the open, arid valley. Flame tools in their tendrils were brought into
play. Dust, reddened with heat, began to rise.
"They're leveling the ground!" Paul Arnold whispered hoarsely. "They
must be preparing a shipyard!"
"Sure, kid," George Bayley laughed, trying to conceal the half-scared
wonder in his own voice. "Maybe it'll take weeks for them to build the
fleet I asked for! But they'll do it! You'll see, if I happen to let
you live that long!"
* * * * *
The unholy wizardry of the Forbidden Moon was proven beyond all doubt.
And in this weird Tower room, air-conditioned against the cold thinness
of the atmosphere beyond its wall, the pyramid still throbbed a shrill
portent of more to come.
A second robot mechanism soared into the chamber from a tunnel mouth.
It bore a curious tripod-like instrument. The flying automaton
spiralled down like a bubble, and came to rest beside Harwich and the
youth. Pinioned by the tendrils of the other automaton, they were
helpless to do anything but watch and submit. They were pushed flat on
their backs, and held firmly. The tripod instrument was set up between
them.
"The discomfort device, this must be!" Bayley gloated, shifting his
weight from one foot to the other. "In just a few seconds there's going
to be some fun, I'll bet! Now, Harwich and Arnold, I'm wishing you bad
luck. Just a little foretaste of what I might wish later! Okay, pretty
machines! Give my beloved enemies the works, just for a second."
Two rods of metal, projecting down from the tripod, were set in
position by one of the automatons. One rod touched Harwich's skull, the
other Paul Arnold's. A switch was moved.
There was no sound; but all of the patrol pilot's body seemed suddenly
and maddeningly afire. To the very center of his mind, agony stabbed,
viciously. No searing pain of any injury he had ever received, could
have equaled this. He writhed, longing to scream his lungs out, as that
moment of sheer hell seemed to last an age.
"God!" Paul gasped when it was over.
Both men were sweating and limp, and yet no visible harm had been done
to their bodies. Artificial sensation, the torture must have been.
Nerve impulses transmitted directly to the brain. A devilish, perverted
achievement of superscience! Such agony might conceivably go on, in
Satanic refinement, for months, without bringing death.
"You see, boys, I'm boss here as long as I stay in this little
telepathy coop, where the old Ionians used to give their orders!"
George Bayley hissed triumphantly. "All the wonders of the Forbidden
Moon are mine to use, just as I see fit! There were just a bunch of
machines here, waiting for somebody to control them. A pistol doesn't
ask who pulls its trigger! And I got here first!"
"I was afraid of something like this when we were still on Ganymede,
before any of us knew," Paul Arnold muttered raggedly.
And Evan Harwich understood very well what the youth meant. George
Bayley was feeling that touch of power here. A sense of omnipotence was
flattering his shallow ego, raising him in his own estimation to the
level of some ruthless god. He, who had been a petty business man, a
printer, a repairer of instruments, a loan shark! Just a crumby, fat
little human being, ridiculous, small and conceited. Pathetic, too,
stubborn, and lacking in judgment. There were many like him on Earth,
and among the scattered spheres of Earth's interplanetary empire.
Maybe, after all, the wisdom of the Forbidden Moon was too big for the
human race. Maybe they would have to grow themselves first, advance in
evolution, before they would know how to handle and how to win real
benefits from such wisdom.
"All right, Nero," Harwich growled contemptuously to Bayley. "I'll
grant that you're in the driver's seat, ready to stop nowhere. Building
a space fleet and all. But where is Clara Arnold?"
The patrol pilot asked the question with fear and doubt in his heart.
"Clara Arnold?" said Bayley almost casually. "Too damned clever for
a girl! Said she thought I might have had something to do with the
crackup of the RQ257. Said she was worried about Paul and you, too,
Harwich, being maybe stranded still alive here on Io. But she said that
she'd finally decided my promises weren't good for anything, anyway.
That I'd have to rescue you two men first before she'd believe in me.
Until then, our engagement was off."
Harwich felt a brief wave of elation, as he heard these words. Clara
had seemed so quiet and timid; but she'd evidently proved herself
plenty courageous and plenty smart.
