In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era Read online

  “You mean these diamonds are instrumental in the disappearances?” she asked wonderingly.

  I nodded. “That’s what we think, baby. And I have one other little exhibit for you.” Slowly I drew out the lead box and opened it, only a crack, and let a single beam of radiance escape before slamming it shut again.

  She gasped in awe. “That’s beautiful! But how—”

  “That’s where my job begins,” I said. “That diamond is an unused specimen, one that hasn’t functioned yet.”

  “Just how do you fit into this?” she asked suspiciously.

  I stood up. “I’ll find out soon enough. I’m going to go into the next room,” I said, “and see how this diamond works. And then I’m going to go wherever it takes me, and worry about getting back after I get there.”

  The words fell so easily from my mouth that it seemed as if that had actually been my plan along. Really, it hadn’t; I didn’t have any idea where I was going to begin this case, but certainly that wasn’t any way to go about it.

  But as I spoke the words, I saw that that was what I had to do. That was the way the Bureau worked. Go straight to the heart of the matter, and worry about the consequences to yourself later.

  “Les—” Peg began, and then knocked it off. She knew it wouldn’t do her any good to complain, and she didn’t try. I loved her for it. I knew she didn’t like my job, and I knew she’d give anything to have me go into some sane, safe industry—like jetcar racing, or something, I suppose—but at least she kept her mouth shut once I got going on a project.

  “You wait here,” I told her. “Fix a couple of drinks for us. I’m going to adjourn to the next room and play around with this piece of glitter for a while.”

  “Be careful,” she urged.

  “I always am,” I said. I gave her a kiss, and as I felt her soft, responsive lips against mine I wondered just where in hell that diamond was going to lead me. I didn’t want to get too far from Peg, I thought suddenly.

  Then I broke away, scooped up the lead box, and went into my tiny den, closing the door behind me.

  I sat down at the desk and spread the burnt-out diamonds in a little semi-circle around the box. The room was cold, and I was shivering a little—not only from the draft, either.

  I turned on my desk light and sat there for a while, staring at the glistening row of gems, staring at the odd little brown cloud disfiguring each one.

  Then, slowly, I reached for the box.

  Sixty-six men—only men, for a reason I didn’t understand—had disappeared. The diamonds had something to do with it. I didn’t know what. But I had an overriding feeling that I was slated to be Number Sixty-seven.

  It’s a job, I thought. It’s my job. And there was only one way to do it. My fingers quivered a little, just a little, as I started to open the box.

  Brightness began to stream from it as soon as the upper half had parted from the lower, and I felt a bead of sweat break out on my forehead and go trickling down back of my ear. With perhaps too much caution, I lifted back the lid and lay bare the diamond nestling within, like a pearl inside an oyster.

  I had never seen anything so lovely in my life. It was emerald-cut, neat and streamlined, with uncanny brilliance lurking in its smooth facets. It was small, but perfect, symmetrical and clear. It looked like a tiny spark of cold, blue-white fire.

  Then I looked closer.

  There was something in the heart of the diamond—not the familiar brown flaw of the others, but something of a different color, something moving and flickering. Before my eyes, it changed and grew.

  And I saw what it was. It was the form of a girl—a woman, rather, a voluptuous, writhing nude form in the center of the gem. Her hair was a lustrous blue-black, her eyes a piercing ebony. She was gesturing to me, holding out her hands, incredibly beckoning from within the heart of the diamond.

  I felt my legs go limp. She was growing larger, coming closer, holding out her arms, beckoning, calling—

  She seemed to fill the room. The diamond grew to gigantic size, and my brain whirled and bobbed in dizzy circles. I sensed the overpowering, wordless call.

  Then I heard the door open and close behind me, and I heard Peg’s anguished scream: “Les!”

  There was the sound of footsteps running toward me, but I didn’t turn. I felt Peg’s arms around my shoulder. She seemed to be holding me back.

