“And the snap-net?”
“Cocked and ready, Fragrant Madame.”
“Very well—prepare to cast off!”
The brunette snapped to attention; she saluted by touching the thin pigtail hanging down over her left ear; turning smartly, she hoisted herself through the port.
Instantly, all was action. Junior officers repeated the command into intercom mouthpieces, and the men of the crew, giggling excitedly, scurried around to the orders of a brawny female bosun. Six of them hauled up an enormous round lid made of the same opaque yellow plastic as the hull of the ship. Four others brought things resembling giant-sized toothpaste tubes. Two more stood by with a large steaming kettle.
A bosun barked. Quickly, the toothpaste boys squeezed a brown, viscous substance into the channel running around the projecting face of the port. The lads with the lid slapped it into position. Another bosun counted to twenty out loud. The kettle was emptied into a spout over the port; the spout was sealed with brown goo and a plug; and for a while the kettle’s contents could be heard rumbling and gurgling inside. “Report!” snapped the Captain.
“Port sealed,” answered a bosun.
“Landing segment, report!”
“Segment unstuck,” sang out the Commander.
The Captain hesitated for an instant. Then she shrugged. “Might as well be killed for an ooth as a sarlig” she muttered. “Landing segment away!”
Quite unaware that she had just supervised an operation which would have given any Terrestrial designer of spaceships a full-blown neurosis, she began guiding the segment down to its rendezvous.
* * * *
As it descended, Papa Schimmelhorn continued on his carefree way, never suspecting that his mind was acting like a beacon for strangers out of Space, or that Mama Schimmelhorn was following not more than half a block away. Therefore he felt free to give Gustav-Adolf the benefit of his experience of life and love.
“Zo, Gustav-Adolf,” he began, “you vant to know vhy Prudie makes die young punks pay to vatch und aftervards she has a date vith Papa Schimmelhorn?”
Gustav-Adolf, savoring the scent of a back-fence adversary on the warm night air, growled emphatically.
“Dot’s der shpirit!” cried Papa Schimmelhorn. “You listen. I tell how I am full of vinegar at eighty years, und nodt like poor old Heinrich, vith no lead in der pencil. Vhen I vas tvelve—”
He described the precocious episode in detail. Then, blonde by blonde, brunette by plump brunette, he went on through the ardent fumblings of his adolescence, through the journeyman experiences of his young manhood, to the good, steady craftsmanship achieved in middle age.
By the time the landing segment reached fifty thousand feet, he had—both chronologically and on the ground—covered more than half the distance to Miss Prudence, and was discussing the lush redheaded widow who had enlivened his several years as a janitor at the Geneva Institute for Higher Physics, where he had first discovered his scientific genius.
As the segment passed twenty thousand feet, he was explaining how an adventure with a female string quartet had revealed the full flowering of his masculinity at three score years and ten.
As it dropped down—ten thousand feet, five, one—and as his powerful strides took him deeper into the district of bars and adult bookstores and dubious hotels where Ms. Prudence did her nightly stint—he neatly inventoried his more recent triumphs.
Finally, the segment hovering a scant hundred feet above his head, and unaware that now behind him his wife was silently and swiftly closing in, he paused in the darkened parking lot behind Horny Joe’s.
Quietly, the vessel overhead descended fifty feet—and quietly Mama Schimmelhorn advanced fifteen.
“Oh-ho-ho-ho!” he chuckled. “Gustav-Adolf, I giff you goot advice. To keep der vinegar vhen you are old—” He pulled the long, striped tail playfully. “—you must keep chasing pretty lidtle pussycats! Und now ve—”
“Und now ve vhat?” demanded Mama Schimmelhorn, as the sharp point of her umbrella caught him in the ribs. “You think you get avay again, ha? To shtay up late, und feel dot dancing girl vithout her clothes, und teach mein Gustav-Adolf dirty tricks?” She reapplied the point of her umbrella several times. “Right now I take you by der ear! Ve go shtrait ho—”
She never finished. Without a sound, the snap-net from the landing segment fell and enfolded them. It rose into the air. The segment swallowed it.
