The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories Read online

  This one appeared even longer than the one on the ground floor of the house, and it was far better lit. Not only were there windows admitting the rays of the red moon, but breaks in the roof were numerous as well, and the passage had piles of rubble here and there on its floor. The noise of the wind seemed suddenly louder, almost a yell as it raced through the many openings and surged down the length of the whole building.

  For no particular reason, Powers turned right rather than left and began a slow reconnaissance of the corridor, watching for any place that might provide at least a temporary shelter, in which he could hide until daybreak. If there is such a thing as day in this place, said his weary mind.

  He passed a doorway on his right, no different from any other, when he halted suddenly and spun back. There had been an actual door, and his tired brain had failed to register it. It was hung on great metal hinges and stood solidly, a great, unadorned mass of a seeming black wood, opening on the room or inward side. There was no bolt or lock.

  He checked the corridor again, saw and heard nothing and then moved quickly into the room. Unlike the other he had seen, it was not completely empty. Several large timbers, fragments of old beams, lay scattered on the floor, and a large wooden chest, minus its top, stood in one corner, under the window.

  Powers summoned his last reserves of energy and by sheer strength managed to close the heavy door on its harshly grating hinges. The noise he made terrified him but there was no help for it. Dragging over the largest fragment of beam, he made a sturdy brace against it, and then sat down, facing the window and the moonlight. He noted idly, while listening, that a small hatch was set in one wall, the left, which might communicate with some forgotten pantry and that it seemed to have something dark like rotted velvet stuffed back in its recesses. A vague unease about the texture of what he had noted in passing made him look back again. And this time he saw movement where the material had been.

  Into the room, slowly and with infinite caution there came a hand. It was five fingered and each huge finger was tipped with a polished claw. The hand and the colossal arm behind it were furred in black, close-lying pelage, which he had mistaken for velvet. It moved slowly and stealthily in his direction, already as long as his leg and twice as big around. With it came a wave of the foul and sickening odor.

  Frozen momentarily, he saw his error. The hatch he had seen was actually a connecting window to the next room and he had awakened what was lying there when he moved the beams and braced the door.

  A great gust of fury awakened in his exhausted body. Just when he had found a shelter, some hideous thing sought to devour him! Within a bare second of his moment of discovery, he sprang across the room and with his knife, slashed at the groping black limb, aiming at the inner elbow, and hoping to sever a tendon.

  The arm jerked back like lightning, and simultaneously, he was almost deafened by a scream of rage and pain which shook him physically with its sheer volume.

  He leaped back, alert, his gaze fixed on the little window and saw, framed in its square, filling it from side to side, the visage which guided the arm.

  THE FACE was twice the size of a man's and rather like that of a colossal cat. Black fur covered it to the blunt, naked muzzle, which was damp and wet. The eyes were huge, red and lambent, with vertical, black pupils, and he could just see tiny, upright ears on the sides of the great head. The wide, lipless mouth opened and again he was deafened by that awful cry, even as he saw the terrible teeth, a row of razor-sharp carnassials. The stench of the brute filled the room like a fog, but as he poised, ready for further battle, he saw with satisfaction that dark drops and pools on the floor showed his own power. He waited, tired but alert, for the monster's next move, his eyes fixed on that dreadful face.

  As he waited for the next attack, the beast screamed again. But the cry was different, higher and wailing, even though it still left the man shaking from sheer vibration. And all the time, the strange eyes never left him, their stare of concentrated malignancy seeming to will him to remain, to freeze there and never move.

  And even as that thought crossed his mind, a faint sound from outside came to his ears through the window, and he knew the bitter taste of his own folly. He had ignored all the warnings, the scream in the garden as he entered the house, the almost simultaneous shape on the balcony that he had watched, and now the familiar wailing howl from the wounded animal, followed by the scrape of claws outside. The balcony ran outside this very room, and there were two hunters, not one!

