“Not Only Dead Men” (Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1942) by A. E. van Vogt is a Golden Age classic along with the other stories he wrote for John W. Campbell in the 1940s. “Vault of the Beast”, “Black Destroyer”, “Asylum”, etc., the man from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan kept pumping out brilliant Science Fiction that shaped future writers like Philip K. Dick. I read it, not in Astounding, but in my favorite AEVV collection, Monsters! (1965).
This particular tale is special because it is set in the Arctic where some very odd things happen. Von Vogt begins with a newspaper item that telegraphs that this isn’t going to work out well for our protagonists: WHALESHIP FOUND BATTERED DERELICT OFF NORTHERN ALASKA. The article goes on to say the ship was destroyed not by bombs or guns but some mysterious force. The galley stove was still warm but all hands are missing. What happened? AEVV throws us right into the middle of it in the next paragraph.
Captain Frank Wardell and his crew of the Albatross had been looking for whales for three months without success. Suddenly they stumble upon what they think is a damaged Russian sub. Only it isn’t. All hands take note when the creature standing next to an open hatch looks like this:
A figure— a beast. The thing reared up on homy, gleaming legs, and its scales shone in the late-morning sun. Of its four arms, one was clutching a flat, crystalline structure, a second held a small, blunt object that showed faintly crimson in the dazzling sunbeams. The other two arms were at ease.
Fortunately for us if we can’t imagine that, the artist, Frank Kramer did for us in the opening illustration.
The humans shoot at the alien and his ship but seem to do not damage. The critter dives in the water and pops onto their vessel. He kills no one, knocks them out mysteriously, but ruins all their fuel by making the oil unburnable. The captain perceives that the aliens have a purpose for them when he finds that their whaling harpoons have been improved with a light weight cable.
We jump to the alien vessel and meet Ral Dorno, the commander of the alien police vessel. The aliens are chasing another extra-terrestrial known as the devil-Blal. This creature, if left alone on Earth where it crashed, would destroy the entire population of the planet. (We learn Earth was colonized by the inhabitants of Wodesk, and we are not sufficiently advanced yet to join as Galactic citizens. There is something like the Prime Directive that requires all those who discover the aliens to be purged.)
Back to Wardell and his men: they observe that the aliens have built harpoons similar to their own. Later the Blal shows up, rising from the water like a terrible whale:
Warden’s fingers whitened on his binoculars, as be studied the great, bulging back that glinted darkly in the swell half a mile to the north, bearing straight down on the ship . The monster left a gleaming trail in the sea as it swam with enormous power.
In a way, the part of it that was visible looked like nothing else than a large whale. Wardell clutched at the wild hope, and then—
A spume of water sprayed the sea; and his illusion smashed like a bullet-proof jacket before a cannonball.
Because no whale on God’s wide oceans had ever retched water in such a formidable fashion. Wardell had a brief, vivid mental picture of ten-foot jaws convulsively working under the waves, and spreading water like a bellows.
Frank Kramer drew this one too!
The humans fire their two harpoons, as the aliens do likewise. Together they hold the beast while the sailors pump bullets into it. This does little, but the disintegration ray the aliens use does. This epic battle goes on for four days! Finally the Blal is zapped from existence. The good guys have won.
But are they really good guys? They take all the humans with them when they leave the planet. But small mercies, they do not kill them outright. Ral Dorno has great admiration for these hardy fellows who helped him destroy the Blal. He gives them a reward they have not expected:
“It will not be necessary to keep our guests in a cataleptic state. As soon as they recover from the effects of the silver gas, let them . . . experience the journey.”
The humans are to become guests on board and see the universe. They can never return to Earth, for they know too much, but they can enjoy a whole new universe. Not Only Dead Men Tell No Tales. Those taken away don’t either.
Van Vogt was certainly not the first SF writer to place a strange tale at the Poles. Jules Verne wrote about the Sphinx of Ice and English at the North Pole back in the 1860s. Walter Kateley wrote “Arctic Rescue” for Hugo Gernsback for Air Wonder Stories, May 1930. His later stories involve aliens. Von Vogt wasn’t inventing anything here. Kateley’s later tales are essentially the same idea: adventurers in the Arctic encounter extraterrestrials. What makes von Vogt more interesting is he pulls humans directly into a conflict between alien species. Think Alien vs. Predator back in 1942! (Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us either. The creators of Alien went to court with A. E. Van Vogt over his story “Black Destroyer”. They settled out of court. Later versions of Alien acknowledge van Vogt’s contributions though the writer Dan O’Bannon denies the connection.)
