to land on top of the Gray Plateau.
“I have always admired your letters, Gret,” came Paul’s honeyed voice in fine Mogo enunciations. “Are you ready to meet your little Jun-Ze-Jun?”
Mamma Mountain almost shrieked when Katherine relayed this one. “I can’t stand it. A nice man like Paul playing such games.”
The party of spying earth ships landed in the shadowed terrain just before the sun peeked over. From here they could see and not be seen. To the west of them the shelf of the Gray Plateau extended for many miles in full view. The two vast Mogo ships settled down like two great bomb-shaped clouds, their sides gleaming in the pink light of dawn. Then as the sun’s rays struck them, they lit up with a glare of gold.
“Mox is falling for her, I can tell,” Papa Mouse whispered. “Gee, is he going to be surprised.”
“There’ll be an awful fight!” Katherine said. “I’m afraid—I don’t know whether Gret is equal to it. Once before, when they fought, Mox beat him brutally . . . Watch!”
The two giant boats had stopped in a T formation, so that the side of the larger boat could be seen when its air-locks opened. Mox stepped out. To most of the earth people who had seen Gret once before, Mox looked very much like him. But to Katherine he was different, even when viewed from a distance of five miles. His high bronzed head caught the sunlight as he towered among the wisps of clouds. His four legs stepped along with a gay prance. At a little distance from the airlocks of the other ship he hesitated. Perhaps, Katherine thought, he had noticed for the first time that the ship looked familiar. Or had he ever seen the ship that Gret had come in?
“Maybe he isn’t so sure she’s alone,” Mamma suggested.
“Oh, she’s quite alone, he thinks,” said Katherine.
“Then what’s he stopping for?” said Papa. “I’d walk right in without knocking. Remember the old days, Mamma?”
“I remember you always brought a box of candy,” said Mamma. “And look what it did to me.”
“Watch!” Katherine gasped. The radio talk had stopped. But some of the show was audible through the four or five miles of distance that separated the earth observers from the scene of action. The smaller of the two Mogo ships suddenly leaped forward, like a lion springing. It crashed into the air-locks of the ship that belonged to Mox. That was the blow that was heard. A little cloud of dust and a glint of twisted metal, and then, to the ears of the watching party the faint, “kalunkalunkl” of the crash.
Mox could be seen jumping back, waving his four hands in alarm. The big ship had stopped as suddenly as it had lurched forward, and he may have thought, for an instant, that the jump was an accident. Before he had time to decide what was what, the ship of Gret began spraying smoke on him.
Several jets from the side of the ship shot forth smoke simultaneously. Katherine heard Mamma Mountain give a weird “Wooo-ah!” as her bugging eyes took in the sight. Several colors of smoke were coming from the several openings. Blue and green and gold and pink. They were all turned on the staggering giant. Yes, he was staggering. Trying to run, fighting the smoke off with wildly flaying arms. Blowing back at it. Roaring at it. Cursing it.
He stumbled to his four knees. He turned back toward the smoking ship, trying to peer in, as if wondering what could have happened to the charming Jun-Ze-Jun! But he was out of breath and almost down. Then he sprang to his feet and tried to run. The smoking ship moved toward him and began to follow. He dodged. It circled him, and great clouds of color belched forth from its many hidden spouts.
He crawled to the edge of the plateau, and Katherine and her party could see the look of dismay in his fiery moons of eyes. He blinked slowly. The earth shuddered as he fell to his four elbows and allowed his head to thump against the ground. He was suffocating in a whirling cloud of colors that paralyzed him as they fused.
Gradually the smoke cleared, and they could see him plainly, less than a mile from their shadowed point of observation. His fingers-of-fingers were
barely twitching. His lips moved slightly—he was evidently trying to blow the paralyzing air away from his head. His moon-like eyes were half closed. For all practical purposes he was paralyzed.
Then Katherine and the others saw Gret-O-Gret step forth from his own ship and walk toward the fallen figure. Clinging to the fingers-of-fingers of one upraised hand was Paul. Katherine turned to the telescope to see him plainly.
“Is he all right?” Mamma Mountain asked.