"But where is she?" Harwich growled angrily. "Now, I mean!"
"Don't get excited," Bayley sneered. "She came to the Forbidden Moon
with me, hoping to see you and the kid again. I left her locked in my
rocket. But she can't mean much to me any more now! Not when they
begin to hear about me all over the solar system! Just a passing fancy!
I suppose I might just as well have the machines bring her here now, to
see just how completely helpless you two dopes are!"
* * * * *
Harwich and Paul Arnold were still pinioned to the floor by the
automatons; but in the patrol pilot's slitted eyes glowed the subdued
light of murder, futilely smoldering. The fat printer was absolutely
master now of Clara, the boy, and himself. In his stupid, cruel,
shallow vanity, cosmic power the deeper secrets of which he could
never have understood, had driven Bayley to madness; to megalomania.
That clanging and that red glow from near the distant hills showed the
extent of his ambitions beyond question. The slave machines were not
building that colossal fleet of space warships for nothing! Armed with
weapons beyond human knowledge, such a fleet would sweep in aggressive
fury to even the remotest world within the field of the sun's gravity!
But Harwich's feelings changed briefly to relief, when Clara Arnold
was brought into the Tower room by another of those metal slaves.
The automaton removed from her a flexible, transparent covering, of
evidently airtight material, a protection against the rarity of the
Ionian atmosphere, probably, for in being taken from the airlock of
Bayley's rocket to the air-conditioned Tower here, she would otherwise
have been exposed to suffocation.
The machine set the girl down gently. She looked scared, her blonde
hair was awry, as though, maybe, she'd struggled with the robot; but
otherwise she was still all right.
She looked about in wondering terror; for what she saw was still a
complete mystery to her, just as it had been to her brother and Evan
Harwich a little while ago. No one had told her anything yet.
"Paul--Evan!" she stammered "What is all this here? This pyramid, and
Bayley? What's happened? Tell me, somebody!"
"Take it easy, Clara," Harwich responded, trying to sound reassuring.
"Everything will be all right!" he ended a little unconvincingly,
trying to shield the girl from grim truth.
"Everything's all right already, Clara," Bayley assured her mockingly.
"I've got these two men of yours just where they can do the least harm!
How would you like to see 'em squirm a little? I've got a special
device for that purpose, something very refined and painful! And I've
got just about everything else! In a month's time I could give you the
planet Earth, to wear in a ring around your finger, if I happened to
want to."
"What's he talking about, Evan?" the girl pleaded again, the shadow of
fear in her face deepening. "It sounds sort of awful! Please tell me.
Why are those flat monsters holding you and Paul to the floor?"
"I told you to take it easy, Clara," Harwich returned with a trace of
sternness. "This maniac, Bayley, has got the upper hand now, but I said
everything would be all right, didn't I?"
The patrol pilot was trying again to reassure the girl, with a show
of truculent bravado this time. He hoped that truculence would make
his words sound true, as though he had a trump card up his sleeve, or
something.
"All right in the end, Harwich?" the fat printer chuckled wickedly.
"Well, the end's pretty close. In another minute you'll be too tortured
to do anything but scream. Right now I'm thinking and wishing. Look,
the automatons are getting that agony tripod ready again!"
It was true. Metal tentacles were whipping about, adjusting the torture
rods to touch Harwich's and Paul Arnold's skulls again.
Everything will be all right! That statement was a mocking memory to
the patrol pilot now. An empty, rash challenge to the man whose petty
ego yearned to control even the solar system.
Harwich had never felt so completely helpless in his life before, not
even when he had been suffocating out there on the deserts of the
Forbidden Moon. If he could only somehow knock Bayley out of that
little, pillared structure that served as a receiver for telepathic
orders to the machines; if only he could replace him there for a
second, then everything might be very, very different! But Harwich was
held helpless to the pavement of the tower room. His massive muscles
were useless against machine might!
Direct argument--an attempt to make Bayley see the narrowness and lack
of originality in his colossal ambitions--he knew was equally futile.
Bayley was stubborn and shallow and greedy. Besides, he would never
admit that he was wrong, even if he felt the truth of it!
