The Red Journey Back (23 page)

Installment
Two:

Enter
Two-gun Malone, the Boy Wonder of the Martian Wastes. Yippee.

Desperate
Dan Malone leaps wildly across the forest floor. Hopalong Malone does his best,
firing from all fifteen barrels. Destry Junior to the rescue! Will he make it?

O.K.
folks. Answer very simple.

Destry
Junior doesn’t make it.

Destry
Junior is one blamed three-star Fool.

Gesture
much appreciated by self and K. Hogarth. Damsels in distress—welcome sight of
gallant rescuer. But gallant rescuer ought to have known better.

Gallant
rescuer is also captured.

Cut.

Scene
Twenty-five:
one hour later: self, K.
Hogarth and Dead-eyed Dick Malone still prisoner.

Where
are their friends—last seen on their way from spaceship with supine figures of
Oldtimer Martian Settlers, Doc McGillivray and Hank MacFarlane? Nobody knows.

On
all sides (literary stuff) there is an impenetrable wall of the deadly seed
spores. Yet it is a curious aspect of the phenomenon that the intrepid captives
are themselves in a space which has been kept clear, a bubble, as it were, in
the surrounding ellowyi-oud-cli.

Close-up:
Old Jellybags himself.

Kind
friends and gentle people: what do I say now? How do I go on from here?

There
he was, plumb in the center of a great slob of marsh, and there was steam
rising up all around him. He was white. He was big. And he wasn’t no shape at
all. He was all messy and throbbing all the time, and he was all over little
smooth wet wrinkles, all over the kind of white jelly he was. No eyes, no
nothing. Only just all over kind of raw-looking.
 . . .

I
just don’t like to think of Old Jellybags, kind friends. I just don’t
 . . . 
!

And
the thing was that he
had
us—he had us there; and there wasn’t anything we could do. It was just as if
you couldn’t even
think
.
The thoughts were just drained right out of you, the way it maybe is if you are
ever hypnotized, although I haven’t ever been hypnotized, so I don’t know, but
I should think it was like that.

He
was kind of
finding out about us
.
It’s the only way to say it. It was his thoughts that were all around us, and
he was probing and peering into us with those thoughts of his, and he was
trying to find out
what made us
tick.

Our
chums the Terrible Ones were all standing back a bit by this time. They were
just standing all around like slaves or something. After all, they didn’t need
to hold us anymore.
We couldn’t
move.

Well,
what was the answer? How did we get away? ’Cos we did get away—you know that,
else self wouldn’t be writing all this.

Lordy
knows how long he had us there, feeling kind of sick, all three of us. Lordy
knows.

But
we did get away!

How?

Kind
friends, you won’t believe it. But it worked. It worked for no more’n a split
second or two, but it was all we needed. And the clue is what poor old Doc
McGillivray said when he was telling the others about Old Jellybags: the Vivore
couldn’t
quite
“fool all of the people all of the time.” No, sir. The process was kind of
gradual. Once he had you, of course, he had you—the way he’d had Mac and
Steve—but it took a little time till it was all complete—that was why those two
had managed to go on sending messages right till the end, and it was also why—

However.

You
see, I began to notice something. I began to notice that Old J.B. was so intent
to get to know things in a hurry, sort of, that over and above the gradual-control
stuff, he kind of
took us in
turn.
He kind of concentrated a bit more on
Katey for a moment, and then he concentrated a bit more on Mike for a moment,
and then he concentrated a bit more on me for a moment. If we’d stayed much
longer he’d’ve managed all three at once, but right at the beginning that was
the way it was. ’Course, when he wasn’t concentrating on me, I still couldn’t
move much, but I could, I just
could
think some of my own thoughts.

And
it had all just dawned on me, and I was kind of relaxing for a minute in one of
those spells, when suddenly I heard a whisper. Yessir! Right in my ear. I’d
forgotten all about the whatsit inside our helmets that could make us hear one
another. And it was Mike’s voice.

He
says, “Maggie,” he says.

And
it was a minute or two before I really got it that it
was
Mike speaking, but I did. ’Cos you
see he was talking in Double-talk himself—that’s where the Double-talk comes
in. It was really “Aggiemi” he said. And I tried to answer back in the same
way. But I couldn’t, for all of a sudden Old Jellybags was concentrating right
on me again, and there was no hope. But when he switched away from me onto
Katey I managed it, ’cos there was Mike’s voice again, and he says:

“Maggie,”
he says, very weak and faint, “can you hear me, Maggie?” (or rather: “Anci ooyi
earhi eemi, Aggiemi?”)

And
this time self makes it.

“Yes,”
self says, “can hear you, Mike.”

And
Mike says, still in Double-talk:

“You
get the idea? It’s one of us and then another of us, and in the times between
we can talk, the other two, just a little, not much, but enough.”