  All this flashed through his mind as he was moving. The beast in the next room could never get through the connecting window. All he had to do was stay out of its reach. He dropped his knife and spinning to the old chest he had noted in the far corner, lidless and battered, he stooped and with a convulsive effort raised it from the ground. Half hurling and half pushing it, he aimed it straight at the outer window and his timing could not have been better, although it was largely luck.

  As the second hideous head rose to the window level, preparing to scramble in, a hundred pounds of ancient but solid wood struck it squarely with all the force a tired but powerful and desperate man could put behind it.

  A massive crunch was followed by an awful, choked-off snarl and scrabbling sounds and then the window was clear again. From far below came the sound of something heavy hitting the ground with a squashy impact.

  Powers had fallen to his knees, and, still on them, turned to face his original enemy. But the small connecting window was also empty. Must get up, he thought, and find that knife. But he could not rise. And the room was getting darker, much darker. His strong body was at last betraying him, when he needed it most, giving way to all the physical effort that had been demanded of it, giving way to the hours of fear and tension, the lack of food and water. The other one will come in the window, said his mind: fight! Once more he tried to rise and do battle and actually managed to totter erect, even as the room went completely black and he knew that he was falling forward. He never even felt the floor as he hit.

  Which, under the circumstances, was not really too surprising.

  "HE'S COMING out now," said a voice. "The last shot should do it. Keep his arm immobilized as long as that tube is in it. Twenty more units of Adrenergon before his balance is built up again."

  Powers was aware of being alive and comfortable even before opening his eyes. He felt tired. But pleasantly so, and cool and clean as well. Something soft covered his recumbent body and a pleasant odor, fresh and bracing, was in the air he breathed. Stretching ever so slightly, still only partly awake, he felt his right arm immobilized and the feeling brought all his memories back in a wave, causing him to try to sit up, his eyes open with shock.

  "Easy, easy, Commander." A firm hand on his chest and another on his left shoulder kept him from moving. A tall, blond man of his own age was smiling down at him, his arms restraining any movement. Powers blinked stupidly at him and then stared past him at the others in the large room. All present, but one, wore white coveralls.

  A short, elderly man with an aquiline, clean-shaven face and a stubble of cropped, gray hair stood grinning at the foot of Powers' bed. Next to him, also smiling pleasantly, was a handsome gray-haired woman. And lounging against the far wall was the tall figure of a Lyran, wearing service Blacks with no insignia, his great goggling eyes fixed oddly on Powers' face, his greenish tail curled neatly around one leg, making his race look even more than usual like monstrous parodies of Terrestrial chameleons.

  Powers lay back under his white sheet, idly noting the bustle of a group of human technicians, farther back still, who were moving some massive equipment from the room on silent wheels. He also noted the tube inserted in his arm and leading to a hospital intravenous feeding unit.

  "O.K.," said the blond man who had been holding him down. "Stay quiet, don't move and you can talk. We're here to answer questions. But let me say one thing first. You graduated."

  A sense of lassitude almost stopped Powers from answering, b
ut he was too curious.

  "Where was it? What planet was I on?"

  The older man at the bed's foot answered. "No one will ever land there, or ever has, Commander. You are its first, last and only inhabitant and always will be."

  "That's impossible," said Powers. "How did you get me there? How did you get me away? And what about those black demons and the ..." He stopped, because all those in the room were smiling except the Lyran who could not, and he was emitting the leaking-kettle noise which passed for laughter with his race. A light began to gleam in Powers' eyes and his mind started to race furiously. He was in a hospital. Had he ever left it?

  "He's getting it," said the woman. "Let's put him out of his misery quickly. Commander, you have spent six Galac hours, no more, battling the deadliest dangers, the most vicious adversaries in the galaxy, as well as surmounting the worst obstacles known to man. But none of us can ever really go where you have gone, see what you have seen or do what you have done.

  "You see," she continued pleasantly, "you have fought monsters of your own creating, battled difficulties existing only in your own imagination, dredged from the worst horrors of your subconscious fears and dreads. You have never left this building, never moved a muscle in actuality, except to tense one occasionally." She paused.

