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  Complete Fiction

  Erik Fennel

  (custom book cover)

  Jerry eBooks

  “PS’s Feature Flash”

  Bibliography

  Short Fiction Bibliography

  Fiction Series

  Atavism

  Beneath the Red World’s Crust

  Black Priestess of Varda

  Doughnut Jockey

  War of Intangibles

  Synthetic Hero

  Madmen of Mars

  Alien Psychologist

  The Lost Tribes of Venus

  Night Sky of Venus

  PS’s Feature Flash

  ERIK FENNEL first hit us with the highly original Atavism, in the Spring Issue, but he’s given us further honeys—such as Beneath the Red World’s Crust, in this issue—and you’d better keep an eye on him.

  During a childhood spent running barefoot around Hawaii I developed prehensile toes, and ever since have had to listen to cracks about Darwin’s theory being reversible. My wife, Eve, and our dachshund, Lilith, hold long and earnest conversations about my shortcomings. The dog insists I must have been an anti-social problem child.

  I wasn’t. But, oh, I was an inventive little devil! Once I built a gadget intended to scare birds out of the garden, a propeller that swung little metal weights against a large Chinese gong. It was dead calm the afternoon I finished it, so disgustedly I set it under my father’s bedroom window and forgot it. The trade winds started at 2:47 A.M. Ouch!

  My kid sister kept invading my room so I wired a Model “T” spark coil to the doorknob. Mother touched it first. Ouch again! Then there was a cute little deal involving molten lead and cold water. Double-ouch! The explosion was just short of atomic and I still carry the scars.

  Somehow I survived to tramp around half a dozen universities, studying co-eds, engineering, co-eds, journalism, and co-eds, and to fly a termite-riddled Heath Parasol that needed no running lights because the No. 4 cylinder glowed red hot all the time.

  I worked here and there as a truckdriver, newspaper reporter, bootlegger’s assistant, cameraman, payroll gun-guard, teletype operator, gas pumper, machinist, and did my share of riding the rods.

  Got into structural steel work and loved it, as I seem to have been born without a normal fear of heights. It promised a short life expectancy, but good money and indescribable thrills. I followed the red iron from hell to breakfast, six hundred feet above ground and four hundred feet below, and would be at it yet except that one day there was a very nasty mess. When I got out of the hospital I had a retread job in my skull and no stereoptic vision. End of chapter. 4-F. Readjustment.

  I’ve had the writing bug ever since I can remember—that’s why my wife accuses me of arrested development—and I started reading science-fiction in the old Science and Invention days.

  We’ve spent the last four years in a house trailer. Eve is developing a frustration complex because she can’t rearrange the built-in furniture without using an axe, and I’m still trying to devise a portable basement for my workshop. Perhaps, if I can acquire a couple of used oil wells and cut them into short lengths—

  At present I am engaged in some deep autohypnotic research into the permutations of the Theory of the Perversity of Inanimate Objects, but if a few more editors will be as astute as Mr. Payne and recognize the sterling merit of my deathless prose I may be able to become a credit to some community or other.

  Nichevo.

  —ERIK FENNEL.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Magazine-published Novels

  Beneath the Red World’s Crust, Planet Stories, Fall, August 1947

  Black Priestess of Varda, Planet Stories, Winter, November 1947

  The Lost Tribes of Venus, Planet Stories, May 1954

  SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Atavism, Planet Stories, Spring, February 1947

  Beneath the Red World’s Crust, Planet Stories, Fall, August 1947

  Black Priestess of Varda, Planet Stories, Winter, November 1947

  Doughnut Jockey, Blue Book, May 1948

  War of Intangibles, Astounding Science Fiction, June 1948

  Synthetic Hero, Planet Stories, Fall, August 1948

  Madmen of Mars, Planet Stories, Spring, February 1950

  Alien Psychologist, Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1952

  The Lost Tribes of Venus, Planet Stories, May 1954

  Night Sky of Venus, Venture Science Fiction Magazine, May 1957

  FICTION SERIES

  [N] = Novel

  [SF] = Short Story/Novelette

  The Martians

  Beneath the Red World’s Crust [N]

  Madmen of Mars [SF]

  THE AMPHIBIOUS FORCE moved in with big guns ready, with rockets and flame throwers and LCI’s and LCT’s and planes and thousands of combat-hardened men, expecting to shoot the works against the fog-shrouded little island that might have held the northern key to invasion.

