Takeoff! (36 page)

So Petty shoots her through the head;

He fills her noggin full of lead;

And sweet Kathleen falls over dead;

She doesn’t even groan.

Poor Jommy slams his auto door

And drives away in tears.

Of course, he gets away once more.

We now skip seven years.

The Slans are up to their old tricks.

They raid his hideout in the sticks.

Poor Tommy’s in an awful fix,

In trouble to his ears.

With rays they blast his hideout, and

He runs out into space.

Although they have the upper hand;

They’re led a merry chase.

I hardly think I need to say

That once again he gets away.

He does it twenty times a day;

By now it’s commonplace.

He goes to Mars because he thinks

True Slans are hidden there.

He soon finds that idea stinks;

They aren’t there anywhere.

“A most disgusting state,” says he,

“The only place that they can be

Is highly dangerous to me;

I wonder if I dare?”

So, back on Earth, he sneaks into

The offices of Gray.

He’s caught, and Gray says,

“This won’t do. I fear you’ll have to pay.”

For Gray, it seems, is not a man;

Instead we find that
he’s
a Slan.

Says Gray: “I do not think you can

Expect to get away.”

Then Jommy shrugs and says,

“Pooh-pooh,” And gives his head a toss.

Gray grins and shouts, “Hurray for you!

You must be Jommy Cross!

My daughter Kathleen Layton Gray

Is somehow still alive today!”

Poor Jommy nearly faints away,

He’s thrown for such a loss.

The story’s ended at this spot;

I trust you get the gist.

This is a Dickens of a plot;

The point cannot be missed.

The story of a little boy

Pursued by all the
hoi polloi—

And so Van Vogt, we note with joy,

Gives us a brand new Twist.

POUL ANDERSON’S
“THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS”

A Calypso in Search of a Rhyme

By Randall Garrett

I said
earlier that
constructing
light verse
is
like
an engineering
project,
and
that the
rhyming must be precise.
But rules are
made
to
be
broken;
you just
have to know what
you’re doing.

This is
the only one
of
these Reviews
in
Verse that was written to
be sung.
(The others have been
sung
to various
tunes
at
science fiction
conventions, but that’s not
my doing.)

The
first time
Poul
Anderson
heard
this
one
sung, he
laughed. Now
he just
looks
pained.
Too
much of
a
good thing.

The
song is, as
the subtitle
says,
a calypso.
It sounds
best when
done
with a broad
Jamaican
accent.

Here’s a tale of knighthood’s flower

And of one man’s finest hour:

The story of a most strange land,

Of Holger Carlsen’s little band,

Of fights with trolls and giants, and

The winning of a swan-may’s hand.

By one of Denmark’s noblest scions.

(Chorus)
Three
Red
Hearts
and
Three Gold
Lions!

Holger Carlsen’s fighting Nazis;

While he’s dodging their pot-shots, he’s

Wounded badly in the head,

But he does not fall down dead,

Nor go to hospital bed,

But to Middle World instead.

Magic here holds sway, not science.

(Chorus)
Three
Red
Hearts
and
Three Gold
Lience!

When he wake up, there beside him,

Stands, for Carlsen to ride him,

A horse with armor, shield and sword,

Clothing and misericord,

Fine enough for any lord;

Holger Carlsen climb aboard.

Hungry, he must search for viands.

(Chorus)
Three Red Hearts
and
Three Gold Liands!

Holger rides up to a cottage,

Where an old witch offers pottage.

“How can I get home?” says he.

“Well,” the witch says, “seems to me

That thou ought to go and see

Good Duke Alfric in Faerie.

He will aid in gaining thy ends.”

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold
Ly-ends!

Off he rides to land of Faerie

With Hugi, a dwarf who’s very

Dour and speaks much like a Scot

(Which he may be, like as not),

Though ofttimes he talks a lot.

Next the sex come in the plot.

(Please don’t take offense at my hints.)

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold Ly-hints!

Here she is, named Alianora;

Holger really does go for her.

She can change into a swan

And go flying on and on.

She make friends with doe and fawn;

He feel love about to dawn.

But he’s pure, so pardon my yawns.

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold
Ly-yawns!

Off to Faerie they go quickly,

Where the light is dim and sickly.

Alfric and Morgan-le’Fe

Ask Holger to spend the day

‘Neath Elf Hill not far away;

He is saved by his swan-may;

Beneath that hill, one night is eons.

(Chorus)
Three Red Hearts
and
Three Gold
Leons!

Off they flee across the border;

Spooks pursue on every quarter;

First a dragon overhead

Holger Carlsen kill him dead;

Next a giant huge and dread

Who is looking to be fed.

Holger holds him in abeyance.

(Chorus) Three Red Hearts and Three Gold Leyance!

“Fight with riddles,” says the giant;

Holger Carlsen’s quite compliant.