  "I'LL TAKE over," the older man said. "Ever see the clown who was just holding you, Commander?"

  Powers glanced at the tall, blond man, then shook his head. This would take a whole lot of time to sort out.

  "Think of him in a dirty uniform, unshaven and with Landing Force insignia."

  Powers stared again, then smiled in recognition.

  "Yes, I remember. He met my flier at the building. Why?"

  "Annoyed you, didn't he?" was the question.

  "Yes, he did. So did that hag in the office and that toadstool of a psychiatrist. Again why? What does it prove?"

  This time he flushed when he saw them all grinning.

  "Yes," smiled the woman. "I'm the hag. Dr. Anna Fradkin at your service. We're rather good at disguise around here. I was made up as a grade-school teacher you once had and whom you loathed. Pretty good research, eh? The ex-sergeant, very ex, is Inspector Jared Morgan of the Terran Criminal Police. Sakh Mazzechaz of Lyra Seven is against the wall. And our toadstool psychiatrist with the disgusting interest in sex is at the foot of your bed. Galac Rear Admiral Dulip Singh, to be formal."

  Powers could only gape at this point, but the smiling flag officer helped ease his bewilderment.

  "Look, Powers, relax. You are now, and only now, a Galac Field Agent of Survey & Contact. You've passed the final tests. There's a lot more to learn but it's school work, although some of it can be rough.

  "Survey & Contact has a very small corps. Human and nonhuman, and we're a minority, there are only about three thousand Field Agents. Not many for a galaxy, largely unexplored, eh?

  "You've been tested for over a year. Your mail has been read, your messages, oral and written, monitored. You've been spied on, checked, watched and studied. Those forms and tests you filled out were like the one seventeenth or whatever of an iceberg that appears above water. We know you pretty well. Frankly, we planted the original idea of joining us in a thousand, subtle ways. We do it all the time, although most never get here at all. We are always looking for new people. The good ones are scarce.

  "If we had found anything we didn't like, you'd never have joined. It would have been harmless, but you would have lost interest. We have some pretty good psych people, too. Survey & Contact still would be a mystery to you, and not an interesting one at that.

  "All right, we had brought you to a certain point. We could go no farther. The final test was devised by ... well, never mind, some day you'll learn, if you live that long.

  "Anyway, this morning was it. Disappearing messages, late fliers, no lunch, endless waiting, a busted chron, dirty, unkempt sergeants, nasty prying about sex, alternate jolts of gas, we arranged all of it. Getting a picture? Then, bingo, a threat of death and you're out like a light again. You're strapped in, the electronics wizards connect their gadgets, and you're on your own. In the worst possible place you can think of. The bottom of your own subconscious dread, fighting the demon world of your own Id! You see, a world, even a universe, that you loathe and fear can be induced, forced to appear in your mind.

  "Don't ask me how it's done. That's not my area. You may have a leaning that way yourself. If so, we'll find it. But to get back to the point, you were on a ghastly world filled with childhood fear symbols, half-remembered ghost stories, everything you personally were afraid of, most afraid of, I should say—like that house. A search of your early childhood on Terra disclosed that you had to pass one on your way to school, an empty, old, 'haunted' house that looked like that, and it must have scared Hell out of you so you brought it back. We could follow you on some of it by means of instruments, but you'll have to tell us the rest later. We need the data for our files.

  "At any rate, we had you, irritated, tired, enraged, frustrated, and—keyed up to the highest nervous pitch, which is the only point to all the petty irritations, we had you on, or in as I said, this awful place. You had to fight or go under. Now get this. Those statistics I gave you back in the office were absolutely truthful. You could have been killed. A lot of good men and women have been. So have many other entities. Some minds simply cannot take what they call up out of their own depths. It's the last, ultimate test for a flaw. If you can keep coming, never stop, and never let up, against the worst in your own subconscious, you can't be stopped by anything. Killed, physically, of course, but not stopped." He paused. "Any questions?"

  Powers felt numbed and overwhelmed by what he had heard, but he still had things to ask.

