The Unconquerable (16)
By:
October 15, 2014
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Helen MacInnes’s 1944 novel The Unconquerable (later reissued as While We Still Live), an espionage adventure that pits an innocent English woman against both Nazis and resistance fighters in occupied Poland. MacInnes, it’s worth noting, was married to a British intelligence agent, which may explain what one hears is the amazing accuracy of her story’s details. Under the editorship of HILOBROW’s Joshua Glenn, the Save the Adventure book club will reissue The Unconquerable as an e-book for the first time ever. Enjoy!
The bombardment continued unceasingly. In Stevens’ rooms the men were restless. When the guns seemed about to level off they would talk and argue. They would make brief sorties out into a grotesque world where volunteers were useless. The end was near. The men felt it, and each made his own plans, his own preparations for that moment. Only the Americans and the Swede would be free men once the Germans came, and even they had to plan how they could keep that freedom.
During the day Bill’s remaining tins of food were scraped clean. The last bottle was emptied, and the final candle was inserted in its neck. The boards over the window had been loosened to let some light into the room, so that the candle could be saved for the night. A cold wind swept into the room and huddled them together in their coats. Once, either because the guns seemed to be directed more against the north of the city, or because sitting in this room had become unbearable (“It’s madness to go out,” Jim said, “but it’s misery to sit here and just wonder”), the men rose and left together. Sheila seized the chance to tidy the room. Now that she was alone she had to do something. She couldn’t sit still and let herself just think. Even the Polish grammar book was no longer a diversion. She moved the conglomeration of private possessions into neat piles. She tried to get rid of some of the thick dust which drifted in clouds through the open window. After she had swept the white powder into heaps three times in succession and found that the coating of dust still lay on everything she was forced to close the window boards. Barbara, she thought as she looked round the room, Barbara would have made a neater job. Barbara… She lifted the pail and almost ran downstairs and went searching for the nearest well.
It was farther away than she had thought, and it was an unpleasant journey. She almost wept with rage when a sudden blast, nearer than the others had been, made her duck so that almost half of the precious water was spilled on the road. The little dog had followed her to the well, had waited patiently beside her in the long queue. He had kept very close to her, padding along beside her, looking up into her face every now and again as much as to say, “See, I’ve got one of those humans again. She’s got some quite good points, too. Might be intelligent. At least, she tries very hard. Perhaps I’ll get round to teaching her some tricks one of these days. She certainly learned very quickly how to walk on all fours this morning when she was retrieving the things on the floor.” His tail was carried proudly, his ears were erect. It hadn’t been the guns or the lack of food which had cowed him so much last night. It had been the feeling of being lost, of being unwanted. He now lapped up the pool of water spreading at Sheila’s feet and cocked his head to one side as he looked up waiting for more. His cool assumption made her laugh, and her rage vanished. Strange, she was thinking, that things never seemed so bad if you had some one — even a dog — to share them with. The last stretch of the journey seemed the easier for having the dog trotting along so closely beside her.
The men had returned in her absence.
“I told you to stay here,” Stevens said sharply. “You gave us a scare, walking out on us like that.”
Schlott took the half-filled pail of water and said gently, “We can do this.”
“You had other things to do. Besides, all the other women and children are standing in line for water. That’s our job now. I’m sorry my hand would only let me carry one pail. Doesn’t seem so much, does it?”
“The pioneer woman,” Bill said, and looked round the neat room in amusement.
“The woman’s touch,” Jim said, with pretended scorn. “Now it will take us two hours to get things comfortable again. I see the dog didn’t desert us, anyway. What shall we call him?” He reached down and shook the dog’s paw solemnly. “What shall we call you, funny face?”
“Try some Polish on it,” the Frenchman said.
Schlott obeyed, and they all laughed as the dog cocked his head to one side and his tail fluttered like a flag.
Sheila, watching the relaxed faces round the little animal, thought, it’s a good thing that Jim did salvage this dog; it has given them all a new topic for conversation. For the arguments were now centred on breeds of dog, on dog-training, and animal intelligence.