  The men were all tensely expectant. All, that is, except the nurse and the Air Force radioman whom one of the LCT’s had picked up en route, drifting in a rubber life raft. But their apparent indifference to the impending battle aroused little comment. The task force had its own problems to consider, and that pair had already had it rugged. Their plane, they said, had been shot down weeks before and they’d been dodging Japs ever since.

  When the ramp of the first landing craft grated on the gravel and word went back to the waiting ships that the battle was off, that the Japs for some unknown reason of their own had pulled out without even pausing to destroy their equipment, the nurse and the radioman seemed as calm as though it were what they had expected it all along. But in the excitement over the startling new development their peculiar behavior was overlooked. They didn’t complain, for they had no desire to do any more lying than necessary . . .

  . . . Yark was a Great Brain. Even the more advanced embryos were conscious of his revered status. But his three eyes blinked in rotation—a sure sign of pleasure in a Martian—and in the pleasure of addressing the most distinguished Martians from every field of endeavor his outlines wavered and grew dim. For seconds at a time he thinned out almost to transparency.

  He addressed the gathering orally, though of course all present were sufficiently advanced for direct brain-to-brain communication. Yark fancied himself as an orator—the one atavistic trait he consciously allowed himself—and mental contact did not allow the little frills of speechmaking.

  “The outer hull of the spaceship is made of oxides,” he declared, “because the planet selected for initial exploration has an unconscionable amount of oxygen in its atmosphere, and oxides will not oxidize.”

  Mental applause resounded through the great Hall. This was excellent Martian logic.

  “Construction of the vessel was relatively simple. The great problem lay in developing a life form which could withstand the rigors of the journey.

  “What sets us apart from the lower forms of life?”

  The question was purely rhetorical. Every Martian knew it was the ability to change form at will.

  “This trait is of course due to superior mental ability and training. But even for us there has been a definite limitation, caused of course by residual atavisms. . . atavisms which we must, and some day will, extirpate completely from our glorious race.”

  Excitement overcame his mental control and for a moment he became completely invisible. He frowned mentally as he caught a tittering reaction from some individual in the audience. Invisibility, too, was an aspect of shape
adaptation, of superiority, though because it no longer served a useful purpose it had come to be regarded with suspicion as an atavistic trait. This was particularly true of the involuntary invisibility which sometimes accompanied high emotional tension. A powerful and growing school of thought even considered emotions themselves as atavisms.

  A human audience would have fidgeted as Yark recounted in minutest detail the processes by which Erg, to whom had been granted the honor of becoming the first Martian to visit another planet, had been reduced to the lowest common denominator of Martian consciousness, a mass of specialized but undifferentiated cells. And Yark, Yark of the Council of Great Brains, had been in charge since the very earliest stages of Erg’s embryohood.

  “This reduction,” Yark declared, “has been possible only by complete elimination of all atavistic traits. Even latent ones.” He told with obvious satisfaction of Erg’s unprecedented perfect zero score on the famous Yark Anti-Atavism Test.

  “Erg will remain in full telepathic contact with me,” the Great Brain continued. “Immediately following the landing there will be a period of quiescence, necessary to allow Erg to adjust himself to his new environment. During this period he will be able to gather and retransmit mental impressions from any intelligent creatures nearby—providing of course any such creatures exist upon this barbarously un-Martian planet—but his individuality will remain passive.

