The 19th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Charles V. De Vet

  Mulehead raised one hand grandly and shouted out a string of monosyllables in a high, woman’s voice. The only word Pariseau understood was “Mulehead.”

  As the crowd moved away from the hollow Pariseau noted that the young Slagg female was giving another male the look from under her shaggy tufts.

  * * * *

  Pariseau found a place to sleep that night near the fringes of two adjoining tribes and none questioned his right to be there.

  He slept well and during the next day continued his scouting. He risked going around behind the camping place of Mulehead and his tribe but could get no nearer than a hundred yards. If all else failed, he decided, he might try a dash through the tents and huts here, but he doubted very much that he would ever be able to reach the chief. He continued his roaming among the tribes. By evening he had decided on a plan of action.

  That evening the tribes again gathered at the circular hollow and waited.

  After a time the champion came out, went through the preliminary ceremonies, and issued his challenge.

  Pariseau rose to his feet and roared back an answer!

  The Slaggs deferentially cleared a path for him as he went to the edge of the pit and walked down.

  As Pariseau reached him the Slagg champion went into a crouch and slowly began circling his challenger. Pariseau stood erect and, except for pivoting to keep facing him, appeared almost uninterested in the other’s actions. Suddenly the Slagg lunged heavily.

  Pariseau made no effort to avoid the rush and allowed his opponent to wrap both arms about his body. But, before the Slagg could apply a backbreaking pressure, Pariseau hunched his body into a tight crouch. Resting his head on the Slagg’s hairy chest, he spread his arms to free his shoulders and hammered six blows into his adversary’s stomach.

  At the first blow, Pariseau felt the body above him shudder. At the second the arms circling him jerked free. And at the third the champion swayed.

  The last three, mighty, vessel-rupturing blows were driven with the full weight of Pariseau’s pivoting body behind them.

  Blood gushed from the Slagg’s open mouth and splattered on Pariseau’s shoulders.

  He bent forward, caught the sagging body over his shoulder and straightened with it resting there. The roars of the cheering Slaggs came at him from all sides as he walked up the bank of the amphitheater toward the large green tent at the top.

  When he reached Mulehead’s platform he dropped the body of the Slagg champion to the ground. For the first time then, Pariseau was close enough to see the features of the chieftain.

  Mulehead’s face was scarred and mean-looking in the firelight. One cheek sagged inward where teeth were missing, and grease ran from a bone he was chewing, down his chin and onto his hairy chest. He raised one hand and opened his mouth to speak.

  Unhurriedly Pariseau reached toward the hair-covered shorts he wore and ripped loose a strip of the top edge. From a pocket formed by the dried paste he pulled a small finger sized object and aimed. A split second later the hair on the crown of Mulehead’s head parted violently as a bullet tore into his skull.

  For a moment even those around Mulehead did not realize what had happened. Then, as Pariseau moved forward, two Slaggs sprang to their feet. The look of consternation on their faces was giving way to rage as Pariseau reached them and he drove them aside with his shoulder. He ran straight forward—into the green tent of the dead chieftain.

  He never paused as he ran through the tent and squeezed out beneath the flap at the rear. Once out among the dwellings of the chieftain’s tribesmen a Slagg ran from behind one of the huts to intercept him, but Pariseau struck him down and a minute later was lost in the thick brush.

  He found Hesse sitting at the controls of the Benz, almost as though he had been waiting.

  “Take it up,” Pariseau said. “The job’s finished.”

  BUNZO FAREWELL

  Originally appeared in Planet Stories, September 1953.

  Sometime during the one hundred and seventh day out of Gascol 11, the hourly signal of the tracer beam changed from a tired burp to a sharp ping.

  Sammy Tang knew then that Lutscher had landed and that the long chase was nearing its end. Over three years on the trail of the system’s most wanted criminal, and now they would meet for the first time.

  Tang had dogged his quarry’s flight from the first moment his ship’s beam had picked up its trace. During refueling stops on a dozen worlds he had sometimes been weeks behind, sometimes only hours, but there had been never a glimpse of Lutscher or his ship.

  The chase had led, first across and then down the long arm of the spiral nebula known as the Milky Way, through the portion occupied by ever expanding humanity, and beyond.

  Lutscher made his final stop for fuel on Gascol 11, the last occupied world at the tip of the arm. When Tang reached there Lutscher had gone—out into the blackness of deep space.

  That way, Tang knew, led to suicide, for in that direction lay nothing until the next galaxy, M. 31, and Lutscher had neither the fuel nor the years of life to reach there. Tang followed. In the beginning he had expected that Lutscher’s flight would turn out to be only an elusive tactic, and that he would attempt to double back in a dodging curve.

  But Tang had underrated his man.

  The second week out his ship entered a dust region, or dark nebula, and when it emerged, the third week, he could see ahead a spot of brightness that marked an island star cloud. His respect for Lutscher’s ingenuity and resourcefulness went up several points.

  Tang spent the next several hours studying his instrument board and making calculations. At the end his forehead was sprinkled with fine drops of perspiration. He had enough fuel to reach the star cloud, but not enough to return! He kept the ship steady on its beam.

