There were a number of structures laid out on the plain under the blue
glow of Neptune. Burl saw that only one of them was a true building in
the design he had come to know was that of an ancient Plutonian temple
except that it was far, far larger than any of the ruined shells he had
seen on Pluto.
The other structures turned out to be walls and pillars arranged around
the central building, evidently in relation to their religious
significance. This main building, ornately decorated, was windowless,
and the several closed doors represented metallic and forbidding
barriers. It must have covered thirty acres, rising about thirty feet
from the ground.
As Burl frantically examined it, the leaders of the Neptunians moved
discreetly with him. They gestured at the doors, indicating their own
inability to open them. Apparently they thought that Burl might succeed
where they had failed.
Burl wasn't sure he could. He supposed there might be controls similar
to those that released him from the dome, but he thought first he had
better determine a plan of action. Somewhere within, Russ was sealed
up--an exhibit among the living dead of many planets.
He managed to convey this thought to the three stick-men. There was an
unmistakable nod of assent from one of them, and a twiglike arm
indicated that Burl should follow him. They rapidly crossed the area to
the outlying fringes of a frigi-plasmic forest.
Here towering crystalline masses pushed up from the dark ground. It
seemed to be a weird jumble of broken glass--broken glass ten and
fifteen feet high! The Neptunians led Burl into this amazing landscape
through a narrow path. He walked behind them, feeling thick and heavy in
comparison with their fragile bodies. But, in spite of appearances, they
were not fragile, nor were the growths that made up the fantastic
Neptune-transplanted vegetation of Triton.
They came to a clearing amid the forest of blue and green and orange
crystals, and there were the rest of the Neptunian survivors. Burl
counted about forty, rooted in pools of liquid gas, absorbing renewed
energy while waiting for commands. As he entered the clearing, most of
them lifted their root tentacles and crowded around him. He was as
strange a being to them--helmeted and bundled in plastic and rubber and
metal--as they seemed to him.
Burl noticed that many of them must have been wounded--there were signs
of missing arms or of burned roots, and a few had odd poultices smeared
over their round, blue heads.
The Neptunian commander pointed out their store of arms. They had long
spears of some glistening translucent substance, a projector which fired
darts of the same material, and a number of the Plutonian globe-and-rod
instruments--obviously captured from the enemy.
He examined some of the spears and darts, and a suspicion he had held on
first seeing them was confirmed. These were made of ice! On Neptune, ice
was easily obtained--and hard enough to be worked like metal. Its
melting point being far, far above any heat likely outside of a
Neptunian laboratory, it was as permanent as iron for their needs!
Burl studied the captured Plutonian hand weapons, and was pleased to
have one of the Neptunian soldiers pick up one and demonstrate how it
was fired. It had apparently simpler controls than most Plutonian
products, for it easily blazed forth a bolt of electronic fire that
blasted a tall, crystalline tree to shards.
The Neptunian leader began to gesture again, and conveyed to Burl that
they wanted to attack as soon as possible. He gathered that conditions
on Triton were not the best for these people--that their ability to hold
out was limited and that they desired to make their final assault
without delay. They wanted to know now what Burl could contribute.
Burl realized that as far as he was concerned, he was not in any better
shape than his allies. His oxygen tanks were slowly but surely emptying.
He examined his gauges and was startled to see he had only two more
hours before suffocation would set in. The suit was warmed by batteries
which would last several days longer, but by that time it would be too
late.
Somewhere inside his suit he had a pocket knife, but he could not get at
it in the frigid near-airlessness of the outer surface. His holster
still hung at his side, but it was empty.
There was nothing to do then but to join the Neptunian assault. He would
try to open the door by the electronic charge that still remained in his
body. If he did, they could break in and do what they could. If he could
not, who knew what would happen?
Burl picked up one of the Plutonian weapons and gestured to the rest to
prepare to attack. Immediately, they fell into orderly ranks. They were,
indeed, soldiers, Burl thought--the cream of their planet's
armies--whatever that meant in Terrestrial terms.
Then, following the lead of the Neptunian captain, they marched out of
the forest. As they crossed the open plain, Burl knew that they were
probably in sight of the defenders. But he realized quickly that that
had been true when he was released and nothing had happened. So perhaps
he was wrong. Perhaps the Plutonians were limited--perhaps they had not
bothered to keep a watch.
That left only the Plutonian spaceships to worry about. Burl hastily
searched the sky and located two glowing spots--four really--undoubtedly
two of the double-sphere ships. The Neptunians behind bumped into him,
then the whole column came to a halt.
Burl pointed to the ships. The commander waved his arms helplessly. They
had been there all along, Burl gathered, and what could he do about it?
More gestures. Yes, the ships were dangerous. In fact, they had been the
ones that had defeated the main Neptunian attack, blasted them from the
sky and destroyed the ship in which the stick-man army had arrived. The
Neptunians were going to attack, regardless.
Again, Burl realized the essentially suicidal mood that moved these
beings. They were attacking against odds before which they were utterly
helpless.
Even as Burl stared at the far-off lights of the Plutonian ships, he
noticed them swing away, moving off toward the horizon. As he watched,
he thought for an instant that something else had blinked like a star,
far in the distance.
