The Devil's Asteroid by Manly Wade Wellman (color ebook reader txt) 📖

instruments he once had mastered.

"You'll remember," Parr assured him vehemently. "I never flew anything but a short-shot pleasure cruiser, but I'm beginning to dope things out. We'll help each other, Ruba. Don't you want to get away from here, go home?"

"Home!" breathed Ruba, and the ears of the others—pointed, some of those ears, and all of them hairy—pricked up visibly at that word.

"Well, there you are," Parr said encouragingly. "Sweat your brains, lad. We've got until dawn. Then away we go."

"You will never manage," slurred the skipper from the corner where the Martian captives, bound securely, sprawled under custody of a beast-man with a lever bar for a club. "Thesse animalss have not mental powerr—"

"Shut up, or I'll let that guard tap you," Parr warned him. "They had mental power enough to fool you all over the shop. Come on, Ruba. Isn't this the rocket gauge? Please remember how it operates!"

The capture of the ship had been easy, so easy. The guard had been well kept only until the skipper and his party had gone out of sight toward the human village. Nobody ever expected trouble from beast-men, and the watch on board had not dreamed of a rush until they were down and secure. But this—the rationalization of intricate space-machinery—was by contrast a doleful obstacle. "Please remember," Parr pleaded with Ruba again.

And so for hours. And at last, prodded and cajoled and bullied, the degenerated intelligence of Ruba had partially responded. His clumsy paws, once so skilful, coaxed the mechanism into life. The blasts emitted preliminary belches. The whole fabric of the ship quivered, like a sleeper slowly wakening.

"Can you get her nose up, Ruba?" Parr found himself able to inquire at last.

"Huh, boss," spoke Ling from his watch at the door. "Come. I see white thing."

Parr hurried across to look.

The white thing was a tattered shirt, held aloft on a stick. From the direction of the village came several figures, Martian and Terrestrial. Parr recognized the bearer of the flag of truce—it was Varina Pemberton. With her walked the three Martian hands whom he had warned off, their tentacles lifted to ask for parley, their weapons sheathed at their belts. Sadau was there, and Shanklin.

"Ready, guns," Parr warned Ling and Izak. "Stand clear of us, out there!" he yelled. "We're going to take off."

"Fitzhugh Parr," called back Varina Pemberton, "you must not."

"Oh, must I not?" he taunted her. "Who's so free with her orders? I've got a gun myself this time. Better keep your distance."

The others stopped at the warning, but the girl came forward. "You wouldn't shoot a woman," she announced confidently. "Listen to me."

Parr looked back to where Ruba was fumbling the ship into more definite action. "Go on and talk," he bade her. "I give you one minute."

"You've got to give up this foolish idea," she said earnestly. "It can't succeed—even if you take off."

"No if about it. We're doing wonders. Make your goodbyes short. I wish you joy of this asteroid, ma'am."

"Suppose you do get away," she conceded. "Suppose, though it's a small, crowded ship, you reach Earth and land safely. What then?"

"I'll blow the lid off this dirty Martian Joke," he told her. "Exhibit these poor devils, to show what the Martians do to Terrestrials they convict. And then—"

"Yes, and then!" she cut in passionately. "Don't you see, Parr? Relations between Mars and Earth are at breaking point now. They have been for long. The Martians are technically within their rights when they dump us here, but you'll be a pirate, a thief, a fugitive from justice. You can cause a break, perhaps war. And for what?"

"For getting away, for giving freedom to my only friends on this asteroid," said Parr.

"Freedom?" she repeated. "You think they can be free on Earth? Can they face their wives or mothers as they are now—no longer men?"

"Boss," said Ling suddenly and brokenly, "she tell true. No. I won't go home."

It was like cold water, that sudden rush of ghastly truth upon Parr. The girl was right. His victory would be the saddest of defeats. He looked around him at the beast-men who had placed themselves under his control—what would happen to them on Earth? Prison? Asylum? Zoo?...

"Varina Pemberton," he called, "I think you win."

The hairy ones crowded around him, sensing a change in plan. He spoke quickly:

"It's all off, boys. Get out, one at a time, and rush away for cover. Nobody will hurt you—and we'll be no worse off than we were." He raised his voice again: "If I clear out, will we be left alone?"

"You must give back that armor," she told him. "The Martians insist."

"It's a deal." He stripped the stuff from him and threw it across the floor to lie beside the bound prisoners. "I'm trusting you, Varina Pemberton!" he shouted. "We're getting out."

They departed at his orders, all of them. Ling and Izak went last, dropping the stolen guns they had held so unhandily. Parr waited for all of them to be gone, then he himself left the ship.

At once bullets began to whicker around him. He dodged behind the ship, then ran crookedly for cover. By great good luck, he was not hit. His beast-men hurried to him among the bushes.

"Huh, boss?" they asked anxiously. "Ship no good? What we do?"

He looked over his shoulder. Somewhere in the night enemies hunted for him. The beast-folk were beneath contempt, would be left alone. Only he had shown himself too dangerous to be allowed life.

"Goodbye, boys," he said, with real regret. "I'm not much of a boss if I bring bullets among you. Get back home, and let me haul out by myself. I mean it," he said sternly, as they hesitated. "On your way, and don't get close to me again—death's catching!"

They tramped away into the gloom, with querulous backward looks. Parr took a lonely trail in an opposite direction. After a moment he paused, tingling with suspense. Heavy feet were following him.

"Who's coming?" he challenged, and ducked to avoid a possible shot. None came. The heavy tread came nearer.

"Boss!" It was Ling.

"I told you to go away," reminded Parr gruffly.

"I not go," Ling retorted. "You no make me."

"Ling, you were boss before I came. Now that I'm gone from you—"

"You not gone from me. You my boss. Those others, they maybe pick new boss."

