OUT OF THIS WORLD

By HENRY HASSE

There was no escape but death from that fetid prison planet and its crazed, sadistic overseer.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

When the Earth supply ship set down upon prison planet Number Seven last week, a curious state of affairs was found: the prisoners below mining the ore as usual, the overseer dead, and every indication of some stark drama having taken place. In the study of the overseer's house one man was found dead, apparently by his own hand, and beside him on the desk was a hastily scribbled document which is herewith published.

We hated Marnick.

Because he was an Earthman and because he laughed, we hated him. Awake and asleep, at our daily drudge of labor and in the throes of sluggish nightmare, with a fierce tenacity from the very depths of our souls—those of us who still had souls—we hated him. And there was not a man among us who had not sworn to kill him if given the chance, who did not dream of being the one. For we knew that some day it was going to happen.

But when? It seemed impossible. Daily that is what I thought as I trudged wearily to my place in B-Tunnel two miles below. We were forty men against him, Martians and Earthmen alike. Once there had been Venusians here, too, but they died too easily, and now Venusian criminals were sent elsewhere. Forty against Marnick, but still he was Law here on the tiny barren satellite of Jupiter—the seventh or eighth in orbit, I have long since forgotten which. The Tri-Planet Federation had appointed him overseer, then had immediately forgotten him and us. Out of our way, you criminal scum! Out of the sight and memory of men! Thus it was.

Yes, Marnick was law and lord and master of all he surveyed, and believe me he surveyed us well. He used to come down the central vertical shaft in his little case of special glassite, and hover there above us, watching; sometimes unbeknownst by us; and heaven help any worker who fell under his gaze, who he thought might be shirking. Marnick reserved a very special fate for shirkers, a certain torture, so I had heard.

Now all that I had heard came rushing back to flood my brain, as I stood tensely alert, listening to the raucous, inhuman laughter that surged down the central shaft to reach our ears. Again it came and yet again, rising to insane pitch.

I rested my short-handled hand-pick against the little heap of radite ore. I wiped my sweated brow with fingers that burned and tingled from contact with the radite. I peered covertly around at the many tunnels converging into the central place, and saw the other workers, Martians, and Earthmen, cowering under that sound of laughter. I wondered if I looked to them as they looked to me. I knew I was afraid. That was Marnick's laughter, I had heard it before. His special torture was going on again. Would I be next? So far I had luckily escaped.

I tried to straighten up into a semblance of courage, but again that shrieking laughter came drifting down to cower me. At the same time McGowan left his tunnel next to mine, and came strolling over to me. I was aghast. For any man to so much as leave his post, meant that he would receive the same punishment that some poor devil up there was now receiving. But McGowan always was a reckless one. Tall, brutish, dark and always scowling, a light of indomitable spirit shone perpetually out of his contrasting gray eyes. Those eyes were now hate-filled as he cocked his head and listened to that laughter.

"If only he wouldn't laugh," McGowan said in a voice so calm that it was doubly terrible. "If only he would go ahead with his torture, and watch it if he wished. But to laugh! And to let us know that he laughs! That is the crowning touch. Some day, Reed, I swear to you—"

"Yes, I know," I whispered fearfully. "Some day one of us is going to kill him. A favorite dream here."

"Not someone, Reed. Me! That is a privilege I reserve. And I shall not kill him. At least not in the usual way. I have a very special revenge planned for Mr. Marnick."

That was a story I had heard before, too; but now something in McGowan's voice caused me to look sharply up at him. And the hate that smouldered in those eyes was such as I cared not to look upon. I glanced quickly away, and then I heard a smooth familiar hum from the central shaft. I knew what it was. I swooped for my hand-pick and began to ply it industriously.

"Quick, McGowan, get back to your work!" I whispered. "Marnick's coming down again!" I'm sure McGowan knew that as well as I did, but he simply stood there, gazing almost expectantly at the place where the shaft led up through the cave roof. "You damn fool!" I whispered, but there was a tight little smile on McGowan's lips as he stood there.

