revealed when, drifting with almost imperceptible motion into the
tree, the bird had pecked at him, then flapped away in alarm. A long,
painfully cautious approach from tree to tree to the selected one had
been necessary to the daring scheme of attack he had evolved.
He seemed to be safe. Through a fringe of leaves he saw the guard on
the platform glancing elsewhere. Carse steadied himself, rose slightly
and again scanned the ranch.
Yes, it looked harmless, but he knew that nothing could be further
from the reality. Spaced around the inside edge of that spiky fence
were small metal nozzles protruding a few inches from the ground; and
on the turning of a control wheel, they would hurl forth a deadly
orange swathe, fanning hundreds of feet into the sky. He had tasted
their hot breath once when attacking the ranch in his _Star Devil_.
Then there were the long-range projectors whose muzzles studded the
central building. And the ray-guns of the tower guards.
These were dangers that he knew, for he had experienced them. What
others the ranch held, he could not well surmise. But he saw one
significant thing that gave him pause and brought lines to his brow.
The ranch was expecting trouble. Over to one side of the clearing
rested a great rounded object, on whose smooth hull gleamed coldly the
light from the beacon--Lar Tantril's own personal space-ship--and
alongside it a smaller, somewhat similar shape, the ranch's air-car!
The space-ship signified that the Venusian chief was present; the
air-car, that all his men were gathered in the barracks, and not, as
was their custom, in Port o' Porno for a night of revelry!
All waiting--all gathered here--all ready! All grouped for a strong
defense! Did it mean what it would appear to--that he, the Hawk, was
expected?
He could not know. He could not know if a trap was lying prepared
there against his coming. He could but go ahead, and find out.
The only plan of attack he could think of had grown in his mind. Down
and up: that was the essence of it: but the details were difficult. He
had worked them out as far as he could with typical thoroughness. He
had to reach the heart of the fort lying before him: had to reach the
central house, Lar Tantril's own. The precious papers would be there,
if anywhere.
The Hawk was ready.
He gathered his muscles. His face was cold and hard, his eyes mists of
gray. There was no least sign in the man that, in the next few
all-deciding minutes, death would lick close to him.
He poised where he was precariously balanced. His ray-gun was in his
bare left hand; his face-plate was locked partly open. He raised his
fingers to the direction rod on the suit's breast, gazed straight at
the guard on the nearest watch-platform and snapped the direction rod
out, pointing it at that guard.
* * * * *
What happened then struck so fast, so unexpectedly, that it took only
thirty seconds to plunge the quiet ranch into chaos.
The Hawk came like a thunder-bolt, using to its full power his only
weapon, the space-suit. The sight of him might alone have been enough
to strike terror. From the dark arms of the tree he hurtled, his
bloated monstrous shape of metal and fabric dull in the glow of the
watch-beacon, and crashed with a clang of metal into the platform he
aimed at. Nothing there could withstand him. One second the guard on
it was calmly gazing off into the sky: the next, like a nine-pin he
was bowled over, to topple heels and head whirling to the ground sixty
feet beneath. He lived, he kept consciousness, but he was sorely
injured; and he never saw the outlandish projectile that struck him,
nor saw it streak to the second watch-platform, bowling its guard out
and to the ground likewise, and then repeating at the third and last!
A crash; a pause; a crash; a pause; then a third crash, and the thing
of metal had completed the circuit, and all three watch-platforms were
scooted empty!
Then came confusion.
There had been screams, but now a crazed voice began crying out
mechanically, over and over:
"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit!"
It came from the second guard, who lay twisting on the ground. His
tongue, by some trick of nervous disorganization, beat out those words
like a voice-disk whose needle keeps skipping its groove--and the
effect was macabre.
* * * * *
The central buildings disgorged a crowd of men. Shorty, wiry,
thin-faced Venusians, each with skewer-blade strapped to his side and
some with ray-guns out, they came scrambling into the open, swearing
and wondering. The second guard's insane repetitions directed most of
them in his direction; and they piled in a crowd around him. They had
no attention for what was happening behind, within the buildings they
had emptied. That was what Hawk Carse had planned.
A voice of authority roared up over the general hubbub.
"Rantol! Guard! Rantol, you fool! What happened? What attacked you?
Cut that crazy yelling! Answer me!--you, Rantol!"
"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space--"
"Lar Tantril!" A man with suspicious eyes caught the attention of the
one who had spoken first. "Space-suit, he says! A flying space-suit!
