In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era Read online

  “Yeah,” said Strauss. “There were about forty guys here when I came, but one day a ship came down and some huge things packed most of them up. That made things pretty quiet for a while. We’ve just been lying here, those of us that are left. Every once in a while Sharane catches someone new.”

  “Did both of you get snagged the same way?”

  “I found a diamond on my desk one day,” said Caldwell. “Came out of nowhere. I started staring at it—and I guess you know the rest of the story.”

  “It’s Sharane’s kiss that does it,” Strauss said. “I think it sets up some kind of force field that freezes us. And we stay here, and wait for the alien ship to come pick us up and take us away.”

  “To the slaughterhouse,” said Caldwell dully.

  I pushed and struggled, but it was to no avail. I was efficiently straitjacketed. Above me, the big diamond stared coldly out, its radiant brilliance seeming to mock us.

  Caldwell and Strauss had been trapped the same way I had—by the beckoning diamond. I wondered how many more Sharane would catch, would draw across space to this strange planet. And I wondered why? Who was this strange woman, what power did she have, why was she doing what she did? What motivated her?

  I didn’t know. And it didn’t look like I was ever going to find out.

  All I knew was I was caught, and there didn’t seem to be any way out. But I wasn’t going to give up. I could still keep on hoping.

  We lay there for hours, talking occasionally, more often remaining silent, staring up at the cloudless sky. I could see how the days would roll by, in empty, mindless waiting, until the mysterious ship returned for its next load of Earthmen.

  By dint of much eyeball-rolling, I was able to make out what my two companions looked like. Strauss was balding, sandy-haired, middle aged, Caldwell much younger, dynamic-looking.

  There wasn’t much we could say, and after a while conversation ceased entirely. We were so placed that I could see the giant diamond clearly, and I started to pass the time by staring at its peak, wondering how many carats the thing could weigh. Millions, no doubt.

  Then I began searching the sky, waiting for the ship to come, the ship that would carry us off to our unknown next destination. After a while longer I grew tired, and closed my eyes. I slept, uneasily, and no doubt I would have been tossing and turning if only I could move at all.

  I was awakened by the sound of Caldwell’s deep, sharp voice exclaiming, “Look! Here comes a new one!”

  Then Strauss commented, “And it’s a girl!”

  I struggled to get my eyes open and keep them that way, and swiveled them around, searching for the newcomer. And then I saw her.

  She was just emerging from the edge of the jungle. I saw her plainly, clad in sweater and tight-clinging khaki trousers; she had evidently had a rough time of it in the jungle, because her sweater was torn and shredded and her hair was wildly disheveled. But she kept moving onward, her eyes wide in amazement at the sight of the diamond.

  She was Peg.

  I watched her almost dazedly as she made her way across the clearing. I knew she couldn’t see me yet, but I could see her. It was Peg, all right. How, why she had come, I could only conjecture. But she was here, madly, unbelievably, and I was glad to see her.

  “Where’d she come from?” Caldwell asked.

  “I thought only men came through,” said Strauss. “Maybe she’s an accomplice of Sharane.”

  “No,” I said. “I know her.”

  I tried to call to her, to attract her attention in some way. I didn’t know where Sharane was.

  “Peg!” I called. My voice was a hoarse croak, barely more than a whisper. I tried again. “Peg! Peg!”

  The third time she heard me. I saw her mouth drop open as she turned slowly and saw us spread out on the ground, and then she started running joyfully toward us.

  “Les! Oh, Les!” she called, from a hundred yards away. Her voice came across clearly, and at the moment it seemed like the most wonderful sound I had ever heard.

  I watched her as she ran, drinking in the sight of her—the smooth stride, the long, powerful legs, the bobbing red hair that fluttered up and down as she ran. And a hot burst of shame flooded my face as I remembered the kiss—Sharane’s kiss.

  Peg would forgive me, though. I knew she would.

  She kept running, running toward us—and then, she stopped and recoiled back, as if she had struck a glass wall.

