Stellar Vengeance

"You must realize," squealed the squat, ugly creature in the hastily constructed wooden cage, "that you're inviting certain destruction by holding me prisoner. I warn you, your time is short."

Walt Granger stomped over to the enclosure and swung a heavy boot against one of the two-by-fours that stood like a crooked row of sentries. "That's my worry," he grunted.

He had stumbled upon the whole business just two hours before, right in the middle of his part of the geoglogic survey that was going on in the rock strewn hills and gullies known on the maps as the Millsport Range. He had seen the ship the moment it left the ground, and a few yards from the burned circle of grass that was still smoldering from the rocket blast, there sat the fat little specimen of life from another world. Granger had caught the thing by surprise and had a rope around its middle before it could scamper into the brush.

"My comrades will return for me," warned the thing, its yellowish eyes slowly and rhythmically protruding and withdrawing within their sockets. "They'll have no trouble finding you, and when they do...."

"Shut up!" snapped Granger, pulling on his leather jacket. He turned to the cement fireplace and gave the embers a poke with a charred stick, looking around at the cage every few seconds as though he feared leaving his back turned for more than instant.

He looked at his watch. Eight o'clock, and night was fast spreading a blanket of charcoal shadows over the hillsides. He'd wait till morning to move this crazy beast to the next camp six miles away. A night trip might entail chances he wasn't willing to take.

After a couple of nervous fumbles with a match, he lit a cigarette and glanced uneasily out the one window in the rough cabin. What if the alien, or whatever it was, wasn't kidding about the danger he was in? What if his buddies did decide to come back before morning with the extermination of a human on their minds? Think of it, Granger, he told himself laconically, you'd be a hero! A nice, cold, dead one. And they'd never find the bunch who'd have knocked him off. He'd be one of those "mysterious deaths" the papers played up.

"Free me immediately!" screeched the angry captive, his head swaying like a balloon on a stick. "You haven't much time left!"

"You're a nasty tempered little imp, aren't you?" growled Granger as he strode across the room and peeked curiously inside the crate.

"I loathe you," growled the thing. "I have no intentions of deceiving you. This whole situation is simply a matter of pure logic so far as your plight is concerned."

"You're forgetting," said Granger, his voice lacking a certain amount of its previous confidence, "that you're the one who's in a mess."

"Only temporarily, you fool!" raved the creature, jumping frantically up and down. "Look!" he screamed, pointing a tiny hand toward the window over Granger's left shoulder.

The geologist gasped as he shot a quick glance in the direction of the thing's outstretched arm. A pale green light had turned the surrounding land and sky into an eerie dawn that extended its weird phosphorescence into the cabin itself. And two hundred yards from the cabin, in a small area relatively clear of major obstructions, was the same ship he had seen a few hours before.

"They're here!" shouted the alien. "Let me out!"

Granger slammed shut the door and lifted a massive oak bar into iron brackets on either side. Then he was at the window again. A hatch near the bottom of the craft was open, but there was no sign of movement.

Then he saw one of them, an exact duplicate of his captive, running from bush to bush about fifty feet from the ship. A few steps behind him was another. Two more nearby scrambled over an immense boulder and scurried into the brush. Another five were emerging, like a patrol of midgets, from a ravine to the north of the cabin.

"Be sensible, you idiot!" snarled the thing in the crate. "I'm giving you this final chance. Unlock this contrivance, and all will be well with you. I'll speak on your behalf."

"So you can lead your buddies right back here? Sure," said Granger, "that's all I'd have to do to finish myself off in a real hurry."

"Do as I say!" yelled the alien. "For your own sake!"

"Look," panted Granger, "I know I was crazy to fool with you in the first place, but now that you're here and they're outside, you're staying, see?"

He reached under the lumpy pile of cotton that served as a mattress and pulled out his .30-30 rifle. Little Boy Blue and his pop gun, he thought. He grabbed a handful of cartridges from a box under the bed and began jamming them into the magazine.

"That will be of no use, my friend," droned a hollow voice behind him.

Granger spun himself around just as a pane of glass in the window flew to pieces under the impact of a short, shiny gun barrel. A perfect reproduction of the face of the creature in the cage centered itself in the jagged frame of the broken window and gave him the shadow of a smile that was closer to a victorious leer.

"Put down your weapon," the newcomer ordered coldly.

Get that rifle up fast, Granger commanded himself.

"I repeat," said the face at the window. "Lower your weapon."

They'll let you have it anyway, Granger thought grimly. He slowly curled his finger around the trigger and started to move when he was jarred off his feet by a roaring blast that ripped the door from its hinges and sent it crashing against the rear wall of the cabin.

Outside the ruined entrance stood a group of aliens all armed. Fearfully, he looked to the window, but their leader was gone. In a second he appeared at the door, moved inside the cabin, and Granger automatically stepped back, his hazy mind calculating roughly the few feet of escape route remaining to him. In a moment he was there, his back flattened against the cabin wall.

The short creature kept coming on, its murky orbs fixed on Granger's white, drawn countenance. Then it stopped its advance.

"So you have one of our people," it said in a voice that twanged like piano wire.

Granger tried once in vain for his voice, then gave up. He stared over the head of his foe at the silent assembly outside the cabin, then at the thing in the packing crate. It was sitting there, quiet, immobile, but intently watching the scene between the earthman and his visitor.

"You are holding one of us captive," the commander remarked. "This is a most unfortunate situation, indeed." The small figure stepped aside quickly and waved an arm.

Granger, perspiration trickling down his face, watched a score of glistening weapons raised and pointed inside the cabin. For a second he looked directly at the menacing horde. Then his eyes saw nothing. A blazing flash of white light burst forth from the doorway, and it was all over.

Granger forced open his aching eyes and squinted in the direction of the fiery blast, but the doorway was empty. The commander was still there, though, walking slowly to the door.

Why am I alive? Granger asked himself incredulously. Or am I dead? He bumped his fist against his forehead once or twice and gave his head a vigorous shake. Suddenly, he turned his gaze to the cage. But he saw nothing that resembled the rebuilt packing crate; only a mound of ashes and twisted spikes. In the center of the heap, like a fat, dwarfish king astride his fallen kingdom, was the charred, blackened shell of the grotesque creature that had once occupied the wooden cell.

Then he moved cautiously toward the door and stared, speechless, at the leader of the expedition.

"We shall depart now," said the being. "Thank you for helping us."

Not much later, across the silent reaches of space, a communications operator on another planet looked up from his receiving equipment and handed his superior a message just transmitted from a ship leaving the planet Earth: RETURN MISSION SUCCESSFUL. DESERTER LOCATED AND EXECUTED.