"Burl Denning! Can you hear me, Burl Denning?" A thin, tinny voice
somewhere was calling him. But the darkness was all around, and Burl
felt a great sleepiness and a desire only to sink deeper into the
cottony nothing in which he seemed to be cradled.
"Burl Denning! If you can hear me, speak up!" Again the faint, scratchy
voice nagged at Burl's mind. He really ought to answer. He tried to open
his mouth. Something hard and cold was pressing against his back. He
tossed and squirmed.
Once more the voice called, and this time he decided that he must be
asleep. He struggled to open his eyes, then finally blinked them wide in
an effort to adjust himself to his surroundings.
He was apparently out in the open, and it was night. The sky was dark,
not black, but almost so--a deep, blue-black. There was a pale blue
saucer hanging in the sky. It blotted out most of the view. Gradually,
he became aware of a shiny barrier between him and that sky--he was not
out of doors. Something like a glass dome seemed to be overhead.
Burl raised his head. There was no one in sight. He felt dizzy and
confused. He lifted a hand to his brow, and felt the cold glass of his
space helmet. He was still wearing his space suit then. The voice--it
must be in his helmet phone.
"Hello," he ventured weakly. "Who's calling?"
Quickly the faint voice replied, growing stronger. "Burl, are you all
right? Where are you?"
Burl looked around. He was sitting on the floor of an isolated enclosure
with a transparent dome. There were no walls, just the rounded dome like
a fishbowl turned upside down on him. The flooring beneath his feet was
plastic.
"I'm all right, I think," said Burl. "Is that you, Russ? Sounds a little
like you, but you must be far away."
"Yes, it's me, Russell Clyde," confirmed the voice. "You're coming in
weak, too. Where are you?"
Burl described his surroundings. There was a silence for a moment, then
Russ's voice again. "I kind of suspected it, but what you say confirms
it. We must be on the only planet we haven't visited ... or rather, not
on it, but near it. I mean Neptune. I knew from the gravity I wasn't on
Pluto any more. Judging from our weight, and your description of the
bluish planet in the sky, we must be on Triton, Neptune's bigger moon."
Burl found that his dizziness was disappearing. "I feel light," he
commented, as he got to his feet. "Should Neptune look sort of like
Uranus, only more bluish in color?" he asked.
"That's it," said Russ. "Neptune is pretty much of a twin for Uranus,
only it's denser, a little bit smaller, and perhaps more substantial
than the other giant worlds in our system. It should have a second moon,
smaller and way out."
Burl walked around the little enclosed space. "I guess I'm a prisoner
here," he said. "This dome is on the surface. Most of the area is just a
sort of rocky plain with patches of liquid gases, but there are a couple
of big buildings nearby. Funny sort of structures--they have fancy tops
with symbols on them that look like the phases of the moon."
"I think I'm inside one of those buildings," Russ guessed. "I'm in a big
hall with a lot of exhibits in glass cases. And they've got the
strangest creatures I've ever seen in them. There are lunar markings
here, too--they remind me of the ones we saw on Pluto. You know what I
suspect?"
Burl paced around, regaining his senses as he walked. It was obvious
that, after he'd been knocked out by the Plutonians, he had been taken
by them to this moon of Neptune. For what purpose?
Russ continued to murmur his thoughts, his voice ringing tinnily in
Burl's earphones. "I think that Triton was originally Pluto's moon. When
Pluto wandered into the solar system, it crossed Neptune's orbit and was
held. Its moon came closer to Neptune and was captured completely. But
Pluto, having a greater mass, didn't stick. It established an eccentric
orbit of its own which took it far out from Neptune for hundreds of
years at a stretch and brought it back only rarely. Pluto lost its moon.
And that moon was the spiritual home of the Sun-tappers' religion."
Burl glanced across the landscape. There were some funny things growing
nearby. They looked a little like thin, glassy trees with big, blue
coconuts on top.
