Mission Earth Volume 4: An Alien Affair

  BONK!

  A blackjack hit me in the head from behind!

  At least, I think it must have been a blackjack.

  I went out with stars exploding all around me. I heard the dueling pistol fall.

  Miss Pinch had been standing in the areaway’s blackness waiting for me to ring the bell, facing away from her!

  That was all I knew just then.

  When I awoke, all my clothes were off. I was chained, spread-eagled on the bed, bandaged hands offering no resistance.

  Miss Pinch, fully clothed in a mannish suit complete with slouch hat and bow tie, was standing there looking at me.

  “Inkswitch,” said Miss Pinch, seeing I had now come to. “I have just voted you the top jackass of the year. And we’ll soon see how loud you bray.”

  She reached for the brace of dueling pistols lying on the casket with the explosives from my overcoat. She spun them expertly, one in each hand. She pulled back the mammoth flintlock hammers. She pointed them at me, one at my head, the other at my belly.

  She pulled both triggers!

  A flash of sparks!

  She laughed gaily.

  “You forgot to prime them, Inkswitch. Not a single grain of powder in the priming pans!”

  It seemed to amuse her mightily. She cocked them once more. She held them very close to my side. She pulled the trigger of the left-hand pistol!

  A shower of sparks scorched into my skin. I bit my lips. I would not scream. That’s what set these idiots off!

  Candy was peeking through the door of the inner room. “May I come in? Now that I won’t see him undressing?”

  “Come in, sweetheart,” said Miss Pinch.

  “Ooo!” said Candy. “Its body is all black and blue!”

  “Colored meat,” said Miss Pinch. “We’re going to have colored meat tonight. Now, do you want a drumstick or a wing, you dear girl?”

  Candy flinched. “Oh, horrors! Are you trying to suggest that I actually touch a man? You know that is forbidden to us by the instructor. The thought is horrible to me!”

  Miss Pinch was quite disturbed she had upset her. She stroked her soothingly. “I promise to stand by Psychiatric Birth Control teachings.” Then she had a bright idea. She was very anxious to please. “Watch this!”

  She turned the cocked pistol upside down. Too late to yell, I saw powder trickling from the touchhole into the pan!

  She pulled the trigger!

  BLAM!

  The gout of red flame shot across my stomach!

  The heavy bullet plowed into the wall. Down came a display of knives!

  Black-powder smoke rolled through the room.

  That powder burned! The sparks began to eat into my flesh. I could not reach them to beat them out.

  I screamed! I was so deafened for the moment I could hardly hear myself. Then after a bit my hearing returned.

  Neither of those monsters was in shock.

  Candy, panting and hot-eyed, was hauling at Miss Pinch and trying to yank down her own clothes at the same time. “Pinchy, Pinchy. Take me!”

  Miss Pinch looked at her. “So soon?” She looked back at me reluctantly. But Candy was kissing her passionately. “All right,” said Miss Pinch. She grabbed her, carried her off to the other room and slammed the door.

  Moans, groans and shrieks.

  Silence.

  Low, savage muttering.

  Silence.

  At least I had had a half-hour reprieve.

  Miss Pinch came out. She still had her shoes on. She stood and cursed me. She called me every vile name I had ever heard of and some that I hadn’t.

  Finally she ran out of vitriol. She sat down on the couch. “Men!” she said, with burning contempt. “Torturers of women!”

  “Miss Pinch,” I said, “I think you have a psychological problem. I think, perhaps, some childhood experience may have caused you to reverse roles with . . .” I couldn’t think of a thing that would account for this monster!

  “Well, go on, Inkswitch. Let’s hear some juicy tales about you and the little girls in the neighborhood. Possibly gay little anecdotes of how you threw them on a beach of pointed rocks and did a frolicking dance on their faces! Or perhaps how you had a little sister that you carefully made into a whore. Oh, I’m sure you could tell us lots of stories. We would not be amused. For such crimes, Inkswitch, you should be beaten! You will be beaten, Inkswitch!” She turned.