  "What happens now, Sir, about my regular service, I mean?"

  "You'll be transferred, probably to Supply & Requisitions. And be promoted steadily in grade. We have no rank, only assignments. Today you obey me. Tomorrow—the reverse. You may make admiral, but I doubt it. Too impetuous.

  "And then you'll go to school. Our school. And go to work. But no one will ever know. What else?"

  "Well, the gentle being from Lyra, has he something special to say to me?"

  "Oh, him." Admiral Singh turned and winked at Mazzechaz, who politely snapped a nictitating membrane in a return gesture.

  "Seems he wants you for a partner. He liked your total profile in our files. We all have them, partners, that is, to begin with, sometimes permanently. Don't know what he saw in you, myself. More?"

  Powers sat up and stared at the faces around him. It all seemed unbelievable, but it must be true.

  "Is this graduation, Sir?"

  "All you'll ever get, Son. Now we'll clear out, let you get some rest. Oh, yes, one more thing." The admiral assumed a rigid posture, a deadpan expression.

  "Do you still want to join?"

  Powers was awfully tired, but he managed to rise to the occasion.

  "Hell, yes, it beats work, I guess."

  There was a long silence from all those around the bed and then the tall Lyran spoke for the first time, in a sibilant whisper.

  "Welcome, Brother."

  The End

  Whose Short Happy Life?

  Fantasy & Science Fiction - March 1968

  Here is a story about a hunting party that includes a couple of real hunters and one indoor type. If there's anything worse for a non-hunter than being dragged along on a hunting trip, it's surely to accompany a party that is in search of dangerous game; after all, a guy can get killed ...

  PERSONALLY speaking, I don't kill animals for fun. I don't mind people hunting, but I get no pleasure out of it. Not even of watching it. Why not stay in civilization, a nice quiet bar say, with a friendly young thing as company? But I had no choice.

  "We're going hunting," the Boss says, just like that. I like my job so I say, "Fine, lovely, what fun," and all that. I like the Boss, mind you, a really great guy, one of the best. Aside from this silly hunting an
d the wife situation, he's a chap I really admire. Wives? Well, this tramp was the fourth. Half his age and completely, but utterly no good. Just like all the rest, I might add. The Boss is rich but he'd be a lot richer if he didn't feel he had to marry them. The joke is, after he marries them, they despise him. Can't stand him, cheat on him practically in public, laugh at him until he has to get rid of them. And then go find a new one just like the others.

  Well, I knew what this was all about. This latest tramp was beginning to laugh. So we were going into one of the Reserves to show how brave and virile the Boss still was. I ask you! A good lay on with a leather strap once a week and he'd have had a happy married life forever. Instead, he has to look for real danger, and include me, who wants no part of it.

  "You cheer me up," he says. "Those stories of yours are going to make this the best trip yet. I don't know why I never thought of bringing you before. You're a natural around the camp fire."

  I shudder. How much is the job worth? Will this go on every time he splits up? Ugh. I steel myself. I'll try it once, anyway, before I am forced to quit and find other employment.

  If you like wild country, grass and sunlight (who likes that, I ask you), trees and birds and all that junk, I guess you might like the Reserves. We went to the one in the north of Ssgurrland and picked up our guide and vehicles and the guns. There was even one of those for me. It made me cold to look at it. I wondered if I could avoid carrying it, maybe pretend my arm was hurt. I figured that I'd blow my foot off if I ever had to use it.

  The guide was terrible, one of those hams you see in the Tridees, all whiskers and muscles, about twice as big as he had to be. I felt small and insignificant beside him. No one was watching me, however. But I could see the Boss's wife giving this bum a fast once-over. And compared to him the Boss looked kind of old and grizzled. It made me mad. I knew what he'd done in the last war as a youngster. Had a lot of medals he never talked about and one of his old servants told me, or I'd never have known. He was twice the hero this brawny oaf would ever be, but the tramp would be in this guy's sack just as inevitably as the Sun went down.