“He never looked better,” Katherine said, and then she cried.
Later that day the many parties of visitors from the New Earth settlements came and went. Those who were not afraid were allowed the curious pleasure of walking over the chest of Mox-O-Mox.
Mox had been securely shackled—chained and bolted with the massive hardware of another world. He was fastened, neck, shoulders, wrists, knees, ankles and belly to a mile-long slab that might have been an immense box top. Whatever it was, the giant Gret-O-Gret treated the cameramen and news reporters to the spectacle of the year when he lifted his Mogo cousin onto the slab and went to work fastening him down.
When Mox-O-Mox began to regain consciousness he was quite unable to struggle. He groaned and whispered and at once began to confess his evil deeds, even though no one was pressing him for conversation. The visitors on his chest ran down over his shuddering flesh, and were sometimes knocked down by the thump of one of his six hearts in their scramble to get away from his thundering voice.
His words were recorded, and the time would come when earth men other than Katherine and Paul would have the privilege of knowing his language and interpreting for themselves his confession of this hour.
“Please don’t take me back to the Mogo Courts, Gret. I admit that I did it . . . Yes, I crashed their planets. I murdered the little insects by the millions. I did it to spite you, Gret. What are you going to do with me? Don’t take me back to the Mogo Courts . . .”
Paul Keller, looking quite tired and grave in spite of his recent cheery Mogo singing, slipped his arm around Katherine and responded to her happy smile. Together they interpreted the Mogo words to the newsmen as Mox went on talking. It all sounded convincing to the editors of the 12 page New Earth, and they celebrated the event by putting out a special thirty-two page edition.
That evening a little man by the name of Papa Mouse came into his special hour of glory. Everything from the Gray Plateau had been moved to the space port of the New Earth capitol for the benefit of all comers who wanted a glimpse of a helpless mile-tall giant, or his ship. (The damaged ship, Gret had decided, was to be left with the earth people, a Mogo souvenir.)
There was just the slightest possibility that Mox-O-Mox might regain enough strength, not to break his bonds, but to twist or crack the box lid to which he was bound. Consequently, Gret parked his own thirteen-mile-long space ship at the prisoner’s side and attached to the smoke making apparatus a simple switch which could be controlled by any earth person. And that was Papa Mouse’s honor—to sit in the crow’s nest of one of the spaceport’s observation towers and keep watch on the Mogo monster lying there across the landscape. Any time that Mox showed signs of becoming too active it was Papa Mouse’s privilege to turn on the current. The smoke cloud did the rest.
Papa liked it. The newspapers carried a special story of his interviews. “I always wondered how it would feel to overpower a giant,” they quoted him as saying. “And how is it?” they asked. “Wonderful! It’s all a matter of self-confidence. Mamma Mountain had better take warning, from this day on I’m a changed man.” He pressed the button, and the massive Mox, who had just flicked an eyelash, forgot to unflick it.
CHAPTER XXXXI
Gret was about to leave the solar system and journey back to Mogo land. His prisoner, resting none too comfortably, had become reconciled to the fate of facing the Mogo Courts. It was the most merciful fate he could ask. His disorganized mumblings revealed that he knew he was lucky not to be executed at once by the earth people.
In the short time that Gret remained in the New Earth capitol before his final departure, he succeeded in winning the friendship of the governing committee and the public at large. His sincerity was unquestioned. Paul and Katherine acted as his interpreter. They demonstrated his ship to all comers at his request, and they also showed their own films from Mogo Land. In short, a few days of communion between Gret and his earth hosts resulted in establishing a solid foundation for harmonious relationships between the two universes for the centuries to come.
No one who listened to Gret’s earnest dissertations on the Mogo Courts doubted that Mox would get his just dues upon his return. And the oath of no more assaults from the great creatures of Mogo Land became a cornerstone of the new interplanetary and interstellar understanding.
“If I thought I could help you reorganize and rebuild, without doing incidental damage with my huge feet,” Gret said, making an expression of humor, “I should be glad to stay. But I have watched the progress you have already been making—and such rapid progress! Already your population is growing by the hundreds daily, as you select your new members from other planets. Then too, I understand that new members are being born to some of you who have been living here during the past many months. I trust that this method of adding to your population will not fail you as the years go on, but will serve you well.”