In the control room of the Vilvilkuz, Snar TuhlY’t, the brilliant signal on the screen winked out. There was sudden silence. Captain and Lieutenant glanced at each other apprehensively.
“Well, I—I guess that means she’s in the bag, ha-ha.” The Captain’s laughter lacked enthusiasm.
“Y-yes, F-Fragrant Madame, I’m af-f-fraid it does,” quavered the Lieutenant. “Did you see what I saw j-just before we caught her—on the screen, I mean?”
“Those squiggles?”
“They—they didn’t look like squiggles—not to me. They looked like regular s-signals. One of them was pretty high, too, by our standards—around two-four-four-something. And the other—well, I know you won’t believe me, this being an alien planet, but it looked just like a cat’s!”
“Nonsense!” asserted the Captain, a little too loudly. “They were squiggles, that’s all. And if they weren’t, what of it? You aren’t frightened of a cat, I hope—not with the ship as full of them as a husband shop.”
“Of c-course not, Fragrant Madame. What worries me is that signal in between. It might belong to almost anything—maybe some horrible, h-hairy creature with great big t-tentacles!”
Involuntary, the Captain shivered—a sign of unfeminine weakness that angered her. “Dammit, Lieutenant,” she shouted, “do you want to get the men hysterical? Our problem’s grave enough to warrant any risk. Besides, I’m taking all possible precautions. When the net’s opened, we’ll have the spray-guns ready. So shut up—that’s an order!”
And she stamped off to attend to the purely military details of the reception.
* * * *
Much has been, and still is being, written about the nature of a first contact with extraterrestrials. All of it is, of course, ridiculous—for the event, as it actually occurred involved nothing more extraordinary than Papa and Mama Schimmelhorn, Gustav-Adolf, the complement of the spaceship Vilvilkuz Snar Tuhl-T’t, and an astounding assortment of emotions.
Though the Commander in charge of the landing segment made the return trip in a hurry, she did not push her craft into any uncomfortable accelerations—an impossible procedure where ifk are the motive power. Including the time to glue-in and unseal the port, nearly twenty minutes elapsed before the net was finally deposited on the control room floor.
Aboard ship, tension had mounted. The men were twitching and whimpering. The women, spray-guns ready, were watching the reopened port in grim silence. Twelve men and two bosuns stood near it, looking dismal.
“Net on its way!” came a voice from the port—and the base of the net made its appearance.
“Look alive there!” shouted the Captain.
Urged on by the bosuns, the twelve men seized the net—tightly woven, semi-rigid, like a drawn-out lobster-trap. For a moment, it lay there, quivering and shaking and emitting blood-curdling noises.
“S-set it on end,” the Captain ordered.
Reluctantly, the little men obeyed.
“P-prepare to open it.”
Six men laid trembling hands to a line fastened at one side of the snap-net; the other six grasped its counterpart.
The Captain faced them, pale but brave.
As one woman, her officers primed their spray-guns; aimed them.
“N-now!” she cried.
Uttering a simultaneous and despairing sob, the crewmen pulled. Abruptly, the snap-net
came apart. Its two sides separated and fell away. An awful hush descended on the room—
There, breathing fire, stood Mama Schimmelhorn. Her stiff black dress was rumpled; her small black hat was squashed. But her umbrella was still firmly in her hand. She was unbowed.
Behind her, Papa Schimmelhorn was in a sadder state. His jaw sagged loosely. Blood trickled down into his shredded beard from numerous lacerations which had enabled Gustav-Adolf to retain a perch atop his head. Clutching the bathrobe and its treasure to his breast, he seemed entirely unaware that now his friend—ears flat, teeth bared, and every hair erect—was making him a battlement from which to cry a terrible feline challenge to the worlds.
Aghast, all color draining from their faces, the alien crew stared straight at Mama Schimmelhorn. For just an instant, she stared right back. Then, nostrils flaring, she advanced a pace, and hammered her umbrella’s point against the deck.
“More naked vomen!” she trumpeted.
