Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (9 page)

Then it reached out its right hand with finger bones the size of table
knives, and laid hold on a young tree and yanked it out by the roots,
without air much a-trying. It stood and tore off branches, easy as you'd
peel the shucks from an ear of corn. It made itself a club thataway, and
hiked it over the low skull and moved to close in on me again.

No point in it for me to try to run away from such a thing, and well I
knew it. Turn and run from a haunt or a devil, it runs after you. If it
catches you, then what? I quick grabbed up the shovel where it leant on
the walnut trunk. Compared to that club the bony thing had, it was like a
ball bat against a wagon tongue.

"What you want of me?" I said, but I felt I didn't have to be told that.

Bones like those, long worn bare and scattered apart and now joined and
made to live by words of power, they'd wake up hungry. They'd be starved
for food. If they got food, maybe they'd put flesh back on themselves, be
themselves as they'd been once before. What food was closer to hand than I
was?

Man-eaters—such things were told of by old Indians, wise men who'd
sworn to them. The wendigo, up in Northern parts. The anisgina,
recollected in Cherokee tales to make you shiver. Supposed to be all died
out and gone these days, but when bones rise up …

The bones came a-slaunching close. I heard them click.

I hiked up the shovel with both my hands, and held the blade edge forward
like an axe. I'd chop with that. The bones stood a second, the whole
skeleton of them, tall over me. In the glow of the moon those bones looked
like frosty silver. My head wouldn't have come put to those big cliffs of
shoulders. The jaws opened and shut. They made a snapping sound.

Because they wanted to bite a chunk out of me. Those teeth in the jaws,
they were as long and sharp as knives. They could break a man's arm off if
they jammed into it.

But I didn't run. To run nair had helped me much in such a case. I'd stand
my ground, fight. If I lost the fight, maybe Hallcott could get away and
tell the tale. I bent my knees and made my legs springly. I hoped I could
move faster and surer than those big, lumbering bones.

Preacher Melick had said the Bible words to make them live, had said them
without a-thinking. And that song, I'd have been better off if I'd nair
sung it. I watched the thick, bony arms rise up and fetch the club down to
bust my head.

That quick, I sidestepped and danced clear, and down came the big hunk of
tree, so hard on the ground it boomed there like a slamming door. I made a
swing with my own shovel, but the club was up again and in the way. My
blade bounced off. Again the club hiked up over me; it made a dark blotch
against the moon. I set myself to dodge again.

Then it was that Embro Hallcott, come back up just behind me, started in
to sing in his husky voice:

The toe bone's connected from the foot bone,
The foot bone's
connected from the heel bone …

And quick on from there, about the shin and thigh and hip bones, about the
back bone and the shoulder bone. I stood with my shovel held up in both
hands, and watched the thing come apart before my eyes.

It had dropped that club that would have driven me into the ground like a
nail. It swayed in broken-up moonlight that shone through tree branches.
It fell to pieces while I watched.

I looked at the bones, down and scattered out now. The skull stared up at
me, and one more time it gave a hungry snap of those jaws. I heard:

The neck bone's connected from the jaw bone,
The jaw bone's
connected from the head bone,
Hear the word of the Lord.

The jaw bone snapped no more. It rolled free from the skull.

Hallcott was up beside me. I could feel him shake all over.

"It worked," he said, in the tiredest voice you could call for.

"That song built him up," I said back. "And that song, sung different,
took him back down again. Though it appears to me the word should be
'disconnected.'"

"Sure enough?" he wondered me. "I don't know that word, that disconnected.
But I thought on an old tale, how a man read in a magic book and devilish
things came all 'round him, so he read the book backward and made them go
away." His eyes bugged as he looked at a big thigh bone, dropped clear of
its kneecap and shin. "What if it hadn't worked, John?"

"Point is, it did work and thank the good Lord for that," I told him.
"Now, how you say for us to put him back in his coffin again, and not sing
air note to him this time?"

