From Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Volume 32 Number 8, August of 1958. Published by Ziff-Davis, courtesy of internet archive.

by Bertram A[sic, probably A Bertram] Chandler. Bertram Chandler was an Anglo-Australian mariner turned science fiction writer.

THAT was the year of the satellites, of the Sputniks. That was the year of the Space Dog. That was the year it all started.

We didn't know what it was that we were starting. None of us as much as guessed – not even the theologians. To the scientists and the engineers it was the Dawn of the Space Age, as it was to most of the millions of newspaper readers. Oh, there were some pessimistic souls who regarded the triumphs of the rocketeers as proof that no place in the world was safe from the
intercontinental ballistic missile. They were right – in a way. The launching of that first, unfortunate hound into her closed orbit round the planet did mean the doom of civilization, although in a totally unexpected manner.

Those of you who have never known what it was like before the coming of our insolent, capricious masters will find it hard to envisage things as they were. Even if we are successful in this desperate attempt to overthrow our rulers there can never be any return to the old days and
the old ways. It could be that the devils we know may prove preferable to the devils we don't
know – but I doubt it. The Power whose aid we hope to enlist may be aloof, and cruel at
times, but she has an essential dignity sadly lacking in those other Powers that we so foolishly – albeit unwittingly – invoked. Too, her people have suffered as much as ours under the rule of the beasts.

It wasn't a bad world at all – by present day standards – the year that the trouble started. We grumbled, and we dreaded, at times, the future – but it wasn't a bad world. Even with the ever present threat of atomic war, it wasn't a bad world. We were ruling – or misruling – ourselves. The power was ours, ours, as was the choice. It was up to us to decide whether we lived in Heaven or died in Hell. There had been, during our last big war – it finished some twelve years before the launching of the Space Dog – a lot of talk about the Four Freedoms. They were what we were supposed to be fighting for: Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. Freedom of speech. Freedom of thought. Nobody mentioned the Fifth Freedom, which is the most important of all, and that's the one that we miss the most. Freedom to go to Hell our own way. We – all of us who can remember the old days – rather resent having been dragged there by outsiders.

It didn't matter what nationality we were – the world was a collection of nations then and not, as now, just two big Empires – we all had that freedom. And we were free to dream, too. We were free to dream of the Earthly paradise that would come with the wise use of automation and atomic power. We were free to dream of ships to the Moon – and how close we were to realizing that dream! – and the planets and, even, the stars. But automation is no more than a legend – all manufactured things are made, now, slowly and painfully by men, women and children. Atomic power is only an old, half-remembered, half-believed story. They saw to it that the power stations and the research establishments were destroyed. They used their powers to make ineffective and useless the stockpiles of atomic weapons, of all weapons. Perhaps they saved the world – but they saved it for their people, not for us – for their purposes.

It was the Russians who launched the first animal into Space. A dog, it was. You'll know
all about her. Her statue stands in every village, every town. It stands by the dozen in every
city. She died, eventually, out there in the cold and the darkness, in what we thought of,
then, as the loneliness. Before she died she must have called – and her call was answered. It wasn't answered at once. After all – a Being to whom Eternity is no more than a normal life span is slow to awaken, is slow, even when awakened, to take action.

After that first dog there were other animals. There were rats. (We were lucky there, very
lucky. Somehow Man, who has always had an odd taste in deities, never got around to worshipping those repellent creatures.) There were guinea pigs. There were mice. There
were monkeys. To an unbiased observer – if such a one existed – it must have seemed that Man was determined to fill the Space around his planet with a sample of every known life form.

There were, as I have said, monkeys.

This went on for a few years, with all concerned feverishly accumulating data that would be
of value when the first human beings ventured into Space. Detailed plans were in existence
for the establishment of the Lunar Colony, for the management of the Mars Expedition. The first man-carrying rockets were already being constructed, and the first Space Station was only a matter of a few weeks in the future when the realization came that all was not well.

