In Space No One Can Hear You Scream by Hank Davis Page B

Parke outside. The sun had almost disappeared now, and there were black shadows over the red land. It was bitterly cold, but neither man noticed.
    “Did you hear what they said, Parke? Did you hear it? They said I was their leader! With men like those—” He laughed at the sky. With those soldiers, those weapons, nothing could stop him. He’d really stock his land—prettiest girls in the world, and would he have a time!
    “I’m a general!” Edsel shouted, and slipped the helmet over his head. “How do I look, Parke? Don’t I look like a—” He stopped. He was hearing a voice in his ears, whispering, muttering. What was it saying?
    “ . . . damned idiot, with his little dream of a kingdom. Power like this is for a man of genius, a man who can remake history. Myself! ”
    “Who’s talking? That’s you, isn’t it Parke?” Edsel realized suddenly that the helmet allowed him to listen in on thoughts. He didn’t have time to consider what a weapon this would be for a ruler.
    Parke shot him neatly through the back with a gun he had been holding all the time.
    “What an idiot,” Parke told himself, slipping the helmet on his head. “A kingdom! All the power in the world and he dreamed of a little kingdom!” He glanced back at the cave.
    “With those troops—the force field—and the weapons—I can take over the world.” He said it coldly, knowing it was a fact. He turned to go back to the cave to activate the Synthetics, but stopped first to pick up the little black box Edsel had carried.
    Engraved on it, in flowing Martian script, was, “The Last Weapon.”
    I wonder what it could be, Parke asked himself. He had let Edsel live long enough to try out all the others; no use chancing a misfire himself. It was too bad he hadn’t lived long enough to try out this one, too.
    Of course, I really don’t need it, he told himself. He had plenty. But this might make the job a lot easier, a lot safer. Whatever it was, it was bound to be good.
    Well, he told himself, let’s see what the Martians considered their last weapon. He opened the box.
    A vapor drifted out, and Parke threw the box from him, thinking about poison gas.
    The vapor mounted, drifted haphazardly for a while, then began to coalesce. It spread, grew and took shape.
    In a few seconds, it was complete, hovering over the box. It glimmered white in the dying light, and Parke saw that it was just a tremendous mouth, topped by a pair of unblinking eyes.
    “Ho ho,” the mouth said. “Protoplasm!” It drifted to the body of Edsel. Parke lifted a blaster and took careful aim.
    “Quiet protoplasm,” the thing said, nuzzling Edsel’s body. “I like quiet protoplasm.” It took down the body in a single gulp.
    Parke fired, blasting a ten-foot hole in the ground. The giant mouth drifted out of it, chuckling.
    “It’s been so long,” it said.
    Parke was clenching his nerves in a forged grip. He refused to let himself become panicked. Calmly he activated the force field, forming a blue sphere around himself.
    Still chuckling, the thing drifted through the blue haze.
    Parke picked up the weapon Edsel had used on Faxon, feeling the well-balanced piece swing up in his hand. He backed to one side of the force field as the thing approached, and turned on the beam.
    The thing kept coming.
    “Die, die!” Parke screamed, his nerves breaking.
    But the thing came on, grinning broadly.
    “I like quiet protoplasm,” the thing said as its gigantic mouth converged on Parke.
    “But I also like lively protoplasm.”
    It gulped once, then drifted out of the other side of the field, looking anxiously around for the millions of units of protoplasm, as there had been in the old days.

Mongoose

    Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

    Pest control is a necessity everywhere, even on a space station, and this station was overdue for a heavy dose of it. Particularly since the pests were breaking through from another dimension, and leaving holes through which even bigger alien