“What shall we call it?” Sheila asked when these subjects had been exhausted.
“Him, not it,” Jim said, as he tried to straighten the tangled coat with his broken comb. “Wonder who owned him? If you washed this soot off him and combed him correctly you’d have a good West Highland terrier. What about Prince Charlie?”
The game started; each had his own idea of a name, and each idea led to another.
The Frenchman said incredulously, “If anyone had told me a week ago that I should spend my last hours in Warsaw naming a dog I should have said he was completely mad.”
“This may keep us from going mad,” Schlott said.
“What about me?” Sheila asked. She held up the torn jacket which she was trying to sew in order to keep herself occupied. “I think I ought to warn you that I’ve never sewn a man’s jacket or shirt before in my life.”
“No embroidered rosebuds on the collar, please,” Bill said.
“What, none? I thought a spot of broderie anglaise would have been appropriate. Or perhaps you might prefer some Richelieu work round these holes? I can’t disguise them, I’m afraid.”
“Just stop the seams from bursting altogether,” Jim said. “We only want these things to be able to hang on to us. It can’t be helped about the wide open spaces.”
The man from Vienna alone said nothing, and didn’t laugh. He sat on the floor with his head resting against the wall, his eyes counting each unseen shell-burst. But then, he had known what the Nazis were like: he had escaped from a concentration camp.
He spoke only once. He said “Do you realize the Germans may be crossing the bridges? Do you realize ——”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Hope some of them stick in the wire entanglements I met last night. If a Pole hadn’t shown me the way out I’d have been hooked up there still. That is what made the holes, Sheila.”
“We thought it was moths,” Stevens said, but Sheila noted that he too was listening openly to the falling shells now. They all were. Schlott blew out the candle and removed a window board. A red glow spread over the opposite wall. Schlott began to curse, solemnly, sincerely.
“Come on,” he said suddenly, and left the room. The others followed. They didn’t even pause, this time to gather their equipment. Their footsteps clattered on the top stairs and then were lost as the guns’ thunder grew louder. The dog whined uneasily and then lay down, its nose pointing to the door, which swung half open. Sheila collected Madame Knast’s sewing materials and replaced them neatly in their little wicker basket. She pretended to be busy, but the red glow on the opposite wall was deepening; the house trembled with the distant blows like the engine-room of a ship ploughing its way through heavy seas; the air which came into the room was hot and dry and smelled of sulphur. The dog coughed uneasily and padded about the room with its ears flat against its head. This is the end, Sheila thought as she lay down on the couch. No one was going to live through this night. For a moment she had the impulse to go out and face this terror in the streets as the men had done. But then she remembered that if any of them did get back to find she was gone once more, then they’d come out searching again. She would have to stay where she was. Wait… wait… You waited for everything, for food and water, for the bombs to fall, for the night to come, for another day. Nothing but wait…
The dog came over to where she lay. He took her forefinger gently between his teeth and held it like that for some moments, as if to say, “I’m here, too, you know.” She rubbed his cheek, and he jumped up beside her and crept close to her side.
She had to think about something. Not about people. Just about something. So she thought of London. She would take a bus-ride: from Hampstead down Tottenham Court Road into Charing Cross Road and Coventry Street and Piccadilly Circus. Then she would go up Regent Street and along Oxford Street, and then down Park Lane and past Hyde Park Corner and along to Knightsbridge and Kensington. She was on her way back to Piccadilly, heading for Trafalgar Square and the Strand and Fleet Street, when she fell asleep.
The silence awakened her. It was morning. She sat up quickly on the couch and listened. Yes the guns had stopped. The planes had gone. The silence was so immense, so overwhelming, that it terrified her.
Outside, in the street, there were people. They were looking at the sky unbelievingly. They moved as in a daze.
“Come on, dog,” Sheila said, and was shocked at the loudness of her voice. Had they all been yelling at each other in these last two days? The dog’s tail thumped on the floor. “Come on, dog,” she repeated quietly, and went down into the street carrying the pail. She had learned never to make any trip without doing something necessary. The dog padded heavily on the stairs behind her. Yesterday she had only seen the movements of his paws; now she could hear them. Yesterday she hadn’t heard his tail thumping on the floor, she hadn’t even known the handle of the pail creaked. The little noises could live again.