  “Candy!” she yelled into the other room. “The (bleepard) just confessed! Come in here!”

  Candy came out. She was naked. She watched with interest while Miss Pinch got a big truncheon.

  “Now,” said Miss Pinch. “You’re going to hear some real screams, you darling girl.”

  “I don’t have a sister!” I yelled.

  “You will when I get through with you,” said Miss Pinch. And laid on with a will. She drew back at last. “Now confess! Did you make your little sister into a whore?”

  I confessed hurriedly that I had.

  “Then this beating is going to do you lots of good,” said Miss Pinch and began in earnest!

  It must have been nearing midnight. They had depleted the record cabinet. The room was full of marijuana smoke. They were both naked and exhausted after numerous trips to the other room.

  Miss Pinch unchained me. I somehow got into my clothes.

  She stood naked in the hall, holding the door open, oblivious to the icy wind.

  “You obviously have not had company training, Inkswitch. It is all too plain to see that you prefer sex smashing a woman down into a bed. You are perverted, Inkswitch. Don’t you know that that makes babies and babies are forbidden? Think Psychiatric Birth Control, Inkswitch. Rockecenter would fire you out of hand if he thought you favored old-fashioned sex! So we are doing you a favor, Inkswitch. We will gradually win you away from your male beastliness. Consider it our blessing, Inkswitch.”

  “Oh, I do,” I faltered.

  “Very good, you contemptible (bleepard). We will see you here tomorrow night. Without pistols. Primed or unprimed. And without fail.”

  She stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here is another hundred dollars. You weren’t very good tonight. Maybe more tomorrow night. So show up, Inkswitch.”

  She slammed the door.

  The hundred-dollar bill fluttered down beside my feet.

  I shivered, beaten, in the cold wind.

  PART THIRTY-THREE

  Chapter 1

  The next day, when I awoke, I came to the conclusion that things were not going very well.

  The morning paper confirmed it.

  You would not think that a wad of wood pulp, crushed flat, messily smeared with some carbon, could constitute a deadly weapon. But a newspaper is all of that and more. Any direction it is pointed, it can kill. Especially when motivated by an idiot. One who does not seem to know who he is pointing at.

  The target person was supposed to be Heller, whatever name they called him, however many doubles he might have. The person it wounded, this morning, was me!

  There it was, right on the front page:

  TEN-BILLION-BUCK SUIT SETTLED

  ___________________

  WHIZ KID TRIUMPHS OVER OCTOPUS

  ___________________

  OIL GIANT WRITHES—DOW JONES SOARS

  The ten-billion-buck Whiz Kid suit has been settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

  The Director of the Federal Reserve Bank issued an emergency statement that the bank would open this morning and resume business.

  In a sudden stop-press announcement in the small hours of this morning, a spokesman for Boggle, Gouge & Hound stunned the assembled media, stating “Octopus Oil is out of danger. We have just met with Swindle and Crouch and reached total agreement on an out-of-court settlement of Wister vs. Octopus Oil.”

  Swindle and Crouch, when reached, stated, “No comment.” But their representative was seen at the courthouse removing the case from the court dockets.

  Speculation as to the amount
of settlement was rife. The president of the New York Stock Exchange promised that the Exchange would again open its doors.

  The dollar is expected to soar against foreign exchange.

  The Seven Brothers, in a predawn meeting, pledged the closest possible support to one another.

  A director of Peril-Cinch, the world’s largest stock brokerage firm, stated, “Now that this threat is out of the way, we can expect Dow Jones to rise this morning and have coffee. The panic sell-off of Octopus stock (most of which we bought ourselves) has been ended, and we extend our condolences to the suckers who sold. Octopus stock will now soar. God bless the Whiz Kid and American youth.”

  Wister, exhausted from his battle, smiled wanly. “I did it all for America.” When asked what he would do with the undoubtedly huge amounts of the settlement, he just smiled quietly.

  (See page 18 for photos of the Octopus Oil Building and courthouse.)

  Later editions carried much the same story. I did not have to look at TV or radio to know what they were saying.