"Ling, you fool!" Parr put out a hand in the night, and grabbed a mighty shaggy arm. "I'll be hunted—maybe killed—"

"Huh!" grunted Ling. "They hunt us, maybe they get killed." He turned and spat over his shoulder, in contempt for all marauding Martians and their vassal Earth folk. "You, me—we stay together, boss."

"Come on, then," said Parr. "Ling, you're all right."

"Good talk!" said Ling.

They went to the other side of the little spinning world, and there nobody bothered them. Time and space were relative, as once Einstein remarked to illustrate a rather different situation; anyway, the village under Varina Pemberton numbered only eight men—Parr and Ling could avoid that many easily on a world with nearly nine hundred square miles of brush, rock and gully.

In a grove among grape-vines they built a shelter, and there dwelt for many weeks. Ling wore well as a sole friend and partner. Looking at the big, devoted fellow, Parr did not feel so revolted as at their first glimpse of each other. Ling had seemed so hairy, so misshapen, like a troll out of Gothic legends. But now ... he was only big and burly, and not so hairy as Parr had once supposed. As for his face, all tusk and jaw and no brow, where had Parr gotten such an idea of it? Homely it was, brutal it wasn't....

"I get it," mused Parr. "I'm beginning to degenerate. I'm falling into the beast-man class, closer to Ling's type. Like can't disgust like. Oh, well, why bother about what I can't help?"

He felt resigned to his fate. But then he thought of another—Varina Pemberton, the girl who might have been a pleasant companion in happier, easier circumstances. She had banished him, threatened him, wheedled him out of victory. She, too, would be slipping back to the beast. Her body would warp, her skin grow hairy, her teeth lengthen and sharpen—Ugh! That, at least, revolted him.

"Look, boss," said Ling, rising from where he lounged with a cluster of grapes in his big hand. "People coming—two of 'em."

"Get your club," commanded Parr, and caught up his own rugged length of tough torn-wood. "They're men, not beast-men—they must be looking for trouble."

"Couldn't come to a better place to find it," rejoined Ling, spitting between his palm and the half of his cudgel to tighten his grip. The two of them walked boldly into view.

"I see you, Sadau!" shouted Parr clearly, for there was no mistaking the gaunt, freckled figure in the lead. "Who's that with you?"

The other man must be a new arrival. He was youngish and merry-faced as he drew closer, with black curly hair and a pointed beard. There was a mental-motive look to him, as if he were a high grade engineer or machinist. He wore a breech-clint of woven grasses, and looked expectantly at Parr.

"They aren't armed," pointed out Ling, and it was true. The pair carried sticks, but only as staffs, not clubs.

"Parr!" Sadau was shouting back. "Thank heaven I've found you—we need you badly." He came close, and Parr hefted his club.

"No funny business," he challenged, but Sadau gestured the challenge aside.

"I'm not here to fight. I say, you're needed. Things have gone wrong, awfully. The others got to feeling that there was no reason to obey a woman chief, even though Miss Pemberton has many good impulses—"

"I agree to that," nodded Parr, remembering the girl's many strange behaviors. "I daresay she wasn't much of a leader."

Sadau did not argue the point. "Shanklin, as the previous newest man, grabbed back the chieftaincy," he plunged ahead. "Those other fools backed him. When I tried to defend Miss Pemberton, they drove me out. I stumbled among the others—that crowd you used to capture the patroller—and got a line on where you were. I came for help."

One phase had stuck in Parr's mind. "You tried to defend that girl. They were going to kill her?"

"No. Shanklin, as chief and king, figures he needs a queen. She's not bad looking. He's going to marry her, unless—"

Parr snorted, and Sadau's voice grew angry. "Curse it, man, I'm not casting you for a knight of the Table Round, or the valiant space-hero who arrives in the nick of time at the television drama! Simplify it, Parr. You're the only man who ever had the enterprise to do anything actual here. You ought to be chief still, running things justly. And it isn't justice for a girl to be married unofficially to someone she doesn't like. Miss Pemberton despises Shanklin. Now, do you get my point, or are you afraid?"

It was Ling who made answer: "My boss isn't afraid of anything. He'll straighten that mess out."

Parr glanced at the big fellow. "Thanks for making up my mind for me, Ling. Well, you two have talked me into something. Sadau, shake Ling's big paw. And," he now had time to view the stranger at close hand, "who's this with you?"

The man with the black curls looked genially surprised. "You know me, boss. I'm Frank Rupert."

Parr stared. "Never heard of you."

"You're joking. Why, I almost got that Martian patroller into space, when Miss Pemberton—"

Parr sprang at him and caught him by his shoulders. "You were Ruba—Rupert! It's only that you didn't talk plain before. What's happened to you, man?"

Sadau hastily answered: "The degeneration force is obviated. Reversed. All those who were beast-men are coming back, some of the later arrivals completely normal again. Haven't you noticed a change in this big husk?"

Parr turned and looked at Ling. So that was it! Day by day, the change had not been enough to impress him. As Ling had climbed back along his lost evolutionary trail, Parr had thought that he himself was slipping down....

"Don't stop and scratch your head over it, Parr," Sadau scolded him. "It'll take a lot of explaining, and we haven't time. You said you'd help get Miss Pemberton out of her jam. Come on."

It was like the television thrillers, after all, Parr reflected. But Sadau was right on one count—Parr didn't quite fill the role of the space-hero. He had neither the close-clipped moustache nor the gleaming top boots. But he did have the regulation deep, unfathomable eyes and the murderous impulse.

It was just after noon. Shanklin, as chief-king, had also set up for a priest. In the center of the village clearing, he stood holding a sullen and pale Varina Pemberton by one wrist, while he recited what garblings of the marriage service he remembered.