Catherine Lucille Moore was born on January 24, 1911, in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ve written multiple birthday tributes to her. As I said for Robert E. Howard’s birthday two days, ago, I’m eulogized out. So today in honor of her birthday, I’ll be revising a series I let go dormant, that of the Northwest Smith stories. There will be spoilers below the fold.
“Yvala” was first published in the February 1936 issue of Weird Tales. It was the eighth installment in the series. The story opens with Smith and his Venusian sidekick/partner Yarol are hanging around a spaceport on Mars, waiting to meet a man. While they wait, they watch a ship move from its hanger onto the launch field. It’s a slave ship. Smith recognized it and knows that the Patrol is cracking down on the slave trade in the System. The owners of the ship are facing tough times.
But then, so are Smith and Yarol. They haven’t eaten in a few days. So when the man who had arranged the meeting with Yarol shows up, it’s no surprise he’s connected to the slavers. He’s an Irishman, something Smith recognizes. Moore tells us it’s not safe for Smith to return to the world of his birth. He’s too much of a wanted man. Because Smith is feeling a bit homesick, he agrees to the man’s proposition.
He represents the slavers and wants to hire Smith and Yarol to go to one of the moons of Jupiter. Which one, well, Moore plays it cagey and doesn’t name it. But it has to be one of the larger ones.
A few years back, a sole survivor of a crash stumbled out of the jungle, raving about having encountered the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. The people in the small settlement of the moon chalk it up to hallucinations he had in the jungle. At least until another crash survivor stumbles in recently, telling the same story.
The slave syndicate wants Smith and Yarol to go find the women and bring them back. Smith admits it’s a dirty business, but Yarol says “the money’s clean” and he likes to eat. Smith agrees. Remember Smith is the protagonist of these stories, but he’s not a hero.
They fly out to the jungle moon in the ship they saw, just them and three men from the syndicate. Smith doesn’t trust them.
They land in the jungle and discover a paved road cutting through the undergrowth a few yards away. I thought this was a little too convenient, but that’s what Moore chose to do. Smith and Yarol follow the road.
Soon they hear singing, and they each see a group of beautiful women coming towards them. All the women are identical. Although Moore doesn’t explicitly say it, at least that I saw, the implies the women are naked. But the women Smith sees aren’t the women Yarol sees. Smith sees tanned redheads. Yarol sees women with black hair and ghostly white skin. Smith and Yarol find it hard to resist the women as they lead them along the road and into an area carpeted with a flowering moss beneath tall trees. Smith thinks he catches glimpses of a number of animals. He senses shame and warning from them, but again these reservations are overwhelmed by the spell of the women.
Smith sees columns fallen amidst scattered ruins, but the women lead the two men to the only standing temple. There they vanish, and one woman, identical to the women who had led Smith there only somehow lovelier.
She tells the men she is Yvala and invites them to gaze upon her beauty. They do, and Smith senses his life force leaving him as he loses consciousness.
He awakes to dreams of being a wolf. A struggle ensues as Smith tries to keep a grip on his humanity. He manages, but just barely, and then only when the three slavers show up, ensnared by Yvala. Smith realizes that Yvala is Circe from ancient myth. The animals he’d seen really had been trying in their way to warn him. They were the people Yvala/Circe had turned into the animal they most resemble.
Smith is able to restore Yarol, and they flee back to the ship.
This isn’t Moore’s strongest contribution to the Northwest Smith series. The question of how the two survivors of the crashes managed to escape from Yvala, much less how they managed to survive in the jungle. Smith and Yarol are barely able to reach the road from the ship, and it’s only a few yards away.
It’s easy, though, to overlook those little logical details. Moore’s prose is lush, and the story moves along at a steady pace.
There are four more stories and a vignette left in the Northwest Smith series. I’ll be looking at all of them.
I like this story but not as much as the other Northwest Smith stories. It’s hard to emphasize with Northwest Smith when he goes into slaving.
Agreed. Smith is a villain, but I think Moore in most cases makes him someone we care about.
He’s more heroic in Shamblaue for example. He saves a girl from a lynch mob. Of course, we all know how that turned out. In Yvala, he’s hesitant to go on the slaving expedition but he does so because he needs the money.
True, he does have redeeming characteristics. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have any appeal.
I’m thinking about doing a followup post looking at what animal he turned into and contrasting that with what Yarol turned into.
That would be interesting. I certainly would like to read it.
I assumed that the road was supernatural. That it would appear nearby anytime someone found themselves within Yvala’s sphere of influence.
“Although Moore doesn’t explicitly say it, at least that I saw, the implies the women are naked.”
Moore strongly implies that Yvala herself defeats Smith’s initial resistance by sweeping her hair to the side to display her nakedness in full.
I hadn’t thought about the road being supernatural. That’s an interesting point. And you’re correct about Yvala sweeping her hair implied that she was naked.
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