  I saw her move back a few paces and rub her nose as if she had bruised it. Then she stepped forward again, and, in perplexity, extended a hand in front of her. It stopped short at the same barrier.

  She began to edge around in a wary semicircle, feeling in front of her, and everywhere it was the same. An invisible barrier, blocking us off from her. She wouldn’t be able to reach us. Whoever had snared us really knew his business.

  Tears of frustration came to her eyes, but she wiped them away and continued to search for some break in the barrier, while I shouted words of encouragement to her. It was a miracle that Peg was here at all, Peg whom I thought I’d never see again, and I wanted desperately to be holding her tight.

  She completed the circle around us, without finding any way in. I saw her kick the barrier viciously, saw her foot stop in mid-air as the invisible field rebuffed the blow.

  And then I saw Sharane come up behind her.

  “Watch it!” I yelled, but there was no need of the warning. Peg turned, and the two women faced each other uneasily.

  I felt torn apart when I saw the two of them together. Peg was a wonderful girl, wonderful to look at, wonderful to be with—but Sharane! Sharane was something different, something unearthly, something irresistible. No wonder she had trapped sixty-seven men so far. Sixty-seven, plus Peg—if Peg had been trapped.

  The two women moved closer to each other, and then, incredibly, I heard Sharane say, in the same throaty, erotic voice she had used on me and on everyone else who had come through the crystal gateway, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Peg’s sarcastic answer rang out sharp and clear. “I’ll bet you have,” she snapped.

  “It has been so long since I called, and you did not come,” Sharane said caressingly.

  My eyes popped. Was Sharane trying to make love to Peg? What kind of thing was Sharane, anyway?

  “Let me through that barrier,” Peg demanded.

  Sharane made no answer, but merely moved closer. “My name is Sharane,” she said. “I have been waiting for you.”

  Word for word, the same routine she’d given me! Only how did she expect it to work on Peg?

  It didn’t. Sharane moved even closer, reached out her arms, started to embrace Peg—

  And Peg knocked her sprawling with an open-fisted blow.

  Sharane went reeling back on the ground, but picked herself up with no apparent bruises, and returned to her strange task. She moved back to Peg, turning on all her siren charms.

  It was incredible, unbelievable. But Peg wasn’t to be tempted as easily as a mere man would be. As Sharane approached, Peg whipped out at her with another blow, and followed with a neat fist to the dark-haired woman’s stomach.

  Sharane backed up, and apparently caught on that she wasn’t getting the usual reaction from Peg. She charged in a mad flurry, failed to get much of a handhold on Peg’s short-cut hair, and launched out in an attack of wild violence.

  Peg parried most of the punches, but a stray fingernail got through the defense and raked down her cheek, leaving a long, bloody line, and one of Sharane’s frantic blows landed in her mid-section, throwing her back gasping for breath.

  I heard my own voice shouting encouragement, roaring as if I were at a prizefight. And, from around me, I heard the other men cheering Peg on too.

  I had never seen two women fight before. It was quite a sight.

  Sharane kept the upper hand for a few moments, forcing Peg back, and on the areas of flesh exposed where Peg’s sweater had been torn in the jungle, I saw livid bruis
es starting to appear.

  Then Peg regained the initiative, and with an outburst of kicks, punches, and slaps she drove Sharane back. Peg used every tactic in the book, and some that weren’t—such as reaching out, seizing Sharane’s lovely blue-black hair, and yanking.

  Suddenly I saw Sharane break away out of a clinch and dash back, toward us, through the barrier. Peg followed on her heels, just a step behind.

  Sharane must have dissolved the barrier she’d set up in order to let herself get through, but the maneuver turned out a flop, because Peg came right through with her. Sharane turned, glared angrily at her when she saw the strategy had been negated, and set out in a run—straight for the giant diamond!

  “Go get her, Peg!” I shouted, almost breathless myself from the strain of watching the women fight while I myself was unable to move a muscle.

  Sharane was climbing the diamond, pulling herself up by grasping the sharp corners of the facets, hauling herself up over that great shining eye. And Peg was right behind her.