"What happened to you and Haines after we got separated?" he asked,
still talking through his helmet phone.
"I don't know what happened to Haines," said Russ. "I hope he got away.
But they trapped me. I was taken aboard one of their dumbbell ships, and
brought here. The trip took days. I guess you were unconscious for all
that time. If it's any comfort to you, the Pluto building was destroyed.
Our atomic bomb went off. I saw the flare from a window in the ship. I
think this moon is the last stronghold of the Sun-tappers, and I think
it is our final objective."
The strange crystalline vegetation seemed to be moving closer to Burl.
He watched it carefully. It _was_ moving! There were living beings out
there!
They glided oddly over the ground, and he saw that their bases were a
mass of crystalline fringes, moving feelers which crawled over the
surface bearing the upper structures with them. They had thin, trunklike
bodies with two long, pencil-like branches that were used as arms. And
the coconut objects were heads!
They circled the dome now, and Burl could see that each round blue knob
had a central black spot that apparently served as an eye. There was no
sign of nostrils or mouth. Burl stared at the creatures in wonder.
The beings were clearly gesturing to him, trying to signal with their
odd arms. He waved back, wondering how he could establish communication.
As he did so, he described the creatures to Russ.
Russ's voice was excited. "Say! I think I've figured out what sort of
place I'm in. This is a museum of galactic life! Each of these glass
cases contains a specimen of the highest form of life of its particular
world. In one of the cases, opposite me, there's one of the Martian
creatures--a big, antlike fellow. He's standing there, looking perfectly
alive, but absolutely motionless. Next to him is something else that
looks like an intelligent form. It's sort of a man, covered with short
red hair. Around its waist it's got a belt, and there are pouches on it,
and something like a short sword. It must be a humanoid type from some
world out among the stars. Some of the others look like intelligent
forms, too, because they are wearing clothing.
"I think that collecting these specimens and setting them up here is
part of the religion of the Sun-tappers."
While Russ was talking, Burl thought of a way he might communicate with
the stick-men. He wanted to draw a diagram of the solar system on the
floor of his enclosure. He gestured futilely with his hand, but there
was nothing with which to make a marking. The stick-men outside watched
his hand, then one of them reached around to something hanging across
its back and withdrew a thin tablet and a wedge of red. Holding the
tablet up so that Burl could see, the creature quickly sketched a
recognizable map of the Sun and its planets!
Burl realized then that he was dealing with highly intelligent
beings--no savages, these, but the products of a high civilization. He
indicated the third world as his own. The stick-man drew back as if
surprised, then pointed upward.
They came from Neptune!
During the next few hours, a most curious three-way discussion went
on--Burl signaling to the Neptunians outside and describing his
discoveries to Russ over the phone of his space suit; Russ suggesting
answers to some of the more difficult diagrams. It was a curious
experience. Gradually, by means of simple drawings and gestures, and
even charadelike playlets acted out by the weird vegetable-crystal
beings, there emerged the general story of the Neptunians and the
invaders from Pluto.
On Neptune there had been a great civilization covering the entire
world, a hard surface lying deep beneath its thick methane atmosphere.
There were forests and there were animals and intelligent beings. They
did not breathe, but absorbed both their food and liquid gas through
rootlike feelers on which they stood and moved.
Then one day, about thirty years ago, they had been invaded by creatures
that came in dumbbell-shaped spaceships, and which had destroyed their
cities, and attempted to conquer the planet. They learned that these
ships had come from Triton, the strange new moon that Neptune had
acquired about a thousand years earlier, and from the new planet, Pluto,
their astronomers had observed at that time.
For thirty years the Neptunians had fought against the invaders. For a
while they almost succeeded, but then something new had developed. Their
world grew hotter. Great structures had been erected on the poles, the
areas first conquered by the Plutonians and still held by them. From
these spots, vast amounts of heat surged over the planet and changed it.