In the street a grey-faced woman stopped her. “What is wrong?” the woman asked. Sheila heard others asking the same question. You talked to strangers, to anyone, to the windowless houses. The guns had stopped, and you asked “What is wrong?”
She saw the two Americans and the Swede walking slowly towards her. Their faces were old and lined with fatigue. Their clothes and skin and hair were covered with a fine dust. Bakers out of hell, she thought. “Where are the others?” she asked.
‘The Englishman and the Frenchman have gone. It was time for them to go,” Schlott said heavily.
“The Spaniard and the Austrian?”
“They went over the Kierbedz Bridge. They haven’t come back.”
Sheila looked up at the grey haze of sky as the others had done. The men’s eyes followed hers. Their little group stood closely together looking at the dust cloud above the city, listening to the silence. Grim faces moved quietly along the ruined streets, searching for food, for shelter, for water, searching. Three children stood at the edge of a bomb crater, filled with water wasted in its muddy hole. Sheila saw one small arm raised to throw a stone, heard the high-pitched little laugh as the water splashed round the boy’s feet. The others were playing a game, too. “I’m a bomber. See!” one child yelled suddenly as he threw a large piece of stone. “I’m a machine-gun,” cried another, and scooped up a double handful of gravel to shower into the pool. “Hear it! I’m a machine-gun!”
The shrill calls of the children were the only sound in the street.
Stevens turned away, and the little group followed him.
Upstairs in Stevens’ room the men dropped wearily on the couch and the floor.
“What’s to do now?” Schlott asked. “What’s to do, now that it’s all over?”
“Some still want to fight on,” Bill said. “Some are weeping in the streets because they aren’t to be allowed to die any more. I saw men in tears.” He picked himself up from the floor and tramped blindly into the bedroom. They heard the springs creak as he threw himself heavily on the bed.
“What’s to do now?” Schlott repeated.
“I’m damned if my side is going to lose,” Steve burst out. “I’m God-damned if it is going to lose. It ——”
Schlott pointed at Sheila, and Steve grew silent. He rose also, and paced between the hall and the room.
“We must not sit here with our thoughts for company,” Sheila said to Schlott. “I’ve these rooms to clean properly. There’s water to fetch and food to be found. There are our friends to see. Perhaps they still need our help. But first of all, you must sleep. You’ve been out all night.”
“Stuck in a cellar. No damned good to anyone,” Steve said bitterly.
Sheila unfolded a blanket. “Sleep, Steve,” she suggested. “Here, or in Madame Knast’s room? There’s a comfortable bed there.”
Stevens shook his head and slowly wound a small alarm-clock. “This is my own place,” he said. “I guess we are damned lucky to have it.” He took the blanket from Sheila. “There’s that meeting this afternoon. Four hours — just give me four hours of sleep.” Sheila glanced anxiously over at Schlott to see if he had heard, but he was already asleep.. Steve stretched himself on the floor and placed the clock beside his head.
Sheila went into the wreck of the kitchen, and the dog followed her.
“What is it to be, dog?” she said. “Shall we clean up, or shall we get some water and food.” The dog cocked its head to the side, thumped its tail, and waited with bright brown eyes.
“All right,” Sheila said. “Water and food.”
She lifted the pail once more, and they went downstairs and joined the searching people.
The strange thing about a bucket of water was the way its weight increased. She set down the pail at her feet for the third time on the homeward journey. The dog sat down too. It waited, watching her face.
“Stop looking at me!” she said half angrily. The dog’s tail circled, and she laughed at the head held sideways. The boy who had been walking along the pavement towards her, his eyes fixed on the ground, looked up when he heard the laugh. He stood looking at her with angry blue eyes.
“It’s this dog,” Sheila said. “He makes me laugh.”
