Our Price: $4.99 ISBN: Subject: PageTurner - Science Fiction Fantasy Pages: 0 Publication Date: April 2005

MOONWORM'S DANCE

OTHER ALIEN ENCOUNTERS

By

STANLEY MULLEN

(Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine)

A Renaissance E Books publication

ISBN 1-58873-576-1

All rights reserved

2005 by J. M. Stine and the Estate of S. Mullen

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

For information:

Publisher@renebooks.com

PageTurner Editions/Futures Past Science Fiction

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

SPACE TO SWING A CAT

MOONWORM'S DANCE

THE LIVING VORTEX

THE PIT OF NYMPTHONS

GAMMA IS THEE!

MASTER OF THE MOONDOG

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR AND BOOK

Stanley Mullen (1911-73) was a long-time fan of science fiction, fantasy and horror tales. He began selling stories in 1948, in his late 30s and stopped a decade later in 1958 due to health and changing markets, after publishing forty some stories and his only novel, Kinsmen of the Dragon. Although the majority of his stories were colorful pulp action yarns published in Planet Stories, he occasionally wrote a more carefully controlled serious piece for Astounding and contributed dark fantasy to Weird Tales and Fantastic Stories.

Doubtless, his most popular story was "Space to Swing a Cat," which appeared in the June 1958 issue of Astounding, and was nominated for the 1959 Hugo Award for best sf short story. Despite his popularity and Hugo nomination, few of his stories were ever reprinted. Not even "Space to Swing a Cat," which must be one of the most neglected Hugo nominees of all time.

At the same time that he was writing stories like "Space to Swing a Cat," Mullen was working on a series of stories sharing the same futuristic background (technically called a "future history" series). Common elements in these stories were the planet Venus, seen as a dustbowl caused by an ancient atomic war, with life surviving mostly in the Tihar Forest. This mysterious abode was a rich breeding ground for all sorts of mutations due to its strong radioactivity.

Other common elements include such creatures as Wrigglers from Callisto, Venusian swamp slugs and grull-cats, seven-limbed bat-noses from Mercury, iceworms from Neptune, and the deadly windharps of Mars, the amiable moondogs from Titan, along with nympthons, gamma-men, space angels and other outré alien life-forms Mullen specialized in creating. Except for "Space to Swing a Cat," all the stories in this collection are drawn from that common "future history" – making their first-ever republication a major event for all fans of science fantasy and the alien creatures it envisions.

To add to reader enjoyment, we have reproduced the original magazine blurbs for each of these stories.

Jean Marie Stine

SPACE TO SWING A CAT

It was a long, long time ago that Man learned that a horse can run and pull better than he, and that a dog can hunt better. Been quite a while since we've learned anything new...

In space, the big ship and the little ship huddled together. Arnold Brook crawled through the flexible tunnel connecting to the air lock of the tiny spacer. Inside, Brook closed the outer valve and signaled he was coming through. A buzzer sounded, the red blinker went on, and the inner valve clicked, sliding slowly open. Evidently the new fish was already on-ship.

As chief test pilot, Brook had reached the stage of estimating in advance his chances with each new apprentice. His duties included testing new men or surrogates as well as ships. He wondered what the new boy would be like, or would this one be another Pilot Surrogate Number something-or-other? Biolabs had been sending some weirdies lately.

His first sight of Tam, seated arrogantly in the triple-hung pilot's seat playing with the controls, convinced Brook that he was going to have trouble with this one. Tam – P.S. 97C – was a dilly. Becoming instinctively aware of Brook's scrutiny, Tam spun about and transfixed the veteran pilot with a pair of sharply alert yellow-green eyes.

"You're Brook, aren't you? Specialist test-pilot STP 471863H. I've memorized your records."

Brook laughed grimly. "Good. Then you'll know what to expect in the way of a shakedown. I'm tough on apprentices. It keeps them and me alive."

"It has until now," said Tam steadily. "You've never had a fatal accident with an apprentice, have you?"

"Never."

"And you've never given a Pilot Surrogate any kind of passing grade, either?"

"None so far. Maybe I'm harder to please with freaks."

