Seven Against Mars. Martin Berman-Gorvine

corn. He didn’t dare say nothin’ to them, seein’ as how they were armed with rifles and all.”

      Suddenly Mom turned on Katie. “What the heck are you doing, standing around eavesdropping on grown-up talk? Get yourself back out there and feed them pigs!”

      “Yes, Ma,” she sighed. Wouldn’t be worth her while to complain out loud, not unless she wanted a spanking. No one else my age gets spanked. She made her way out to their miserable broken-down excuse for a barn. She never could resign herself to the stink of the pigs. But being out of sight of the house gave her the chance to take out the book and read a few more paragraphs:

      Karolla was waiting for Jack in a clearing deep in the jungle. He looked something like a miniature model of Earth’s fabled Tyrannosaurus Rex, only with grayish, downy fur, the head of a sheepdog and startling blue eyes that blinked innocently down at Jack as he emerged and sheathed his electric machete. “You’re late,” the Venusian chided in a clear, high-pitched voice that always reminded Jack of his little brother Jim, lost and presumed drowned in the Half-Shell Ocean these many years.

      To clear the lump that rose in his throat Jack snarled, “Wasn’t my fault, all right, ya big shaggy lump? I had to dodge Ares’ agents back in Aphrodite Port. Always did hate the city. I’d rather fight a Medusa barehanded any day than have to deal with one of those sneaky, hit-below-the-belt tough guys they got on every street corner there. But let’s not stand around jabbering. Take me to the Medusa that’s got Anya!”

      “Right away, Jack,” Karolla said sweetly, and bounded off into the undergrowth. Jack charged after him, hollering in vain at the Venusian to slow down. At least he was easy enough to follow, because he left behind a trail of crushed and trampled joowallah plants oozing their scarlet juice onto the forest floor. In no time at all Jack emerged in the clearing where the Medusa had made its nest, but he saw right away that there was a problem.…

      Rachel punched the typewriter keys as gently as she could while still leaving a mark on the page, so as not to wake up the brats. Mrs. Goldberg would kill her if she did. The late July night was sweltering, their room stifling thanks to the boards nailed over the windows, which did nothing to keep out the drafts on winter nights. There was little light to see by; for the millionth time Rachel thanked her lucky stars she had taken touch-typing lessons the summer before the Germans invaded. Still and all, it was her habit to write for at least an hour every night after the two brats had finally fallen asleep, despite all of Mom’s warnings about how she was going to ruin her eyesight, and Mrs. Goldberg’s warnings about what she would do if her precious children’s sleep was disturbed. Tonight she typed frantically, trying to forget her worry about her parents, who had gone out hours ago along with Mr. Goldberg, chasing a rumor of black-market apples. But her attempt to lose herself on Venus was soon shattered by a furtive knocking. Mrs. Goldberg lit a candle stub and dived to open the door, bumping into Rachel and shoving her out of the way. Mr. Goldberg lurched in, smelling of dirt and sweat, and embraced his wife wordlessly.

      “What is it? Where’s Mom and Dad?” Rachel whispered. No one answered her at first. Then Mr. Goldberg detached himself from his wife and looked at her. In the flickering candlelight she couldn’t read his expression, but she thought she saw his eyes gleam.

      “Maideleh, I’m so sorry, but the Germans took them. I barely got away myself.”

      Mrs. Goldberg let out a stifled sob. Rachel just stared at him. “What do you mean the Germans took them?”

      “The Germans grabbed them right off the street along with dozens of other people. I saw them being marched away with their hands up. They’re all going to work camps, or so the Germans say.”

      Trust that weaselly little Goldberg to be the one to sneak away. “So how come you weren’t rounded up?”

      Mrs. Goldberg stopped her soft crying. “Rachel, don’t—”

      Mr. Goldberg’s head and shoulders sagged, as if he were a marionette whose strings had been cut. “I hid,” he confessed. “I didn’t dare sneak back here till now.”

