Amour, Amour, Dear Planet!

A new and sinless world the anti-pleasure Mohcans sought. But they depended on their hostage, Spacecaptain Jan Obrien, to find it for them ... and he was an amorous imp from way back.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Spacecaptain Jan Obrien was plain drunk and in no condition to handle an aircar. Which fact perhaps can be understood for a man who has not tasted the liquor of Terra in ten years and who comes home to his native planet to find it wrecked by the worst of its wars.

Obrien was in no condition, but nevertheless he was handling an aircar, whizzing down a Rocky Mountain canyon at a couple of hundred miles per hour. The time was barely dawn and the visibility was terrible.

"Slow down, Jan, slow down, slow down!" the sleek young tart in the transparent evening gown kept whimpering. She was not as drunk as Jan. Disgusted with the Chicago nightclub in which he had started his homecoming 12 hours before, Jan had hustled her into the aircar and started out vaguely for Portland or L.A. or both.

A solid cliff suddenly loomed out of the mist ahead. The girl covered her eyes and screamed shrilly. The quick-thinking habits of 20 years were not completely drowned in liquor. Jan yanked at the controls, and the aircar shrieked in protest as it changed its direction to the vertical. Jan and the girl were hurled so violently into the transparent elastic protector curtain that they were stunned. When Jan came to, they were approximately two miles above Pike's Peak. The sunlight was dazzling.

"Hey, baby, we're still airborne," Jan cried, jabbing his elbow into the girl's ribs.

She looked down at the mountain and groaned.

"It takes more than an old cliff to do a spacecaptain in," Jan yelled. "Look baby, did you know we could do this?" Jan cut the power and let the aircar descend in a series of erratically fluttering loops. The mountain rushed up at them. The girl covered her eyes and sobbed, "Don't, please don't!"

The mountain top was covered with a multitude of people dressed in white. They faced a great golden crescent that gleamed like fire in the rising sun. Jan was so fascinated by the spectacle that his coordination failed him. He was conscious of the white-robed people fleeing in terror as he fought to regain control of the aircar.

They crashed. Their speed had been only about 50 miles per hour and the protectors saved them from injury. They scrambled out to survey the damage.

"Well, it won't fly again soon," Jan said. He breathed deeply of the thin air.

"What a hell of a place to crash," the girl said. "Those are Mohcans holding their spring equinox festival. They'll probably stone me." She looked down at her transparent gown. The white-robed people had resumed their places and were singing a hymn as though nothing had happened. It was slow, sad, august, a mighty organ sound of human voices.

The girl's face was chalk white. "Let's run for it," she begged. "They're dangerous. They're dangerous as hell. Please believe me." She turned and started to run down the path that had once been the cogroad, stumbling in her high-heeled shoes.

Jan ran after her, weaving as though the mountain were a deck on the high seas.

He grabbed her by the arm. "Hey, baby, they don't sound dangerous," he said. "They're just singing a kind of hymn as though nothing happened. The only rise we got out of them was the way they scattered when we started to crash."

"Come on, come on," she cried. "I know about these people. They'll be after us when the hymn stops."

"Okay, but you're talking foolish," he said. They started walking down the mountain. "Hell, those people won't do us any harm. They're too busy singing." He pulled out a pack of cigarets and lit one.

"You're space-crazy," she said. "Didn't you ever hear of the massacre of scientists at Harvard, or what they did to the chorus girls in 'Sex Happy'?"