"Controlled mutants, please."

"Man-made freaks," corrected Brook amiably.

"I won't argue with you. I just want to be sure that we understand one another," Tam went on seriously.

"I'm afraid we do," countered Brook, less amiably. "I didn't ask for this job, you know. It was dumped on me. I don't have to like it, and I don't have to like the material they send me. Human apprentices are bad enough, but I won't settle for any substitutes unless they're better than the original."

"I didn't ask for the job either," Tam stated fairly. "I can do the work, but I doubt if I will when people feel about me ... about us, the way you seem to."

"I could be clearer."

Tam stroked a whisker with a beautifully formed finger. "Go ahead," he prodded. "I'm curious. What do you really think of us?"

Brook was irritated or he would never have said it. "I think you're a bunch of stinking animals. I'm just the cage-sweeper in a zoo."

"Unfortunately," muttered Tam, "the olfactory senses of other animals is more sensitive than in humans. And the stench of man has been an offense in our nostrils ever since the gray apes descended from trees."

Brook had the grace to laugh, which eased the tension slightly.

"I apologize for my rudeness," Brook said awkwardly. "I should not have said what I did. And don't let it worry you as far as the test is concerned. You'll get a fair test."

"But you really don't like me?" persisted Tam.

"Let's say I don't like cats. Now that we've settled the relationship between man and the noble beasts which may or may not be his friends, shall we get to work?"

"Whenever you say," agreed Tam eagerly.

"Right. The first thing you have to do is relax. You may as well climb out of that seat and take it easy. Sleep if you can. They'll drop us off in seven hours – 2300 Earth Arbitrary Time – and then you'll take over and run course. And remember, nothing is ever as bad as you feared, or as good as you hoped. You'll never run into anything in normal space-piloting as bad as the measured course. Most work in space is eternal boredom or screaming and continuous emergency. Anybody can stand boredom, so all you'll get in the test is emergency."

"Nothing is ever as bad as you feared, or as good as you hoped," Tam repeated aloud. "That's an awfully gray view of existence."

"Is it? I suppose you prefer bright colors."

Tam laughed. "With me, bright colors are standard equipment."

Tam yawned tigerishly, exposing savage fangs. His peach-fuzzed skin rippled smoothly as he flexed magnificent muscles getting out of the pilot's chair, which was actually more of a cage.

Out of the cage-seat, standing on hind legs, Tam stood taller than a man. His build suggested that he could walk erect or go as a quadruped with equal ease. He walked with pride, seemed alert and intelligent, not given to wasted thought of movement. In him was a natural pride of being which showed in his poise and a catlike grace and sureness of movement. He slipped down the trapeze bars of the ship's framing with the skill and agility of a veteran spaceman. Cat of the catwalks, thought Brook irritably. He looks like a tiger left too long in the rain, bright colors just starting to run together on the fine fur of his coat.

Tam was a cat. A tiger, to be strictly accurate.

In his profession, Brook had expected to catch a few tigers by the tail but not so literally. Deep space is no place for such strenuous exercise. But science must be served, and the Biolabs were serving their science in pretty big platefuls. Tam was a new-model tiger, and even a tame tiger can be a husky handful in space. Biolabs might be, but Brook was not too sure that Tam was tame. The space-testing course would give him an excellent opportunity to find out...

* * * *

Long ago, interplanetary expansion reaching as far as Pluto convinced man of one thing. Before risking the black and empty unknowns beyond the Solar System, man would need a partner with greater strength, endurance, and quicker reflexes than his own. Machines could not completely fill the need. Devices such as mass detectors, proximity alarms and radiation counters could extend man's meager senses. Automatic calculators could solve problems of logic and astrogation more rapidly than man ever had. But there were limits beyond which mechanical extensions of his faculties could not serve.

Emergencies in space occur too rapidly for mankind's reflexes to function, and even robot piloting equipment was too unreliable and subject to breakdown. The race needed outside help, a partner, preferably an organic adaptation with high intelligence potential, yet with reflexes not atrophied by civilization. Only such a being could relieve man of the physical strains and crushing responsibility during microsecond emergencies in space. It must be a helper, strong, agile, courageous, nimble of thought, with the cold nerve to carry through instantaneous decision in spite of the distraction, danger and inevitable panic. For partner, man needed superman. He had to settle for superbeast.