Hallcott didn't relish to touch the bones, and, gentlemen, neither did I.
I scooped them in the shovel, all the way along to where the grave was
open and the coffin lid flung back. In I shoved them, one by one, in a
heap on top of the Turkey Track quilt. I sought out air single bone, even
the little separate toe bones that come in the song, a-picking them up
with the shovel blade. Somewhere I've heard tell there are two hundred and
eight bones in a skeleton. Finally I got all of them. I swung the lid
down, and Hallcott fastened the hook into the staple. Then we stood and
harked. There was just a breath of sweet, cool breeze in some bushes. Nair
other sound that we made out.

Hallcott picked up another of the shovels, and quick we filled that grave
in again. We patted it down smooth on top. Again we harked. Nair sound
from where we'd buried the bones a second time.

"I reckon he's at rest now," I felt like a-saying. "Leastways, all
disconnected again thataway, he can't get up unless some other gone gump
comes here and sings that song to him again."

"For hell's sake, whatever was he?" Hallcott asked, of the whole starry
night sky.

"Maybe not even science folks could answer that," I said. "I'd reckon he
was of a devil—people long gone from this country—a people
that wasn't man nor either beast; a kind of people that pure down had to
go, but gets recollected in ugly old tales of man-eating things. That's
all I can think to say to it."

I flung down the shovel and went back to where my stuff lay against the
walnut tree. I slung my blanket roll and soogin on my back, and took my
guitar up under my arm. Right that moment, I sure enough didn't have a
wish to play it.

"John," said Hallcott. "Where you reckon to head now?"

"Preacher Melick kindly invited me to his house. I have it in mind to go
there."

"Me, too, if he's got room for me," said Hallcott. "Money wouldn't buy me
to go nowheres alone in this night. No sir, nor for many a night to come."

The End

© 1981 by Manly Wade Wellman. First published in
Sorceror's
Apprentice,
summer 1981. Permission granted by The Pimlico Agency,
Inc., Agents for Estate of Manly Wade Wellman.

Eric Frank Russell

It was a long time since the
Bustler
had been so silent. She lay in
the Sirian spaceport, her tubes cold, her shell particle-scarred, her air
that of a long-distance runner exhausted at the end of a marathon. There
was good reason for this: she had returned from a lengthy trip by no means
devoid of troubles.

Now, in port, well-deserved rest had been gained if only temporarily.
Peace, sweet peace. No more bothers, no more crises, no more major upsets,
no more dire predicaments such as crop up in free flight at least twice a
day. Just peace.

Hah!

Captain McNaught reposed in his cabin, feet up on desk, and enjoyed the
relaxation to the utmost. The engines were dead, their hellish pounding
absent for the first time in months. Out there in the big city, four
hundred of his crew were making whoopee under a brilliant sun. This
evening, when First Officer Gregory returned to take charge, he was going
to go into the fragrant twilight and make the rounds of neon-lit
civilization.

That was the beauty of making landfall at long last. Men could give way to
themselves, blow off surplus steam, each according to his fashion. No
duties, no worries, no dangers, no responsibilities in spaceport. A haven
of safety and comfort for tired rovers.

Again, hah!

Burman, the chief radio officer, entered the cabin. He was one of the
half-dozen remaining on duty and bore the expression of a man who can
think of twenty better things to do.

"Relayed signal just come in, sir." Handing the paper across, he waited
for the other to look at it and perhaps dictate a reply.

Taking the sheet, McNaught removed the feet from his desk, sat erect, and
read the message aloud.

Terran Headquarters to
Bustler
. Remain Siriport pending further
orders. Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy due there seventeenth. Feldman. Navy
Op. Command, Sirisec.

He looked up, all happiness gone from his leathery features, and groaned.

"Something wrong?" asked Burman, vaguely alarmed.

McNaught pointed at three thin books on his desk. "The middle one. Page
twenty."

Leafing through it, Burman found an item that said:
Vane W. Cassidy,
R-Ad. Head Inspector Ships and Stores.

Burman swallowed hard. "Does that mean—?"

