"The Slave Raiders from Mercury," by Don Wilcox (from the June 1940 issue of Amazing Stories), is a bizarre story. This, though, is one its strengths. It's fun-bizarre, not annoying-bizarre.
It begins with a carnival sideshow exhibiting an alien rocket that was found abandoned in a field. But when a young mule driver named Lester Allison and a score or so of other people pay their fifty cents to go aboard, the doors slide shut and the rocket takes off.
It's not a trick by the poor carnival barker who talked them into boarding--he's trapped on the rocket as well. So at first, Allison and the others have no idea where they are going and who is responsible.
Allison soon shows some natural leadership ability and becomes the defacto head of the kidnapped group. And they'll need a good leader. The rocket is heading for Mercury, where it lands and delivers the group into slavery.
The twilight zone of Mercury is inhabited by the Dazzalox, a humanoid race that is dying out, but still need healthy male slaves to work for them. An evil Earth scientist named Kilhide had arrived on Mercury some years ago in a rocket of his own design. He now operates robot-controlled rockets to bring fresh slaves to the Dazzalox, making quite a profitable business out of it. Male slaves able to work are sold. Anyone else, including the women, are thrown into a room full of poison gas.
But a spanner is about to be thrown into the works. The group includes the lovely June O'Neil (with whom, of course, Allison has fallen in love). Kilhide gets the hots for her, saves her from the poison chamber and decides to make her his wife. But a thousand-year-old Dazzalox named Jo-jo-kak sees her and lays claim on her instead. Jo-jo-kak even delays his scheduled ritual suicide to show off this new prize.
This causes a social upheaval. Many male Dazzalox now want female slaves of their own and Kilhide happily starts arranging some women to be kidnapped on Earth and brought to Mercury. The lady Dazzalox are rather upset by this. It both flies in the face of tradition and arouses some pretty violent feelings of jealousy. Soon, a male/female civil war is brewing.
All this just might present the opportunity for Allison to escape with the rest of the slaves. But he's in prison by this point after killing Jo-jo-kak to protect June. So he must first survive a bizarre form of execution called the Rite of the Floating Chop, then make his way through a city in the gripes of battle and mass murder, and then find Kilhide to keep him alive until he shows the slaves how to operate the rockets.
From start to finish, the story has a bizarre feel to it. And not because it's set in a Space Opera world where Mercury is inhabitable. I'm well used to stories like that.
I think it's because the prose is so casual in introducing the various science fiction elements and the weird Dazzalox culture. This isn't to say that story fails to generate suspense or excitement when it needs to. The description of the Rite of the Floating Chop is itself an edge-of-your-seat set piece. "The Slave Raiders of Mercury" is completely comfortable with its Space Opera elements as the bizarre tale takes us from a carnival on Earth to an alien city on Mercury without missing a beat.
You can read this one online HERE
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