The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

  He slammed out of the galley. While he was gone we drank beer vigorously. When he returned his face was ash-colored. “What did Cooper say?” Wilkerson asked.

  “He said that good publicity was more important than our necks, that if we are going to bring colonists here, we have to be able to prove to them how peaceful Venus is.”

  “Um,” Wilkerson said. “What else did the good man say?”

  “He fired me!” Molock sounded as if he was strangling. “He told me to come in and get my pay. When I asked him how I was to get there, he said I was to walk.”

  “Um,” Wilkerson said. “Well, go right ahead and start walking. You bluffed Shad Brisbee once. You can do it again.”

  “You’re as bad as Cooper!” Molock screamed. “Shad Brisbee would murder me if he caught me outside this ship. I’m not a damned Venusian, I’m fair game to him.”

  “Nah, he wouldn’t hurt you,” Wilkerson said, “Hell, he’s just an ignorant native. All he’s got are knives and clubs and spears and bows and arrows—just a native. He’s easy to bluff. Hell, you’re a human being. He probably looks on you as a sort of a god. At least some of the literature I saw one of the trained seals pounding out in the publicity department said the natives regarded humans as minor gods who can do no wrong.”

  Whaaam! An arrow smashed against the plastite hull window bounced off. One point was definitely to our advantage. No weapon possessed by the Venusians could get through the steel hull or the plastite view ports of the ship. We were as safe as sardines in a can—unless the Venusians found a can opener.

  We sat in the galley and morosely drank beer and considered how best to draw our wills.

  “Hey, look!” Molock gasped, painting toward the plastite window.

  At first glance it seemed to me that the whole Venusian race had put in its appearance. There were hundreds of Venusians, thousands of them, coming from all directions. Shad Brisbee had called in his pals from miles around and they were all heading our way.

  Wilkerson’s face went white. “This looks like the end, boys,” he said.

  “Nah!” Molock answered. “They’ll never get through the hull. I’ll figure out something.”

  “You had better get your slide rule into action. Uh! What was that?”

  That was the ship lurching as if it was about to turn over. From the ports, we could see what was happening. Venusians were on both sides of the ship. Those on one side were pushing while those on the other side were pulling. When the ship settled back, the ones on the second side pushed like hell, setting up a rhythmic rocking motion that was rapidly threatening to turn the ship over.

  “You could turn over a mountain like this!” Wilkerson whispered, as the ship lurched. “My God! They’re going to try to roll the whole damned ship into the swamp.”

  On one side of Shad Brisbee’s dancing ground was jungle. On the other side was a deep pool of muddy water. Staring at it, Wilkerson seemed to talk out of a trance. “Drowned, like rats in a trap, in my own ship!” He took a deep breath, turned to Molock. “Go out and bluff Shad Brisbee now!”

  Molock also took a deep breath and rose to his feet. “I’ll just go do that,” he said, moving toward the lock.

  All of us were too stunned to try to stop him.

  When he opened the outer door of the lock, the noise that came in was like the howling of a forest full of baboons. But the rocking of the ship stopped as soon as he appeared. I don’t know why the Venusians didn’t kill him before he had a chance to open his mouth, but probably they were too surprised at his appearance to take immediate action.

  “I want to talk to Shad Brisbee!” he yelled at the top of his voice.

  Shad appeared in the throng. He looked more than seven feet tall and I would have sworn he had more than six eyes. The throng grew so quiet you could hear these tame Venusians slobbering as they thirsted for human blood.

  “I’ll dance you…for the right…to keep our ship…on your dancing ground…until it is repaired …” Molock said.

  “The hopeless fool!” Wilkerson gasped. “The utter idiot…”

  “You will dance me?” You could have heard Shad Brisbee scream for miles around. The idea appalled him, because it was a direct challenge, and it also appealed to him because he was absolutely certain that he, or any other Venusian could out-dance any human who had ever put foot on the Veiled Planet. “I’ll do it!” Shad Brisbee roared. “Make room for the dancers!” His voice was a howl that shook wondering echoes out of the jungle.

