Brian Aldiss (1925-2017)

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986)

D-433

BOW DOWN TO NUL

Two Nuls are sitting in a bar on the crossroads planet Stomin.  Jicksha had attacked Wattol Forlie earlier while the latter was lying on a stone wall contemplating the universe.  Money being the object, Jicksha felt bad later, after the two had fought, when he discovered that Forlie was a down and out gambler like himself.  A Nul was about 8 feet tall with a cylindrical body that had a number of tentacles attached to its upper region;  they weigh about a ton apiece.  Forlie had been fired from his lucrative position on planet Earth by his boss, Par-Chavorlem because he had disapproved of his boss's treatment of the local species.  The Nul had occupied Earth for about a thousand years.  Just one of the four million planets under the "protection" of the Nul, the inhabitants lived a precarious life outside the Nul strongholds, farming, husbanding and catering to the demands of their overlords.  The planet was criss-crossed with force-field protected highways that connected the principle cities with each other and served to convey timber and other natural products to the main space-port for shipment to Parnassy, the Nul home-world, and other points of interstellar commerce.  Par-Chavorlem had made a very good thing from stealing money from every shipment that left the planet due to his stingy attitude and treatment of the locals.  It was Forlie's intention to report him to the authorities on Parnassy.

Arriving at headquarters, Forlie visits Synvoret, a respected veteran of ambassadorial affairs,  and tells him about the whole-sale embezzlement and fraud being perpetrated by his former employer.  Synvoret persuades the commerce authorities to fund an inspection tour of the operation on Earth and he spends the next two years getting there.  In the meanwhile Par-Chavorlem has discovered that his perfidy is about to be unveiled, so he makes arrangements to convince the visiting inspector that his operation is completely legal and above suspicion.  He builds a smaller metropolis on the other side of the planet because the one he lives in is egregiously larger and more opulent than the rules of enterprise permit.  The Nul are more interested in peaceful commercial relations within their protectorate than in belligerent assertion of their superiority.

Gary Towler and Elizabeth Forladon are translators hired by the Nul to communicate Nul demands to the indigenes outside of the city.  Gary is a secret agent for the revolutionaries whose leader is Rivars, a somewhat impulsive and thoughtless person, brave but not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.  So when they learn about the imminent arrival of Synvoret, they plan a major uprising against the Nul, hoping to finally drive them off the planet.  When the investigator turns up, they hope to demonstrate the cupidity and rapacity of the planetary Commissioner in such an overt way that even another Nul will be persuaded of his iniquitous thievery.  But nothing seems to work:  every ploy they plot is forseen by Par-Chavorlem and even when they provide physical evidence of his chicanery, Synorvet is not convinced.  In fact, he leaves the planet assured that it's under the guidance and governance of a benign administration.  Back on Parnassy, he reports that all the rumors of duplicity on Earth are totally baseless, and that,in fact, that the natives are so violent and unruly that the Nul Empire would be better off without them.  So the tale ends with the expectation that the Nul will leave Earth because of the pugnacious denizens and that this is just the beginning of a revolution that will sweep the Nul out of the galaxy.

THE DARK DESTROYERS (abridged)

For generations humans have suffered under the threat of extinction by the depredations of the Cold People, the generic term for a species of giant snail-like entities that have invaded the planet, driving the mass of men into the jungles and swamps near the equator.  They are from a planet whose average temperature is around 60 degrees below zero.  The few remaining residents of Earth eke a bare living from subsistence farms and live in small villages hidden under the foliage.  Mark Darragh is a scout for a village located in the upper reaches of the Orinoco river.  He's noted for his courage and inventive imagination as well as for his non-acceptance of the present status of humanity as grovelers in the dirt before the might of the Cold People.  So he leaves his home in a canoe and paddles north to the Caribbean, looking and hoping to discover a way to defeat the intruders.  The Cold People live in domes that are refrigerated and sealed off from the atmosphere, as the snail-like creatures breath a mixture of hydrogen sulfide and ethane.  Mark arrives in Haiti and finds a dome situated on a hill in the Haitian jungle.  He pokes about without much result and returns to where he left the canoe, only to find that it was being stolen by a Cold People airship which picked it up and headed back to the dome with it.  Mark wants it back so he returns to the dome at night, when the snails are less active, climbs the outside of the edifice and finds the boat.  But he's captured by two snails who tie him up and take off in one of their torpedo-shaped aircraft.  He manages to free himself and with the speed of a snake, slashes the protective shells that protect the invaders from the poisonous oxygen atmosphere, killing them both.  Then he figures out how to fly the ship and heads north with it.  Near the Great Lakes, he spots a giant dome, bigger than any that he'd seen on the continent, and flies into the central orifice located on its upper surface.  The inhabitants soon realize that a puny human has invaded their space and they chase him waving their ray guns until they finally corner him near a dark river across which they shove him by shooting a different sort of ray at him.  Mark finds himself in a small village which has been kept intact by the snails, still inside the dome, for purposes of observation.  Mark soon assumes leadership of the small group, falling in love with the headman's daughter at the same time, and invents a plan of escape.  He creates a disturbance, causing six snails to fly into the village in one of their ships.  Luring them into one of the houses, he collapses the roof on them which tears holes in their protective suits and the entire village escapes in the ship.  Flying south, they eventually reach Mark's village and call a meeting of all the surrounding communities, resulting in a unified commitment to revolution.  The reader is left to assume that with Yankee determination and sly cunning, humanity will soon drive off the hated intruders

These were both pretty good adventure stories, i thought.  I guess the "Destroyers" one was abridged because it was too long to fit into the Ace Double format.  Aldiss was a well-known British science fiction writer with a lot of publications to his credit.  Wellman's reputation was more in the horror/fantasy line, although he wrote all sorts of books, even Westerns.  I'd say the Aldiss was a cut above the other one insofar as quality was concerned, but estimations of that kind are arbitrary at best, and another reader might disagree.  Anyway, just another example of Ace's generally readable selectivity as applied to this series...