Biolabs, trying to create a demigod in man's own image, inevitably turned first to the higher primates. For varieties of reasons monkeys, apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, et cetera, all failed to qualify, usually because their one-track minds derailed trains of thought after about one full minute of concentration. They were mercurial, inattentive, disinterested though curious, and even more inclined to panic than were men.

Next on the list, predictably, was man's ancient ally, the dog. Canines took eagerly to space travel, adapted readily to odd atmospheric compounds, showed little unhealthy response to differences in pressure, were not easily thrown into panic, and had the real advantage of loyal devotion to their masters. On the debit side, their slave-complex gave them a complete incapacity to initiate ideas, to think logically and understand even the most elementary arithmetic. They remained slaves and companions, pets rather than partners. They were stubbornly stupid as if the breed had been behind the door when brains were given out. Dogs were not the answer.

Housecats had their day – but failed, too, due to their closed-circuit minds, their limited reactions to directed mutation, especially to growth stimuli. Larger than the size of a well-fed Persian, the animals became lethargic and morose, usually dying of obscure glandular complaints. Cat-minds and cat-bodies both had definite limitations supplied by nature; they were difficult to teach, full of blind spots, and rigidly limited in size and potentials of mechanical ability.

A rat experiment promised more, but proved deadly dangerous. Rats were highly intelligent and startlingly adaptable. Controlled mutation took care of anatomical limitations, gave them increased size, developed delicate, skillful hands. Rodent minds blotted up technical educations, learned quickly, remembered well, and quickly made use of all available knowledge. Unfortunately – from the human point of view – serious character flaws became rapidly apparent. The beasts were species-consciously working together with maniac efficiency, vicious between groups with no quarter asked or given, treacherous in their jealousy and hatred for mankind, suicidally savage in implementing their traditional feuds with cats, dogs ... and man.

That experiment had to be quickly discontinued. In self-defense, the experimenters in Biolabs slaughtered the races of mutant rats, and felt the odd guilt of genocide while carrying out the massacre. Even so, the brutes almost got out of hand, and there were casualties.

* * * *

Backtracking, Biolabs tried their techniques on larger cats, all carnivores, and all notorious for trigger-tempers. The lions were most intelligent, but too lazy ever to be taught to work for a living. Also, they lived in family groups, hunted in concert, and resisted all attempts to separate them from their group way of life. Some other large cats were exclusively hunters, and remained so. Even in mutation, instincts and interests stayed set, and all processes designed to change them produced only neuroses.

Oddly enough, one of the least promising branches of the cat family showed most signs of success. Only after leopards and cheetahs and lions had been tried did anyone think of trying to tame and reconstruct tigers. Tam was not the first of his kind, but he was the most recent, and in some ways, the most startling. With eight generations of selected pedigree behind him, not to mention much scientific meddling with gene-patterns, he was a magnificent animal.

A few of the larger apes had got through, managing to get past the various stages of processing, retaining their mutant factors and remembering enough of their educations to be useful. A very few of them were actually in service as stand-by space pilots. Quite a number of the large cats of various species had made the grade. In the main they were successful experiments, and useful as human facsimiles, if not always as pilot-surrogates. However, Tam was unique of his kind. The first, but not, Biolabs hoped, the last. They held great hopes for him, and for the vast avenues of scientific achievement his success would open up.

"Our job," Brook explained, "is not just a dry run. We have to make a complete circuit of the rings of Saturn, as you know, following a patterned course. But that's only part of the job. We also have to pick up the robot cameras automatically trained upon the planet from various points in the rings, we have to replace film and reset the cameras, check the mechanisms, and then bring back the exposed film. I'd say we were night-watchmen punching time docks in various parts of a big warehouse, but I don't suppose you'd know anything about that."

"I know," said Tam. "And you can stop patronizing me. My education is quite thorough. Possibly better than yours in many ways."