  My attention was on something else. I was watching the gaping slit under my door.

  Swindle and Crouch had been mentioned again in the same story with Boggle, Gouge & Hound.

  Snakes were going to come crawling under that door any minute!

  I was sure of it.

  I ached. The resident doctor, when I had come in around midnight, had rubbed some ointment mixed with “Tch, tch, tch. We must learn not to put our stomach up against certain things,” but it hadn’t helped a bit. I was bruised and raw!

  With a conviction seldom equaled in the Apparatus experience, I knew I had to get out of New York. It was too small for me and Pinch. But I also knew that it was impossible. Heller was winning!

  At home in Turkey an unknown assailant from Lombar would rub me out if I left Heller triumphing in New York.

  It was a matter of off-the-barbecue-stick and into-the-flames if I left things in this condition.

  I tried to get practical. A baseball bat taken to Madison was all I seemed to be able to think of.

  Something desperate was called for.

  Moaning from pain, I tried to lie down. Moaning from pain, I tried to stand up.

  I compromised. Half reclining in a chaise lounge, I tried to think. An idea greater than any idea I had ever had was absolutely mandatory!

  Before I could do anything else, Heller had to be smashed, smashed, smashed!

  But how?

  PART THIRTY-THREE

  Chapter 2

  My eyes, sort of glazed, at first did not register what they were looking at.

  The viewer was on.

  It may have been the bright red colors that drew my attention. They were so glaring, they were painful.

  It was Babe Corleone! She was sitting in the back seat of a big limousine that had just stopped. She had on a red gown and a red cape that was printed here and there with black hands. She was wearing a red veil.

  The costume she had mentioned! I knew I was looking at the start of Gunsalmo Silva’s funeral!

  There was a man in black sitting beside her. She was talking to him petulantly. “True, true, Signore Saggezza. You have been a good consigliere. True, true, the Corleone family has had none better. True, true, true, I must take your advice. But I don’t care what the hell you say, I am going to go to this funeral!”

  “Mia capa, I plead with you again. It is not wise! The report is just in. The church is swarming with the lice of Faustino Narcotici! This could start a gang war!” He saw he was getting nowhere. He looked with appeal straight out of the viewer. To Heller!

  Of course. Heller. I would be getting no picture at all unless Heller was there. My wits were too soaked in pain to concentrate well.

  I could make out Heller’s own image in the limousine glass. He seemed to be wearing a red tuxedo under a scarlet ski parka with a hood and snow mask. Everything red. He must be sitting on a jump seat.

  Heller looked outside. There was a church seen through the leafless trees of a park. All around the limousine, near to hand, men were packed thickly, facing outward. They held riot shotguns in their hands. They were dressed in black overcoats and black slouch hats. Corleone soldati, soldiers alert for war. They were very tense.

  Heller turned back. Babe was sulking behind her red veil. The consigliere was still looking at Heller in appeal.

  “Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller, “why don’t I just step over to that church and see what’s really going on? Then we’ll know for sure whether it is safe or unsafe. We don’t want you in the middle of a gang fight.”

  “They’ll shoot you!” said Babe in sudden alarm. “Take ten or twelve men!”

  “No,” said Heller. “I’ll be all right. I’ll wear this ski mask.”

  Heller took out his ornate Llama .45 and jacked a shell into the chamber, put on the safety and then shoved the gun into a back belt holster. He adjusted the ski mask in place.

  He started to get out. There was a sound. A yowl! He turned. “You stay there,” he said.

  The cat was sitting on the other jump seat! It had on a red leather harness and a red collar with brass spikes. It had been about to follow but now it settled back on the seat, sitting up, alert.

  I sat up, too! With sudden hope. If Heller was walking straight into the Faustino mob, he indeed might get shot! I didn’t have the platen so they mustn’t kill him. But a nice painful wound that would put him a long time in the hospital would be just great!

  There was every chance of it, too! Imagine going on a scout in a red tuxedo and a luminous scarlet ski parka! About as invisible as a bomb blast! What an idiot!