The boy said nothing. His eyes followed Sheila’s pointed hand, and now he stood looking at the dog. The dog looked at him in turn and cocked his head to the other side. The boy’s fingers snapped half-heartedly, and the dog’s front paws beat an excited little tattoo on the pavement’s dust. The boy smiled involuntarily. The dog sat up and begged.
“It’s a nice dog,” the boy said slowly, and knelt to rumple its coat. He kept his head bent, his face well hidden.
Sheila picked up the pail once more. The boy straightened. He kept his head turned away. “I’ll carry it,” he said in a muffled voice.
“I haven’t very far to go,” Sheila said.
“I’ll carry it.” He lifted the pail out of her hand.
When they reached the hall of Madame Knast’s apartment the boy hesitated awkwardly.
“Do you need more water?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get it. Have you another bucket? I can carry two.”
Sheila searched for the second pail. “Thank you,” she said, when she had handed it to him, “this is really a great help to me.”
The boy clattered down the staircase eagerly. When he came back he seemed happier. The tight lines had gone from his mouth. And when Sheila, cornering the last heap of broken glass and china and dust beside the cardboard box, said “Splendid!” he seemed happier still. He insisted he could fill the box with the rubbish and empty it downstairs. He made several journeys, carrying the box carefully so that no dust spilled over. When he came back he stood at the kitchen door.
“Anything else?” he asked shyly, but there was such a pathetic eagerness in his voice that Sheila halted her final thanks.
“I was going out to try to buy some food,” she said instead. “Do you know where I could buy any?”
“Not buy.” The boy stood thinking, and then added, “I may find some.”
Again he clattered down the staircase. When he came back he had a cabbage tucked under one arm and a small piece of raw, roughly hacked meat in the other hand.
“We’ll build a fire in the courtyard,” the boy said. “We’ll make soup in a covered pot. I’ll go and get scraps of wood from the street.”
“Perhaps the caretaker has a wood stove,” Sheila suggested.
“The caretaker isn’t there. I looked in his kitchen. The stove has gone too.”
Sheila looked at him in amazement. “I don’t know what I should do without you,” she said truthfully. The boy flushed, and his face became more alive. He jumped down the staircase, three steps at a time.
Before he came back for the soup pot Sheila had wiped the withered-looking cabbage — she couldn’t waste water in washing it — and had cut it into strips. She did the same with the hunk of meat, averting her eyes at intervals. There was salt and some herbs in the little hand-painted jars on the kitchen-dresser. She sprinkled them liberally into the water covering the meat and the cabbage, and handed the tightly lidded pot to the waiting boy. The dog, watching all these preparations with instinctive pleasure, looked apologetically over his shoulder as he trotted after the boy and the pot of food. “I’m not deserting you,” he seemed to say, “I’m just guarding this pot, you understand.”
From the courtyard she heard voices. The fire was burning brightly in its three-sided nest of stones. The boy had found a piece of iron grille, a pretty thing with a twisting pattern of flowers, and vine, and had placed it across the top of the stones. “There’s room for other pots, too,” she heard him say proudly, and saw some women in once smart clothes hurry away to carry out his suggestion. “Go and find more wood,” the boy was saying to the children who hung round to watch the flames. They obeyed him with excited whoops.
But they all must live here, she thought in surprise. And then she smiled at herself. Of course they did. It was like the last night on a stormy sea voyage: people whose existence you had never suspected suddenly appeared out of their cabins, and the whole ship became amazingly inhabited.
The alarm-clock rang. Sheila, after cleaning the rooms, had made a determined attempt to clean her dress and her shoes. She had discarded the shreds of silk which had once been stockings. She had wiped her face and combed her hair and even thought of powder and lipstick. She felt much better. Now she stopped admiring her handiwork and rushed through to the living-room to silence the alarm.
Stevens and Schlott hadn’t moved. Four hours. Did Stevens really mean four hours? Yet Mr Olszak’s meeting was at three, and the time was almost one o’clock now.
Sheila shook Steve’s shoulder. “Breakfast is ready,” she said. It took some time and perseverance, but at last he opened his eyes and sat up stiffly on the floor.