  Molock came back into the galley. “You can’t do it,” Wilkerson gasped. “These dances are endurance contests. That big baboon has done nothing but dance all his life. He can dance straight into next week …”

  “I’m stalling for time,” Molock said. “I want you to get on that radio again and convince that damned Cooper he’s got to get here and help us. All he has to do is swoop low in a ship over this place and these baboons will take to the jungle or the swamp to dodge the rocket blast. Tell him.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Wilkerson said grimly. “The question is—will he act on what I tell him.”

  Molock’s eyes went to Rita. “Honey, I want you to get those cameras going and keep them going. I want this recorded for posterity, if for nobody else.”

  Rita was shaken and scared. But there was good stuff down inside that girl. “Will do,” she whispered. She got to her feet and headed for the observation dome in the top of the ship where the cameras were located.

  Molock turned to me. “I’ve got a little job for you, Sam.” Out of his pocket, he slipped the little needle gun. “I’m going to have to dance against that six-eyed baboon. When he gets to dancing real good and everybody is all excited, I want you to shoot him in the butt with one of these needles.”

  “But—” I whispered.

  “Exactly,” Molock said. “It won’t kill him, but a couple of these needles will slow him down considerably.”

  I regarded the weapon with horror. “But that means I’ll have to go out there where all those Venusians are!” Maybe this wasn’t a heroic thing to say but the thought just popped out of my mind. Anyhow, I wasn’t feeling very heroic.

  “Yah!” Molock said.

  “But—”

  “I’ll be out there,” Molock said. “I’ll be out there dancing. All you’ve got to do is squat on the ground.”

  “Okay,” I said. The word cost me a desperate effort but I said it.

  We went out together.…

  The Venusians had already cleared a circle fifty yards in diameter. They clustered around this circle like hungry dogs waiting for the kill. Shad Brisbee, stark naked, grinning out of all of his six eyes, looking nine feet tall and fit to dance all month, grinned as he waited. In Shad Brisbee’s mind, here was a lamb being led to the slaughter.

  Shad Brisbee and I had one thing in common—we both agreed on this lamb led to the slaughter idea.

  I squatted on the ground at the edge of the circle and tried to lose myself between the legs of the Venusians towering over me.

  Have you ever seen a Venusian dance? If you haven’t, you have missed one of the weirdest sights in the solar system. They do everything in the books on ballets, ball room dancing, tap dancing, they also turn flip-flops and walk on their hands. They do things that no human being will ever believe until he sees it.

  As big and as ponderous as he was, Shad Brisbee went into his act by turning three quick back flips.

  I’ll give Molock credit, he could do tricks I had never guessed he could do. He kept even with Shad. But within thirty minutes he was beginning to pant. Going round the circle, dancing every step of the way, he found wind to yell at Wilkerson, who was peering from the lock.

  “Any news…from that damned Cooper?”

  “Operations contacted him…in a bar!” Wilkerson yelled. “Cooper said you could dance your own way out of thi
s …”

  “The dirty dog!” Molock screamed.

  The next time he came around the circle, waving his hands and bending double as he imitated one of Shad Brisbee’s more intricate steps, he whispered to me, “Bunt him.…”

  Keeping the little spring gun out of sight in my hand, I waited until the Venusian’s back was turned to me, and pressed the trigger. The spring clicked softly. I caught a glint of the needle as it went home in Shad’s backside.

  He went right on dancing as if nothing had happened.

  The next time he came around the circle, Molock whispered, “Let him have another one.…”

  As I started to pull the trigger, the sky seemed to fall down on top of me. A ham-sized Venusian hand smashed me downward.

  “No tricks!” a Venusian voice snarled into my ear.

  The gun was jerked away from me. About twenty-four eyes in my vicinity were concentrated on me, each one glaring in its own individual way. I was given to understand that if I attempted to take any further part in the proceedings, I would be fed to the nearest alligator.

  “What happened?” Molock yelled, as he danced by again.

  “They caught me. You’ll have to out-dance him honestly.”

