The Radio Beasts

by Ralph Milne Farley

He came to in jet darkness, buried beneath an overwhelming weight, which required long and patient effort to dislodge. Finally, however, he struggled to the surface, and found that he had been lying in the ant-barricade, covered by the dead bodies of his comrades-in-arms.

Cabot, himself, presented a gruesome figure. His hair was matted with blood, but whether his own or that of some Cupian he could not tell. Probably his own, as there was a severe wound along the ridge of his scalp, presumably caused by a bullet from the rifle, down the muzzle of which he had looked as he surmounted the barricade. His toga, too, was drenched with blood. He felt weak and dizzy. Groping for support, he looked about him.

The street was lighted but vacant. The night was warm and moist and fragrant, as are all nights on Poros, but it afforded no balm for the aching head of Myles Cabot.

Among the dead Cupians in the barricade were many bodies of the ant-men, still grappling with their adversaries, even in death. Myles counted the bodies of the Cupian slain and was reassured to find that they represented but a mere negligible fraction of those who had stormed the redoubt. Of course, it was just as hard on the dead to be dead, regardless of proportions; so Cabot did not have the heart to rejoice at the fewness of the slain. But at least it was comforting to know that a large majority of his brave men had survived, and even more comforting to realize that they were presumably by this time far on their way northward toward Lake Luno, Lilla and the little king. At least Cabot hoped so. Of course, the Cupian assault might perhaps have been repulsed. At any rate, the victors, whoever they had been, had robbed the dead of their arms and ammunition. Cabot’s revolver, being in his right hand, had been overlooked, for the inhabitants of this planet are left-handed; but his cartridge belt was gone.

Just then his thoughts were rudely interrupted by the arrival of a Formian sentinel. Myles withdrew precipitately into a darkened doorway. The ant man halted directly outside the hiding place, almost within reach of Cabot’s hands. For a moment Cabot had the idea of shooting him. Then it occurred to him that the noise of his revolver would attract attention and bring other ant men to the scene. Then he realized that it would not, for, of course, the inhabitants of Poros have no sense of hearing. So he fired and rid the planet of one more member of the dominant race. But this left him only four cartridges. He could not replenish his supply from his victim, for the latter had been armed only with a sword.

Stepping over the dead body, Cabot staggered down the street and soon gained the open country. Here there were no more street lights, and accordingly walking in the pitch darkness became very difficult. Finally after falling off the road several times, he groped his way into the woods and, crawling into the heart of a tartan bush, lay down to sleep.

Until reaching this haven of refuge, he had really had scarcely a moment for consecutive thought since the fatal shot had been fired that morning. Think of it! This morning, only six parths ago, he had been sitting at a Peace Day celebration, as Field Marshal and Minister of Play of a peaceful nation. Now this whole nation had been plunged into civil war and invaded by its enemies, and he himself was a hunted fugitive. And in the meantime what a host of events had occurred! A beloved monarch assassinated. His traitorous murderer declared king. The best and most loyal men of all Cupia thrust rudely into prison. Cabot himself deprived of both speech and hearing, by the destruction of his artificial antennae. The domination of hideous ants over Cupia, which had taken a grueling war to destroy, now restored by a coup d’etat in an instant. Poblath overthrown as mango of Kuana.

Then the joyous news of the birth of a new king to dispute the succession with the renegade Yuri. Fighting in the streets. The siege of the jail. The renaissance of the Army of Liberation. The storming of the redoubt. And finally Cabot’s own seeming death and resurrection.

He wondered for the safety of the Princess Lilla. And of his son, the new-born king. Poor wee baby! Little would he know, as he lay kicking and bubbling in his cradle, that he was the storm center of a whole empire, that the fate of a whole planet was wrapped up in him.

Myles thrilled at the thought that he was a father. Yet he shuddered at the realization of what lay before his loved one. And thus musing, he fell into a fitful sleep, from which he awakened in the morning with no clear understanding as to how much of his recollections of the day before had been reality and how much a dream. In fact, it was not until many sangths later, when he had an opportunity to compare notes with several others of the chief actors of this eventful drama, that he was able to reconstruct the actual happenings of Peace Day in the year three-fifty-ten. And even now, the entire day stands forth in his memory as one long, terrible, continuous nightmare.