It was the first time a Flesso had met an
Earthman face to face. And the Flesso appeared
puzzled as to why the Earthman showed no fear!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Marten wasn't prepared for it when the alien tractor-beam grabbed his
little ship. He had been in the Fourth Quadrant of Fless territory,
threading an uneasy course through the extraterrestrials' home grounds,
but he hadn't expected to be caught so suddenly or so hard.
The ship stopped in mid-flight abruptly--so abruptly that Marten's head
was slammed back against the rear of the seat, and for a moment he was
paralyzed by the shock of what had happened.
But only for a moment. His toe reached out, snapped the pedal on the
subspace radio, and an instant later the voice of Earth Central's
operator said, "What is it, Marten?"
"Tell them I've been caught," Marten said crisply. "Tell 'em the
Flesso patrols got me. And--"
The radio went dead as the Flesso dampers got to it. Marten pulled
himself forward and ran his eyes over the instrument panel. Against the
dark velvet of space, a dull-gray Flesso warship was swelling in the
viewplate, preparing to scoop up its prey. Marten had been caught like
a fly in molasses.
The odds had been against his stunt anyway. Theoretically, such a
small ship as the little scout he was piloting should have been able
to get through the Flesso patrols easily--but in practice, the network
of spybeams stretching through the entire Quadrant were efficient and
near-infallible defenses, as Marten was discovering now.
_But I had lousy luck too_, he thought. _I wandered right up to the
biggest warship in the whole damned fleet. Must have come within a
light week or less._
There wasn't much point in trying to break away, now. Marten was
trapped--thoroughly and unarguably. The little scout ship didn't carry
a tenth the power he would need to break from the grasp of the big
battle cruiser. And as for the scout ship's armament, it wasn't enough
even to tickle the screens of a battleship like this one. Scout ships
depended on speed and indetectability, and neither attribute was of
much value now.
Within minutes, the heavy tractor beams pulled the smaller ship into
the yawning airlock of the huge Flesso cruiser.
_Okay_, Marten thought. He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair,
and waited. There was nothing else he could do--until a Fless tried to
enter the ship.
* * * * *
Time passed. The little scout ship was drawn further and further into
the monster Flesso ship. It was now entirely enclosed by darkness,
imprisoned within the metal hull of the huge battleship of space.
Sitting inside, Marten waited patiently. The Flesso had been wanting to
capture an Earthman for a long time. Well, now they'd succeeded. They'd
captured their first Earth ship.
Suddenly, Marten's damped communicator screen came back to life. A
scaly, toad-like face appeared, and Marten stared blandly at the three
red-rimmed, fiery eyes that confronted him.
"I see you are still alive, Earthman!"
"No thanks to you, ugly-face!" Marten returned. "I'm hungry, though. Am
I going to stay for dinner, or can I leave now?"
Earth and Fless had long been in communication with each other; the
war had lasted for nearly five years, ever since the first treacherous
Flesso sneak attack on a Terran outpost. The beings from the planet
Fless were the coldest, most dangerous aliens Earth had yet encountered
in its expansion to the stars.
During the war, neither side had succeeded in capturing one of the
other's men alive. The ravening energies of a billion-cycle space gun
tore a ship completely apart, leaving no survivors. But now Marten had
been captured--and he was determined to make the most of it.
"Keep your tongue!" the toad-faced Fless snarled. "Do you know who I
am?"
"Santa Claus? Uncle Sam? The Wicked Witch of the North?"