"Yes, it does," said McNaught without pleasure. "Back to training-college
and all its rigmarole. Paint and soap, spit and polish." He put on an
officious expression, adopted a voice to match it. "Captain, you have only
seven ninety-nine emergency rations. Your allocation is eight hundred.
Nothing in your logbook accounts for the missing one. Where is it? What
happened to it? How is it that one of the men's kit lacks an officially
issued pair of suspenders? Did you report his loss?"

"Why does he pick on us?" asked Burman, appalled. "He's never chivvied us
before."

"That's why," informed McNaught, scowling at the wall. "It's our turn to
be stretched across the barrel." His gaze found the calendar. "We have
three days—and we'll need 'em! Tell Second Officer Pike to come here
at once."

Burman departed gloomily. In short time, Pike entered. His face reaffirmed
the old adage that bad news travels fast.

"Make out an indent," ordered McNaught, "for one hundred gallons of
plastic paint, Navy gray, approved quality. Make out another for thirty
gallons of interior white enamel. Take them to spaceport stores right
away. Tell them to deliver by six this evening along with our correct
issue of brushes and sprayers. Grab up any cleaning material that's going
for free."

"The men won't like this," remarked Pike, feebly.

"They're going to love it," McNaught asserted. "A bright and shiny ship,
all spic and span, is good for morale. It says so in that book. Get moving
and put those indents in. When you come back, find the stores and
equipment sheets and bring them here. We've got to check stocks before
Cassidy arrives. Once he's here we'll have no chance to make up shortages
or smuggle out any extra items we happened to find in our hands."

"Very well, sir." Pike went out wearing the same expression as Burman's.

Lying back in his chair, McNaught muttered to himself. There was a feeling
in his bones that something was sure to cause a last-minute ruckus. A
shortage of any item would be serious enough unless covered by a previous
report. A surplus would be bad, very bad. The former implied carelessness
or misfortune. The latter suggested barefaced theft of government property
in circumstances condoned by the commander.

For instance, there was that recent case of Williams of the heavy cruiser
Swift.
He'd heard of it over the spacevine when out around Bootes.
Williams had been found in unwitting command of eleven reels of
electric-fence wire when his official issue was ten. It had taken a
court-martial to decide that the extra reel—which had formidable
barter-value on a certain planet—had not been stolen from
space-stores, or, in sailor jargon, "teleportated aboard." But Williams
had been reprimanded. And that did not help promotion.

He was still rumbling discontentedly when Pike returned bearing a folder
of foolscap sheets.

"Going to start right away, sir?"

"We'll have to." He heaved himself erect, mentally bid good-bye to time
off and a taste of the bright lights. "It'll take long enough to work
right through from bow to tail. I'll leave the men's kit inspection to the
last."

Marching out of the cabin, he set forth toward the bow, Pike following
with broody reluctance.

As they passed the open main lock, Peaslake observed them, bounded eagerly
up the gangway and joined behind. A pukka member of the crew, he was a
large dog whose ancestors had been more enthusiastic than selective. He
wore with pride a big collar inscribed:
Peaslake—Property of S.S.
Bustler. His chief duties, ably performed, were to keep alien rodents off
the ship and, on rare occasions, smell out dangers not visible to human
eyes.

The three paraded forward, McNaught and Pike in the manner of men grimly
sacrificing pleasure for the sake of duty, Peaslake with the panting
willingness of one ready for any new game no matter what.

Reaching the bow-cabin, McNaught dumped himself in the pilot's seat, took
the folder from the other. "You know this stuff better than me—the
chart room is where I shine. So I'll read them out while you look them
over." He opened the folder, started on the first page. "K1. Beam compass, type D, one of."

"Check," said Pike.

"K2. Distance and direction indicator,
electronic, type JJ, one of."

"Check."

"K3. Port and starboard gravitic
meters, Casini models, one pair."

"Check."

Peaslake planted his head in McNaught's lap, blinked soulfully and whined.
He was beginning to get the others' viewpoint. This tedious itemizing and
checking was a hell of a game. McNaught consolingly lowered a hand and
played with Peaslake's ears while he ploughed his way down the list.

"K187. Foam rubber cushions, pilot and
co-pilot, one pair."