Heat meant death and doom to every living frigi-plasmic thing on
Neptune. Desperately, they increased their warfare, but the heat sapped
their strength, destroying them, until now they knew it was but a matter
of time before the Neptunians, beast and vegetable alike, would vanish
totally.
"So that's it," breathed Burl. "That's where the Sun-tap energy is
going. The Plutonians want Neptune because it's near their old moon, and
they have to warm it up to live on it. Of course! And Neptune's too far
from the Sun to explode when it novas, it will just get comfortable for
the Plutonians!"
The Neptunians continued their strange tale. They had built a crude
spaceship and manned it with a suicide battalion of the most desperate
warriors of their race. They had journeyed to Triton in hopes of seizing
it and destroying the foe from there. The stick-men had attacked and had
been beaten back.
Now there were only a few dozen of them left--the last soldiers of their
invasion and ignored by the enemy. And here they were, explaining this
to Burl whom they recognized as an ally.
Russ's voice suddenly broke into Burl's thoughts, "There's some sort of
ceremony beginning here. There's a procession of Plutonians dressed in
golden robes marching down the center of the hall, carrying staffs with
moon pictures on them.... They're chanting in unison, though it sounds
like barking. Can you hear it?"
Burl could. It sounded faintly in his earphones like the noises in a dog
pound.
"Now they're circling around. They're opening one of the cases. The
glass slides back.... Say! The exhibits aren't dead. I see something
moving.... It's a man!"
Russ's voice stopped suddenly. Faintly, Burl could hear the barking and
then Russ's terrified voice. "It is a man, Burl. He's dark-skinned and
wearing white cotton pants and a homespun shirt. He looks like an
Indian, maybe a South American Indian. When they lifted the glass, he
just walked out and stood as if he were all mixed up. Then he got scared
and started to run."
The voice was silent a moment. "They grabbed him, Burl. They
_sacrificed_ him! And now they're coming for me."
"Stop them!" Burl yelled wildly. "Do something!"
"I can't stop them." Russ was resigned. "They're taking me to the empty
glass case. I guess I'm elected to be the next exhibit. They're shoving
me in!"
Outside Burl's enclosure the stick-men sensed something unusual in his
strained attitude. They stared in at him, while he remained tense,
listening.
Now Russ's voice came again. "They're going to take off my helmet and
throw in the suspended animation gas, Burl. Good-by. I can see them
still. Oh ... oh, I feel strange, I feel stiff, faint ... here ... I ...
go...."
His voice faded out, thin and weak. Then there was only silence.
Burl threw himself against the restraining transparent wall of his dome
prison and hammered on it with his fists. The dome would not give way.
He looked around desperately, determined to escape, wondering what
surprise the Plutonians were holding him for--suspecting he would be the
next victim. They would be coming for him soon, he knew.
He searched the enclosure for some way of leaving. He looked at the
stick-men and wondered if they knew. One of them, the one who seemed to
be the leader, gestured to him. His arm pointed to a spot in the floor.
Sure enough, there was a crack there, an outline like a small trap
cover. He worked at it with his fingers and, finding a dent, he pushed.
A lid came off. Below was a cleared space, a few inches deep, in which
were set the levers of a typical Plutonian control board.
Burl wondered if he were still carrying the charge that attuned him to
such controls. The shock he had received on Pluto could have blanked it
out.
He pushed at the levers with his gloved hands. They did not obey him.
Desperately, he removed the glove from one of his hands. It was bitter
cold in the little enclosure, but there was some atmosphere. The lever
almost froze to his fingers, but he turned it again.
This time it worked. The top of the dome that entrapped him suddenly
opened, and the sides slid back. Burl replaced his glove on his hand and
dashed outside to the freedom of the frigid surface of Triton.
Then he was among the Neptunian stick-men, and they were actually
patting him on the back, waving toward the building, hurrying him on.
They were prepared to die in one last desperate assault on the foe.
Could Burl do less?