And
self says yes, that self had jumped to it, and Mike says he had spoken to Katey
in this way the last time it was me was the one being hypnotized, and that
maybe we could work out something, and self says fine and dandy only what? And
Mike says he has an idea and it maybe sounds silly but it might work, and just
at that moment Old Jellybags swings around to concentrate on Mike and he has to
shut up—but of course self can talk to Katey now for a little bit, and self and
Katey have some dialogue along same lines before self is under the influence
again in her turn.

Get
it?

It
took hours. All in Double-talk. I don’t really know why we did use Double-talk—except
maybe it helped to make it all a bit more secret to us. We were all a bit dopey
and it seemed a good idea at the time. ’Course, if Old J.B. had chosen to do a
bit of concentrating on all of us together we’d’ve been caught out. He could
have understood Double-talk just as easily as any other kind of talk—not that
he could hear, of course, for he’d no ears, but it wasn’t words that mattered
to him at all, but the thought behind the words.

Still,
luckily he
didn’t
tackle us all three at once—and we took tremendous care right through only to
talk when he wasn’t looking, so to say.

Well
then: Mike’s idea for a way to escape seems just blamed silly when you set it
down like this on paper—I’m almost ashamed to do it! But I told you we were
very dopey when we were half under the influence, and it was all we could think
of, and anyway it worked, kind friends.

Mike
said (only it took a long time for him to say all this, partly to me and partly
to Katey) Mike said: “You know back home,” Mike said, “when you’re with the
gang, and you suddenly say to one of them ‘Look out behind,’ why you can be
doggone sure that just for a split second he
will
look out behind. Well,” says Mike, “suppose
we did that with Old J.B. in front there? ’Course he can’t
look
behind, we know that, but if we all
three all thought at the same time, as hard as we could, that there was
something
dangerous behind him, maybe just for
the one moment he would switch
his
thoughts away from us. And we can move so quickly on Mars that if we all made
one great jump over to the left it would take us twenty feet at least, and then
Old Jellybags wouldn’t be so strong in his power over us and we could jump
again, and then again, and we might get away, right outside, and we would only
have the Terrible Ones to cope with, and we could maybe outpace them if we took
them by surprise.”

Well,
Mike said all that, bit by bit, and in the old Double-talk, to each of us, and
Katey and I talked about it too, when Mike was under the influence. And so we
built it all up. And even at the time it seemed silly, but we had to do
something, and it was a long shot.

Once
or twice, as we worked it all out, there was the notion that maybe Old
Jellybags was wise to us. He started switching from one to the other more
quickly. But we kept it hidden by only doing a little bit at a time. And at
last we were all ready.

“Next
time,” says Mike, “—next time around and we’ll do it. He’s at Katey now. He’ll
switch to me next. Tell Katey to be ready. Then after me he’ll switch to you.
Now, you know there’s just a moment when you feel it all coming on as he does
his full hypnotizing stuff? Well, just at that moment, when it’s coming to you
and leaving me, do everything you can to shout what we’ve agreed to shout.
Katey can do it at the same time, and so will I, just when the ’fluence is
leaving me, you see. He won’t hear us, of course, but while we shout we’ll all
three
think
at the same time, and the thought behind the shout will get over to him, and
with luck it might work—he might just switch away from all three of us at the
same time, and the minute you feel free of him, jump, my girl, as hard as you
can!”

We
did it.

We
built it all up.

We
had worked out what to say, you see. Not that it mattered what we did say—it
was the thought behind it that mattered. If we could only
believe
it strongly enough ourselves
 . . .

I
got the signal from Katey while Mike was under the influence. Then I felt Old
Jellybags beginning to switch to me. And I screwed up all my concentration,
every single ounce of it, and we all
did
shout at the same time, with a
tremendous
effort, and we almost deafened ourselves inside the helmets. And you’ll never
guess what we shouted, and if it seems silly you’ll remember that we were all
dopey when we worked it out, and anyway as I’ve said it wasn’t the words that
mattered at all.

We
shouted:

“Look
out behind there!
Paul Revere!
”

It
was all we could think of—it was all we could agree on. And we thought so hard,
so hard. I know I thought so hard myself it was as if, just for the one quick
second, I had a kind of vision behind Old Jellybags of that old hero we used to
read about when we were very young, galloping to the rescue. There was a kind
of shadow, very fleeting, in the forest beyond, of a great black horse and a
man astride her, coming to save us. I thought so hard, you see.

And
it was the thought that did it. There must have been, just for a second, a
sudden sense of some kind of danger from all three of us to Old Jellybags. He
didn’t look around, of course—
but he did
switch his thought away from us,
kind friends!
I felt all of a sudden free—and I remembered to jump—and I was suddenly flying
through the air with Mike on one side and Katey on the other!