  I tore loose. The girl from the diamond was calling to me, and I felt inexorably drawn. “Les!” I heard Peg call again, and then again, more faintly. Her voice seemed to fade away, and the diamond grew, and grew, and seemed to take up the entire universe. And within it, now life size, was that girl, calling to me.

  I went to her.

  There was greyness, and void.

  I found myself alone. Somewhere.

  I was flat on my face, breathing in a strange, warm, alien air, lying stretched out with my nose buried in a thick carpet of blue-green moss. I stumbled to my feet and looked around, still hearing the echoes of Peg’s fading cries resounding in my head.

  Strange twittering noises sounded from above. Still too stunned to do much besides react to direct stimuli, I glanced up and saw a vicious-looking black-feathered bird with gleaming red talons leap from one tree to another.

  Once I recovered my mental equilibrium, my first feeling was one of bitter, irrational anger—anger at the Chief for having let me fall into this job, anger at Peg for not forcing me to turn down the assignment, anger at myself for letting that diamond suck me into its field.

  I was Number Sixty-seven, all right. Lee Hayden, Vanished Man. I could imagine Peg’s terror-stricken face as she saw me disappear before her eyes and then picked up—

  A burnt-out diamond.

  Wherever those sixty-six guys had gone, I had followed. I looked around again. I had landed on some alien world, evidently, and I took the realization a lot more calmly than I should have. I was pretty blase, as a matter of fact.

  It could have been the Congo, of course, or the Amazon basin—but that wasn’t too probable. For one thing, most of the places like that on Earth are pretty well civilized-looking by now. For another, no place, not even the Amazon, had birds like the ones that were flitting through the trees here. No place.

  After the anger had washed through me, I calmed down a little. I leaned against one of the gigantic trees and groped for a clue, something to pick on as a starting point for the investigation I was about to conduct, the investigation that would clear things up. I was here on business.

  I was in the middle of a vast jungle. The air was warm and moist, and clinging vines dangled down from the great trees. There didn’t seem to be any other animal life, except for the myriad infernal birds.

  Overhead, behind the curtain of vines, I could see the sun streaming down. It wasn’t the familiar yellow light of Sol, either; the sun here was small, blue-white, and hot. I was sweating—me, in my business suit.

  I stripped the jacket off and dangled it on the limb of a tree nearby, as a landmark, and started to walk. Meantime, pounding away in my head, was the vision of that impossible girl inside that impossibly lovely diamond. She was the bait that had trapped me.

  I saw how the process worked. These diamonds appeared, and the lucky recipient would stare at them, as I did, hypnotized by the unearthly beauty of the stone into thinking there was a beckoning girl inside.

  Then, through some magic, the trap snapped, and the unsuspecting victim—me—got drawn in and carried across space to an uninhabited jungle planet—here.

  Why? That was what I was going to find out—I hoped.

  I started to walk, moving slowly through the thick haze of the steaming jungle. I kept hearing the twitter of the birds, as a sort of chirping mockery from above, and now and then a little animal jumped out from behind the trees and scurried across my path, but otherwise there wasn’t a sign of another living being. I wondered if each victim of this thing got sent to a planet of his own; I hoped not. I was starting to feel terribly alo
ne here.

  The jungle seemed endless, and that blue-white sun was getting hotter and hotter with each passing minute. I began to think that I was moving in circles. One tree looked just like the next.

  I walked for perhaps an hour, with the sweat pouring down my arms and shoulders and my legs getting wobbly from the strain and the heat, and floating in front of me all the time was the vision of Peg’s face as she must have looked the moment I vanished.

  I tried to picture the scene. Probably the first thing she’d do, when she got her balance back, would be to call the Bureau, get the Chief on the wire, and curse him black and blue. She wasn’t a weak woman. She’d let him know in no uncertain terms what she thought of him for giving me this job, for sending me out to do and die for the Bureau.

  But what would she do then? Where would she go? Would she forget me and find someone else? The thought chilled me. I kept slogging on through that infernal mudhole of a planet, and there was nothing in sight but trees and more of them. After a while longer, I peeled off my shirt and wrapped it around the bole of a lanky sapling. Another landmark, I thought.