It was in Russia that the trouble started. The Russians were always a secretive people, and
at first the lack of news of events within the borders of that country were taken to be indicative of some struggle for leadership. It had happened before and was, we all thought, happening again. Then fantastic, incredible reports began to filter through. There was, it seemed, another Russian Revolution. The dogs had risen against their erstwhile masters. Packs of savage hounds roamed the streets of Moscow and Leningrad, ripping to bloody shreds any man, woman or child unlucky enough to cross their path. The Red Air Force was grounded, and the Army was trying to fight the enemy with swords and bayonets, firearms being useless. Some of the Russian leaders escaped and made their way to London and Washington. They appealed to the Western
leaders for aid. They begged that fleets of aircraft be sent to bomb their cities. They told of the great, shadowy figure, like that of a man with a dog's head, who strode always before the
brute armies, whose appearance struck men with a paralyzing terror.

They were mad, we all said. They had been deposed by a people who had had enough of
tyranny – we didn't know what tyranny was, then – and wished to be revenged upon those who had been their subjects. I often wonder what would have happened if we had believed them. Would our aircraft, our atomic bombs, have been effective? Could we have stemmed the tide before it had risen too far?

We heard no more from Russia – but we heard of the wave of canine revolt that was
spreading westwards from her borders, that had engulfed Poland and Finland and the Scandinavian countries, that was beginning to sweep through Germany. Throughout the remainder of the world the authorities acted at last. They knew what was happening, without knowing why. The most plausible theory was that the Russians had developed a virus that would turn the most docile household pet into a savage killer and that by some mischance the virus had got loose in their own country. In any case the disease, as it was
thought to be, was spreading. Orders went out that all dogs – save for a few to be kept for
laboratory use – were to be killed. Many were killed. Many were hidden by loving masters and mistresses – and repaid the trust by acts of treachery such as we, in these latter years, have come to associate with that once crawling, servile slave now become master.

Then, suddenly, the dogs found allies – allies with a manual dexterity the equal of
Man's. In the old days monkeys were indigenous to the Tropics – to India and Africa and Central America – but there were many of them to be found in all nations of the world. They were in zoological gardens – the places in which animals from all over the planet were displayed for the edification and education of the people. They were in laboratories. Some of them, incredible as it may seem, were used in the manufacture of remedies for various diseases to which the human race was – and still is, especially so now that no further supplies of vaccine are being manufactured – prone. Some of them were destined to be the crews of further experimental space vehicles.

The dogs and the monkeys were a strong combination. I know. I was among those taking
part in the defense of Southampton, trying to hold back the brutes from the docks and the
evacuation ships. I was one of a mixed party of merchant seamen and civilians manning a barricade. Rifles we had, and shotguns, and an ancient Lewis machine gun. We wondered, as we waited there, what had happened to the Army and the Air Force. We knew, within a little,
what had happened to the Navy. We had heard of the simian saboteurs whose small size had
enabled them to creep aboard vessels unobserved, whose nimble hands had proved capable of
causing the destruction of many a ship.

It was about half an hour after sunset when the action started. We saw them coming along
the road, keeping to the shadows, hugging the walls of the buildings. There were Alsatians
and terriers, spaniels even. We opened fire – single, aimed shots from the rifles, a burst of tracer from the Lewis gun. We heard yelps. We saw a few dark shapes sprawling motionless; the others vanished into doorways and side streets.

We waited, and saw that they were advancing again. Again we opened fire. Had there been anybody among us with any military training it is possible that we would have watched the rooftops as well as the road. But we didn't. The first grenade that fell among us put the Lewis gun out of action and killed most of our party.

I lay where I had fallen and saw them there, silhouetted against the pale sky – a row of black, gesticulating shapes like evil pygmies. I still had hold of my rifle and I raised it, pulling
the trigger. There was a faint click, nothing more. I ejected the round, tried to fire again.

Then I saw It looming high in the sky, behind Its people. All of you will have seen It, and
you will have felt awe and terror, but what you will have felt will be a pale shadow of the
feelings of anybody like myself seeing It for the first time. I stared at the great shape of the
crowned monkey in speechless terror, at the huge, shadowy bulk of it, at the gleaming,
crimson eyes.

Somebody was shaking me, pulling me to my feet. Somebody was screaming, 'Run! Run!' It
seemed ages before I could force my head to turn away from the frightening sight of the first
god that I had ever seen. It was ages more before I could will my legs to move. And then I was
running like one in a nightmare, seemingly skimming over the ground, conscious all the time
that there was some unspeakable horror close behind me.

