Second of Four Parts
SYNOPSIS OF PART ONE:
Earthman Floyd Scrilch, interplanetary adventurer, finds himself cast willy-nilly into cosmic intrigue, a gallant but tempest-tossed figure hopelessly at the mercy of forces beyond his comprehension. Although he cannot fathom the motivations of the Invisible Chessplayer (who is himself subject to the implacable compulsions arising out of the penny-a-word practices of the sort of pulp magazines in which storied like this are usually found) Scrilch goes gamely on, bloody but unbowed, wondering vaguely what the hell it's all about.
Escaping handily from an encounter with the Green Ones of Xfuz, Scrilch gets away with nothing more serious than a slashed throat administered by a treacherous priest. Jettisoned at sea, he is picked up by a pirate vessel manned by the brutal Eshb Hack, brother of Kors Hack, the priest. Revealing his identity, Scrilch is immediately assailed. Gun drawn, he steps forward to make Eshb Hack his prisoner, but the pirate leader is unconcerned by the threat.
"Quarter me this pig," Eshb Hack ultimates imperiously.
Four burly crewmen step forward to block the onward motion of Floyd Scrilch. "Out of my way," Scrilch orders. The crewmen pay no attention. They lift their shimmering swords high overhead. The four razor-keen blades descend implacably as Scrilch rasps threateningly, "Aliens, you will pay for this."
NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY
DIRE MENACE AND DEVIOUS MACHINATIONS
Lithely stepping to one side, Scrilch easily avoided the slicing blades descending toward him. A moment later his blaster flashed purple, and the booming laughter of Floyd Scrilch vied with the thunder of the waves as four pirates were converted instantaneously to sub-etheric vibrations.
"Ho!" Scrilch cried vehemently.
"Blackguard!" Eshb Hack expostulated malevolently.
The pirate leader, incensed at the casual way Scrilch had ashed four of his finest men, drew his own sword and swaggered down the deck toward Scrilch, who stood waiting for him, arms akimbo, head thrust forward defiantly, blaster grasped firmly and confidently in his starboard hand.
Sword against blaster, alien against earthman, pirate against spacefarer, villain against hero, they confronted one another balefully.
"You first," Scrilch said sneeringly.
"No, you," Eshb Hack retorted contemptuously.
"You," Scrilch insisted dogmatically.
"You," Eshb Hack replied catagorically.
"Okay," Scrilch said. He hefted his blaster and prepared to convert the towering alien to a sizzling heap of dephlogistonized rubble. It was hardly the gentlemanly thing to do, but under the circumstances Scrilch felt that it was the most sensible action he could take. A Storm was coming up rapidly, scuffing purplingly across the low sweaty horizon, and they could ill afford to haggle over matters of chivalry when in only a few moments the ship would be wallowing in rough seas.
"Yoicks!" cried a voice from the poopdeck. "Monster boarding! Monster!"
Scrilch swivelled his left eye easily in a leeward direction and was chilled to see four bluish tentacles dangling over the gunwales. A moment later the slimy hideous bulk of a zargle had hauled itself to the deck, and stood there leering grotesquely, dripping wet and giving off the foul rotting smell of a thing of the sea-bottoms.
Scrilch faced it with equanimity. It came lurching toward him, a great shambling tower of bluish-purple flesh, with its huge saucer-shaped eyes rolling excitedly, its hungry jaws working, its myriad tentacles quivering with expectation.
"Watch out," said the quiet, confident voice of Scrilch's mentor, Mentor, lensing across the gulf of space to him from his hideout on far off Anemia. "It's a female, and she's in heat. This could be messy."
All thought of Eshb Hack and his pirates vanished from Scrilch's mind as he confronted the primordial prehensile predatory primeval polymorphous cephalopod that slithered across the deck toward him. For a moment, Scrilch's senses deserted him, and where the zargle had stood Scrilch now saw a beautiful damsel, nude and enticing, her coral-tipped breasts rising and falling in eager anticipation, her shapely form pulsing with desire. The earthman, rapt with rapture, moved toward the vision of delight.
"It's a trap, Scrilch!" came Mentor's crackling mental crackle. "Don't be fooled. That's nothing but an oversize octopus with a yen for Earthmen!"
"You're wrong. It's a beautiful damsel with coral-tipped breasts," Scrilch shot back indignantly. "You know how long it's been since I've seen one of those?"
"It's an octopus, you fugghead," the Anemian insisted. "Can't you see that?"
Scrilch paused, making the cortico-thalamic hesitation that has been the undoing of so many good men, and the scales dropped from his eyes. Once more he saw the ferocious zargle in its true form.
He laughed scornfully. "That's no octopus," he said.
"It is," Mentor insisted pedantically.
"I only count six tentacles," Scrilch informed him triumphantly. "That makes it a sexopus."
"Scrilch rushed forward to bliss.
"Forgot about me, huh?" a hoarse voice rumbled hoarsely behind him.
Scrilch turned.
Eshb Hack! The dread pirate leader, advancing toward him with sword on high!
Scrilch was equal to the challenge. A quick nudge on his blaster's firing stud and Eshb Hack was gone, reduced to a few drifting wisps of contragravitated anti-photons. Laughing gleefully, Scrilch kept the blaster's beam trained on the ozone-smelling void where his enemy had been.
"Take that!" Scrilch exulted ecstatically. "And that!" he ecstatized exultantly. "And that! And that! And that!"
"You damned fool, you've blasted a hole right through the ship," came the annoyed voice of the zargle. With one quick bound she leaped overboard and was lost in the roiling sea.
Scrilch scratched his forehead in puzzlement. Somehow he had miscalculated, it seemed. It was almost to his knees, now. He began to think that perhaps it had been a miscalculation to toss away his Lens during that silly argument.
And now the storm broke in all its malevolent fury. Scrilch stood on the quarter-deck, watching the dark ocean rising about him, watching the savage fist of the storm descending toward him, and wishing he knew how to swim.
It was a tense moment. Scrilch's jaws clenched. How was he going yo get out of this one, he asked himself? Could he rely on his author? Suppose the author was a damned fool, too?
The storm burst.
The sea rose.
Shoulders square, jaw akimbo, Floyd Scrilch waited steadfast for his doom.
TO BE CONTINUED
-- Bob Silverberg
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated August 29, 2002. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.