Harry Harrison - Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers

The whips cracked again as the outer door opened, and the first slave was booted into position. One by one the others followed until it was Jerry's turn, and he took a last despairing look at the burning plain, the slaver ship, the insulated buildings where the Hagg-Loos were; then in he went. With an unoiled screeching the portal closed behind him, and darkness descended.

"I'm doing it for you, Chuck," he said staunchly, then sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. When the next door opened, he skittered through quickly as he heard the onrushing 56,000 volts zinging through the cables toward him.

It was a nightmare voyage with an even more nightmarish ending. As Jerry stepped through the last door, a great, hairy, ugly, brutal monster of a slave caught him in the back of the neck with a club (that looked suspiciously like a human femur), sending him sprawling. But surprised as he had been by the sudden and unprovoked attack, Jerry's reflexes were still superb, and he rolled with the blow so it did not stun him, fell and twisted and caught the brute's shin with a solid kick that knocked him to the ground.

Then, before the foul creature could recover, he dived on it and clutched hard with a Japanese headlock that renders the victim unconscious in five seconds and dead in ten. He applied full pressure. The thing tried to speak through its filthy beard. At the end of four seconds it gasped, "Urgh . . . Jerry. . . don't. . ." and instantly became limply unconscious on the fifth second. Jerry thought about this for a few seconds more, wondering how the creature knew his name. After eight seconds had passed, he looked at it more closely, and at the end of nine seconds he released the pressure so that blood reentered the thing's brain, and it did not die. Its grimy, bloodshot eyes opened tremblingly, and it glared up with bestial hatred.

"Chuck, that is you, isn't it?" Jerry asked. The thing blinked fuzzily and muttered, "Me name Chuck. . . how you know name?"

"Poor lad," Jerry said, helping him to his feet and dusting him off. "They have been walking through his brain with spiked boots, and they shall pay for it, and someday, I promise, he will be restored to full mental and physical health. Do you understand, Chuck?"

"Let's go eat. Chuckee hungry."

Jerry patted the Chuck-thing on the shoulder and led him toward the chow trough, where the others were guzzling, concealing his deepest feelings at this terrible fate that had struck his best friend. He felt no desire to compete with the others for the thin gruel that they lapped up by the handfuls. It looked and smelt like mashed mangelwurzels. In fact, it probably was mashed mangel-wurzels; these fiends would stop at nothing. So, while Chuck dived into the swill, Jerry looked around at the demoniac scene – and that was a good word for it, for the cave was dimly lit by flickering flames that leaped from niches scraped in the stone walls. These fires were fueled with some sort of dark lumps; he noticed this when one of the slaves dragged over a bucket and dumped some of them on a fire. A loud creaking and groaning filled the air as other slaves worked hard at the great handles of a grinding machine. This was fed with chunks of some black substance wheeled up on carts. The mill reduced it to a fine powder which was dumped into a funnel and vanished down a pipe.

"DnDrf!" he gasped aloud, the terrible drug that drove aliens mad, then ate away their chitin. Reluctantly he sidled up for a closer look and kicked at a glistening chunk that had dropped from the mill.

"You know," he mused to himself. "If I did not know that this was the hideous drug called DnDrf, I would say it is nothing but a lump of coal."

"It is only a lump of coal, for DnDrf is coal," a grating voice said from behind him. "You think you are a smart guy, huh!"

Jerry was beginning to catch onto the interpersonal relationships in the mine, so he ducked and dodged before turning so that the club, a human femur with a stone head, whistled by without hitting him.

"Try that again and you are a dead thing," he said to the thing wielding the club, crouching at the same time in the karate instant-death-mode.

The creature stopped and looked at him bemusedly, and he looked at it. It wasn't much to look at. Humanoid in form and about his height, it was covered with lumpy brown hide that had a crumbly texture. Only its eyes gleaming whitely from its misshapen head.

"I am called Fevil Dood," it grunted. "And I am top slave in this compound. Do you want to challenge me? Means fight to the death."

"Quite the opposite," Jerry simpered in a sucking way. A plan was already beginning to form. "I will obey all your commands and am completely at your disposal. Just tell me the drill here and show me where I fit in."

"Unghh," the thing grunted, reluctantly lowering its weapon. "Better be telling the truth, or you die like quick. Me and my boys run this place and do no work other than bash skulls in. You and other slaves dig the DnDrf, crush it, and pump it out, a ton a day. You do this every day, and we let you eat and drink and live."

"What do you get out of it?"

"We eat and drink and live; only we don't work."

"Seems a dull existence. I should think you would be planning ways to crack out of here."

"Forget it. You here to stay. We all thought about it; now we don't think about it any more. So work."

"Sure. But why did those two guys stop working?"

"Where?" Fevil Dood roared, raising the club and spinning about.

Jerry instantly gave him a chop on the neck that dropped him, unconscious, with a thud, to the ground. Working fast, Jerry plucked one of the mind shields from its hiding place and then sat on the alien's rough brown chest. With one hand he held Fevil's mouth shut, and with the other he pinched shut his nostrils. Even though unconscious, Fevil began to feel short of breath and groaned and writhed. When his skin was turning purple under the brown, Jerry relented and opened one nostril. As the torrent of air was sucked into his nose Jerry dropped the mind shield into the slipstream, and it vanished into the recesses of the creature's head. At this moment Fevil arched his back and sent Jerry spinning away. Seizing his club, he roared and attacked.

"Now just one moment," Jerry explained, dodging the blows. "If you will please stop that for a moment, I'll tell you what's going on."

The angry boss slave was not interested in explanations, though, and roared and chased Jerry about the cave, cheered on by the other slaves, who were glad of this bit of entertainment plumped into their monotonous existence. Jerry was getting tired of this, so the next time he ducked a blow he plucked up a lump of coal – and suddenly whirled about. The athlete who had batted .999 consistently and had pitched forty-two no-hit games in a row could hit the target he aimed at, oh, indeed he could! The coal whistled through the air and clunked off Fevil Dood's forehead and laid him low one more time. Jerry seized up the club and chased the other slaves away, then sat and waited, club raised, for the defeated superslave to recover. Recover he did, within moments, and glared up at the raised club.

"So go ahead and kill me already. See how you like being boss of these dumbheads."

"Shut up!" Jerry hissed. "Listen quietly or I will brain you. I knocked you out so I could insert a mind shield in your nose. I am here to lead an escape from this mine." Pevil Dood's eyes popped out three inches, on stalks, at this news. "You know, you're right," he mused. "I am a simple telepath but realize now I am getting no messages. So that means no one can listen in on my brain either?"

"Dead right. Now if I give you the club back, will you help me organize the slaves for a revolt?"

"I'm your alien!" he bellowed, leaping to his feet. "Let's go!"