The yes men of Venus

A Minor Cataclysm

My heart was heavy as I drifted over the remote reaches of the Pacific Ocean in the atomic powered Zeppelin the World League of Peaceful Governments had thoughtfully allowed me to borrow in order to show their gratitude for my having ended the 4th World War several weeks ahead of time with my lucky discovery of a powerful ray that made gun powder ineffectual. This balloon cruise, as pleasant as it was, had been planned as more than just a dedicated scientific attempt to map the migratory routes of the Arctic Curlew. It was to have been, too, my wedding journey.

As I followed, with my binoculars, the happily paired curlews flapping to warmer climes I tried to think of some reason for the unpleasant turn events had taken. When I had called for my beloved Joanna on the prior morning her father, the noted munitions tycoon, John Plunderbund Brimstone, had left, not his best wishes for a safe honeymoon but, rather, orders for myself and my Zeppelin to be thrown unceremoniously from the grounds. All my leaden heart could be sure of was that I would never again walk hand in hand with the handsomest, most athletic and yet feminine, girl in the state of New Jersey. The thought of what I was doing would have brought tears to my eyes had I not been as masculine and manly as I am. For the curlew was the one bird that my Joanna and I had always thought of as our bird.

But the rapid deflation of my Zeppelin vanquished all self pity from my mind. I was galvanized into action. Placing my binoculars back in their case, I dived without further thought from the gondola of the falling Zeppelin and into the placid waters of the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps some well placed parting shot from one of the minions of Joanna's father had done its slow work and been the cause of the untimely cessation of my means of transportation.

I am an excellent swimmer and so there was no dread on my part of the long swim ahead. However, I had barely covered a mile when I became aware that something was tugging rather forebodingly at my ankle. My impression was that I had caught my foot in the compelling maw of some great clam. Before I could reflect more the creature had pulled at me so forcefully that my head, the hair of which I wore in a somewhat long though manly fashion, was yanked below the breath stopping waters of the ocean in which I had so recently found myself. I fought bravely, being an excellent boxer. An old ring axiom has it that a good big man can beat a good little man. However, most rules of honest boxing were not made with giant clams in mind. For one thing, I could not be sure if I was fouling the creature or not. As I struggled I became more and more lightheaded and giddy. As I drove an excellent jab home to what I hoped was a vital spot of the clam I suddenly lost consciousness.

The Mysterious Host

I came to in a clean white bed with a large handsome man looking down at me. He was a striking fellow. To give you some idea I will simply say that this man, whose name I soon learned was Lowell Hawthorne, was even better developed and more manfully handsome than myself.

"You've had a bit of a close shave, old man," he said, gripping my shoulder in a perfectly manly way.

"American, aren't you?"

"Right you are, old man," he said. "Mabu, my native boy and Numba, his native boy, fished you out of the briny. Scared the simple fellows a bit at first. They're not used to finding chaps such as yourself inside giant clams. I had some talking to do to convince them you weren't a large pearl or some such thing."

"I believe it is oysters rather than clams that are best known for their pearls," I said, good naturedly, for I took to this handsome, though mysterious, American almost at once.

"Who can tell a native anything?" was his honest reply.

"I suppose I am to be laid up here for a time," I said.

"A few days," said Hawthorne, drawing a bamboo chair near to my side. "If you don't object I'd like to tell you a few of my adventures. For, if I do say so myself, my life has been both curious and strange."

"By all means," I encouraged, being anxious to learn more of this enigmatic man who apparently lived contentedly here among savages and giant clams.

"I can tell by your look," he began, "that you are a man of science and that you may at first be a bit skeptical. Let me begin by saying that for the past five years I have been in close radio contact with a man living inside the planet Venus."

"Inside?" I asked. "Come, Hawthorne. Science is well aware that people live on the outside of that damp junglous planet. But inside?"

"Put aside all your scientific learning for a moment," my new friend replied. "If you do you may learn something. At least you will have whiled away your convalescence."

