THE STAR-MASTER
By RAY CUMMINGS
Docile, decadent Venus was easy
pickings for that twenty-first century
Hitler's dream of cosmic empire.
[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.]
My name is Arthur Frane. You who read this story now, of courseare familiar with momentous events into which I was unexpectedlyplunged—momentous for all mankind.
I write this narrative now to add the true details to what you haveall read and heard blared by the newscasters around the world. I havebeen extolled as a hero although I did nothing except try to keep fromgetting killed.
I was twenty-six years old last summer, in June of 2003, when fateso strangely brought Venta and me together. My family is wealthy, asyou have heard. Do not envy me for that. An income of ten thousanddecimars, however nice it may seem in theory, is in reality noadvantage to a young man of twenty-six. I am a big blond fellow whomthe newscasters have been pleased to call Viking-like and handsome as agod. I'm much obliged. But whatever truth there is in it, that too hasbeen a disadvantage.
The weird events began in July, last summer, when with Jim Gregg Iwent hunting in that Adirondac forest. Jim and I were in GovernmentCollege together. I left to spend my income and become a dawdler—thedisadvantage of money; and Jim joined the Crime Prevention Bureau ofthe New York Shadow Squad. We got a one-day hunting permit. Jim tookhis official crime-tracker equipment, with an extra flash-gun for me;we flew to the Adirondac mountain slope which our permit named andhopefully set out on foot to try our luck.
But we had no luck. A few birds, which even the minimum pencil-rayflash had all but burned to a crisp, were all we had bagged. Eveningcame, with twilight settling so that the forest glades were deepeninginto purple. And then suddenly it seemed that we heard a rustling inthe underbrush—a rustling which ought to be a deer.
We crouched in a thicket, waiting. The sound stopped. "Let's try thelistener," I whispered.
Jim got out his little eavesdropping gadget. But he had no time toconnect it. The rustling began again. It was obviously up a short slopeno more than a hundred feet from us—some wild animal which seemed nowto be retreating.
"I'll take a chance," I muttered. "If that's a deer, we'll lose it if Ican't drill it now."
We knew it could not be a human, since our permit for today barredanyone else from the twenty square miles of Government preserveallotted to us. I fired at the sound, with my violet pencil-flasheating through the underbrush at the top of the slope.
There was a startled, weird outcry; and from the summit of the littlerise a shape broke cover. A girl! She came bursting from a thicket nomore than three feet to the side of the swath my flash had burned, andfor a second or two she stood poised on a rock with the open eveningsky a background above and behind her. A slim shape of bare legs andarms with a brief drape from shoulders to her thighs. The starlight andfading daylight gleamed on her bronzed skin as though she were a metalstatue.
"Well—I say—" Jim muttered.
Thoughts are instant things. There was in my mind the vague idea thathere, by some wild circumstances, was a girl in a fancy-dress partycostume or something of the kind. But the thought, and Jim's mutteredwords of astonishment, were in another second stricken away. Sh