Only Ku Sui has space-suits that fly; or only Ku Sui _had_ them,
rather. You know what that must mean!"
He paused, peering at his lord. The coarse yellowy skin of Tantril's
brow wrinkled with the thought, then his tusk-like Venusian teeth
showed as his lips drew apart in speech.
"Yes!" Lar Tantril said. "It's _Carse_!"
And he ordered the now silent men around him:
"Circle my house, all of you, your guns ready. You, Esret"--to his
second in command--"out gun and come with me."
* * * * *
Even as Lar Tantril spoke, a giant shape was passing clumsily through
the kitchen of his house. Carse had entered from the rear, unseen.
With gun in hand and eyes sharp he crossed the deserted kitchen with
its foul odors of Venusian cookery. Quickly, his metal-shod feet
creating an unavoidable racket, he was through a connecting door and
into the well-furnished dining room. All was brightly lit; he could
easily have been seen through the window-ports rimming each wall; but
he counted on the confusion outside to keep the Venusians engaged for
several minutes more.
Then he went shuffling into the front room of the house, and saw at
once the most likely place.
It was in one corner--a large flat desk, and by it the broad panel of
a radio. Scattered over the desk were a number of papers. In seconds
Carse was bending over them, scanning and discarding with eyes and
hands.
Reports of various quantities of isuan ... orders for stores ... a
list that seemed an inventory of weapons--and then the top page of a
sheaf covered with familiar, neat, small writing. Yes!
Plans and calculations dealing with a laboratory! And, down in the
margin of the first page, the revealing, all-important figure--5,576.34!
He had them--and before Ku Sui! Now, only to get away; out the front
door, and up--up from this trap he was in--up into clean and empty
space, and then to Leithgow and Friday at Ban Wilson's!
But, as the Hawk turned to go, his eye took in a little slip on the
desk, a radio memo, with the name of Ku Sui at its top. Almost without
volition he glanced over it, hoping to discover useful information
about Ku Sui's asteroid--and with the passing of those few extra
seconds his chance for escaping out the door passed too.
Carse's back was partly toward the front door when a voice, hard and
deadly, spoke from it:
"Your hands up!"
* * * * *
The adventurer's nerves twanged; he wheeled; and even as he did so
another voice bit out from the rear door:
"Yes, up! One move and you're dead!"
And Hawk Carse found himself caught between ray-guns held unswervingly
on his body by a man at each door. He was not fool enough to try to
shoot, even though his own gun was in his hand; his best speed would
be slow-motion in the hampering space-suit. He was fairly
caught--because for a few precious seconds he had let his mind slip
from the all-important matter of escaping.
At a shout from someone, both doors filled with men, and thin faces
appeared at the window-ports. Their ray-guns made an impregnable fence
around the netted Hawk.
And then a well-remembered voice, harsh as the man from whom it came,
cut through the room.
"Apparently you're caught, Captain Carse!"
The cold gray eyes narrowed, scanned the room, the blocked doors, the
barricade of guns held by the grim men at doorways and window-ports.
"Yes," Hawk Carse murmured. "Apparently I am."
* * * * *
Lar Tantril, the Venusian chief, smiled. He was tall for one of his
race, even taller than the prisoner he faced. Clad in tight-fitting,
iron-gray mesh, he had the characteristic wiry body, thin legs and
arms of his kind. Spiky short-cropped hair grew like steel slivers
from the narrow dome of his long hatchet head, and the taut-stretched
skin of his face was burned a deep hard brown. He looked what he was:
a bold and unscrupulous leader of his men.
"The gun in your belt," he said, "--drop it. Right on the floor.
There--better. I like you not with a gun near your hand, Carse."
The Hawk regarded him frigidly.
"And now what?" he asked.
Lar Tantril continued smiling. His ray-gun did not move for an instant
from the line it held on the metal and fabric giant. He said at a
tangent, quite pleasantly:
"Think fast, Captain Carse--think fast! Isn't that one of Dr. Ku's new
suits?--a little space-ship all your own? Why not plan a sudden sweep
for that door in an attempt to crash through my men and get free up in
the air--eh?"
"Why not?" said the Hawk.
"It might be possible," Tantril continued, "with your luck. _Unless
something went wrong with your helmet gravity-plates._"
At this the Venusian's gun moved. Deliberately it came up and aimed at
the crown of the adventurer's helmet. Tantril squeezed the trigger.