  The star cloud expanded during the following days into three star systems—one with observable planets—and on one of them Lutscher had landed.

  Tang timed his landing to come in during the late daylight. His landing flares would draw attention during the dark hours, and any interval earlier in the day would give the possible inhabitants of this world a better opportunity to investigate before he was ready for them.

  He had only time enough to observe that the topography of the planet was mostly stone and sand, with occasional patches of vegetation—and that Lutscher’s ship rested less than a hundred yards from his own—before he was enveloped in the swift fall of darkness.

  He wasted no time in preparing his ship for possible contingencies.

  The first button he pressed on a small wall panel activated the electric eye and automatic guns in the elevated nose of the ship. The second set in motion the instruments, in the blister at the base of the ship, that tested the planet’s atmosphere, gravity, moisture content, and temperature. There was nothing more he could do until daylight.

  Pulling down his sleeping board he kicked off his shoes and rested his shoulders against the wall of the compartment. He lit a cigar and seemed thoroughly preoccupied with the smoke that curled up and through the air vents.

  Even being so near the completion of his task brought Tang no feeling of elation or triumph. The men of his profession came from many worlds but their calling had shaped them into a common mold. The internal discipline that best fitted them to spend long months of solitude in their lonely space ships left them without the high rises or low valleys of emotion experienced by most men. If his mission failed Tang would waste no energy in purposeless regret or worry; if it succeeded his only sensation would be satisfaction.

  His cigar finished he straightened his land-muscled form on the sleeping pad and rested his head on his folded hands. When the lights went out three minutes later he was sleeping dreamlessly.

  * * * *

  Tang prepared himself a substantial breakfast the next morning, and not until he had leisurely consumed it did he check his instruments. He was not too surprised when he found the planet’s atmosphere entirely safe for human habitation.

&nb
sp; Whatever else might be said about Lutscher he was not stupid. There had been no blind chance involved when he headed this way. The star area was uncharted but Lutscher had either been here before or had learned about it from someone who had.

  The planet’s temperature, Tang found, ranged from a low of 72 degrees Fahrenheit during the night to a present reading of 78. The atmosphere’s only deviation from Earth-normal was a slightly higher oxygen content. Gravity tested 1.29 Gs. A human could function here quite efficiently.

  Unhurriedly Tang buckled on a compact electric pistol and a stout knife. He hooked a canteen of water on his belt, and slipped a packet of concentrated food tablets into his shirt pocket. Throwing the sling of his field glasses over his shoulder, he was ready to leave.

  He pulled down the port door release and it slid open a bare six inches and stopped with a dull click. It was locked and only a force powerful enough to spring the metal could open it wider until he was ready. He was certain that no moving object had approached nearer the ship than eighty-five feet during the night or the firing of the guns in the nose would have warned him, but the designers of the ship had built it for men who took chances only when necessary.

  Dull daylight came in through the port opening. Outside the ship something moved.

  Tang studied the moving something intently, but it was too far away to be seen clearly. From where he stood it appeared to be a huge insect. He pressed the lock release all the way down and stepped into the opening left by the sliding door.

  Slipping his field glasses from their case he put them to his eyes. The creature he had seen stood gazing back at him. It was definitely an insect-type, except that it had only four limbs, and stood almost as tall as a man. Its limbs and body were armored and thin, reminding him of the cartoons he had seen of stick-men. Squatting upright on two large legs it stood motionless, holding its smaller upper limbs bent clawlike at its sides. Sunlight glinted from two eye-lens clusters on each side of its thin sharp head. It resembled a giant praying-mantis.

  For several long minutes Tang studied the insect but it made no further movement. He lowered his glasses and sat down in the doorway with his legs hanging outside, making himself plainly visible to his observer. He suspected that it was not a member of the planet’s dominant species, but he waited to see how it would react to him. That reaction would be the best demonstration of its intelligence.

  After a wait of over fifteen minutes the creature turned slowly and hopped away. It traveled in long awkward jumps much like an Earth grasshopper, its progress aided by short wings which Tang noted then for the first time. It entered a dense copse of brush that grew in large rings like the practice exercises in a schoolboy’s penmanship book.

  Tang rested in the doorway for a good hour after the insect had disappeared before he stepped to the ground. He looked for the planet’s sun but the sky was thick with clouds that seemed not to move. He walked around the ship. There was nothing of immediate interest within sight. Locking the port door he walked toward Lutscher’s ship.

  His progress became slower as he neared his goal. Whether or not Lutscher was inside he would probably have his guns set for intruders. True, most watch guns when activated gave a warning shot overhead or into the ground, before concentrating on an encroacher, but with a criminal a man never knew what to expect. And Lutscher could be ruthless. However, he reached the ship without challenge.

  Picking up a shiny bit of crystal at his feet he rapped on the vessel’s metal skin, and waited. He knew the sound would be heard inside, while his voice probably would not. He repeated the rapping several times before he decided that Lutscher was not inside. Shrugging his shoulders he turned away. His next move would be to investigate the brush land into which the stick-insect had disappeared.