  “But I can’t go much farther—” He was covered with sweat and his chest was heaving.

  I felt like the lowest kind of a dog for having let him down. Molock might be an utter damned fool, but when the chips were down, he was in there trying for all of us. He had built all his hopes on this trick with the needle gun.

  Circling the dancing ground, he suddenly stopped, stood with his hands on his hips, chest heaving.

  “You give up?” Shad Brisbee shouted. “You quit?”

  “I do not—give up!” Molock wheezed.

  “But you have stop dancing.”

  “I have danced your way—for two zonars. Turn about is fair play. Now you dance—my way.”

  “Your way?” Astonishment showed in all of Shad Brisbee’s six eyes. “You humans don’t dance, you don’t know how.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong!” Molock answered. “We know how to dance in a new way—a way you stupid Venusians have never heard of.”

  I didn’t know whether Shad Brisbee and the others were more excited over the insult or the thought of a new way to dance. Dancing was the blood of life to them.

  “No way Venusians not know!” Shad Brisbee shouted. “We know everything about dancing, all steps, all—”

  “Hell, you don’t know this way,” Molock interrupted. “I doubt if you could do it even if I taught it to you.”

  He was stalling for time but as he was stalling he was getting his strength back. Personally, it was my opinion that all he knew about dancing he had learned in a dime-a-dance hall in some space port on Earth, but if he wanted to teach this to the Venusians, it was all right with me.

  “Show him to me!” Shad Brisbee screamed. “I can do him.”

  “All right. Watch this.” Weaving forward with his hands up, Molock slugged Shad Brisbee on the jaw.

  The startled Venusian almost turned a somersault as he went over backward. A cry of rage arose, both from Shad and the onlookers.

  “Kill the human—”

  “Slaughter him—”

  “Now you try to hit me!” Molock ignored the cries for his blood. He weaved away with his fists up.

  “That’s not dancing!” Shad Brisbee roared.

  “It’s our kind of dancing, the human way to dance,” Molock answered. “Yah, you big yellow-belly, you can’t do it!”

  I held my breath. The hopeless idiot—or maybe genius—was trying to turn a dancing contest into a boxing match. And he did. Screaming, Shad Brisbee charged, swung a tremendous hay-maker at Molock’s jaw. Dodging, Molock slugged him behind the ear.

  For the next fifteen minutes, to my awed and thunderously appreciative delight, I watched a Venusian get carved to pieces. Molock hit Shad Brisbee with everything up to and including his elbows and knees. He hit the Venusian in the gullet, the stomach, all over the head, and he knocked at least three eyes out of commission.

  It took him exactly fifteen minutes to reduce a seven foot Venusian giant to the status of a whimpering child.

  “I give…I give …” Shad Brisbee gasped. “You better dancer than me.…”

  “You will allow us to stay here unmolested, until we can get our ship repaired?” Molock demanded.

  “Sure… Sure… I do that for you…if you do one thing for me.…”

  “What’s that?”

  “Here, I whisper to you.…” Leaning forward, Shad whispered something in Molock’s ear. The human looked a little surprised and startled. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal.” Then, as if some secret thought was pleasing him tremendously, he began to grin.

  “I’ll say it’s a deal,” he said.

  “Boys, we go home now!” Shad Brisbee shouted.

  With awed and appreciative looks at the greatest dancer they had ever seen, they went streaming away from Shad Brisbee’s dancing ground.

  An equally awed and appreciative Wilkerson met us in the lock. Rita was there too, but Rita wasn’t awed. She climbed right up into Molock’s arms. “Did you get the pics?” he asked her.

  “I got them, darling.”

  “Then we’ve got the world by the tail, honey. We’ve got the world by the tail.”

  It took two weeks to get our ship repaired. During this time, Molock was a mighty busy man, both taking pictures of his own selection and spending hours each day with Shad Brisbee. In spite of the fact that he had been licked, Shad harbored no animosity. He and Molock struck up a beautiful friendship.