"Monkey tricks, maybe. And some parroting of general background culture. Probably you've had training in simulated close-up maneuvering, but it's not the real thing. Matching motion and latching onto a non-spherical chunk of matter flipping over and over in its own crazy rotation pattern is one of the trickiest deals you'll ever encounter. Every decision and every reflex action stands a good chance of being your last."

Tam smiled with aggravating calm. "Long speech, bwana. Is it supposed to frighten me?"

"It should. Sitting on my hands while a green pilot does it always frightens me."

"Do I frighten you, bwana?" jeered Tam.

"Any raw test pilot does. And you seem rawer than most. This isn't your jungle, pussycat. This is space. It's big and tough and mean."

Tam stared unblinkingly, his eyes cold and luminous.

"Perhaps it is just a bigger jungle. Don't you think I am big and tough and mean?"

"It doesn't worry me, pussycat. You're a long way from your home jungle. This is my jungle. I know it. I like it. If you try throwing your weight around in my jungle, I'll pull your fangs for you and make you gum them down. Savvy."

Tam laughed. "Little man talks big. A few generations ago, my ancestors considered mankind too low-grade game even to hunt. We left man-eating to the old, the toothless, the crippled of our kind. There are other jungles, other hunts. And don't call me pussycat. Tomcat, at least. My name is Tam. I am surrogate pilot 97C. Tam is simpler, unless you prefer to call me 'sir.' "

"All right, chum. When the mother ship drops us off, we travel to the rings on robot pilot. We can check the magnetic tapes and feed them in. I'll let you know when to take over. And when I do, you're on your own. You'll have to trim orbit, set a course as it's marked on the charts, and do your own worrying. I don't take over unless you flub out. Understood?"

"Right, Bwana Brook. It should be an interesting test voyage." His luminous eyes became veiled and thoughtful.

* * * *

Sleeping, Tam dreamed:

Race memories stirred and he roamed deep jungle. Hot lances of sungold streamed through the filtering lacy foliage overhead. It lay in pools on shadowy pathways among the tangled masses of cool greenery. His senses knew and recognized the smell of rotting vegetation, the soft caress of thick mud by the river, the slashing cut of sawgrass on his flanks, the sounds of rustling small life deep-hidden in the forest. In retrospect, he caught a sharp scent of fresh blood, and the rank taste of raw flesh, salty, rich, satisfying. Blood-memories knew all these things and many more, their arrogant tiger-stalk as lords of their environment, a joy of hunting and slaying, the mystical darkness of an untouched wilderness, a contemptuous, but oddly disturbing, knowledge of mankind.

Other memories prowled the dark fastness of mind, the pride of being, the knowledge of instincts smothered or distorted by mutation, the reluctant yielding of body patterns, retention of the old sureness and grace, the warping of senses and desires, but still the hot, flaring identity of tiger-being. Form might be altered, paws become hands, new motivations take the place of old, but something remained. Something elemental.

"Tiger, tiger,

Burning bright."

Sleeping, Tam moved restlessly.

Like a triggered spring, he awoke. He awoke, remembering.

To blunt the weariness of passing hours, he studied "The Space Pilot's Handbook."

Saturn; possible orbits from Titan...

Saturn, rings of...

Ring "A" – outermost ring, outer diameter one hundred sixty-nine thousand miles, inner diameter one hundred forty-nine thousand miles, divided by two minor gaps. Separated by two thousand miles interval "Cassini's Gap" from Ring "B" smaller and brighter about sixteen thousand five hundred miles breadth, contacts Ring "C" at inner diameter, so-called Crepe Ring, darkish and diffuse, inner diameter ninety-two thousand miles, although extremely diffuse matter extends eight thousand five hundred miles to surface of planet Saturn.

Composition of Rings – diffuse matter, largely rock debris and solid-frozen-ammonia snow, believed wreckage of satellite destroyed by tidal action.

Tam slammed the book shut. Nothing there not already memorized. Nothing to occupy his mind, release pressure built up in his nervous system. He paced the restricted interior of the ship as restlessly as a cat in a cage.