Later that night we sat, my companion and I, in a bedroom of a deserted house. We watched
from the window the flames leaping higher and higher over the docks; we heard the screams.
We still had our rifles with us, but doubted that they would be of any use except as clubs. We
had knives that we had found in the kitchen.

It was my friend who explained it all to me. He was an aeronautical engineer by trade – and he had hoped, he said, to become an astronautical engineer – and had made the study of comparative religions his hobby.

'I think I've got it doped out,' he said. 'There may be a way out of the mess, too. Anyhow, I'm going to tell as many people as I can what I think has happened, starting with you. Meanwhile – keep your eyes skinned for dogs or monkeys . . .'

'I am,' I said. 'And I've blocked the chimney.'

'Good. Then just listen while I'm talking – and keep on watching. This, I think, was the way of it. For quite a few centuries now we've been an irreligious race. Even in the so-called backward countries people have been letting science take the place of their gods. Now – what happens to gods when they have no worshippers?'

'They . . die, I suppose,' I said.

'That's what I used to think. I don't think so any longer. They sleep – but not on this world. They sleep somewhere in Space. A thousand miles out? A million? The other side of the
moon? I don't know . . .

'Anyhow, just imagine two deities slumbering peacefully out there, two deities whose animal worshipping followers have long since lost their belief, their faith. Two deities whose working life, so far as this world is concerned, is over. One of them Egyptian and the other one Indian.

'One of them, we will suppose, is a dog. We, fools that we are, send a dog out to perish in the cold and the dark. That dog appeals, somehow, to the essential spirit of its race, the spirit that
was worshipped in ancient Egypt ... Do you remember the dog-headed god that the Russians reported? Then we start sending out monkeys. They make their appeal to their race spirit . . .'

'Incredible!' I said.

'Isn't everything that's happened incredible?' he countered. 'We've dreaded fission bombs and fusion bombs and cobalt bombs and bacteriological warfare – but none of us ever
dreamed that we should see the world given over to the rule of the beasts.'

'They'll be beaten,' I said.

'Will they?' he asked. 'Will they? It's gods that we're up against, remember – gods. What can you do when the fuel of a jet or rocket motor fails to burn? What can you do when
a hydrogen bomb – it's been tried – just won't explode? What can you do when even rifles are useless? It's like those old wars in the Old Testament that the Children of Israel always won because the Almighty intervened on their behalf with a few miracles.'

'What do you intend to do?' I asked him.

'To survive,' he said. 'They'll not be killing all of us – we're too useful to them. Can you imagine a monkey doing one hard day's work? Can you imagine a dog being willing to
do without the pampering that he's become used to over the centuries?

'So, if enough of us with the know-how survive, we might, someday, be able to launch a
man-carrying rocket into Space . . . We might be able to make our appeal to a higher authority . . .'

He survived.

He's one of the scientists on that island at which the ship will be calling shortly. Our lords and masters permitted us to maintain a pitiful skeleton of the great network of communications that once covered the world – even they, to a certain extent, are dependent upon long distance transport for the upkeep of their standards of life. Luckily neither dogs nor monkeys are sea-minded, and so it has been possible for personnel and supplies to be smuggled out of England and America and Russia. Luckily the gods are as stupid as their people – after all, they're only animals, even though they do possess supernatural powers.

Tomorrow we call at that unnamed island in the Pacific.

Tomorrow we see the rocket fired. It has taken all our resources and years of toil to build. It would never lift a man. We shall never be able to build a man-carrying ship – we realize
that – and we are old, all of us, and soon there will be nobody who remembers the glories of our race before it was given over to the bestial empery of the dog and the monkey and reduced to their servitude.

The rocket will work. It has to work. It will carry into Space something living, something
small, something weighing only a few pounds. It will carry into black emptiness – or not-emptiness – the representative of a race that has fared worse than Man, that has been harried almost out of existence by the legions of Anubis and Hanuman.

She knows, I think, what her destiny will be. She is sitting on my lap as I write, and she is
purring, and her sharp little claws are pricking the skin of my thigh. She looks up at me
and there is, I swear, a real intelligence in those green eyes.

I shall be sorry to lose her.

I hope that the wrath of Pusht, the Cat Goddess, will be recompense for my loss.

Editor's Note: As if anyone would send cats into space.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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