“Breakfast?” he said. That’s no way to wake a man when he knows there isn’t any.” His temper was as bad as the taste in his mouth. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. The packet was crumpled and empty. He threw it angrily at the opposite wall.
Sheila picked up the clock and pointed to the time. “The meeting is at three,” she said. The second time he understood.
“All right, all right,” he said irritably.
“Why don’t you wash and shave? You’ll feel better with that beard off.”
He looked at the neat table in surprise. “What’s happened to the bottles?”
Sheila pointed to their orderly row on top of the bookcase. “Drinking-water,” she explained. “And I found some clean towels and soap in Madame Knast’s room. I think you’d better wash in here; something has gone wrong with the bathroom — it’s a frightful mess.”
He still looked surprised, but he didn’t say anything. He began morosely to shave and wash.
“Who the hell is this?” he asked suddenly, and stared at the doorway. Sheila, folding the blanket into a neat bulk, looked up to see the boy standing hesitatingly in the hall. The dog ran into the room, and jumped up and down excitedly with short, sharp barks.
“Oh, shut up!” Stevens said. Schlott sat up on the couch and frowned heavily.
The boy carried the pot into the kitchen and then, watching Steve’s lathered face uncertainly, backed slowly towards the front-door.
He thinks we don’t want him, he thinks I don’t need him any longer, Sheila guessed. She ran through the hall and caught the boy by his sleeve and pulled him back into the room. He came slowly, willingly and yet unwillingly.
“What’s wrong with him?” Stevens asked. In Polish he said, “Come in, come in. What’s your name?”
“Casimir.”
“Well, come in, Casimir.”
“He’s been our friend,” Sheila said in Polish. Her arm kept a tight grip on the boy. “He got us this water and food and made a fire and cooked the food. Please come in, Casimir. I am Sheila. That man is Steve. That man is Gustav, and our friend Bill is sleeping next door. Will you help me to put the soup in the bowls, and shall we all eat together?”
The boy followed her silently into the kitchen. The dog begged for food, standing erect in its eagerness. From the living-room came Schlott’s voice chanting, “Foodl Food! Food!”
“This is Steve’s house,” Sheila explained carefully to the silent boy. “He has given us shelter. We had no place to go.”
“You are refugees, too?” the boy asked with unexpected interest. Sheila felt suddenly happy as she watched the round face with its short nose and anxious blue eyes; she had said the right thing, thank God. She smothered a question about his home and people and said simply, “Yes.”
The boy’s confidence returned. He was no longer an intruder. He was one of them.
“Here’s some soup for the dog. You give it to him, and then he will be your dog.”
“Whose dog is he?”
“He is a refugee, too, like all of us.”
The meal wasn’t large, but it was enough for them after the little they had eaten in the last few days. Everything was finished, down to the last shred of stringy and now colourless meat, to the last strand of tasteless cabbage. The dog came round to them, each in turn, to wag its tail and jab a cold nose against their ankles.
“He’s saying thank you,” the boy said delightedly. And then the delight faded, and he rose clumsily to his feet. “Thank you, too.” He bowed jerkily, bent down to pat the dog’s head, and started towards the door.
“Quick, Steve — ask him to stay here. Quick,” Sheila said in English.
“What about his own home?” said Schlott. “If he has people they will be worried.”
“If he has people,” Sheila said quietly.
“But we may have to leave here,” Steve said. “What then?”
“We can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The boy had halted at the door. His movements were very slow. “Go back,” he was saying to the dog, which had followed him. “Go back.” There was a sudden lost look on the boy’s face.
“Why are you leaving us? We should like you to stay here,” Steve said. “Would you like to stay here?”
The boy nodded and came slowly back into the room. He watched them anxiously.
Schlott rose and thumped him on the back. “You’re our food-scout, Casimir. We need you.”
“And look how happy the dog is,” Sheila said quietly. The boy nodded, and sat cross-legged on the floor. He began to play with the dog.
Steven looked at his watch and then at Sheila. She rose obediently.
“Where are you two going?” Bill asked rashly.
“Out,” Stevens said. Schlott and the dark-haired American exchanged amused glances.
