The Crystal Planetoids
By STANTON A. COBLENTZ
There in the sky was a vast web
and perched on it were invisible
beings--what did it all mean?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories May 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Philip Dunbar ran a lean exploratory hand through his tousled long
black hair. There was a sardonic, faintly quizzical look in his dark,
trimly moustached face, which acquaintances were inclined to describe
as "handsome, but saturnine." His little jet-points of eyes, as he
stared across at the next laboratory table, glittered enigmatically.
"Well, Ronny," he inquired, in a drawl that rasped, "found it at last?"
Ronald Gates peered up from amid a mass of lenses, batteries and wires.
His frank, open face widened into a broad smile. His clear blue eyes
sparkled.
"Yes, by heaven," he confessed, enthusiastically, "I think I've got
that devil licked!"
Instantly Dunbar was at his side.
"Like hell you have!" he doubted.
At the same time, from the opposite end of the great laboratory, a
feminine voice broke out,
"Oh, good, Ronald, I knew you'd do it!" And the tall form of Eleanor
Firth, its youthful attractiveness scarcely dimmed by the stained
rubber gloves and apron she was wearing, came gliding toward the men.
Her big golden-brown eyes blazed with admiration as she turned them
full upon Gates. "I knew it, Ronald--I knew you simply had to!"
To an onlooker, the relationship of the men and the girl would have
been crystal-clear. Dunbar's manner, as he glared at Gates, was
dagger-sharp; Gates had no eyes for Dunbar at all; while both men
regarded the young lady with softening glances that were eloquent.
Why was it, Dunbar reflected, that they had all taken to staying in
overtime here at their place of employment, the laboratory of the
Merlin Research Institute? True, Gates was all worked up about that
damnable invention of his! And Eleanor--wasn't it just like a woman
to find an excuse to stay when she knew Gates would be there? As for
himself--if he didn't want to be shoved out of the picture, he had no
choice but to work on after hours!
"Yes, by glory! I think I've done the trick!" Gates was exclaiming. "If
you folk'll just come with me to the roof, I'll demonstrate!"
He took up a black instrument resembling a pair of opera glasses,
except that it was equipped with large red lenses, and was attached by
wires to a cluster of minute batteries and radio-like tubes.
"What did you say you call the contraption?" asked Dunbar, as Gates
started upstairs with his invention.
"The Infra-Red Eye."
"Why in blazes do you call it that?"
"Just wait a minute, and you'll see. You know as well as I do, Dunbar,
photographs taken in infra-red light will reveal clear details through
a mist. Why must the human eye be blind where the camera can see?
It is all a question of securing the proper adaptation to etheric
vibrations--which I have done by means of invisible rays produced by
electrical action on certain iridium and osmium salts in these tubes."
* * * * *
Dunbar grunted a half coherent reply, and threw open the roof-door. As
they came out into the heavy mist-laden air of the late July afternoon,
the humidity rolled from them visibly. There was a peculiar stagnation
in the atmosphere, as though the very breath of heaven had been
congealed. Featureless gray clouds hung wearily over the landscape; a
dull, blank haze obscured everything beyond a few hundred yards. One
might have said that the very elements had gone to sleep.
"Goodness, I do wish we could get some relief from this atrocious
heat!" sighed Eleanor.
"The twenty-ninth continuous day of it, unless I've missed my count!"
grumbled Dunbar, as he mopped his perspiring brow. "Doesn't it beat the
devil? What's more, it's getting worse!"
"Yes, and the strangest thing of all is, it seems to affect the whole
world!" returned the girl. "I just can't believe it's not something
more than common weather!"
"Hate to tell you what I suspect it is!" returned Dunbar, ominously.
"Come, come, folks, what are you so cheerful about, all of a sudden?"
Gates demanded, as he examined the adjustments of the wires. "Good
heavens! I'm sick and tired of hearing there's something supernatural
about a heat spell, just because it happens to be unusually prolonged."
"Yes, but the other phenomena!" broke in Dunbar, his sharp eyes
glinting with hostility. "The dust clouds--the checking of normal wind
movements--the indefinable thickening in the atmosphere--the thunder
storms of unprecedented violence--"
"Nothing has been definitely established," denied Gates. "Personally,
I doubt if it's anything at all, aside from a cycle of exceptional
sun-spot activity. But we're wasting our time. Ready now for the
infra-red eye?"