Raising her weapon, she whirled on Papa Schimmelhorn. “Ach, you should be ashamed! For der old goat at more than eighty years vun at a time iss maybe nodt enough? I giff der lesson vith der bumbershoot—”
She saw his face. She stopped in mid-attack. She did a very careful double-take. These women were certainly not dancing girls. They looked more like a bathing party of female Russian sergeants, painted by a Renoir without the glow and with a fragmentary and slightly surrealistic grudge against all hairdressers and the garment industry. They carried things like fireplace bellows with coffee-pots attached, which they were pointing at her. Behind them, a swarm of swishy little men in colored frocks were peering out, and squeaking shrilly, and ducking back again.
The women were now booming out excited comments in a strange language she did not understand, so she ignored them. Her mind was putting two and two together rapidly—
An especially large Commander was the first to find her voice. “L-look at her!” she gasped. “She has c-clothes on!”
“B-b-black clothes!” exclaimed another officer.
“All over!” cried a third. “And she has all her hair!”
They started talking all at once. “She—she must be at least a Mother-President!”
“A-at least!”
“And we—we’ve kidnapped her!”
“Hoisted her in a net as if she was a—a kreth or something!”
“Look at her!”
Mama Schimmelhorn shuffled the data she had available. She added memories of many an afternoon spent in the company of a grand-nephew named Willie Fledermaus, aged twelve. The answer came to her. “Shpacers!” she told herself under her breath. “Und they are only vomen vith lidtle pipshqveak men, nodt octupusers like in die comic-books!”
Her anger settled to a good white heat. Zo maybe you are vashervomen from Chupiter or Mars? she thought, rearing her head and standing even more stiffly than before. Vell, you vatch oudt—efen vith lenses und die defer tricks like in dot Kinseysons Report, you don ‘dt fool Mama Schimmelhorn! Villie has told me all aboudt—”
“Look at her!” said the large Commander, in awe. “She—she’s absolutely regal! Mightn’t she be a Mother-Empress, or something of the sort? I mean, with powers of life and death, and fleets of warships, like on Loog IV?”
“She’s simply furious!” whispered a junior officer. “Oh, Fragrant Madame—wh-what’ll we do with her?”
Prior to the opening of the net, the Captain’s worst apprehensions had been concerned with her quarry’s stupendous intellect, but never had she imagined it combined with a supreme political authority. Now she was torn between the hazardous completion of her mission, the equally unpromising return of the dread personage to solid earth, and—rather vaguely—some deed of violence to rid her vessel once and for all of its unwelcome guests.
She hesitated—and her hand was forced. Like all the rest, the imaginative Lieutenant at the Intellectometer had, until then, had eyes only for the central, and female, figure in the tableau. Now, for the first time, she really noticed Papa Schimmelhorn. She goggled. “Look at that thing!” she screeched. “I—I knew it! A hairy monster! It—it’s been drinking blood!”
A cry of horror rose.
“Kill it!” croaked the Lieutenant, trying to aim her spray-gun around Mama Schimmelhorn.
The hairy monster stared at her stupidly. Gustav-Adolf, having descended to a shoulder, bared his fangs and hissed at everyone. And Mama Schimmelhorn, reacting instantly, adopted a technique she had used with great success against unfriendly dogs. She leveled her umbrella. She pressed the catch. Working it quickly back and forth, flapping the fabric in and out ahead of her, she moved relentlessly against the enemy.
“Put down der shqvirter!” came her dreadful voice.
The officers retreated hastily.
Whimpering a little, still trying frantically to draw a bead, the Lieutenant stood her ground—
It was too much for the Captain. She sprang. She seized the spray-gun and threw it to the floor. “You fool!” she yelled. “Do you want to kill us all? Look at her weapon—it’s mechanical!” There was a frightened echoing of the word; several more spray-guns clattered down.
The Captain turned to Mama Schimmelhorn. She bowed repeatedly, trying to mock up an appeasing smile. Aside she said, “Th-that creature with her—it hasn’t any t-tentacles that I can see—m-maybe it’s not a monster after all—maybe it’s just a huge, abnormal man—” She shuddered. “—it’s p-probably quite tame—it’s probably her cat-bearer, that’s all—”
Mama Schimmelhorn did not smile back. She furled the big umbrella contemptuously. Somehow, she knew, she had gained the upper hand; now she was going to make the most of it. From her black handbag, she took her usually unneeded hearing aid. She raised its microphone to her lips. She gestured at the floor. “Ve go back down!” she announced imperiously. “Or right avay I call der Shpace Patrol!”