  I was starting to get dreadfully depressed by the loneliness, by the dead, paradoxical emptiness of this fantastically fertile world. There didn’t seem to be any way out, any hope at all, and I was beginning to give in to my fears in a way I usually didn’t do.

  But just then a brown something came bounding out of the tangled nest of vines above me and struck me hard, knocking me to the ground. I hit the springy moss with a terrific impact, recoiled, and rolled over, feeling my lip starting to swell where I’d split it.

  I found myself facing what looked like an ape, about the size of a small, wiry man. The beast had two pairs of arms, two glowing, malicious eyes, and as nice a pair of saber teeth as you could find outside the Museum of Natural History. I scrambled a foot or two back, and lashed out with my feet.

  I wasn’t alone here any more, for sure.

  The animal fought back furiously, wrapping its four arms around me, bringing its two razor-sharp teeth much too close to my throat to make me happy.

  But I had just been waiting for something like this. I needed something concrete on which I could take out all my fear and rage and resentment, and I met the animal’s attack firmly and came back on the creature’s own grounds, fighting with arms and legs and knees and anything else handy. Overhead, I heard the chattering of the birds grow to a tumultuous frenzy.

  I pounded away, smashed a fist into those two gleaming yellow sabers and felt them crack beneath my driving knuckles, felt the teeth give and break beneath the impact. A hot lancet of pain shot down my hand, but the animal gave a searing cry and jumped back.

  I was on him immediately. All its attention was being given to the two broken teeth; its upper pair of hands was busy trying to stanch the flow of bright blood from its mouth, and the other two were waving in feeble circles. I came down hard with my feet, once, twice, a third time, and then the arms stopped waving.

  I walked away, looking cautiously around to see if the animal had any relatives in the neighborhood. Suddenly, the empty, lonely jungle seemed overcrowded; behind every spreading leaf, there might be another of these saber-toothed horrors. Breathing hard, feeling the blood dripping from my cut knuckles, I started to edge on through the jungle.

  My face was set in a grim mask. It looked like life on this planet was going to be a permanent struggle for survival, judging from my first taste of its wildlife—with no way out. I thought of Peg, back on Earth, and wondered what she was doing, what she was thinking of.

  I kept going, determined now to keep moving at all costs, determined to beat this world and find my way back to Earth. The fight had set my hormones rolling, apparently; the outpour of adrenalin was just what I needed to galvanize me out of the fit of depression I had been sinking into. Now I was fully alive, wide awake, and wanting out desperately.

  Then I glanced up. There seemed to be a fire up ahead; white, brilliant light was streaming through the jungle, illuminating the dark recesses around me. I drew in my breath. If it really was fire, that meant people—savages, perhaps? I advanced cautiously, dying a dozen times whenever I scrunched dawn on a twig.

  After about fifty yards, the path swiveled abruptly at a right-angle bend, and I found myself suddenly out of the jungle. I emerged from the thickly-packed trees and saw what was causing all the light. I whistled slowly.

  It wasn’t a fire. It was a diamond, planted smack in the middle of a wide treeless clearing—the biggest diamond anyone ever dreamed of, looming ten feet off the ground, lying there like a gigantic chunk of frozen flame. It was cut with a million facets from which the bright sunlight glinted fiercely. All around it, the trees had been levelled to the ground. The great gem stood all alone, in solitary majesty.

  Not quite alone, though. For as I stood there, at the edge of the jungle, staring in openmouthed astonishment, I saw a figure come up over the top of the diamond, poise for a moment on the narrow facet at the very peak, and then leap lightly to the ground.

  It was the girl—the girl whose beckoning arms had enticed me into this nightmare in the first place. She was coming toward me.

  The girl in the diamond had been nude, but I guess that was only part of the bait. This girl was clad, though what she was wearing took care of the legal minimum and not much more. Otherwise, it was the same girl, radiant with an incredible sort of magnetism. In person, she had the same kind of effect that the image in the diamond had had.