  I watched as Peg started the ascent, slipping and sliding, cutting her hands on the keen edges. Sharane was at the top, balanced precariously on the uppermost facet. The sun was beating down hard, shooting blinding flashes of light slashing off the diamond into our eyes.

  As Peg approached the top, Sharane stooped and pushed her off. She went sliding back down, catching hold half way to the ground. I saw that she had ripped the leg of her slacks open, but she didn’t appear to be cut herself. She dangled for a moment and then with dogged determination she climbed her way back to the top. My heart pounded as frantically as if I were taking part in the struggle myself.

  Sharane kicked out viciously. I saw Peg start to lose her grip, begin to fall back—and then seize Sharane’s flailing foot, and, holding on with an unbreakable grip, begin to haul herself to the top of the diamond!

  She reached it at last, and the two of them stood here, rocking shakily back and forth in the narrow area, while the blazing sun burnt down fiercely on them, sending rivers of perspiration coursing down their bare flesh. They were locked in a double grip, shivering from exhaustion, neither one able to gain advantage over the other.

  Then I saw Peg’s muscles flex, and she began to bend Sharane back, back, until the other woman was almost doubled over. Suddenly Sharane’s leg gave way, and she toppled; through some miracle, she landed on her back, still atop the diamond, and Peg pounced down on her. Peg clamped her hands on Sharane’s lovely throat, and started to squeeze.

  Sharane’s arms began to thrash wildly—and then, then, as we watched dumfounded, Sharane began to change! As Peg kept up the relentless pressure, Sharane’s shape began to alter; arms became tentacles, skin thickened and became something else, changed color from radiant white to loathsome purple. Where there had been a lovely seductress a moment before lay a ghastly thing.

  Peg jumped back, startled at the transformation; Sharane, or the thing that had been Sharane, lashed out with a tentacle, and Peg, still clinging to the other, toppled back and off the diamond, pinwheeling to the ground.

  The Sharane-thing lost its balance and dropped off the other side. I saw Peg lying unconscious on the ground, watched in impotent horror as the alien being started to rise—

  And suddenly I discovered I was free! My arm moved, my leg! Apparently the alien had needed all its power to fight Peg, and had been unable to spare the concentration needed to maintain our imprisonment.

  I was up and running in an instant, feeling strength ebb back into my stiff, cramped muscles. I leaped on the monster before it could rise, felt its strange, dry, alien odor, and then my hands were around its scaly throat. I looked down, searched for some trace of the loveliness that had once tempted me, and could find none. I saw a weird, terrifying face with glinting many-faceted eyes and a twisted, agonized mouth. I kept up the pressure.

  I heard the creature’s breath gasping out, and then I felt hands on my shoulders—Peg’s, on one shoulder, and a man’s hand, on the other.

  I looked up and saw Strauss’ pudgy face. “Don’t kill the thing,” he said. “Get up, and let’s find out what’s been going on.”

  “No,” I said. But they pulled me off.

  I stood up, and watched the alien writhing on the ground, struggling to recover its breath. A surge of hatred ran through me as I saw the strange thing down there.

  “What are you?” I demanded. “Where are we?”

  “Give me some time,” it said, barely able to speak—but I could still detect in its voice the same underlying hypnotic tone that Sharane’s voice had had. It was the only point the thing had in common with the girl. “Let me recover. I mean no further harm.”

  “I don’t trust it,” I said uneasily.

  “Why not wait?” asked Strauss. “It can’t make any trouble for us now—obviously there has to be some kind of emotional surrender or it can’t take control of us. That must be how the girl was able to defeat it.”

  I nodded. “That sounds reasonable.” I stared coldly down at the battered, suffering alien. “All right. Let’s let it catch its breath, and we’ll find out what’s what.”

  I was glad, now, that they had pulled me off. Carried away the way I was, I would undoubtedly have throttled the creature—and the Chief would undoubtedly have throttled me for it when I got back—if I got back. For one thing, with the creature alive there was a chance we might find out what this was all about. For another, with the creature dead we might have no way of getting back to Earth.