"I'm all keyed up!" announced Eleanor, casting the young man one of her
strangely kindled, animated glances.
"Here, you make the first test," he decided, thrusting the black
instrument into her hands. "Just fit it to your eyes like binoculars.
Turn that screw for the adjustment. Wait! I'll see to the current!"
He switched a lever, drew back a panel, and pressed a button. But,
aside from a faint whirring sound, there was no apparent effect.
"Now focus the instrument!" he went on. "Point it anywhere. If you
don't see through that haze as easily as a knife cuts butter, then set
me down as a fraud and a liar!"
The girl screwed up her eyes. Faint wrinkles were visible on her broad,
creamy white brow. A second passed in silence. Then an astonishing
change overcame her countenance.
All at once, her lips drew apart in an incredulous expression. A gasp
came from between her lips. A pallor spread across her cheeks. For
several seconds she remained as if glued to the instrument.
* * * * *
Grimacing wrily, she snapped herself away from the eye-piece with a
horrified,
"Ugh!" Her eyes bulged. Her whole form was trembling.
"I--I--I guess I'm seeing things!" she explained, lamely.
Then, observing how strangely Dunbar was staring at her, she thrust the
instrument at him.
"Here, you--you just look for yourself!"
Dunbar took up the apparatus, and peered through it steadily for
perhaps half a minute. But he too, when he put it down, was visibly
paler.
"God! Am I crazy?" he grunted. "Here, Ronny, better have a peep
yourself--"
But Gates had already snatched up the instrument. And he too gasped as
he adjusted the lenses. For he saw nothing that he had anticipated.
The only purpose of the Infra-Red Eye, as he himself had declared, had
been to penetrate a haze. But how startlingly the results had exceeded
expectations!
Spread far above the earth's surface, in the form of colossal cobwebs,
were long tenuous strands, woven in a web many layers deep. The
threads, colorless and almost transparent, were thin as though composed
of some silken fabric; but were enormously long, and stretched in great
curves from horizon to zenith. Over the entire firmament they seemed
to be bent and twisted by the tens of thousands, forming intricate
geometric patterns, and uncannily giving the impression of enclosing
the earth in a great cage. Wavering slightly in the faint breezes of
the upper spaces, they covered every section of the visible heavens,
even spreading their dim crisscrossing bars across the moon.
As if this discovery in itself was not ghastly enough, a still more
terrible sight presented itself. Scores of beings, vaguely human-shaped
and each with many limbs dangling octopus-like, swung agilely along
the gigantic webs. Of prodigious size--seemingly not less than fifteen
or twenty feet tall--the creatures were of a watery pallor that made
only the bare outlines of their forms visible. Each, in the middle of
an egg-shaped head, displayed two oddly three-cornered eyes that glowed
with dull red flames; each possessed six or eight many-fingered hands
with which it was adding new segments to the monstrous web.
With a groan, Gates put down the instrument; and, wiping his streaming
brow, sagged against a wall for support. But the horror in his eyes
matched that in the faces of his companions as the three stared at one
another in open-mouthed amazement.
CHAPTER II
The Terror Strikes
It was as Dunbar had remarked. For nearly a month, unexampled
meteorological disturbances had been occurring throughout the earth.
Not only in the northern hemisphere had a record heat blanketed every
land; in regions far below the Equator, the accustomed mid-winter chill
had disappeared; indeed, an almost tropical calm had been reported
as far south as Cape Horn. Everywhere on the earth's surface, normal
wind currents had been retarded or halted; everywhere dust and mist
had accumulated; everywhere--even in the usually thunderless coastal
regions of California--electrical storms of unparalleled violence had
been of almost daily occurrence. But scientists, having no plausible
explanation, had for the most part looked on in mute bewilderment.
There were, however, some who professed to believe that the shattered
remnants of a comet had entered the earth's atmosphere; and supported
their theory by pointing out that quantities of some gaseous foreign
substance, which as yet they had been unable to analyze, had been
detected in the stratosphere; while scores of high-flying airplanes had
recently been slowed down or wrecked by unexplained impediments.
Few persons as yet saw any connection between the extraordinary weather
and the reports of astronomers that dozens of minute bodies had been
detected through telescopes, revolving as satellites about the earth
just beyond its atmospheric limits. For lack of a better theory, it was
assumed that they were asteroids or "minor planets" which had ventured
too close to the earth and had been caught by its gravitational
power; although no one could say why so many of them should have
been discovered almost simultaneously. Besides, it was hard to
account for the peculiar glassy appearance of these so-called Crystal
Planetoids--an appearance which did not at all indicate the nickel or
iron composition that might have been expected.
