A Plunge in the Dark
Beneath the great translucent milky-white envelope of the Planetoid,
Gates stood in an egg-shaped jelly-like car about thirty feet tall. He
was still invisible, even to himself; and could not see the gigantic
companion who shared with him his curious vehicle. But through the
gelatinous walls he could view the vast cloud-covered expanse of the
earth as it rolled by far beneath.
"Now we must wait, nignig," his unseen companion was saying, "until we
whirl around on our orbit to your own part of the globe. Fortunately,
it is but a minute planet, and the journey will take scarcely another
hour. The instruments will tell us when we arrive. But by my tail! may
my brothers not revive before then!"
"What will we do, when we get to earth?" inquired Gates.
"Do?" hissed Yellow-Claws. "What do you expect? Why, get vengeance, as
I have told you, earthling!"
"But how get vengeance?"
"You shall see! May the blue lightnings blast me, if you do not see!
I shall discredit the leadership of the Peerless Red One! I shall
frustrate his schemes! I shall invalidate him, as we say on Saturn!
Then he will go back home in disgrace, like the scum of the abyss
that he is! He will commit Guhl-Guhli--which is to say, he will sting
himself to death, and I will come into my own! Then, nignig, I will
return and conquer this world as it should be conquered!"
Gates groaned. He began to see that at heart Yellow-Claws was no
better than Red-Hood; all he would give the earth would be a momentary
reprieve.
Yet was not even a momentary reprieve better than nothing?
So at any rate, Gates asked himself a little later in a spasm of alarm.
Not quite an hour had gone by; and Yellow-Claws was just preparing to
cut the egg-shaped car adrift. But suddenly, through the jelly-like
shell of the Planetoid, huge spidery shapes were seen in shadowy
movement. And Yellow-Claws whirred with excitement, "Quick, earthling,
quick! or they'll be upon us!"
There came a ripping sound, though no cutting instrument was visible;
and the car began to plummet earthward.
But at the same time, through apertures in the walls of the Planetoid,
a score of octopus-limbed creatures began to glide, their angry eyes
glaring, like triangular rubies, their arms waving fantastically.
Around the Planetoid and beneath it they darted, then, gradually
becoming dimmer of outline, disappeared from sight.
But Gates was not to be deceived. He knew that they had but garbed
themselves in invisibility. He knew that the vibrations given off by
Yellow-Claws' body would guide them, although their foe could not be
seen. And he was appallingly aware that the whole pack of them were in
pursuit of his protector.
"By our planet's ten moons! they must not catch us!" rattled out
Yellow-Claws. "If we are captured, we will suffer the penalty of
deserters. We will be slain--yes, slain by the method of Multiple
Agony, which torments every nerve of the body for many days before
death brings relief."
* * * * *
Down, down, down they dashed. They rushed through the stratosphere, and
the earth seemed to leap forward to meet them. But reaching the heavier
layers of the atmosphere, they were checked by the resistance of the
air--and were checked even more by the tangle of invisible Saturnian
webs.
Almost at the same time, they were lost in a fog. Whether the earth
were near or far they could not say; they bobbed around like a ship on
a stormy sea. "Cursed be all the demons of outer space! Something's
wrong with the direction gauge!" muttered Yellow-Claws.
Even as he spoke, there came a roar from somewhere near at hand. And a
dull-red smoke-puff burst through the fog overhead.
"Fiery imps of Jupiter!" growled Yellow-Claws. "They've got the range!"
It was an extraordinary battle that followed. Both sides were
invisible; both aimed frightening flashes in the other's direction.
Grimly Gates reflected that earth-folk, watching the demonstration
from below, would think an unusually severe thunder storm in progress.
For, in truth, there were all the symptoms of a thunder storm. The sky
rumbled with detonations as of gigantic artillery; red lightnings and
blue and purple shot through the hazes in zigzag streaks; rain began to
fall in howling torrents. How it was that they escaped destruction in
that first moment of the encounter was more than Gates could explain;
for he saw crimson bars and blue balls of fire playing along the outer
surface of the jelly-like envelope.