  So I stood back, letting the anger seep out of me, and turned to Peg.

  She had come off on top in the fight, but she was pretty well battered. One of her lovely blue eyes had an even lovelier shiner, and she was thoroughly scratched and bruised. Her sweater was just about ripped clean off her, and she was holding the tatters together self-consciously.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  She smiled, and through all the blood and bruises it still looked wonderful.

  “I went to the Chief, after you—disappeared.”

  “I wish you hadn’t,” I said. “I didn’t want him to know I was letting you in on anything.”

  “He doesn’t know. All I did was ask him to tell me what kind of job you had been sent out on. After I told him what had happened to you, he explained.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I requested that the next unused diamond that was found be turned over to me. He didn’t want to, but finally he agreed to it.”

  I looked at the slowly twisting creature lying on the ground, and back to Peg. “So?”

  “So another diamond materialized that night, and the Chief called me. I came and picked it up, and when I was alone I looked at it. There was that girl in it, calling to me.” She made a face. “It was disgusting.”

  “And then you were drawn in?” I asked, remembering the way Sharane had trapped me.

  “Of course not, silly. I didn’t respond to that posturing girl at all, and so I couldn’t be caught. But I voluntarily came through. I willed myself to be drawn in, and I was. I landed up in that jungle, and wandered out here when I saw the light of the diamond.”

  I nodded. “And then Sharane came after you with her song and dance. Since Sharane was actually an alien with no real idea of the difference between the human sexes, she—it—thought her act would work on you too. But it didn’t.”

  I walked over to where the alien was, and Peg and the six freed captives followed me. Sharane—the Sharane-thing—was sitting up.

  “Hurry,” it said. “We must talk before the Llanar ship arrives, or there is great danger.”

  “Who are the Llanar?” I asked, surprised.

  “My captors,” said the alien. Its weird face was twisted into an expression of cosmic sadness.

  “What do you mean, your captors?”

  “The Llanar,” Sharane said, “are a great race from out there.” She gestured at the sky. “They conquered my people, and they wish to enslave yours through us. They have placed me
here, against my will, and shown me how to disguise myself as a human. All who were drawn by the diamond were powerless against me—except—”

  She pointed to Peg.

  I smiled. “The only thing as hard as a diamond is another diamond. The only thing that could resist Sharane’s womanly wiles would be another woman. Those diamonds were set up to trap men—and when a woman came through, Sharane here didn’t know what to do with her. She had never experienced a human woman.”

  “I have now,” the alien said weakly. “I hope to never again.”

  “How does this trap work?” Caldwell asked.

  “The great diamond here is the focus,” Sharane said. “The smaller ones serve as transmitting poles, at the other end of the channel. We send them to Earth, and when men find them they are drawn in. I then tempt them to surrender themselves—and as soon as they do, I freeze them.” The alien broke into the alien equivalent of a sob. “Then the Llanar come, and take them away. They make them slaves, on their home worlds.”

  The alien sat up, and rubbed itself. “But you have won your freedom from me,” it said. “You may return to your planet.”

  “And you?”

  “I must sit here,” the alien said. “I must continue to prey on Earth, or the Llanar will kill me.”

  “We’ll close that damnable gateway, don’t worry,” muttered Caldwell, but I ignored him.

  Suddenly all my hatred for Sharane had vanished. I saw the strange thing before us as a person, not a thing—a suffering, sensitive person. An alien, true, but very human under the to-me-grotesque exterior. In just those few minutes I learned a lesson: you don’t have to have arms and legs and two blue eyes to be a human being.

  I saw the whole picture now. Sharane’s people were under the domination of still another alien race from deep in the galaxy—the dread Llanar. And the Llanar were forcing Sharane to operate this lonely trap on the edge of the universe, waiting like a spider to net the unfortunates who happened to find one of the treacherous diamonds she scattered.

  “You can send us back to Earth?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sharane said. “But—”