If you missed the last one…
Leigh Brackett was the queen of Space. There are so many good stories to choose from but I decided on this one. “Cube From Space” (Super Science Stories, August 1942) is a corker. This is one of her Solar System stories, all set in a consistent milieu of red Martians, green Venusians and black Mercurians. I have to admit I was drawn to the image of the cube-shaped spaceship. The shape of the ship isn’t really that important but it is unusual. Any fan of Star Trek knows the Borg use ships of a similar shape and I have to wonder if the show’s designers were aware of Brackett’s tale.
Red, a notorious space pirate has escaped the authorities but is floating in a spacesuit off Jupiter. His air has run out and he is ready to die. A black cube-shaped ship appears and Red crawls into the airlock. He enters the ship to find someone talking directly into his mind. He has met with telepathy before and recognizes it. He meets the owners of the ship, strange mutated-looking humanoids that glide around on grav-disks. A blinding light burns into his brain until he throws his gun off one of the black catwalks.
Red has a conversation with the cube aliens and learns they want to find a place where they can hole up and heal. Red is not quick to help, telling them that Earth, Mars and Venus are no good. The Patrol would blow them out of space as soon as they approached a planet. Red has another idea, Mercury. There is a small human base there on the belt strip that exists between the burning light side and the freezing dark side. He passes out.
When Red wakes he hears another voice, a human one. He climbs down into the bowels of the ship and finds a giant black-bearded knight in armor chained up with a giant sword hanging over him. He is Crom, a human from another solar system. From Crom, Red learns much. The cube aliens are called Rakshi. They fought a terrible war with Crom’s people, one that forced Crom to sacrifice himself. Driving the Rakshi ship beyond the orbit of a sun stranded the ship since its power worked on solar energy. But now Red has given them Mercury. The base there will suffer terribly under the Rakshi, who will enslave everyone. Immortality is often given to those who help the Rakshi. Red likes the sound of that. He also gives his history. Born on a freighter, his life was a string of brutal labor and starvation. He has no love for the human race.
The cube ship makes Mercury but crashes due to failing tech. Red falls out of the ship as it lands then is pulled into a cave by the workers on the planet. He meets Markham Chandler, the man who runs the base, and Hildegarde Smith known as Hildy. She patches up Red’s injuries. He is taken with the woman and fascinated by the kindness of the Mercurians. He has never encountered decent humans before and slowly decides to join them and save them from the Rakshi. Red knows that the Rakshi plan to use the humans’ bodies to regenerate their broken forms.
The Mercurains are rounded up and taken to the cube for processing. They valiantly try to defend themselves but fail because of the Rakshi’s solar weapons and blinding mind-control. They believe Red has betrayed them. Red pretends to help the aliens but slips back into the ship. On the way the Rakshi kill pestering local fauna:
There were gleams up there in the dark, metallic purple and green, hard and bright. Red saw wings with small light bodies between them and little fanged heads, rushing down toward them.
These alien space bats are the Mercurian Hunting Bats. (For more on Alien Space Bats, go here.) The Rakshi kill many and disperse the rest. Red cuts a pair of wings to use as a shield against the Rakshi’s solar weapons since the wings of the bats are covered with reflective scales that allow them to survive against the Sun’s close proximity. Once inside, he frees Crom, giving him his sword of light, the only weapon that can truly hurt the Rakshi. The giant man is dying, so he throws himself at the alien fiends, killing their leader. Red helps, shooting at them and hiding behind his bat wings. He is wounded. Crom dies, bursting into flame but laughing, as his sword pierces the Heart of Flame, the central power unit of the Rakshi technology. He dies but he takes the Rakshi with him. Red survives to see if he and Hildy have a future together on Mercury.
Brackett’s love for the works of Robert E. Howard are evident once again. The use of the name Crom is immediately familiar to fans of Conan, who worships a god named Crom. Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury made a similar nod in “Lorelei of the Red Mist” with an anti-hero protagonist named Conan. The illustration for the story is by Weird Tales alumnus, Boris Dolgov, somehow so appropriate (though a little confusing until you read the story.) The name of the Rakshi is another nod to Indian mythology and the Rakshasa.
This novelette of 12,000 words shows off Brackett’s energy and economy. She is able to set up the Rakshi, their history, Crom and Red’s personalities, the Mercury colony and its inhabitants in so few words. The story is lean, never lagging and ultimately a dazzler of an ending. The character of Crom is a Sword & Sorcery hero transplanted to space. Brackett also tips into Sword & Planet but not quite. Her love of Edgar Rice Burroughs is well known but this tale is still a space opera first. I doubt very much she worried about any such definitions. Fun, color and excitement were her aims.
Conclusion
The Big Four were the best of a generation of SF writers. Leigh Brackett was probably the finest wordsmith of the Four. The style of hard-boiled Mystery helped her give her Edgar Rice Burroughs-descended plots a real spark of language. Perhaps as important, is Brackett’s talent for sculpting characters. Red is a despicable villain but he is never cardboard in “Cube From Space”, and that’s saying something for a Space Pirate, one of the sub-genres worst cliches.
Brackett wrote several famous screenplays for Hollywood, including The Big Sleep (1946) with William Faulkner and Rio Bravo (1959) for John Wayne. She wrote the initial screenplay for George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes back shortly before her death in 1978. Her love of action and Chandleresque prose are evident even in 1942 with what many might consider a minor space opera. She understood the storyteller’s craft and goals better than most Pulspters and she was loved for it.
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