  “Following the period of quiescence, differentiation of cells will take place. Erg will then be a full-fledged Martian and will explore the entire planet. After that, who knows what vistas of greatness lie ahead?

  “In his present form only I, his mentor and creator, can retain contact. But you honored Martians will be allowed to become attuned to my brain and thus receive Erg’s reports.”

  He paused and held aloft a transparent cylinder. The Martians stirred with interest. They were all greatly impressed, although Erg resembled nothing so much as a pot roast in a jar. They had never heard of a pot roast.

  “We shall now dispatch Erg upon his epochal journey.”

  GUNNAR VIBORG paced restlessly to keep warm, kicking irritably at the pile of mouldy straw in the back of the cave and the deflated life raft from which they had sneaked ashore the night after their plane had been shot down at sea.

  “Martha,” he said, “this is no good. If we don’t get food now, tonight, we’ll be too weak if we ever do get a chance for a getaway. I say, let’s make a grab now and take our chances afterward. How about it?”

  The nurse, her attractive face now pinched with cold and hunger, nodded. Both were well aware that a raid on a Jap supply cache would start an intensive search, but hunger and desperation are companions.

  They checked their pistols, their only weapons except Gunnar’s trench knife, and started out. They had already chosen their objective, but were only halfway there when the raid began. Probing searchlight beams broke futilely against the hovering clouds and the night rocked with falling bombs and the insane yammer of antiaircraft fire.

  One raid more or less meant little in their situation and, even while they crouched between two huge boulders, Gunnar kept remembering that wonderful restaurant in his Minnesota home town, its strong black coffee and thick steaks and beautiful apple pie.

  “Quit that, stomach!” he told himself. The raid seemed to have ended and they were moving on again when, without warning, the night was shattered by a blue flash somewhere above. The glare penetrated even the blanketing fog and for an instant left the island starkly outlined in a brilliance exceeding daylight. Instantly the ack-ack resumed its uproar, firing blindly. A thousand freight trains seemed to rumble by overhead.

  Then a ball-shaped object, emitting a dying trail of flame, whistled out of the overcast like a gigantic bomb. Sparks flashed from a rock as it struck and re bounded. It bounced again and came tumbling down the hill, clanging against boulders, hissing and steaming with its own heat as it encountered patches of snow.

  “What—what the hell is it?” Martha whispered.

  “Some sort of rocket plane. I didn’t know we had anything like that.”

  Gunnar ran forward to investigate as it came to rest near them. It was metal, but battered completely beyond recognition. Part of it was ripped and torn as though by a shell.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Martha urged as Gunnar probed the wreckage. “The Japs are coming.”

  Gunnar prodded once more at a loosened section, which swung aside to disclose a padded compartment. The transparent cylindrical container he hauled out was scorched but unbroken.

  “Let’s go!” Martha pleaded.

  They had to endure an eternity of anxious waiting, huddled in a snowbank while a Nip patrol went by. Gunnar held on to his loot. He had gotten one glimpse of the contents, and it looked like food.

  Their clothing was soaked melted snow and sweat when at last they regained the comparative safety of their cave.

  Gunnar had trouble with the container. The fastenings refused to unfasten.

  “Quit stalling,” Martha complained. “I’m hungry.”

  Finally Gunnar smashed the thing open with a chunk of rock and hacked off a couple of pieces with his trench knife. The meat resembled an outstandingly low grade of Spam, interspersed with bits of gristle that made tough chewing, and it had a strong gamey taste.

  “Not American,” Gunnar remarked.

  “Some kind of ersatz, probably Jap,” Martha commented between bites. They were too hungry to be choosey.

  A sound from the cave’s mouth interrupted their meal. Gunnar gripped his trench knife and pistol as he moved stealthily forward. Then he laughed.

  “What is it?” Martha inquired, her gun ready, too.

  The half-breed husky growled again, sniffed hungrily and entered the cave snarling. Old scars and new gashes in his flea-bitten hide showed his familiarity with the ways of Jap soldiery.