So he began the odd and compelling narrative that you will read in the next chapter.

Down And Out On Mars

I am the reincarnation, began Hawthorne, of an Egyptian priest, whose name if I were to mention it you would recognize as being as familiar to you as your own. Having lived several lives I reached this one with more than the usual sense of ennui. I tried many things: shopkeeping, the cavalry, gold prospecting, writing for the magazines. None of these helped, nor could love. For in ancient Egypt I had loved a handsome and sporting priestess named Isis. After her all other women were anticlimactic. As Fate would have it, she whom I sincerely and respectfully loved, never seemed to get reincarnated during the same era as myself. You know how women are about keeping appointments.

One evening toward the end of 1970 I was strolling through Central Park long after the hour when most men thought it safe. To a man such as myself, a man who fought the Red Indians without a qualm, the worst terrors of Central Park after dark held no dread. Still I was taken aback when seven youths fell upon me with baseball bats. You have perhaps found, as I did that night, that even a superb physical being is no match for seven men with little respect for the correct way of life, and large clubs. Though I maimed and injured a good number of them I was nevertheless knocked unconscious.

When I awoke and took a step I bounced twelve feet into the air.

Some reappraisal of my surroundings seemed in order. Central Park had surely changed considerably. It was now a great red desert. I took another step and bounced again. Then the awesome truth came home to me. I was no longer in Central Park. I was on Mars.

I am aware that you scientifically inclined chaps talk of space travel as being a remote possibility. You will realize, of course, that in 1970 no such thing was even at the experimental stage. Therefore I knew I had been transported to the Red Planet by some mystical means there is no way to explain.

I was still engrossed in seeing how high I could bounce when three large green men rode toward me mounted on gigantic hairy horses that boasted two extra sets of legs. The green men themselves were twenty feet high and turned out to have, now that I noticed, an extra set of green arms. This is not the sort of sight someone who has only recently been battered with wooden clubs wishes to see on awakening.

But appearances are not always the best indication of the man and I soon found my green welcomers to be quite decent. By means of a method too complex to burden you with we soon taught each other our respective languages.

The green men were named Yarl Zun, Zin Yerg and Yex Zurb. I explained to them that I had apparently transmigrated to Mars by some strange means.

"You picked a bad time to transmigrate," said Yarl Zun, shaking his great green head.

"Why is that?"

The three of them proceeded to explain to me as we shared a breakfast of kex, which is rather like our cold oatmeal, that Mars was in the midst of a great depression. It seems that the head of their government, the Daktor, who is roughly equivalent to two of our presidents, had been wooed into the camp of the more radical element in the Martian society and instead of listening to his Yax-Daktros, or well-wishers as we would call them, and building up comforting supplies of zugbeams, or what we would call deathrays, he had foolishly poured the taxpayers' money into Yerb, which is something like our social security. The result was rampant radicalism and poverty with little or no respect for Goomba, roughly equal to our patriotism.

The upshot of this enlightening political indoctrination was that I would have a tough time making my way on Mars at the moment. Zin Yerg and the rest helpfully offered to bat me over the head with Zoobs, roughly equivalent to our baseball bats, in the hope that I might then transmigrate back to Earth. I, though, having been an optimist in nine out of ten of my previous reincarnations, decided to brazen it out. Stick I would and albeit I was down and out at the moment I felt I would not be for long.

Such was indeed the case, as I will next relate.

The Great Games Of Maroom

I threw in my lot with the green men who were, it evolved, enroute to Maroom, the capital of this country, to enroll in the Great Games. It is difficult for me to find a parallel on our own planet for these Great Games. What transpired at them, as I was to learn only too well and shortly, was this. The blood-thirsty citizens of Maroom flock to a large stadium and there witness various fellows fighting one another and also great and ferocious beasts, of which there are many on this depression-torn planet. Should a poor mendicant triumph in one of these gruesome contests he is awarded a cash prize. This explains why the down-and-out of Mars flock to Maroom.