So Harwich felt utterly checkmated on every side. The clanging out
there, the building of the space fleet, mocked him. The rustle
of wheels in that huge pyramid coordinator mocked him. All the
Aladdin-like miracles of the Forbidden Moon mocked him, pointing out
his impotence to do anything, now.
He even wondered savagely why that great coordinator mechanism, with
all its terrific powers, didn't revolt against the dominance of the
puny human being that mastered it. But, of course, it would have no
desire to revolt. It had no desires of any kind, no capacity for
happiness or misery, no consciousness even. It was no more alive, no
more sentient, than an adding machine. Only infinitely more complex. It
invented things and it directed lesser mechanisms only by the rolling
of the wheels and the surge of energy inside it. And it responded to
telepathic control of whomever was there to give it, just as a space
ship might respond to whomever was at its throttle.
Still, there had to be some way out of this mess! Harwich knew it
wasn't just Clara and Paul and himself that were in danger. It was
everything he knew and respected. Freedom. Liberty. Unless he and his
companions were able to do something, a Dark Age would come, surely. An
age of machines, ruled by a madman.
The rod of the torture instrument was touching his skull. In just
another moment the agony would begin. But what was Paul Arnold
muttering beside him?
"Evan, those animals in the cages! We thought they looked like men
didn't we? Here's something else: Maybe they are men, in a way! Men who
went backward in evolution; lost their intelligence."
* * * * *
No one but Harwich could have heard the boy, for he spoke in a very
low tone. But at once the patrol pilot understood; grasped a part of
the Ionian riddle that he had missed before. Machines. No thinking or
work to do. Indolence. And then?
At once Harwich saw a way, a slim possibility to avert cosmic
catastrophe. He couldn't appeal to Bayley's reason, but maybe he could
appeal to his fears. He had to try it, anyway.
Suddenly the patrol pilot's lips curled in derision and contempt.
"Bayley," he said, "you're an utter damned fool! You think you'll
extend your power all over the solar system. Well, maybe you will do
that; but in the end you'll be destroyed! You give the orders--sure!
But do you understand the thing in that pyramid? It was made to serve,
as all machines are. The ancient Ionians had it pretty nice for
themselves, yes. But did you ever wonder what happened to them? _Where
are they now? Do you know, Bayley?_"
Harwich's final question was a dry whisper, like the voice of some
ghost of ages past.
"_Where are those ancient Ionians now, Bayley?_" he repeated.
No man could have escaped awe there in that tremendous Tower room,
where all the mysteries of the eons seemed to be congregated, many of
them hidden and unknown and perhaps dangerous. George Bayley's eyes
were suddenly very big. Quite evidently there were many things that
he had not thought about. His gaze lingered momentarily on the great
throbbing pyramid, inscrutable there in this huge dusky chamber.
"Stop trying to bluff me, you crazy idiot!" the fat printer stormed at
last. "The Ionians are extinct, of course!"
Harwich managed to grin wolfishly. "If you believe that, Bayley, do
you want to follow them into extinction?" he questioned. "Yes, they
mastered science. They conquered even the problem of the thinning
atmosphere and the loss of moisture and heat on their dying world.
But after they turned their science over to the machines, something
happened to them. Their numbers began to grow less, yes. They lost
control of their empire, which must have included all the moons
of--Jupiter. But they didn't completely die out, Bayley! Something
happened to those Ionians that was far worse! Do you know what it was,
Bayley? Do you want the same thing to happen to you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" the printer stammered
furiously, fear of the unknown spreading over his plump face.
"No, those ancient people of the Forbidden Moon didn't become
completely extinct," Harwich continued. "I believe you can see quite a
few of them from the Tower room here. The walls are semi-transparent,
and those cages outside aren't far away. They're full of Ionians.
Sluglike, brainless monstrosities without even intelligence enough or
will enough to wish any more!"
Harwich paused to let the facts sink into George Bayley's mind.
"That's them!" the patrol pilot continued. "It's an old theory that
any race has to keep struggling, thinking, working; otherwise it goes
backwards. By using their brains and muscles, Earthmen developed from
apish ancestors, you know. But here the Ionians had everything done
for them. So evolution was reversed. They lost their intelligence. And
now, what are they? Stupid beasts, tended by machines that follow the
original orders of long ago to take care of them. Worse than animals in
a zoo."
