Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

It is really not much higher than the top window at home. Maybe a little higher. You put the toes of your shoes in the wire and bend out with your stomach against the rail to look down, but a grown-up pulls you down and tells you not to do it, then goes away. You do it again, and there are rocks at the bottom which the waves wash over in a neat way, covering them up and then pulling back. Someone touches your elbow, but you pay no attention for a minute, watching the water.

Then you get down, and the man standing beside you is Dr. Death.

He has a white scarf and black leather gloves and his hair is shiny black. His face is not tanned like Captain Ransom’s but white, and handsome in a different way like the statue of a head that used to be in Papa’s library when you and Mother used to live in town with him, and you think: Mama would say after he was gone how good looking he was. He smiles at you, but you are no older.

‘Hi.’ What else can you say?

‘Good afternoon, Mr. Babcock. I’m afraid I startled you.’

You shrug. ‘A little bit. I didn’t expect you to be here, I guess.’

Dr. Death turns his back to the wind to light a cigarette he takes from a gold case. It is longer even than a 101 and has a red tip, and a gold dragon on the paper. ‘While you were looking down, I slipped from between the pages of the excellent novel you have in your coat pocket.’

‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll be around from time to time.’

‘Captain Ransom is here already. He’ll kill you.’

Dr. Death smiles and shakes his head. ‘Hardly. You see, Tackman, Ransom and I are a bit like wrestlers; under various guises we put on our show again and again - but only under the spotlight.’ He flicks his cigarette over the rail and for a moment your eyes follow the bright spark out and down and see it vanish in the water. When you look back, Dr. Death is gone, and you are getting cold. You go back into the restaurant and get a free mint candy where the cash register is and then go and sit beside Aunt May again in time to have coconut cream pie and hot chocolate.

Aunt May drops out of the conversation long enough to ask, ‘Who was that man you were talking to, Tackie?’

‘A man.’

In the car Mama sits close to Dr. Black, with Aunt Julie on the other side of her so she will have to, and Aunt May sits way up on the edge of her seat with her head in between theirs so they can all talk. It is grey and cold outside; you think how long it will be before you are home again, and take the book out.

Ransom heard them coming and flattened himself against the wall beside the door of his cell. There was no way out, he knew, save through that iron portal.

For the past four hours he had been testing every surface of the stone room for a possible exit, and there was none. Floor, walls, and ceiling were of cyclopean stone blocks; the windowless door of solid metal locked outside.

Nearer. He tensed every muscle and knotted his fists.

Nearer. The shambling steps halted. There was a rattle of keys and the door swung back. Like a thunderbolt of purpose he dived through the opening. A hideous face loomed above him and he sent his right fist crashing into it, knocking the lumbering beast-man to his knees. Two hairy arms pinioned him from behind, but he fought free and the monster reeled under his blows. The corridor stretched ahead of him with a dim glow of daylight at the end and he sprinted for it. Then - darkness!

When he recovered consciousness he found himself already erect, strapped to the wall of a brilliantly lit room which seemed to share the characters of a surgical theatre and a chemical laboratory. Directly before his eyes stood a bulky object which he knew must be an operating table, and upon it, covered with a sheet, lay the unmistakable form of a human being.

He had hardly had time to comprehend the situation when Dr. Death entered, no longer in the elegant evening dress in which Ransom had beheld him last, but wearing white surgical clothing. Behind him limped the hideous Golo, carrying a tray of implements.

“Ah!” seeing that his prisoner was conscious, Dr. Death strolled across the room and raised a hand as though to strike him in the face, but, when Ransom did not flinch, dropped it, smiling. “My dear Captain! You are with us again, I see.”

“I hoped for a minute there,” Ransom said levelly, “that I was away from you. Mind telling me what got me?”

“A thrown club, or so my slaves report. My baboon-man is quite good at it. But aren’t you going to ask about this charming little tableau I’ve staged for you?”

“I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”

“But you are curious,” Dr. Death smiled his crooked smile. “I shall not keep you in suspense. Your own time, Captain, has not come yet; and before it does I am going to demonstrate my technique to you. It is so seldom that I have a really appreciative audience.” With a calculated gesture he whipped away the sheet which had covered the prone form on the operating table.

Ransom could scarcely believe his eyes. Before him lay the unconscious body of a girl, with skin as white as silk and hair like the sun seen through mist.

“You are interested now, I see,” Dr. Death remarked dryly, “and you consider her beautiful. Believe me, when I have completed my work you will flee screaming if she so much as turns what will no longer be a face towards you. This woman has been my implacable enemy since I came to this island, and the time has come for me to” - he halted in mid-sentence and looked at Ransom with an expression of mingled slyness and gloating - “for me to illustrate something of your own fate, shall we say.”

While Dr. Death had been talking his deformed assistant had prepared a hypodermic. Ransom watched as the needle plunged into the girl’s almost translucent flesh, and the liquid in the syringe - a fluid which by its very colour suggested the vile perversion of medical technique - entered her bloodstream. Though still unconscious the girl sighed, and it seemed to Ransom that a cloud passed over her sleeping face as though she had already begun an evil dream. Roughly the hideous Golo turned her on her back and fastened in place straps of the same kind as those that held Ransom himself pinned to the wall.’

‘What are you reading, Tackie?’ Aunt May asked. ‘Nothing.’ He shut the book.

‘Well, you shouldn’t read in the car. It’s bad for your eyes.’ Dr. Black looked back at them for a moment, then asked Mama, ‘Have you got a costume for the little fellow yet?’

‘For Tackie?’ Mama shook her head, making her beautiful hair shine even in the dim light of the car. ‘No, nothing. It will be past his bedtime.’

‘Well, you’ll have to let him see the guests anyway, Barbara; no boy should miss that.’

And then the car was racing along the road out to Settlers Island. And then you were home.

Ransom watched as the loathsome creature edged towards him. Though not as large as some of the others its great teeth looked formidable indeed, and in one hand it grasped a heavy jungle knife with a razor edge.

For a moment he thought it would molest the unconscious girl, but it circled around her to stand before Ransom himself, never meeting his eyes.

Then, with a gesture as unexpected as it was frightening, it bent suddenly to press its hideous face against his pinioned right hand, and a great, shuddering gasp ran through the creature’s twisted body.

Ransom waited, tense.

Again that deep inhalation, seeming almost a sob. Then the beast-man straightened up, looking into Ransom’s face but avoiding his gaze. A thin, strangely familiar whine came from the monster’s throat.

“Cut me loose,” Ransom ordered.

“Yes. This I came to. Yes, Master.” The huge head, wider than it was high, bobbed up and down. Then the sharp blade of the machete bit into the straps holding Ransom. As soon as he was free he took the blade from the willing hand of the beast-man and freed the limbs of the girl on the operating table. She was light in his arms, and for an instant he stood looking down at her tranquil face.