  Once there he found that the openings he had noted were not ringlets, as they had appeared through his glasses. Rather they were formed by branches growing up from large flat limbs lying on the ground. The branches were bent inward like barrel staves and gave the limbs the appearance of huge skeleton torsos, with the ribs pointed upward. Small finger-like roots reached from the limbs and buried themselves in the sandy soil.

  Progress through the woods, Tang soon found, was possible only by walking through the tunnels made by the branches. Traveling diagonally was slow, tortuous work, while walking alongside the limbs was impossible—they grew too close together. However, the branches of the tunnel only met well above his head, and the limbs themselves offered a hard walking surface. He made good progress.

  The temperature had gone up several degrees since morning and Tang was soon perspiring freely. The planet’s greater gravity pull brought a loginess to his limbs, but this was compensated for by a strange feeling of well-being. The feeling, he surmised, was caused by the high oxygen content of the air he was breathing.

  He walked until he came to the branch tunnel’s open end and stepped out into the planet’s murky sunlight. Ahead loomed the trunk of a tree, a huge trunk probably thirty feet in diameter. He noted now that the large limbs that ran along the ground grew from this trunk. It took him only a minute to perceive that the entire plot of vegetation, which must have covered over a square mile, originated here.

  With no warning of its approach, a creature, semi-human in form, walked into view from behind the tree trunk. Tang stifled his instinctive urge to reach for his pistol and stood motionless. He had learned long ago, that when playing a strange game, to let the other fellow play first.

  The native possessed two limbs upon which he stood, and two others, set where its shoulders should have been, but there his human likeness ceased. Yet there was something about him that more nearly approached the human standard of a man than did the stick-insect which he had observed earlier.

  The man-creature’s body and limbs were well filled out, and covered with slate-gray skin. There was no neck, his head was merely an extension of his trunk. Two eye clusters, set high on his head and wide apart, and a long, slit, mouth just below were his only facial features. Two flesh-feathered apertures, situated where the breast nipples would have been on a human, and evidently respiration openings, fluttered with each breath the creature took. He was entirely unclothed and in one grubby fist he gripped a long-bladed knife.

  About the native’s feet frisked a small four-legged animal with the proportions of a pudgy teddy bear. It too was neckless, with the same dead-white skin as the native, and reminded Tang of a bouncy little ball of bread dough.

  The native stared at him until the silence grew thin and Tang decided that he would have to make the first move.

  “Hello,” he said. He knew there was little chance the other could understand him. In fact, there were no organs of hearing, as far as he could discern, yet he hoped to convey by the tone of his voice that he was not a hostile intruder. He knew by experience that almost invariably an animal, or a human, feared a stranger, and reacted to that fear with either flight or a challenge. Sometimes that fear could be allayed by an early demonstration of amity.

  Abruptly the native seemed to lose interest in Tang. He turned and began cutting small branch shoots from one of the surrounding limbs. These he placed on a pile which he had started on the ground.

  Tang drew a deep breath of relief. Still keeping a wary eye on the native he walked over to the tree trunk and stood leaning against it. The other ignored him and went on with his work.

  When the pile of shoots reached a size that satisfied him, the native picked them up and entered one of the branch tunnels leading in the opposite direction from which Tang had come. Tang followed.

  They came out of the woods onto the same type of sandy plain that Tang had found when he first landed. A half mile away he could see a small river, and collected along its banks were dozens of adobe-like dwellings. They stretched away along the river banks until lost to sight among the foothills.

  The small animal made a sound like the tinkling of little bells and the native walked three more steps and stopped. He bent down an
d the teddy bear pet sprang up onto the pile of branches and rode there. Once the native turned his body to see if Tang was still following, then paid no further attention to him until they reached the village.

  On the way they met several more of the man-type creatures, each with one of the dough balls tagging along, but none of them did more than glance at Tang. Most of them ignored him completely.

  Once five of the stick-insects cut across their path. The native stopped to let them pass before he walked on. Ignoring each other seemed to be the custom here, Tang thought whimsically.

  The same held true after they entered the village: Men, insects, and pets mingled indiscriminately, each seemingly oblivious to the presence of the others.

  “Welcome to our fair city,” a voice said, and Tang spun halfway around.

  II

  Tang pulled his sidearm part way out before he noted that the man standing in the doorway of one of the huts was unarmed. He was also shoeless and bare to the waist. Sweat ran down the blond hairs on his chest and a week’s growth of blond whiskers sprouted from his face. The visible portion of his features, and his candid blue eyes, were young, but his temples were peppered with gray.

  “Surely you can’t be as surprised to see me as you seem,” the stranger said. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Bill Lutscher; and, of course, you are the famous man-hunter, Sammy Tang.”

  Lutscher smiled and stepped from the doorway with his hand extended. Tang gripped the hand unhesitatingly, astounded to find himself liking the man. Then he remembered ruefully that Lutscher was famous for his charm. In fact, that charm was the very quality that had indirectly made him the sought-after man he was.