His audience smiled as these words were interpreted by Katherine at the microphone. The New Earth was indeed taking pride in each and every addition of population which might be credited to some New Earth stork.
“You will survive and will prosper and will again become a great proud race,” Gret said in conclusion. He was lying down on his belly, his great head propped in his upper hands, so that his face could be nearer the people assembled in the spaceport plaza. “And now, before I depart finally, is there nothing more I can do for you in the way of favors? Do not hesitate to ask me.”
For several moments after Katherine relayed these words to the audience, there was only the hum of the crowd, looking around at itself, wondering if anyone would speak up.
Then a different hum sounded from over the tops of buildings and a plane came roaring over. It was flying crazily. It made a perilous dip, it winged toward the crowd, then zoomed up again and shot off toward a ruined hillside where there was nothing but broken rock. For a moment it appeared to be maneuvering for a landing. However, it failed to cut its speed, and now it was heading straight for the rocky ledge.
“Who’s running that relic?” Paul asked Katherine.
“Never saw it before—,” she said. “Someone doesn’t know how to—it’s going to crash!”
A door swung open and two figures leaped out into the air. The plane crashed. A spurt of flame, a cloud of black smoke, the echo of disaster—or had it crashed harmlessly? The two figures who had leaped out were winging back toward the crowd.
“Wingmen!” Paul gasped. “Why, it’s Green Flash . . . and Purple Wings . . . Now how did they ever . . .”
The two winged visitors were waving their arms in gestures that seemed to say, “Will you welcome us?” They were coming fast. They circled around Gret’s head, hovered for a moment within the glow of his great purple and orange eyes, and then spied the little broadcasting platform on which Katherine, Paul, Waterfield and a few other dignitaries were standing.
“Green Flash!” Paul called. “Purple Wings! Where did you come from? How did you manage to fly a plane? Where did you learn—”
The questions were plentiful and the answers not too clear. Later they were to learn more of the strange story of the winged couple’s effort to come across to the continent of America—how they had flown up and down the coast and tried island-to-island hopping, only to be driven back by vast waters too wide to be crossed on wing. Eventually they had uncovered a hangar of planes from the ruins of a coast town. They had experimented—had crashed seventeen planes in their crude experiments, working at first from the outside, using long wires to set off the controls as the
y tried to learn the technique of taking off. Later they had dared to sit inside the plane and try its levers—
“But we never learned to land,” Purple Wings said, shaking her wavy black tresses. “We would always fly out and let the plane crash—and that was the only thing we dared do now. Someday will you teach my husband to fly?”
All of which was entertaining enough, but quite beside the point. The winged couple had come for a purpose. They had been driven by desperation. They needed help. Over on the other side of the sea there was trouble that was bigger than they.
“We did not dare go against the will of the other voters and set certain prisoners free. The only thing we could do was to come and let you know. We think you will want to set them free.”
“Who?” Katherine asked.
“George Hurley and Anna Pantella.”
“George? Anna? They’re—you mean . . .”
“They are prisoners at Banrab, in the hospital which we wingmen maintain for the examination and treatment of our patients, the earth men.” It was a proud speech for Purple Wings, and she finished it with a little bow.
Katherine might have berated Paul for his slow wits. She was feeling quite helpless all at once, wishing he would do something. But as usual, his ideas were a jump ahead of her best guess. He had turned to the microphone. He spoke something to Gret-O-Gret in the Mogo language.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Gret-O-Gret replied. “Do some of you wish to go along? Katherine? Mamma Mountain? And your powerful little husband?”
Papa Mouse wasn’t interested, thank you. He was still in the height of his glory, holding his smoke spell over the earth’s destroyer.
CHAPTER XXXXII
In the Banrab cave, Garritt Glasgow moved back and forth past the bars that had held him prisoner many, many months. He was not quite mad. There were still clear-cut motives that put energy into his ceaseless pacing. Certain things he planned. Certain things he wanted. Certain deadly destructions he intended to commit when the opportunity came.