Manifestly, the car was made of a strongly non-conducting substance;
but, even so, he expected the whole fragile affair to collapse
instantly.
But the speed of their descent, it soon appeared, was greater than they
had imagined; in less than five minutes, they grew conscious of vague
outlines just beneath. At almost the same moment, there came a violent
threshing and bumping, and Gates, stunned and bruised, was aware of
vague projections, which he recognized as the limbs of trees.
At the same time, he was startled by a loud popping, as of a suddenly
deflated balloon.
"By the Eleventh Asteroid!" rasped Yellow-Claws. "We're being torn to
shreds!"
Surely enough, the branches of the tree had slashed through the
gelatinous envelope, which was hanging from the foliage in wispy,
thinly palpitating bands and tatters. Their car--or, rather, all that
was left of it--had lodged in the upper limbs of a huge oak, forty feet
above ground!
Not that this distance meant anything, so far as Yellow-Claws was
concerned. But his protective envelope had been destroyed; and though a
red spout of smoke vomited from between his gray-green lips and lunged
toward his foe in forked lightnings, he knew that the battle was lost.
"Stay where you are, earthling!" he muttered. "They must not find you!
By my fifth arm! They will pay dearly for my life!"
* * * * *
Before these words had died in his ears, Gates knew that Yellow-Claws
had sprung down from the tree. The lightnings had become a little more
remote, though hardly less terrible. Then a scream shrilled from the
distance, and Gates rejoiced to know that one of the enemy had been
struck. But almost immediately, closer at hand, there rose an unearthly
shriek, followed by a groan as of some being in utmost anguish.
"Thur-glut-nu! Thur-glut-nu!" came terribly, in the Saturnian tongue.
And then less fiercely, to Gates,
"May all the devils of the space-ways curse them! They've hit me! Hit
me, earthling, in the middle nerve center!"--by which he referred to
a spot beneath the left shoulder, which, Gates had learned, was a
Saturnian's one really vulnerable point.
Yellow-Claws' next words were rasping and horrible beyond description.
"Flee, nignig, flee! I invoke on them the curses of a thousand dead
generations! the venom of all black planets! I--I--by my father's
claws, I shall never see Saturn again!"
The cry trailed off into a confusion of words in the sufferer's native
tongue. There came another moan; then a series of terrifying snorts,
snarls and bellowings, as of a wolf-pack closing in on its prey. And
red and green lightnings flashed, and blue fireballs played among the
treetops ... while a pandemonium of thunder drowned out that fiendish
chorus.[2]
[Footnote 2: On Earth, fireballs can travel along a wire fence, but
are grounded instantly they come to a wooden post, provided they are
in direct contact. However, these unearthly fireballs seem to have a
negative quality.--Ed.]
Quivering, Gates clung to his perch high in the oak-tree. At any
moment, he expected to be snatched up by an invisible arm. Yet time
went by, the lightnings and thunders faded out, and at last he began to
breathe more easily. He heard the threshing as of mighty forms moving
past him. They brushed by the tree; they whisked through the woods to
right and to left. But thanks to his invisibility; thanks also to the
fact that, unlike Yellow-Claws, he set up no etheric vibration that his
enemies could detect, he remained unmolested.
It seemed a long while before at last all became quiet. Then, as the
immediate danger passed, the rescued man began to take stock of his
position.
"By god," he reflected, with a wry grimace, "I'd better not start
crowing just yet!" For had he escaped only in order to face a
lingering, more cruel doom? Lost in some unknown corner of the woods,
perhaps many miles from home; invisible, and without food, money, or
other means of making his way, he was, to say the least, in a desperate
pass. Would he be able, despite all handicaps, to make his way to
civilization before Dunbar could carry out his Mephistophelean plots?
His teeth bit into his lower lip with a grimness of determination as,
in the misty twilight, he felt his way down from the tree and began
searching for an outlet from the wilderness.