_Spang!_
A pencil-thin streak of orange stabbed between Venusian and Earthling;
sparks hissed out where it struck the tip of the helmet; and for an
instant life and strength seemed to leave the grotesquely clad figure.
Carse slumped down under a quick crushing weight. Weight! It bent him
low, and it was only with a great effort that he was able to
straighten again. For the suit's full load of metal and fabric was
upon him now, its enormous boots binding him to the ground since their
weight was unrelieved by the partial lift of the helmet plates. An
inch-wide, black-rimmed hole in the mechanism above the helmet told
what had happened.
Lar Tantril chortled, and his men, most of them only half
comprehending what he had done, echoed him.
"But even yet you've got a chance," the Venusian went on. "There's
another set of plates in the boot-soles, for attraction. If you got a
chance to stand on your head outside, you'd be gone! So--"
* * * * *
This time he lowered the gun, and carefully, accurately, he sent two
spitting streams of orange through the soles of the great boots.
The danger Carse had feared had come to pass. His one weapon had been
destroyed. He was worse than helpless; he was in a cumbersome prison,
all power of quick movement gone. He was a paralyzed giant, tied to
the soil, the ways of the air hopelessly closed. The slightest step
would cost great effort.
"You have protected yourself well, Lar Tantril," he said slowly.
Now Tantril laughed deeply and unrestrainedly. "Yes, and by Mother
Venus," he cried, "it's good to see you this way, Carse, unarmed and
in my power!" He turned to his circle of men and said: "Poor Hawk!
Can't fly any more! I've put him in a cage! So thoughtful of him to
bring his cage along with him so I could trap him inside it! His own
cage!" He guffawed, shaking, and the others laughed loud.
Through it all Hawk Carse stood motionless, his face cold and graven,
his slender body bent under the burden of the dead suit. He still held
in his right hand, limp by his side, the sheaf of papers and their
all-important figure--and the thumb and forefinger of his hand were
moving, so slowly as to be hardly noticeable, in what seemed to be a
lone sign of nervous tension.
"You know, Carse," Tantril observed after his laugh, "I've been half
expecting you, though I don't see how you knew I was the one who took
those papers you're holding. Dr. Ku radioed me, you see. I think you
were reading his message at the time I entered. Did you finish it?"
"No," said the Hawk.
"You'll find it interesting. Let me read it to you." And Tantril took
up the memo.
"From Ku Sui to Lar Tantril: Search House No. 574 in Port o' Porno
closely for anything pertinent to Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow or
giving clue to his whereabouts. Keep what you obtain for me; I will
come to your ranch in five days. Watch for Hawk Carse, Eliot Leithgow
and a Negro, arriving from space at Satellite III in self-propulsive
space-suits." There followed some details concerning the suits'
mechanism; then: "Carse caused me certain trouble and came near
hurting my major inventions. I want him badly."
* * * * *
At this the adventurer's face tightened; his gray eyes went frosty.
All he and Leithgow had deduced, then, was true. Dr. Ku had survived
the crashing of the asteroid's dome. The mechanisms had also
survived--and certainly the coordinated brains--the brains he, Hawk
Carse, had promised to destroy! Now trapped, it seemed that promise
could never be fulfilled....
Yet even through this torturing thought of a promise unkept, the
Hawk's thumb and forefinger moved in their slight grinding motion on
the first sheet of the sheaf of papers....
Lar Tantril reached out his hand for the sheaf. "So, obeying Dr. Ku's
orders, I had the house searched and got these papers. They, must be
valuable, Carse, since you wanted them so badly. Ku Sui will be
pleased. Hand them over."
With but the barest flick of gray eyes downward. Hawk Carse gave the
sheaf to Tantril.
But his brief glance at the top-most sheet told him all he wanted to
know. Gradually, methodically, the motion of thumb and forefinger had
totally effaced the revealing figure 5,576.34, the one clue to the
location of Leithgow's laboratory. Enough! What he had set out to do
was finished. The chief task was achieved!
"And now, perhaps," Lar Tantril chuckled, "a little entertainment."
His men pricked up their ears. This language was more understandable.
Entertainment meant playing with the prisoner--torture. And alkite,
probably, and isuan. A night of revelry!
But Hawk Carse smiled thinly at this.
"Entertainment, Tantril?" his cold voice said. He paused, and then
added slowly: "What a fool you are!"
* * * * *
Lar Tantril was not annoyed by the words. He only laughed and slapped
his thigh.