“Well make a tour of inspection of the bridge,” Bill said to Schlott. He paused as if thinking of the two men who had crossed it yesterday. He went on with mock light-heartedness which deceived no one. “It will be good to walk along the streets without having to dodge into a doorway every two minutes.”
“What about the boy and the dog?” Schlott asked. “A family is a serious matter. You have got to think about them.”
Sheila said to the boy, “We must go out now. Would you look after the dog? Ill give you a small piece of soap and a comb. Wash him in the river, or in a shell-hole. And if you can find some more food we will have soup again to-night. Tell the children in the courtyard to keep that fire burning. Will you do that?”
“Your Polish is improving,” Steve said, “but let the poor kid rest. He needs it.”
“Yes, but not alone, by himself. He can rest to-night when we are all together. Now he has got to do things, to feel that he is needed here.”
The men looked at her strangely, and then nodded their agreement.
In the street Stevens took Sheila’s arm. They walked northward to the centre of the city. They walked in silence. The ruin and destruction round them were too eloquent. Past them moved white faces, sad, sorrowful, sick. Warsaw was not only written, but carved upon their hearts.
RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HILOBROW’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Philip Gordon Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.
READ GORGEOUS PAPERBACKS: HiLoBooks has reissued the following 10 obscure but amazing Radium Age science fiction novels in beautiful print editions: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, J.D. Beresford’s Goslings, E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man, Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage, and Muriel Jaeger’s The Man with Six Senses. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire.”
ORIGINAL FICTION: HILOBROW has serialized three novels: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic); Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda (which includes original music); and Robert Waldron’s roman à clef The School on the Fens. We also publish original stories and comics. These include: Matthew Battles’s stories “Gita Nova“, “Makes the Man,” “Imago,” “Camera Lucida,” “A Simple Message”, “Children of the Volcano”, “The Gnomon”, “Billable Memories”, “For Provisional Description of Superficial Features”, “The Dogs in the Trees”, “The Sovereignties of Invention”, and “Survivor: The Island of Dr. Moreau”; several of these later appeared in the collection The Sovereignties of Invention | Peggy Nelson’s “Mood Indigo“, “Top Kill Fail“, and “Mercerism” | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Flourish Klink’s Star Trek fanfic “Conference Comms” | Charlie Mitchell’s “A Fantasy Land” | Charlie Mitchell’s “Sentinels” | Joshua Glenn’s “The Lawless One”, and the mashup story “Zarathustra vs. Swamp Thing” | Adam McGovern and Paolo Leandri’s Idoru Jones comics | John Holbo’s “Sugarplum Squeampunk” | “Another Corporate Death” (1) and “Another Corporate Death” (2) by Mike Fleisch | Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Frank Fiorentino’s graphic novel “The Song of Otto” (excerpt) | John Holbo’s graphic novel On Beyond Zarathustra (excerpt) | “Manoj” and “Josh” by Vijay Balakrishnan | “Verge” by Chris Rossi, and his audio novel Low Priority Hero | EPIC WINS: THE ILIAD (1.408-415) by Flourish Klink | EPIC WINS: THE KALEVALA (3.1-278) by James Parker | EPIC WINS: THE ARGONAUTICA (2.815-834) by Joshua Glenn | EPIC WINS: THE MYTH OF THE ELK by Matthew Battles | TROUBLED SUPERHUMAN CONTEST: Charles Pappas, “The Law” | CATASTROPHE CONTEST: Timothy Raymond, “Hem and the Flood” | TELEPATHY CONTEST: Rachel Ellis Adams, “Fatima, Can You Hear Me?” | OIL SPILL CONTEST: A.E. Smith, “Sound Thinking | LITTLE NEMO CAPTION CONTEST: Joe Lyons, “Necronomicon” | SPOOKY-KOOKY CONTEST: Tucker Cummings, “Well Marbled” | INVENT-A-HERO CONTEST: TG Gibbon, “The Firefly” | FANFICTION CONTEST: Lyette Mercier’s “Sex and the Single Superhero”