  I stood there, dazzled.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Her voice was low and throbbing, with just the merest echo of something alien and strange about it. “It has been so long since I called, and you did not come.”

  I just stared at her. Up till this moment I had thought Peg was about as sexy as a girl could be, as far as I was concerned. But I was wrong. This item made Peg look almost like an old washboard by comparison.

  She was all curves, but with a rippling strength underneath that was a joy to see. Her hair was deep blue-black, with glossy undertones, and her eyes were deep and compelling.

  “My name is Sharane,” she said softly. “I have been waiting for you.”

  The sunlight kept bouncing down off that colossal diamond, and Sharane stood there, brilliant in its reflected light. Her skin seemed to glow, it was so radiant. She took another step toward me, arms outstretched.

  I moved back a step. So much glamor in one body frightened me. The last time I had listened to this girl’s call, it had drawn me across space and brought me to this planet. Devil only knew what might happen this time.

  Besides, there was Peg. So I backed off.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. “Why have I been brought here? Where is this place?”

  “What does it matter?” Sharane asked lightly, and from the tone of her voice I started to wonder myself. “Come here,” she urged.

  I started to laugh, I’m afraid. It was all so preposterous, this whole business of diamonds that make people shoot off to some world in space, and this lynx-eyed temptress coming toward me—I dissolved in near-hysterical laughter.

  But I was laughing out of the other side of my face a moment later, when Sharane stepped close to me and I felt her warmth near me. She looked up at me, with the same expression on her face that the image in the diamond had had. I was defenseless.

  Peg, I thought. Peg, help me!

  She put her arms around me, and I started to pull back and then stopped. I couldn’t. She came close, enfolded herself around me.

  Somehow at that moment the distant Peg seemed pretty pale and tawdry next to Sharane. I forgot her. I forgot Peg, I forgot the Chief, the Bureau, Earth—I forgot everything, except Sharane and the blindingly brilliant diamond in front of me.

  She drew my head down, and our lips met. The contact was warm, tingling—

  And I felt myself grow rigid, as if I were rooted to the ground.

  Sharane pulled her lips away, and took a step back.
She looked at me, strangely, half triumphantly and half sadly. I saw her sigh, saw her breasts rise and fall.

  I strained to move, and couldn’t. I was frozen!

  “Sharane!”

  “I am sorry,” she said. Her musical voice seemed to be modulated into a minor key, as if she were really sorry. “This is the way things must be.”

  And then she lifted me up, slung my stiffened form over her shoulder as easily as if I were an empty sack, and started walking away!

  I struggled impotently against the strange paralysis that had overcome me, and cursed bitterly. A second time, Sharane had trapped me! Once, when she called from the depths of the crystal; now, when she betrayed me with a kiss.

  I rolled my eyes in anguish, but that was as close as I could come to motion. Sharane carried me lightly, easily, around to the other side of the gigantic diamond. “You will have friends here,” she said softly.

  I looked around, and blinked in surprise. For half a dozen other Earthmen lay, similarly frozen, behind the great diamond.

  Sharane very carefully laid me down in their midst, and left me.

  She had put me between two other frozen prisoners. Further away, I saw four more. All six were gripped by the same strange force that held me.

  “Greetings, friend,” I heard the man on my left say. “The name is Caldwell—Frederic Caldwell. What’s yours?” It was almost as if we were meeting in a cafeteria, he was so casual.

  “Les Hayden,” I said.

  “My name is Strauss,” said the one on my right. “Ed Strauss. Glad to meet you, Hayden. Join our merry band.”

  Strauss—Caldwell—those were two of the names on that list of sixty-six vanishers. And I’m Sixty-Seven. Welcome to the fold, I thought.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Ten days,” said Strauss.

  “A week,” Caldwell said. “But you’d never know it. When you’re frozen like this, you don’t need food or anything. You’re out of circulation, period. You just lie here, waiting for the next sucker to be deposited in the vault.”