"Yes?" he mocked. "Truly, Captain Carse, you must be frightened, to
try and anger me so I'll shoot! Do you fear a skewer-blade so much? We
would leave most of you for Ku Sui!"
Carse shook his head. "No, Lar Tantril, I don't want you to shoot me.
I'm telling you you're a fool--because you think me one."
With a wave of his hands the Venusian protested: "No, no, not at all.
You're infernally clever, Carse. I'll always be the first to admit
it."
"Then do you think I'd attack your ranch alone?"
"You'd like me to believe you have friends hidden somewhere?" Tantril
asked, smiling tolerantly.
Carse's voice came back curtly. "Believe what you like, but learn
this: It's your boast that your ranch is impregnable, guarded on every
side and from every angle. I'm telling you it's not. Its vulnerable.
It's wide open to one way of attack and my friends and I know it
well."
For a second the Venusian's assurance wavered.
"Vulnerable?" he said. "Open to attack? You're just stalling!"
Whip-like words cut through.
"Wait and see. Wait till the ranch is stormed and wiped out. Wait
twenty minutes! Only twenty!"
Hawk Carse was always listened to when he spoke in such manner. Lar
Tantril stared at the hard gray eyes boring into his.
"Why do you tell me this?" he asked. Then, with a smile: "Why not wait
until my ranch is wiped out, as you say?" His smile broadened. "Until
these hidden friends attack?"
"Simply because I must insure my living. Nothing my friends could do
would prevent your having plenty of time to kill me before you
yourselves were destroyed. I think, under the circumstances, you
_would_ kill me. And I must go free. I have made a promise. A very
important promise. I must be free to carry it out."
"Just what are you aiming at?"
"I'm offering," said the Hawk, "to show you where your fort is
vulnerable--in time for you to protect it. I'll do this if you'll let
me go free. _You need not release me till afterwards._"
* * * * *
Lar Tantril's mouth fell half open at this surprising turn. He was
unquestionably taken aback. But he snapped his lips shut and
considered the offer. A trick? Carse was famed for them. A trap? But
how? He scanned his men. Fifty to one; fifty ray-guns on an unarmed
man helpless in a hampering prison of metal and fabric. If a trap,
Carse could not possibly escape death. But yet....
Tantril walked over to his man Esret, and, stepping apart, they
conferred in whispers.
"Is he trying to trick us?" the chief asked.
"I don't see how he can hope to. He can hardly move in that suit. It
ties him down. We could keep tight guard upon him. He couldn't
possibly get away. And at the slightest sign of something shady--"
"Yes; but you know him."
"What he says is sensible. Naturally he wants to live. He knows we'll
shoot him if he tries to trick us, and he knows we'll do it if we're
attacked! We'll of course leave men at all defensive stations. If
there _is_ a weakness here, if the ranch _is_ vulnerable--we should
learn what it is. It'll cost us nothing. We can't lose, and we might
be saving everything. Of course we won't let him go afterwards."
Tantril considered a moment longer, then said:
"Yes, I think you are right."
He turned back to the waiting Carse.
"Agreed," he said. "Show this vulnerable point to us and you'll be
released. But no false moves! One sign of treachery and you're dead!"
The Hawk's strong-cut face showed no change. It was only inwardly that
he smiled.
* * * * *
Their very manner of accompanying him showed their respect for the
slender adventurer.
He had no gun; he was stooped by the unrelieved weight of the massive
helmet, the suit itself and the chunky blocks of metal which were the
boots; his every dragging step was that of a man shackled by
chains--but he was Hawk Carse! And so, as he shuffled out through the
front door of the house and lumbered with painful effort across the
clearing, he was surrounded by a glitter of ray-guns held by the
close-pressing circle of men. Tantril's own gun kept steady on his
broad fabric-clad back, and of its proximity he kept reminding Carse.
New guards were already on watch on each of the three
watch-platforms, their eyes sweeping around the clearing and the
jungle and the dark stretch of the lake, and often returning to the
crowd which marked the stumbling giant's progress below. Each point of
defense was manned. In the ranch's central control room, a
steel-sheathed cubby in the basement of Tantril's house, men stood
watchful, their hands ready at the wheels and levers which commanded
the ranch's ray-batteries, their eyes on the vision-screen which gave
to this unseen heart of the place a panoramic view of what was
transpiring above. And all waited on what the grotesque, bloated
figure they watched might reveal.
