by one who should know better
The space rocket Clarissa was nine days out from Venus. The members of
the crew were also out for nine days. They were hunters, fearless
expeditionists who bagged game in Venusian jungles. At the start of our
story they are busy bagging their pants, not to forget their eyes. A
sort of lull has fallen over the ship (Note: a lull is a time warp that
frequently attacks rockets and seduces its members into a siesta). It
was during this lull that Anthony Quelch sat sprawled at his typewriter
looking as baggy as a bag of unripe grapefruit. ANTHONY QUELCH, the
Cosmic Clamor Boy, with a face like turned linoleum on the third term,
busy writing a book: "Fascism is Communism with a shave" for which he
would receive 367 rubles, 10 pazinkas and incarceration in a cinema
showing Gone With The Wind.
The boys upstairs were throwing a party in the control room. They had
been throwing the same party so long the party looked like a worn out
first edition of a trapeze artist. There is doubt in our mind as to
whether they were trying to break the party up or just do the morning
mopping and break the lease simultaneously. Arms, legs and heads
littered the deck. The boys, it seems, threw a party at the drop of a
chin. Sort of a space cataclysm with rules and little regulation--kind
of an atomic convulsion in the front parlor. The neighbors never
complained. The neighbors were 450 million miles away. And the boys were
tighter than a catsup bottle at lunch-time. The last time the captain
had looked up the hatch and called to his kiddies in a gentle voice,
"HELL!" the kiddies had thrown snowballs at him. The captain had
vanished. Clever way they make these space bombs nowadays. A few minutes
previous the boys had been tearing up old Amazings and throwing them at
one another, but now they contented themselves with tearing up just the
editors. Palmer was torn in half and he sat in a corner arguing with
himself about rejecting a story for an hour before someone put him
through an orange juice machine killing him. (Orange juice sorry, now?)
And then they landed on Venus. How in heck they got back there so quick
is a wonder of science, but there they were. "Come on, girls!" cried
Quelch, "put on your shin guards, get out there and dig ditches for good
old W.P.A. and the Rover Boys Academy, earth branch 27!"
Out into the staggering rain they dashed. Five minutes later they came
back in, gasping, reeling. They had forgotten their corsets! The
Venusians closed in like a million land-lords. "Charge, men!" cried
Quelch, running the other way. And then--BATTLE! "What a fight; folks,"
cried Quelch. "Twenty thousand earth men against two Venusians! We're
outnumbered, but we'll fight!" BLOOSH! "Correction--ten thousand men
fighting!" KERBLOM! "One hundred men from earth left!" BOOM! "This is
the last man speaking, folks! What a fight. I ain't had so much fun
since--Help, someone just clipped my corset strings!" BWOM! "Someone
just clipped me!"
The field was silent. The ship lay gleaming in the pink light of dawn
that was just blooming over the mountains like a pale flower. The two
Venusians stood weeping over the bodies of the Earthlings like onion
peelers or two women in a bargain basement. One Venusian looked at the
other Venusian, and in a high-pitched, hoarse, sad voice said: "Aye,
aye, aye--THIS--HIT SHOODEN HEPPEN TO A DOG--NOT A DOIDY LEEDLE DOG!"
And dawn came peacefully, like beer barrels, rolling.
_The Intruder_
_emil petaja_
It was in San Francisco, on the walk above the sand and surf that
pounded like the heart of the earth. There was wind, the sky and sea
blended in a grey mist.
I was sitting on a stone bench watching a faint hint of distant smoke,
wondering what ship it was and from what far port.
Mine was a pleasent wind--loneliness. So when he came, wrapped in his
great overcoat and muffler, hat pulled down, and sat on my bench I was
about to rise and leave him. There were other benches, and I was not in
the mood for idle gossip about Hitler and taxes.
"Don't go. Please." His plea was authentic.
"I must get back to my shop," I said.
"Surely you can spare a moment." I could not even to begin to place the
accent in his voice. Low as a whisper, tense. His deep-set eyes held
me ... his face was pale and had a serenity born of suffering. A placcid
face, not given to emotional betrayels, yet mystical. I sat down again.
Here was someone bewilderingly strange. Someone I wouldn't soon forget.
He moved a hand toward me, as tho to hold me from going, and I saw with
mild curiosity that he wore heavy gloves, like mittens.
"I am not well. I ... I must not be out in the damp air," I said. "But
today I just had to go out and walk. I had to."
"I can understand." I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in his
words. "I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visited
your shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of the
covers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right?"