Then, so that none would miss the point, she grasped her bumbershoot firmly by the middle and, turning its needle-nose toward the stars, traced out a violent, vertical trajectory. “Whee-eeeee-eee—BOOM!” she shouted, making Willie Fledermaus’ favorite rocket noise. “BOOM! Zap-zap-zap-BANG!”
Chaos erupted. “She—she’s using a communicator!” yelped several voices simultaneously. “She’s going to call her warships!” cried several others. “We—we’ll be destroyed!” mooed an enormous bosun fearfully.
The women milled about. The crewmen, bleating, ran blindly up and down, tripping each other and the officers.
The Captain dropped to her knees in front of Mama Schimmelhorn. “Oh, please, Your Loveliness!” she begged. “Don’t call your navy and—and have us all disintegrated. We didn’t know you were a Mother-Empress. Really, we didn’t. Why, if we had, we never would’ve kidnapped you like that—without your husbands and your retinue! We never even would’ve thought of it—”
She rattled on. The tumult died away. With bated breath, her officers watched for the Mother-Empress’ response. The bosuns, as quietly as possible, started restoring order among the men. And Mama Schimmelhorn, frowning ferociously to cover her surprise, muttered, “Vhat iss—down on die knees und gobble-gobble-gobble in Roumanian? Maybe you think I vant to buy a vacuum-shveeper made in Chupiter? Veil, I don’dt.” Again, she pointed earthward. “Ve go back down! I giff you der address!”
“Most Radiant Madame! We’ll take you back again if you insist—of course we will!” The Captain pointed downward, nodded rapidly, and let her face express the utmost desolation and despair. “But please don’t make us do it, Your Seductiveness. We need you desperately! We really do—” She pointed upward, opening her arms wide in a rapturous welcome. For a moment, she held the pose, then swiftly rearranged her features into their former hopelessness and, pointing at the cowering crewmen desperately, squeezed out a tear.
Though Mama Schi
mmelhorn understood immediately, she did not thaw. “Zo you haff troubles vith die lidtle men?” she remarked sarcastically. “Vhat iss—they shneak avay to play die tiddleyvinks? Und now, because you are too big und shtupid to fix up, you kidsnatch me der discipline to teach, nicht wahr?” Again she hammered the umbrella’s point against the deck. “Now I go home!”
“Shall we prepare the landing segment, Fragrant Madame?” asked a despondent voice. “For—for the return?”
The Captain hesitated, finding the actual order hard to give—and suddenly all thought of orders was driven from her mind. From the great, gory figure of Papa Schimmelhorn came a metallic click. Immediately, he was the cynosure of all eyes. There was a fraction of a second’s pause. Then, muted only slightly by the bathrobe’s folds, the plain-song of the cuckoo choir resounded through the room.
Still in a semi-coma, Papa Schimmelhorn instinctively took action, as any craftsman will when he finds the proper functioning of his masterpiece obstructed by extraneous matter. Holding the clock aloft with one huge hand, he stripped away the bathrobe and let it fall.
Ms. Prudie Pilgrim had never achieved so stunning an effect. His audience gasped. It stood there spellbound as the whir-r-r and click announced the reopening of the door. It gasped again as the choir appeared, and sang, and popped in again.
This was repeated ten times more, and with each repetition the wonder grew. Then—brrr-r-t—the upper doors flew open upon the sylvan scene.
The audience did its best to gasp, and failed.
Smirking, the Alpine youth tiptoed around the wall. The Alpine maiden twitched her little hips. The youth reached out his eager hand, and pinched—
And, as the maiden shrieked, and did the bumps, and cranked the windlass handle furiously, the personnel of the Vilvilkuz Snar Tuhl-Y’t went simply wild. The blushing crewmen squealed and hid their eyes. Astounded cries and exclamations filled the air. It was a mechanism! It couldn’t be! Impossible, incredible—but there it was! The little figure of the girl—completely clothed! What did it mean? How? Why? What? Where—?
The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack Page 9