* * * * *
Not all these facts were in the minds of the three observers on the
roof as they made their disconcerting discovery. But there were certain
things which they did realize clearly enough.
"By glory," exclaimed Gates, his big eyes as wide with surprise as
though he had seen the dead. "By glory! I just can't believe those
great spidery devils are real--"
"Real or not, I--I've got a feeling we shouldn't stay here," Eleanor
muttered, her face still white, as she started toward the door.
"I--I--something tells me it isn't safe!"
"What in tarnation do you think can happen to us here more than down
below?" demanded Gates. And then, with a shrug, "I'm going to take
another peep through that glass!"
"Sure, go ahead! Might as well all wait, and die together!" Dunbar
growled. "D'ye know, I've got an idea Eleanor's right. If we've a spark
of sense left in our hides--"
Gates cast him a scornful glance, noting what an abject figure he
seemed to be, as, with terror convulsing his lean, moustached face, he
went slouching away.
"Hope I'll fall dead before I get so soft!" reflected the inventor.
Yet, despite himself, his pulses were throbbing as he returned to
the Infra-Red Ray and observed the ominous, ruddy glow that, within
the last minute, had come across the heavens. Was not the atmosphere
thicker, hotter, heavier than ever? Why did it seem to bear down on
him like a stony weight? Why within him that impulse which he sternly
repressed--that impulse to race for shelter?
For a few seconds, after he had re-adjusted the instrument, he saw only
what he had observed before: the prodigious spidery webs, with the huge
octopus-limbed creatures swinging across them.
But almost immediately he made another observation. And, as he did
so, a cry came to his lips. It was a cry of horror, issuing from some
vast instinctive depth--a cry such as one might utter if one saw a
man-eating tiger springing toward one with wide-open jaws. "For God's
sake! Quick! Run--for your lives!"
Even as he uttered this plea, Gates dropped the instrument and started
away. Dunbar was already in the doorway, into which he was disappearing
with the violence of panic; while just behind him Eleanor was
scampering like a frightened wild thing.
But they were just a second too late. There came a rushing as of a
great wind. There came a moment as of immense shadows, sweeping down
with lightning velocity. There came a glimpse of tenuous shapes in
rapid motion, a little like the spokes of a furiously turning wheel. At
the same time, in a nightmarish, unbelievable fashion, Gates saw Dunbar
and Eleanor arrested in mid-flight. Something vague and gray, which
looked like a gigantic claw, seemed to be woven about them both. But it
all happened too quickly for him to be sure. In the same instant, he
beheld them both jerked into air; then whirled skyward at rocket speed,
while their cries rang in his ears.
[Illustration: The girl's scream rang out as the tentacles reached down
and enfolded them in steel mesh.]
At the same instant also, as he stared at his companions, stunned and
gasping, he felt something soft but powerful seizing him about the
middle--something wriggling, and snake-like, and icy chill of touch. He
was never to know whether he screamed in the extremity of his terror;
all that he was aware of was that there came a mighty jerk, and that,
helpless as a hare in an eagle's talons, he rose into air with a speed
that almost beat out his breath; and saw the roofs of the city fading
beneath him amid the reddish haze.
* * * * *
For several minutes, beneath the clubbing rapidity of the flight, the
captive's senses deserted him. And when, feeling dazed and drugged, he
revived, it was to find himself amid a universe of fog in which the
earth had receded from sight. He had, however, the distinct sensation
of still rising--rising at tremendous speed. And he noticed--and
this, to his mind, was the most incredible thing of all--that he was
surrounded by an egg-shaped jelly-like transparent envelope about
fifteen feet long. Not until much later did he realize that this
envelope enclosed oxygen enough for him to breathe, and maintained it
at a temperature and pressure without which life at his great elevation
would have been impossible.
He had no way of knowing how much time went by in that nightmarish
flight. He did, however, feel sure that many minutes had passed before
at length he found himself above the mists. Blanketed in vapor,
the earth rolled beneath him, shadowy and featureless; while, in a
crepuscular dimness, he saw the stars glittering from the purple-gray
void. But what particularly held his attention was the sight of several
monstrous creatures--long and spidery, and with dangling octopus
limbs--which drifted ghost-like through the vagueness just outside the
egg-shaped envelope, with malevolently glowing three-cornered reddish
eyes.
