Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition), April 1944 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 reported it. Get going, stranger. I’m taking you to Big Oaf.” For a moment Pendrake sat as still as death. The needle-sharp thought that came finally was: He was too sick, too weak. The crisis had come too soon, far, far too soon. | Thoughtful, alert, Pendrake walked along the street of the village. That he could walk at all was exhilarating. He couldn’t dare try anything involving strength yet, but he simply must survive a few “days” longer —gain time to observe, correlate, organize the demoralized anti-Big Oafs. His Air Force and science training stood him in good stead. He wasted scarcely a glance at the houses and the motley assort- ment of raggedly dressed men and the sullen women in their Nazi woman’s corps uniforms barely touched the outer fringes of his thought. His mind, his whole being concentrated on control centers. With abrupt understanding of the ges- tapolike regulation of vital supplies that was here, he noted that two half-naked men with blue skins and broad flat noses stood guard over a stream of water that gushed from a wall and gurgled out of sight through a hole in the ground. There were other places being guarded, particu- larly four large buildings, but the reasons for protecting them were not apparent at first glance. Pendrake moved forward a few yards, then stopped. And stared. In almost the exact center of the town, half hidden by a growth of trees, was a stockade. It was made of tree boles, lashed to- gether. Tall it stood, presenting a hundred- and-fifty-foot front, fifty feet high, with a massive gate around which loitered a dozen men with spears, long bows and drawn knives. The structure looked obscene, ugly, utterly incongruous amaong the delicate hued, shell-like houses. But there was no doubt at all that here in this monstrous fort dwelt the central authority of his fan- tastic world. The thought ended as one of the guards, a raggedly dressed individual who wore spurs on high boots and looked like a bad caricature of a cowboy, challenged: “Takin’ this feller in to see Big Oaf, Troger?” “Yep!” Pendrake’s bearded, bull-voiced escort answered. “You better search him, though.” “What about Morrison? Does he go in, too?” asked a black-eyed man in a shiny ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION tattered remnant of what must once have been a black suit of some kind. It struck : Pendrake with a start, as fingers poked eagerly through his pockets that this second guard resembled with startling fidelity a motion picture version he had seen of a gambler of the old West. Pendrake felt a sudden, sharp fascina- tion. In spite of himself, in spite of his will to waste not one glance on anything that might confuse, he grew more aware of the men. . They had been blurs to his vision; now they came into sharp focus: Men of all the periods of the West, an astounding assortment, even some that didn’t seem to fit at all. But Pendrake felt not a shadow of doubt: 3 They were all Western American. It was as if in some incredible fashion a net had been cast from the Moon, and into that net ‘had fallen men from every age of the western United States: and then the catch had been gathered here and, like this im- mortal village, kept immune from the rav- ages of time. There were about a hundred men visible from where he stood at the gate of the stockade. Seven of them were Indians in loin cloths, red of skin, tall, arrow-backed. They fitted. And so did all the roughly dressed men in open-necked shirts and belted, narrow-legged trousers; and so did the ragged cowboys. Morrison didn’t fit, not quite, though there must have been clerk-ish types like him in Western towns. There were some short, ugly men and some very fine big, dark-brown men who didn’t fit either; and there was another one of the half-naked, blue-skinned, flat-nosed men, but— ~ Whoever had collected this crew had gotten hold of some of the toughest char- acters that the old, hard West had ever bred. A big hand grabbed his collar, pushed him physically and mentally out of his mood of appraisal. “Get in there!’ said the voice of Troger. Pendrake’s reaction was automatic. If he had thought, if he hadn’t had to come so far out of his dark speculations, he would have controlled himself in time. But the insult of being grabbed came too suddenly. His response was as violent as it was involuntary. His arm came up; his fingers caught the offending wrist; and for one brief instant every tired nerve in his body pumped power with the lightning speed that alone makes for tiger strength. comiclbooks (©)