* * * *

The hours dragged past somehow. The mother ship dropped the survey cruiser.

"Relax," advised Brook, not unkindly. "You've wound yourself up too tightly."

"I feel all right," said Tam, shooting a quick glance at the dark emptiness beyond the viewplates. A large slice of the glowing globe of Saturn occupied one side of the visible.

"We'll have to close the cover flaps on the viewplates."

"Don't do me any favors," snapped Tam.

"I'm not. It's required. You're supposed to make this run on instruments. However, if it will make you feel any better, you can switch on the outside televiewers. They relay a picture inside. There's no regulation against that. In fact, you'll have to use them when we try to sneak up on the camera placements. Remember, they're no different from any other asteroids. Just junk heaps of loose rock, mostly stuck together with frozen ammonia."

"I know that." Savagely.

"All right, friend. You'll be flying broken pieces of orbits. Don't get jerky or impatient, or you'll blast us in to Saturn, or halfway across space. The escape velocity of Saturn is a little over 22 mps, which is rough, so don't get careless. I won't bother you, unless you flub and I have to take over. So good luck. It's all yours."

Calm flowed into Tam as he felt the controls in his hands. He gripped them solidly, learning the feel, experimenting, getting to know the responses. Race memories rose from his deepest subconscious. A sense of power, of mastery, knowledge of his new environment, and sureness of his ability to deal with it.

He became, like any pilot, part of the ship. Its reflex was his reflex. He was the ship...

Sureness. Power. Happiness, such as he had never known, never dreamed existed...

Once around the rings of Saturn, dipping in and out of the agglomerations of cosmic debris, implementing split-seconds of decision with exact timing of action. Normally only a demented space pilot would subject himself or his ship to such continuous strains, such frequent changes of direction, such intricacies of maneuver. The test allowed only a minimum of departure from the scheduled pattern, only a minimum of initiative to the apprentice pilot. But, no sanely planned spaceflight would skirt so closely the infinite possibilities of disaster.

Disaster came, of course. In space, emergency comes quickly, from any angle, and is by definition unpredictable. It was a small thing, but a diamond is small. The random factor in this case was a chunk of meteoric debris, basically identical to the rest of the local matter, but with one important difference. This one was not part of the ring. It was a rogue meteor caught in the gravity of Saturn, possibly pursuing a violently eccentric orbit of its own, possibly heading for Saturn on collision course.

It never reached Saturn. The space cruiser, with Tam at the controls, got in the way.

Emergency is sudden and definite. It can be complete and fatal. But a survey cruiser, new-model, is planned with high margin for error. End over end went the ship, like an insect hit on the wing, but not smashed. Tam eventually wrestled some sense into ship motion by firing auxiliary jets in sequence, but the main drive was off. While the flip-ups lasted, both Tam and Brook had a rough ride.

"That was fun," commented Brook. "Shall we do it again?"

"You're joking, of course."

"Only to hide how scared I am," admitted Brook uneasily.

"What happened? Or is this just part of a rigged gimmick to see how I'll react in a real emergency?"

"No gimmick. I think we can assume that something hit us. It happens. The question is, how much damage is done? Can we fix it? And how much time do we have?"

"What do you want me to do?" inquired Tam.

"You figure out where we're heading on the new orbit. I will check the ship."

In a few moments, Tam glanced up from his figures.

"We're in trouble," he observed.

"I guessed that," agreed Brook. "How bad?"

"Present orbit will intersect the surface of Saturn. At our present speed, the ship will burn up in atmosphere long before we crash. In any case, the surface of Saturn is not a comfortable alternative. We will have to repair the ship. Have you located the damage?"

"None inside," said Brook. "Use the outside viewers to scan. Maybe you can see something."

"Main jets are jammed apparently," said Tam a minute later. "They shut off automatically. Won't go on again. What happens now?"

Brook shrugged. "That depends on the damage. We can go outside and poke around, but we haven't dry-dock facilities. I can't make a prognosis until I see what's wrong."

"Outside," said Tam, closing his eyes briefly.

"Outside. Get your suit on, buster. Bring torches."

"Right, chief."