  He walked through the circle of Corleone men and straight over to the church. Actually, it was a small cathedral. A sign said, Our Lady of Gracious Peace. They must be somewhere in lower Manhattan.

  There was nobody outside, just a few empty limousines.

  Heller scanned the cathedral itself. Gothic arches swept up to considerable height on either side of the massive doors. He stepped forward. The altars glittered with gold leaf, the votive candles sputtered in vast rows. Sunlight beamed down through stained glass. The place was empty of people.

  At least live people, anyway. A casket, its top open, rested on trestles. Heller did not walk down the aisle and approach it.

  Voices were coming from a side room near the main entrance. Heller tiptoed over to the door of it and looked in. The place, in comparison to the main cathedral, was well lit by diagonally paned windows all around it.

  It was absolutely crammed with men!

  They were in black overcoats and slouch hats. Many had shotguns under their arms. They were facing someone standing on a raised platform.

  Razza Louseini! The consigliere of Faustino “The Noose” Narcotici! I recognized him well from past dope contacts in Turkey. He was also the man who had fingered Heller that first time in the Howard Johnson’s on the New Jersey Turnpike. He would possibly recognize Heller! Marvelous! A good, disabling wound in Heller was exactly what I needed!

  Louseini was not making too much progress. He looked angry and upset. “But, men,” Razza was arguing, “you don’t seem to understand. Gunsalmo Silva was killed while on family business. We’ve got to bury him in some sort of style.”

  A man in the mob spoke up, “Our family has lost nineteen good men this fall. That’s more than in most gang wars. All we been doing all fall is giving our own family members funerals! But Silva wasn’t any real loss to us. We got better things to do!”

  Others muttered in agreement.

  Razza looked at them and showed his teeth. “Silva was a hero! He wasted ‘Holy Joe’ for us! You got to show respect! How would you like to get bumped and nobody showed respect? How about that?”

  Another voice. It was a priest in robes, very close to where Heller stood. Evidently he was the one who was supposed to officiate. “May I speak?”

  Razza said, “Go ahead, Father Paciere. Maybe you can talk some sense into their thick heads!”

/>   Father Paciere said, “My sons, we are here in the presence of the dead. It grieves me to see you quarrel in this holy place. I need eight pallbearers and it would please me well if some would volunteer.”

  A very tough-faced mobster turned toward the priest. “Father, I don’t think they been telling you all they know. Gunsalmo Silva was a traditore, a traitor to the Corleone family.”

  The priest recoiled. He crossed himself. “I didn’t know!” He bowed his head and shook it sadly. “Now I understand why even his own brother and uncle would not attend. All are equal in the eyes of God, but a traditore . . .”

  “Hey!” the tough-faced mobster suddenly barked, pointing at Heller. “Who’s that? A spy?”

  All faces whipped toward Heller in the doorway. Guns came up. Oh, here it came! I was going to get my wish!

  Father Paciere said, “No, no. Peace! There will be no firing to desecrate the cathedral!” He came over to Heller.

  “My son, you are masked,” said the priest. “What is your name?”

  Well, I suppose a Royal officer doesn’t lie to a priest. He said, “Here on this planet, they call me Jerome Wister.”

  The noise was such that I couldn’t tell what happened for a moment. It was a dreadful smashing sound!

  Heller looked.

  Men were going out those leaded windows in a rocket stream!

  Screams of panic!

  Shattering crashes of riot gun butts hammering out panes to clear the way!

  Men were pouring out onto the shrubbery outside!

  Limousines were roaring into life!

  The room was empty.

  The limousines were gone.

  A tinkle of broken glass fell with one last sound upon the floor.

  Father Paciere came out from behind the door. He was staring at Heller with an open mouth. Then he looked around at the empty and wrecked room. He crossed himself. He looked at Heller, eyes wide, “So you are Wister.”

  Heller said, “Wait around, Father. Maybe I can get you a funeral started yet.”

  He sprinted back through the leafless trees. The Corleone soldiers were standing there, open-mouthed, staring at the missing limousines and empty surrounds. Heller went through them. He opened the limousine door.