  When we finally got the ship repaired and was about ready to take off, a ship arrived from headquarters, carrying a most important visitor, a Mr. George Cooper, head of publicity. Wearing beautiful clothes, his fingers manicured, delicately perfumed—for he was a sensitive man—he descended from the lock.

  Molock and Shad Brisbee greeted him.

  Cooper smiled urbanely at them.

  “He wants to dance, Shad,” Molock said. “Try out your new step on him, the one I’ve been teaching you.”

  With one single forearm jab, Shad Brisbee knocked Mr. Cooper clear back into the ship the publicity man had just left. Then Shad turned eagerly to Molock.

  “Tell me…do I dance him good…?”

  “Shad,” Molock said, beaming. “You dance him beautiful.”

  The smile on Molock’s face was a heavenly thing.

  * * * *

  Well, that’s about it, except for the pics, the ones Rita took of the dance and other carefully selected horror shots of some of the less beautiful aspects of this Eden in the Sky.

  I understand these pics are terrific box office on Earth. All we know is that they’re kicking credits in to us so fast that we’re all getting rich, Wilkerson, Molock, Mrs. Molock, and me.

  Of course, we’re not exactly trying to double-cross the publicity department of Trans-Space, Inc., but if you are thinking of coming to Venus, it might be wise to see our picture first. It will give you a little more rounded view of a place that is a little short of Heaven…about a couple of billion miles short of it.

  And, if you are thinking of coming to Venus, you had better take one other thing into consideration—the promise Molock made to Shad Brisbee before the Venusian would concede defeat in dancing. Shad made Molock promise to teach him this new and wonderful form of dancing that humans knew.

  Molock spent two weeks doing exactly that, which accounts for the enthusiastic greeting Mr. Cooper got from one of the tame Venusians.

  I understand this form of “dancing” is spreading like wild fire over the Veiled Planet.

  If you are thinking of going to Venus, you had better take in consideration not only the fog flies, the forty foot boa constrictors, th
e blue tigers, but the fact that every blasted Venusian native now considers himself an expert at “human dancing” and spends most of his spare time looking for humans to practice with.

  Unless you’re fully prepared to “dance” with these Venusians, you had better think twice before deciding to settle on this Eden in the Sky.

  MARTIAN ADVENTURE

  Fantastic Adventures, Oct. 1944.

  CHAPTER I

  “Cripes, it’s Harden!” Keogh gasped.

  “Yeah,” Harden said. “But take it easy. I didn’t know you were boss of this outfit, and besides I’m here on business—”

  He got no farther. Keogh, in a manner surprising for his bulk, lifted himself from behind the desk and darted through the door at the back. As he moved, the Martian glow lamps, reacting to his mental command, flickered and went out. The room was plunged into darkness.

  As Harden turned, he was reaching inside his coat for the gun nestled in its holster there. The gun slid smoothly into his hand, a flat, compact little weapon that fired a tiny sliver of steel much like a phonograph needle of the old days. The gun was actuated by a powerful spring and was almost silent in operation, a tiny ping being the only noise when it was fired. As to what happened when one of the needles hit you, that depended on the charge the needle carried. It might be anything from sudden death to unconsciousness within ten seconds. The needles in the magazine of the gun that Harden carried were loaded with thirty minutes of blissful sleep.

  “Open!” he said.

  The door did not budge. When he had entered, it had opened to his command. Or that was what he thought when he entered. He realized now that Keogh, hearing his voice, had ordered the door to open. The sensitive operating mechanism was tuned to Keogh’s mental commands.

  “Damn!”

  He dropped into a crouch, intending to drive his shoulder at the door. The knife whistled as it passed over his head, hit the door with a metallic clang. If he had been standing erect, it would have hit him between the shoulder blades.

  Harden fired without moving, aiming at the back door through which Keogh had made his hasty exit. One thing was certain: Keogh had not thrown that knife. A Martian had done that. The Martians were experts with knives, preferring them to any other weapon. Too often Harden had seen them bring down small game with a thrown knife for him to doubt their expertness with a stiletto. He held his breath and waited.