The hum continued. Even as I continued to hack at the hard-grained rock I shot a sidelong glance up at the shaft. Marnick's vehicle appeared suddenly there, seemingly suspended in the air. It was simply a glassite-enclosed, rounded cage, large enough to contain Marnick and the two lumbering, Jovian brutes he kept always with him. A pale violet halo hovered around the entire structure. It hung there just below the cave roof.

I could glimpse Marnick standing there erect, arms folded, peering haughtily down at us. Naturally a tall man, he always seemed taller and more forbidding in that posture. His hair was gray, but no grayer than his face; and against that grayness his eyes were dull black and quite expressionless, as if at one time he had seen some sight that had burned them out.

But now his arms unfolded and he leaned tensely forward. His thin colorless lips twitched as if in disbelief. A second later his rasping voice went bounding about the walls: "You! Earthman, over there! Get back to your work!"

He was speaking to McGowan and we all knew it. McGowan stood only a few feet from me, but I dared not even glance up at him now. I glimpsed him, however, bending down slowly, deliberately, and I saw his right hand seize a good-sized lump of radite ore from my pile. He straightened just as deliberately, turned to face Marnick and then said: "Go to hell!" With those words, McGowan drew back his hand and hurled the radite lump at Marnick's cage.

All of us in that moment paused to watch, and all of us were aghast at McGowan's futile bravado. We knew that not even an atom-blast, much less a lump of rock, could penetrate that mysterious force-barrier Marnick had erected around himself. That's what made the act so terrible, for McGowan knew it, too. And he wore a satisfied little smile as he did it.

Straight at the glittering machine McGowan hurled the heavy boulder.

The rock didn't come within a yard of Marnick's cage. It struck against the violet force-halo, bounded back and clattered to the floor. Marnick's lips split into what might have been a grin; he touched a button beside him and the cage dropped the rest of the way to the cave floor. Its door opened and the two Jovian brutes stepped quickly out. Grinning through thick, blubbery lips, with huge powerful hands reaching out, they strode purposefully toward McGowan.

McGowan made no defensive gesture. He stood there still smiling a little, as though hugely satisfied with what he had done. The Jovians seized him ungently, hurried him back to the cage and into it. The door closed and the cage slowly began to rise. The Jovians released his arms then, and McGowan acted with customary deliberateness as his right fist lashed up and crashed into Marnick's mouth. Marnick staggered back, his face a gushing well of red; but with a seeming flick of the wrist his paralyzer tube was in his hand, its pale beam spurting out. McGowan sank down in a huddled little heap, but even so, his very attitude as he lay there unconscious seemed one of satisfaction. The cage rose swiftly up and out of sight.

I didn't allow myself to think of the fate that would be McGowan's now. As we worked we listened again for the sound of Marnick's insane laughter. But it never came. He knew that we hated him, and he loved it. It was a sort of little game he played with us. He knew that we would be listening for his laughter now, so he chose not to let us hear it; to make us wonder. Psychologically it was much more terrible.

That Marnick was a devil.

Four days later McGowan came back to us.

Rumor among us had it that Marnick maintained special quarters up on the surface of this satellite, a stone house against the barren rock; and that in this house was a certain room into which Marnick thrust the men who displeased him. Beyond this even rumor failed to go, but we often hazarded guesses. The most prevalent guess was that Marnick released hordes of Callistan Gnishii into this room, then stood at a glass-paned door and shrieked with insane laughter at the antics of the unfortunate victims. The Gnishii are tiny little sharp-tipped devils, scarcely three inches in length. Hard-shelled, blazing red in color, they surely must be a spawn of hell; for they are quite harmless except when in the presence of human flesh, and then they seem to go wild.

We guessed that Marnick might be employing these Gnishii, because several of his victims who came back to us had hundreds of fresh scars covering their legs from ankles to knees. But these men seemed to prefer not to speak of what they had undergone, and the rest of us weren't too anxious to know.