Watch--watch--watch. A hundred eyes, below, above, beside the Hawk,
were centered and alert on each move of his clumsy progress. The
barrels of two-score ray-guns transfixed him. Under such guard he
arrived at the ranch's fence where it approached the Great Briney.
"Open the gate," said the Hawk curtly. "It's down there."
He pointed to where the lake's pebbled beach shelved downward to the
tiny murmurous waves, a ten-foot stretch of ghostly white between the
guarding fence and the water.
"Down there?" repeated Tantril slowly. "Down to the lake?"
"Yes!" Carse snapped irritably. "Well, will you open the gate? I'm
very tired: I can't bear this suit much longer."
* * * * *
Lar Tantril conferred uneasily with Esret, while his men cast
shivering glances out over the dark wind-rippled plain of the lake.
But no enemy showed there. The beach was clear for fifty yards on each
side.
"By Iapetus!" the adventurer complained harshly, "are you children,
to be afraid of the dark? Tantril, put your gun into me, and shoot if
I try anything suspicious! Open the gate!"
Finally the lock was unfastened and the gate swung out. Tantril
stationed a man there, ready to close and lock it in case of need, and
then, Hawk Carse, still surrounded by the alert Venusians, shuffled
down to the edge of the water.
Over the Great Briney was silence. No shape broke its calm. The air
held only the nervous whispers of the crowd and the scrape and crunch
of the lone Earthling's dragging boots as they made wide furrows in
the hard pebbly soil of the beach.
The men had fallen back a little, and now were a half circle around
him down to the water's brink. The watch-beacon's light caught them
full there, and threw great blots of shadows lakeward from them. Their
ray-guns were gripped tighter as their shifty eyes darted from his
huge bulk to the water ahead, and back. Doubt and fear swayed them
all.
The Hawk wasted no time, but stepped out to knee-high level on the
sharply shelving bottom. At this Tantril objected.
"Hold, Carse!" he roared. "You play for time, I think! Where is this
point of attack?"
The bloated figure did not answer him, but bent over as if searching
for something under the tiny waves which now were slapping his thigh.
He reached one hand down and probed around with it, apparently
feeling. The eyes watching him were wide and fear-fascinated.
* * * * *
"Here--or no," the Hawk muttered to himself, though a dozen could hear
him. "A little farther, I think.... Here--but no, I forgot: the tide
has come in. A little farther...." He stopped suddenly and
straightened, turned to the Venusian chief. "Don't forget. Lar
Tantril, you have promised I can go free!"
Then he resumed his search of the bottom, the black surface of water
up to his waist. Again the fearful Venusian leader roared an
objection:
"You're tricking us. Carse, you little devil--"
"Oh, don't be an ass!" Carse snapped back. "As if I could get
away--your ray-guns on me!"
Another half minute passed; a few more short steps were taken. A
muttered oath came from one of the wet, uncomfortable men in the grip
of fear. Several there were on the brink of turning in, a panicky dash
for the safety of the enclosure behind, the warm buildings, guarded by
ray-batteries--and yet an awful fascination held them. What metallic
horror of the deeps was being exposed?
"Just a second, now," the Hawk was murmuring. "You'll all see....
Somewhere ... right ... here ... somewhere...."
He held them taut, expectant. The water licked around the waist of his
suit. One more slow step; one more yet.
"_Here!_" he cried triumphantly, and clicked his face-plate closed.
And the men who stared, faces pale, hearts pounding, ray-guns at the
ready, saw him no longer. The water had closed over that shiny metal
helmet. Only a mocking ripple was left.
Hawk Carse was gone!
* * * * *
Gone!--and laughing to himself.
The space-suit, his heavy prison of metal and fabric, would protect
him from water as well as from space! It offered his golden--his
only--opportunity. It had been pierced by Tantril's shots, back in the
house, but only the gravity-plate compartments, which were sealed and
separate. It was still--after he had closed the mittens--air-tight, an
effective little submarine in the dark waters of the Great Briney!
So Carse followed his black course over the lake-bottom laughing and
laughing. In his mind he could see what he had left behind: the men,
shivering there in the water for an instant, completely befogged, and
perhaps firing one or two shots at where he had disappeared; then
turning and breaking back in a grand rush for the fence and safety.
And the ray-batteries, all manned and centered on the lake; Tantril,
in a very fury of rage, but fearful, preparing for a siege; preparing
for anything that might loom suddenly from the water! And all of them
wondering what lay beneath its calm surface; what he, Hawk Carse, had
gone to join!