Bayley's eyes were fairly popping, as he stared through the
semi-transparent walls of the Tower room. Doubtless he could see
those creatures in their air-conditioned habitations. Just helpless,
squirming, incubator freaks!
"I wondered what they were--why they were here," Bayley stammered.
Harwich almost believed at first that he had won a point with the obese
loan shark--scared him out of most of his wild ambitions. But then,
gradually, he saw Bayley's expression grow a trifle less tense. It was
just as Harwich had feared. The printer was beginning to realize that
it must have taken countless generations to degenerate to their present
sorry state. The same condition could not affect him personally. When
Bayley saw this truth, he would be the same megalomaniac as before.
There was only that one slim chance left for Harwich. Bayley's
attention was strongly diverted now. But in a few seconds more, he
would be himself again.
Was the grip of the metal tentacles that held Harwich a little looser
than before, now, because Bayley, the master of machines, had his mind
so intensely on other things, and away from the thought of giving
telepathic commands?
In a sudden, savage lunge, Harwich jerked free from the automaton that
held him to the floor. His clothing was torn and his flesh scraped, but
what did this matter? Everything depended on instant action. The patrol
pilot leaped past Paul Arnold, and his sister, Clara, who had only
watched and listened while he had talked with such grim truth to Bayley.
* * * * *
Already the flat, glittering robot was after Harwich, but he continued
his surprise rush toward the roofed, pillared kiosk that was the
receiver for telepathic orders.
His attack ended in a dying tackle. Bayley was drawing his heat pistol,
but before he could fire it, Harwich's weight struck him. There,
together, in the kiosk, they wrestled and fought. At last there was a
chance for the patrol pilot to bring his massive muscles into play.
He swung his heavy fists, and all the fury of weeks of hardship and
misfortune were back of his blows. Bayley tottered away from under the
kiosk, and for a second Harwich stood there free.
He was in the position of control at last; but Bayley had his pistol
out and aimed, now. Clara was screaming as the fat man pressed the
trigger.
It was too late for Harwich to marshal his thoughts properly. He was
only able to will that the automaton behind him should cease attacking
him. He could not call to his aid any of the great science of Io, in
time.
With the speed of light, a slender pencil of intense heat waves from
Bayley's pistol, struck his side and burned straight through his body.
No bullet could have drilled a neater hole. Harwich's legs collapsed
under him, and he lay writhing there within the kiosk.
A split second later the heat pistol in Bayley's hand spat again.
Turning weakly, Harwich saw Clara crumple and go down. In another
instant, Paul became the third victim.
"You're done, Harwich!" the fat printer was yelling triumphantly.
"You're finished, all of you!"
But by now the patrol man's seething flood of hate had registered.
He was within the telepathy kiosk; and if he had ever willed instant
destruction for anyone, he willed it now, for Bayley. Under other
circumstances he might not have felt so vengeful, but his ebbing pulses
blazed with fury.
There was a click within that vast, slumberous pyramid, that loomed
like a grim god in this shadowy place of enigmas. The automaton that
had recently held Harwich captive, seemed to move like a maddened
animal, created out of pure lightning. Its tentacles whipped around
Bayley long before he could fire again. Harder than steel cable, the
tendrils tightened, like the coils of a python.
There was a choked cry of terror and anguish, and then a sickening,
crunching, squashing sound, as flesh and bone and blood oozed between
those constricting metal loops.
It was almost the last thing that Evan Harwich saw. He was mortally
wounded, a slender hole bored through his side.
Harwich's last delirium was a dream. A silly dream, maybe. Clara and
he together. A little house. Fancifully he pictured its details. Maybe
a mining concession somewhere here among the moons of Jupiter, too. An
orderly life. Not all this hectic battling with unknown dangers any
more. He was a little tired of adventure, a little tired of being space
patrol pilot, too. He could resign.
Somewhere, Evan Harwich's fanciful thinking came to an end.
* * * * *
He awoke suddenly. Paul Arnold was shaking him.