As he still rose, past what might have been the upper limits of the
stratosphere, he saw a silvery globe sparkling above him in the
moonlight. At first he thought it to be a mere speck; but its disk
rapidly widened, until it appeared as large as the sun, then as great
as several suns, then seemed to fill the entire heavens with its pale
glassy form, which shed a tintless cold light that made Gates shudder.
Actually, the sphere was not more than a few hundred yards across; but
to the bewildered victim it seemed enormous as some prodigy of nature.
His confusion was only increased by the fact that he saw the stars
moving rapidly past it, with a westward drift, showing that it was
swinging swiftly to the east on an orbit of its own. So dazed was the
captive that it took him minutes to identify it as one of the Crystal
Planetoids.
By this time, they had reached the surface of the sphere, which he
could see to be composed of a jelly-like substance with the appearance
of milky glass. As they drew near, their speed rapidly diminished,
until they came to a halt almost in contact with the great globe. Then,
as if at its own volition, part of the surface billowed back, like a
paper flap blown by the wind; and Gates, with the sensation of one
entering a prison in a strange land, found himself drifting inside the
sphere.
As suddenly as if it had evaporated, the egg-shaped envelope had
disappeared, and he caught a whiff of hot, heavy, foul-smelling air,
reminding him of a breeze straight from a menagerie. He coughed and
gasped, and, as he did so, became aware of an unimaginably horrifying
scene.
* * * * *
He stood inside the sphere at its lowest part, and gazed up into a
circular space that, to his startled senses, seemed of stupendous
magnitude. Woven about this vastness at all heights and angles was an
intricacy of webs; webs built in concentric circles; webs composed of
long parallel cables crisscrossed by shorter cables; webs ascending
as sharply as the riggings of sailing vessels; and webs spun into
hammock-like floating platforms. All the strands were thinner than
a man's small finger, and shimmered strangely in the many-hued
fluorescence of great light-patches on the ceiling; and somehow their
iridescence, their shifting rainbow hues, their purples, ambers,
aqua-marines, scarlets and turquoise blues, made them seem all the
stranger and more sinister.
But most sinister of all were the great beings sprinting along the webs
or dangling spider-like from a thread. Now for the first time Gates
saw his captors clearly; for now--as he was later to learn--they had
brushed off the powder that made them virtually invisible to human
eyes, and stood forth in their full grotesqueness.
Their outlines were what he had already seen: gigantic, spidery, with
octopus limbs ending in many tentacle-like curling fingers. He had
not known, however, that the monsters were encased in a scaly armor,
which glittered with every peacock hue in the unearthly light, changing
chameleon-like from ruby to emerald, and from gold and violet to
bronze, jade and sulphur-yellow. He had not known that they had wide
pouting greenish-gray lips, from which at times a faint smoke issued.
He had not realized that they were equipped with long whips of tails,
each ending in a horny dart, with which they could strike an enemy with
appalling effect. He had not anticipated that they would talk with a
peculiar whirr, a little like the grating of a buzz-saw; nor had he
expected to see the pouches beneath their lower ribs, in which some of
them, kangaroo-fashion, carried their young.
Scarcely had Gates been deposited in the Planetoid when he made still
another discovery.
"Great heavens, look at Ronald!" he heard a familiar feminine voice.
And, wheeling about, he found himself staring at Dunbar and Eleanor,
who gaped at him not half a dozen yards away.
Both were, literally, as white as ghosts--wide-eyed as persons who
have looked on unmentionable horror. Gates noticed that Dunbar's hair,
usually so sleekly glossed, straggled in wild disorder; that his tie
was a rag, and his coat buttons torn off as if in a struggle; while
Eleanor's clothes were in rumpled disorder. Yet he noted with relief
that neither captive, apparently, had been hurt.
"Thank God!" the girl explained. "You're whole and sound!"
"Even if a little mussed up," Dunbar forced out, with a wry grimace.
"Good Lord! Why, his shirt is in ribbons! And his collar--"
But he was not to finish the sentence. For Gates suddenly cried out,
with a sensation as if a boa constrictor had seized him about the
chest. One of the monsters, its red eyes glaring balefully, had reached
down and grasped him in its tentacles; and, with the manner of a master
reprimanding a disobedient puppy, had begun to carry him away.