So they fight with quip and pun

Till the U-V of the sun

Hit that giant like a gun.

“He’s stoned!” says Holger, “Now let’s run.”

All the air is filled with ions.

(Chorus) Three Red Hearts and Three Gold Lions!

Next they ride into a village

Where a werewolfs bent on pillage.

Who the warg is, folks can’t guess.

Holger Carlsen solves the mess,

And he makes that warg confess

She’s the local young princess.

“Now,” he says, “it’s out of my hands.”

(Chorus) Three Red Hearts and Three Gold Ly-hands!

When the village folk release ‘em

On to Tarnberg go the threesome.

By a good mage they are told

They must find a very old

Sword, that’s worth its weight in gold

At St. Grimmin’s-in-the-Wold.

He found this out at a séance.

(Chorus) Three Red Hearts and Three Gold Leance!

Meanwhile, they have met a knightly

Saracen, with manners sprightly.

Northward they all head apace,

Searching for that dreadful place.

But the swan-may’s pretty face

Is hurting Holger’s state of grace.

“Should I,” says he, “yield to my yens?”

(Chorus) Three Red Hearts and Three Gold Ly-yens!

Holger’s kidnapped by a nixie

(That’s an underwater pixie).

Nixie, who is on the make,

Drags Holger beneath the lake.

“This is more than I can take!”

Holger says, “I’ll make a break.

Come on,” says he, “let us flee hence!”

(Chorus) Spoken:
Flee hence?

Spoken: Uh—fly hence?

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold Ly-hence!

Now to blast their hopes asunder,

They find that they must go under

Neath a mountain, where a troll

Lurks in his disgusting hole.

They kill him and head towards their goal;

Holger says, “Now, bless my soul,

That was worse than fighting giants.”

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold
Liants!

Now, though it’s no place for women,

They come to church of St. Grimmin.

Round the altar they all flock:

Holger pries up big stone block

There is sword beneath the rock;

Holger says, “Now, this I grok!

We found it, though surrounded by haunts.”

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold Ly-haunts!

End of story! Jesu Christe!

Seems to me it’s kind of misty.

He should be belted and earled,

But through space-time he is hurled,

And, un-knighted and un-girled,

He ends up in our own dull world.

His future’s vague as that of Zion’s.

(Chorus)
Three Red
Hearts and
Three Gold
Lions!

JOHN W. CAMBELL’S
“WHO GOES THERE?”

By Randall Garrett

John Campbell had his first story published in
1931,
in the old
Hugo
Gernsback
Amazing Stories.
During the next seven years,
he
not only began to rival
E. E.
Smith as a writer of far-out space opera, but, under the pen name “Don A. Stuart,” wrote some very perceptive and sensitive stories in quite another style.
He
became editor of
Astounding
in
1938,
and wrote very little thereafter except for his thought-provoking land often just plain provoking) editorials for the magazine.

Who Goes There?
was published in
1938
under the Stuart byline, and when I first read it, I didn’t know Stuart was Campbell. What I
did
know is that it scared the daylights out of me. It still does.

A very bad movie called
The Thing from Outer Space
was presumably based on it about
1950,
but the resemblance was slight. James Arness stalked through it, looking like a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and a triffid, and bearing no similarity whatever to Campbell’s horror.

When I showed this verse to John, his only comment was: “Well, it’s a hell of a lot better than
The Thing.”

Here’s a tale of chilling horror

For the sort of guy who more or

Less thinks being an explorer

Is the kind of life for him.

If he finds his life a bore, he

Ought to read this gory story,

For he’ll find exploratory

Work is really rather grim.

For the story starts by stating

That some guys investigating

The Antarctic are debating

On exactly what to do

With a monster they’ve found frozen

Near the campsite they have chose,

And the quarrel grows and grows, un-

Til they’re in an awful stew.

There’s a guy named Blair who wants to r-

Eally check up on this monster

And dissect it. To his conster-

Nation, everyone’s in doubt.

So, of course, he starts in pleading,

And the rest of them start heeding

All his statements, and conceding

That the Thing should be thawed out.

So they let this Thing of evil

Start to melt from its primeval

Sheath of ice; they don’t perceive a l-

Ot of trouble will ensue.

When the Thing is thawed, it neatly

Comes to life, and smiling sweetly,

It absorbs some men completely,

Changing them to monsters, too!

Now we reach the story’s nub, il

Luminating all the trouble;

Each new monster is a double

For the men they each replace.

Since it seems a man’s own mother

Couldn’t tell one from the other,

These guys all watch one another,

Each with fear upon his face.

And so then the men are tested

To see who has been digested,

And who’s been left unmolested,

But the test don’t work! It’s hexed!

So each man just sits there, shrinking

From the others, madly thinking,

As he watches with unblinking

Gaze, and wonders—
Who Goes Next?