"On your feet, you big lug!" the boy was yelling happily. "There's not
a thing wrong with you, now! Clara and I have been awake for half an
hour."
Harwich staggered erect, grumbling confusedly, his stiff, black hair
awry. He'd been lying on a divan. The room around him was almost
familiarly furnished, except for slightly fantastic details of
decoration. The windows were wide, and beyond them there was a sort of
yard, with freshly planted trees. Over the whole setup there was a
fine crystal airdrome.
"What the heck! Where in the name of sense are we?" Harwich burst out
in startled pleasure.
He looked first at Paul Arnold, and then at Clara, whose amber eyes
were twinkling with secretive mischief. It was as though the two had
some sort of joke up their sleeves.
Harwich glanced again out of the window. Beyond the airdome, glinting
and new, was what looked like improved mining equipment. Cropping out
of the ground was the grayish, shiny stuff of a rich ore lode. And
there was a space ship, too; bright and slender and strange, but it
looked plenty serviceable!
"Where are we, anyway?" Harwich demanded again, still completely in the
dark. "Does either of you two know?"
"Still on Io, evidently!" Paul Arnold breezed with a taunting grin.
"Same kind of hills and general character of country! When Bayley shot
me, I passed out. I didn't know anything more until I woke up here a
little while ago!"
"But this layout, Paul!" Harwich growled. "This house and this mining
stuff! How come? You've got some kind of an answer in mind, I'm sure,
by the way you look! I give up. Spill the gag!"
"Okay, Evan," said the boy. "I really do think I've got that part
figured out! After Bayley shot you with the heat-pistol, you were
lying in that telepathy kiosk in the Tower room. Consciously or
unconsciously, you must have done some wishing there, before your brain
blacked out."
Harwich gasped. So that was it! He'd wanted to be alive, though he had
been mortally wounded. And so he was! His shirt was open. There was a
neat round scar on his chest, left by the heat-ray burn, and evidence
of careful supersurgery! The automatons of the Forbidden Moon had saved
his life. Probably Clara's and Paul's lives, too. All while they were
unconscious! The house, the garden, the mine!
"Our miracle hunt on the Forbidden Moon hasn't turned out so badly,"
Paul Arnold remarked. "But so far it's been a lot different from what
Dad or you or I could have anticipated. This place looks like a nice
family setup, Evan. Did you wish include anybody besides yourself?"
Harwich flushed, and looked sheepish. Clara, there, was definitely
blushing, but she was smiling, too.
The ex patrol pilot managed a nervous grin. "I guess you got me there,
Paul," he said. "Now, if it's all right with you, Clara, I don't know
whether I have to say it or not, since it's a dead giveaway. But will
you marry me?"
He got it out, feeling that it had been an awful job. But Clara smiled
happily.
"Try and stop me, Evan," she laughed. "There has to be someone around
to keep you from getting conceited. Just because you won out for us
here on Io, doesn't mean that you won't need bossing yourself, once in
a while!"
Paul Arnold winked, and left discreetly for other parts of the house.
Arm in arm Clara and Evan looked through a window that faced west.
Something was flying there, high up in the sky. It glinted in the late
afternoon sunlight. A lonely speck against the cold firmament, it
seemed to hurry, bent on a last mission.
A few minutes later, from the east, there came a terrific concussion.
The whole dark purple sky, above those sullen hills, was illuminated
with a bluish-white glare for a second. Flying fragments soared far
into space.
Clara clung tightly to Evan. "What was that?" she questioned fearfully.
Harwich grinned, but still there was a haunting shadow of sadness in
his face. "I'm sure I know," he said. "That was the end of the science
of the Forbidden Moon. The end of the force shield, apparatus, the
end of those poor Ionians, and the end of the pyramid! The end of the
whole thing. Suicide, you might call it. You see, back there in the
telepathy kiosk, I wished that too, and the machines were made only to
obey. I hope that when Earthmen, in the future, learn as much science
as existed here on Io, they'll know how to use it, too. We're much too
young a race yet, I guess."
Clara Arnold's awe softened after a moment. "Come on, Evan," she said.
"Let's forget all about that for now. I want to show you the kitchen,
here. It's ducky!..."