      “They should have taken you instead!” Rachel cried, and flung herself onto the filthy, broken-down pallet beside the window that she slept on instead of a bed—only the Goldberg brats were good enough to get actual beds. She buried her face in the pillow, sobbing until her throat was raw and her chest ached, waiting for Mrs. Goldberg to start slapping her and not caring if she did. But nothing happened.

      Later, after Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg had settled into their bed, she gazed at the sliver of night sky just visible through the boards over the window. I’ll never sleep again. Her gaze was drawn to a bright light, too bright to be a star, so bright that it seemed to have definite mass, a shining pewter weight up there in space. Could it be the morning star? Venus was the morning star, wasn’t it? She yawned, her eyelids suddenly heavy, and she struggled to keep them open.

      ♂

      A moment later she blinked and opened her eyes to gray daylight. She turned over and something wet seeped through her thin dress. She scrabbled to sit up. An oozing scarlet liquid the consistency of glue covered her hands and dress. I’m bleeding. Her guts lurched, but then the smell hit her, an odd, sharply sweet scent. She touched the tip of her tongue to her finger. Raspberries? How could she be lying in raspberry jam? The sugar ration had been eliminated, and when was the last time anyone in the ghetto had had fresh fruit to make into preserves?

      Rachel sat up. “Mom?” She stared. Instead of sheets, she had been lying under grayish-tinged green leaves big enough to build a tent with. In fact, Zap-Gun Jack had done exactly that once, when he was fleeing from the Zonds, who hated Karolla’s people, the N’Bialys, so much that.… Rachel blinked twice, squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her temples. I made all that stuff up. It isn’t real. I’m dreaming about it right now because I’m so upset about.… Anyway I’m going to wake up any second because the brats are bound to be fighting like they do every morning.… But when she opened her eyes she was still not in the apartment. Instead she was surrounded by giant unearthly trees, “with mother-of-pearl trunks that stretched up to touch the featureless ceiling of the world,” as she had written just last week. She tried to stand but the decaying leaves on the forest floor were so slippery she landed right back on her rump.

      A man charged out of the jungle, grunting with effort and swearing to himself in English. “Darn that Karolla…if that thing has hurt one hair on Anya’s head I’ll.…” He stopped dead when he saw Rachel sitting there and they stared at each other.

      “Jack?” Rachel finally whispered. “Zap-Gun Jack?”

      “That’s my name.” Jack hitched his thumbs into the loops of his gun belt and rocked back on his heels. “Who might you be, missy?”

      Before Rachel could answer there was a rustling to the left. Jack raised his index finger to his lips and tiptoed in that direction, zap-gun at the ready. Rachel held her breath, waiting for the “frizzing sizzle of the zap-gun, like an enormous steak cooking on the stovetop,” as she’d described it, her mouth watering at the simile. Instead there was a thrashing and a yelping and a surprised shout from Jack. A moment later he was back, his face set in a scowl as he pulled a skinny brown-haired boy by the hand. Wait. Not a boy, but a girl about her own age with her hair cut very short, dressed in dirty dungarees and a patched, short-sleeved shirt. She had a dazed look on her face and kept muttering to herself in strangely accented English, “Time to wake up now. Them pigs need feeding.…”

      “Damn tourists,” Jack said. “Pardon my language, ladies, but what in the heck are you doing so far from Aphrodite Port? The deep jungle’s no place for offworlders. You can get hurt out here. In fact, I’m kind of in a rush right now because I have to rescue another offworlder who got herself in a pickle. Though she’s no tourist.”

      “Neither am I,” the girl who looked like a boy said. “My name’s Kaitlyn Webb, but y’all can call me Katie. I was just walking back from feeding the pigs on our farm when I saw the Dixies surrounding our house. Looked like a whole platoon of them! I ran and hid, and then they took my parents away at gunpoint and set fire to our house.”