F. Wallace - 10 Lost Pulp Sci-Fi Masterpieces

They let him live, amused by the thirst that drove him to lap up each morning’s drenching dew, fascinated by his ravenous appetite for the garbage they flung at him.

The Agvars—furry, savage half-men, with something of the dog and something of the ape and little of the man about them—the Agvars let him live, Chet realized, for exactly one reason: he made them feel superior.

They’d learn now! Even though the children had stopped shrieking and gone away, disgusted at his passivity, no villager’s insensitive ears could yet hear the ship.

In their boastfulness, the Agvars had invited other tribes to come and look at him and poke at him and laugh at him. His presence was known over the whole planet. He’d be found, no matter where on Hedlot the spaceship landed.

And then would come the showdown!

But the showdown came earlier than he expected, speeded because the ship landed close by. Chet told himself he should have counted on that kind of accuracy, but he’d underestimated his fellow pilots.

He had himself signalled Earthside, just before the crash, that his ship was about to land. He’d given his position—described sea and shoreline. They’d find him, if he stayed chained to the post.

But he didn’t. Taken unaware by the Agvars who loosed him, Chet was docile, happy even—certain they wouldn’t hurt him now, but would try to minimize their former cruelty as they turned him over to the spacemen.

When they put new chains on him, around neck and waist, he thought it was only to make sure he didn’t run away before they could deliver him ostentatiously to the ship.

A dozen adult males had gathered in the clearing, but that was hardly an unusual event. Even when they all started out, on a winding trail that didn’t head in the direction of the ship’s recent landing-sounds, Chet was convinced they were just circling some geographic obstacle.

He was interested in the forest of 20-foot mosses and 50-foot evergreen hardwoods pressing densely on each side of the trail. Unconscious when they’d carried him from the beach, he’d never been out of the village since, had never inspected these woods. And he thought his mates from Earth would want to know about them.

Chet could easily have outdistanced the clumsy Agvars if not forced to imitate their crouching walk. But he knew from experience that to show off his erect stance and 18-inch height advantage would make them find some unpleasant way to put him in his place.

They’d shown him that quite often. He’d show them —but later, not just yet. And after showing them, he’d put these Agvars behind him—them, their filthy planet, and their scorching sun.

It had often tortured him, that gauzy, amorphous solar blaze, but never more than now. For the sun of Hedlot, when he glanced at it vengefully, proved from its position that he was not being taken to the ship, but away from it.

Disappointment didn’t rouse Chet to a fighting pitch—it caused him to become crafty. Slyness and deceit, the indirect weapons of the powerless, were not attributes schooled into a student space-pilot. But he’d learned them tied naked to a sunbaked post. That, too, is an effective school.

He hung back, faking fatigue. Malingering brought him pokes and jerks, made the Agvars choke him and beat him and harangue him in their sullen mutter of clicks and growls and glottal catches. But some sense of urgency drove them to give up their fruitless sadism after a while, and drag him through the trail’s blue mud by brute strength, two on the neck-chain, two hauling at his waist.

He let them. Not that he was inured to pain—he just was stubborn.

He wondered, once when they all stopped at a spring for a drink and some rest, whether their haranguing showed the Agvars were sorry they hadn’t taught him their language. Probably not, he decided; probably they didn’t want to think he could have learned it.

He’d tried, in the absence of lessons, by repeating what he heard around him. He’d learned a few words, of course. And for a while, a couple of villagers had seemed to enjoy and encourage his parrot-like attempts to recite whole sentences they voiced for him. But after a few beatings, Chet gathered that he’d only been mouthing obscenities. And that experience, plus inertia, had made him give up the attempt.

Just as well, he now decided. If they’d known of his technical skills, if they’d let him raise their standards, the Agvars might be carrying bows and arrows, instead of mere slings and sticks.

Their hard luck! What they didn’t know, they’d never learn from him! The mere presence of a spaceship on the same planet gave him a buoyant feeling of contempt.

But though contempt helped him endure that journey through the tall mosses and taller trees, it couldn’t ward off exhaustion. When the party stopped at the foot of a sheer rock spire that rose four or five hundred feet above the tallest growth, he collapsed and slept.

They woke him in the pre-dawn twilight and another group of Agvars took over. These—there were only three—looked older than the familiar villagers. And they’d smeared their faces with bands of red and yellow mud. He wondered….

He stopped wondering when they passed a pile of bones at the base of the spire. Among the grisly relics were skulls—brow-ridged, pointed, unmistakably Agvar. Sacrifices!

He was to be killed, then, to propitiate his own rescuers. His three guides—or guards—must be witch-doctors! He let them drag him along while he thought about it.

They’d give him no breakfast, not even water. If they’d eaten themselves, it was while he still slept. The scraps, if any, hadn’t been flung in his face, and there’d been no smooth post to lick the dew from.

Hunger and thirst were nothing new, but neither was the resulting lethargy. Realizing his danger, Chet could only hang back.

Today though that was an old stall; the witch-doctors seemed to expect it. They broke branches from the trees and beat him till he bled. And when the climb up the rocks began, they put one of their number behind him to push, set the other two in front to pull, and tried by main strength to haul him up the five hundred foot rock-face.

Hazily, not hastily, Chet tried to think of a way out. His starved brain could come up with nothing. That, he finally decided, was only natural; it was not thinking that was needed, but action.

Still, he wasn’t precipitate. Caution reinforced his habitual lassitude while trying to dispell it. Half a dozen times he tensed for combat, only to relax hopelessly. But finally he found a place—and the will—to make a stand.

He passed up a wide shelf, and let them tug him along a narrow ledge without much objection. He chose a near-vertical pitch about a hundred feet from the bottom—a mere crack that slanted upward to the right, offering the shallowest of hand- and foot-holds.

He could only hope that he wasn’t in sight from the trail—or else that the villagers had left. He couldn’t see through the treetops to make sure. But he hadn’t the strength to worry.

He froze to the rock, pulling as if in fright. The two witch-doctors in single file above him jerked on the chains they held. But they needed a hand apiece to hold on with, and couldn’t lift him.

The one below, standing on a six-inch ledge, tried to push. When that didn’t work, he broke off a chunk of rock and beat Chet’s left foot with it.

Spurred by the sudden pain, Chet kicked the witch-doctor in the face. The Agvar fell, screaming—until he crashed through the treetops and was still.

To Chet, forgetful of his hearing superiority, it seemed as if that outcry would be heard on Earth itself. Certainly he expected it to alarm the countryside. Still, unless the swift foot-thrust had been seen, no one would be sure the witch-doctor’s fall was not an accident….