  “One of the dogs the Aleuts left behind when the Japs drove them out,” Gunnar said.

  He threw a small chunk of gristle. The dog cowered at the motion but darted forward as the piece fell and wolfed it down without chewing.

  “Here you are, pooch,” Gunnar called.

  “Why, he’s starved,” Martha observed.

  Gunnar held more meat in his hand and backed into the cave. The dog followed, wagging his stumpy tail, all growling and menace forgotten as he found the humans friendly.

  “We can’t let him live,” he said reluctantly as the dog accepted the food from his hand. “He’d run in and out and lead the Japs here.”

  “I guess you’re right,” the nurse agreed, “But—”

  Gunnar picked up his knife, but the dog chose that moment to lick his wrist with a rough, wet tongue, place one paw on his knee and look up inquiringly. Gunnar extended it toward Martha. “Here, you do it. I can’t.”

  She made no move to take the weapon. “I can’t, either. He trusts us.”

  She yawned. A few seconds later he did likewise. Then the dog yawned, too. Gunnar fought another yawn.

  “Something—aangh—wrong—aangh—with that meat!” he cried, sudden alarm struggling with drowsiness. “I feel doped!”

  DROWSINESS WON. He leaned back against the straw in the darkness and closed his eyes.

  Martha’s eyelids were heavy but she was still a nurse. She shook him violently. “Sleep in those wet clothes and you’ll wake up with pneumonia. Get them off!” she ordered.

  Dizzily they undressed in the blackness, wringing out their sopping clothing and hanging it on projecting points of rock in the cave. Before they finished the dog was snoring loudly in the straw.

  Martha felt silly and lightheaded. “Gunnar,” she said. “Let’s call him Frankie. He sings.” She giggled.

  Then she yawned once more, burrowed into the straw and was sound asleep.

  Gunnar had just time to place the two guns and his knife nearby before he too lost consciousness . . .

  . . . Heat. Cold. Heat again. Violent motion. A ripping shock. The sensati
ons would have been excruciatingly painful to any Martian still possessed of anything so atavistic as a pain sense.

  Motion impulses were replaced by vague manifestations of the presence of alien life forms nearby. Two units of alien life. Sensations of Erg becoming the center of some unintelligible, barbaric scene of jubilation, as though he were being received with great joy.

  Yark was mildly surprised. Life on this distant planet had evolved further than he had anticipated. The ceremony was confusing, but at least those organisms had developed sufficiently to recognize Erg’s inherent superiority and to receive him accordingly.

  Rapidly the jubilation died away. Erg was entering the stage of total quiescence, and evidently these alien creatures had quiescent periods too.

  The flow of thought impulses ceased and the assembly waited, members gossiping mentally while Yark kept his brain receptive.

  Time passed, and suddenly an inaudible scream of mental anguish was ripped from Yark’s brain before he could repress it. The assembly came to instant attention, all mental small talk forgotten.

  Yark writhed. Differentiation had begun—but what differentiation! Erg, the incomparable Erg, the most carefully normalized of all Martian personalities—had suddenly developed advanced multiple schizophrenia. He had split into three personalities, two disgustingly atavistic, while the third—ugh! That one was indescribably horrid. Yark had just time to distinguish between the three when their thought trains impinged on his brain, all three at once.

  Yark’s brain was shaken to its very foundations by the intensity of their un-Martian confusion. Fear and anger and snarling hatred and despair and the nearness of deadly peril and the desire to do something to protect something else, emotions which Yark had never encountered in the entire span of his existence, all swirled through his mind at once in sickening profusion.

  Erg, pure, beautiful, perfect, non-atavistic Erg, thinking such black and unenlightened emotion-thoughts!

  Yark was outraged, nonplussed and confounded by Erg’s incontrovertible symptoms of atavistic schizophrenia. Once more his mind registered a mental titter, this time from more than one member of the audience . . .