Struck by a sudden thought, he activated his helmet radio. "Burl Denning
calling the _Magellan_! He spoke at maximum power into his throat mike.
Calling the _Magellan_! If you can hear me, reply!"
Then, to his joy, a faint, far-away voice answered, "Burl Denning! This
is Lockhart. Give us your location."
"Lockhart! There are two Pluto ships approaching you from the direction
in which you can hear my voice. Be careful!"
The voice came faintly again, "We see them. We'll take care of them.
Haines made it back to the ship. The Pluto base is destroyed. There are
only those two ships left. We followed them here as fast as we could.
Can you hold out until we draw them out and crack them? We will need a
little time."
Burl called, "Don't worry about me. Go to it. Russ may be alive in their
building here. Don't bomb it. I'm going to try to get in."
"Okay," called Lockhart's voice, already growing weak as the _Magellan_
and the two pursuing foes drew away.
Burl turned to the Neptunian captain. He drew his hand across the sky to
show that the ships had gone, drawn away from their protection of the
temple. He pointed at the walls of the building with a "let's go"
gesture.
Burl noticed that though the Neptunians were apparently featureless, he
could sense a distinct tightening up in their actions. They were tensed,
ready for the final battle.
They marched up to the main door of the temple. The captain loosed a
bolt of electronic fire at it, but it left no mark.
There was no sound from within. Evidently the Plutonians were either
busy about their own business, or did not regard the Neptunians as worth
their attention.
In a covered panel right next to the door, Burl found the typical
Sun-tap controls. He tried to work them, but they would not function
through his gloves.
He hesitated, knowing that removing his glove this time might prove very
risky. Then he hastily drew off his left gauntlet and the thin nylon
glove that was the inner protection of his suit. He placed his hand on
the control. The icy cold bit into it. He twisted, the control worked,
and he tore his hand away, replacing the gloves.
The door slid open. Burl ran inside, followed by half a dozen
Neptunians. They were in a small antechamber, evidently an air lock.
The Neptunians, leaping with excitement, did not bother to activate the
inner door, which would have meant closing the outer door. Instead, they
attacked it with heavy ice axes. The strange tools, chilled to a
hardness unthinkable on Earth, bit into the fragile plastic.
After a few hard blows, the plastic split, and there was a small
explosion as the air within the temple burst through. A gale of escaping
gases roared through the little chamber, ripping the rest of the door to
shards and hurling the Neptunians right and left. Outside, the flow
began to congeal, and a thin snow of liquid air began to fall.
When the blast subsided after several minutes, the Neptunians jumped up,
shook off the new gas-snow, and charged through the doorway into the
temple itself.
Burl held his Plutonian flashgun at the ready. Inside, they found chaos
and disaster. In the great rooms and halls Plutonians writhed on the
floors, in the last throes of suffocation and freezing, now that the air
had been ripped from their stronghold.
The walls bore brilliant paintings and sharply defined sculptures.
Advancing with the ranks of stick-men, Burl caught glimpses of strange
scenes on distant planets, of landscapes that must have been Pluto at
one time, beneath a double sun that probably was its original parent.
Burl became faintly aware of a distant clanging. Not all the air was
gone, he thought; it must be pouring out in slower volume as the
pressure diminished. Somewhere an alarm was ringing.
The Neptunians fell behind; he saw now that the floor and walls of the
temple were still too hot for them. They began to withdraw, regrouping,
blazing away with ice darts and spears at Plutonians who had appeared in
hastily-donned space garments.
Burl fired, then plunged on. He had to get to the hall where Russ was
imprisoned.
Finally he was out of sight and sound of the Neptunians and their
adversaries. Behind him a door swung down. He was nearing the heart of
the building now. The remaining Plutonians were sealing it off, rallying
for their final defense.
He was now cut off from support. But he still counted on confusion and
surprise to aid him. He ran down a long hall to a vast central chamber
and arrived a split second before the door slammed shut after him. The
museum of galactic life!
It was a huge hall, oval in shape. In its center was a block that might
be an altar. Lining the walls on each side, ranging from the great door
on the far end to the equally ornate one through which Burl had come,
were floor-to-ceiling niches with gently curved, transparent fronts. He
could see dark shapes standing motionless within each of these
exhibition cases.
There were also about two dozen Plutonians in the hall, most of them
grouped around the central altar. They wore gaudy harnesses and carried
sharp, swordlike wands.
Two of them started for Burl, and he leveled his weapon and fired. There
was a flash of light and one of the creatures dropped senseless. The
other turned and scuttled away, uttering barking cries.
Burl glanced hastily around. The rest of the Plutonians--priests or
curators or executioners, whatever they were--advanced slowly on Burl.
He couldn't get them all, but he'd try. He fired it again.
This time the weapon failed to go off. Its charge was used up. The
Plutonians yelped with delight and pressed forward, flourishing their
swords.
Burl desperately hurled a globe-and-rod at them, meanwhile looking
around for a new weapon, But he saw only the shining glass fronts of the
exhibits. In the nearest case was a manlike being, dark purple in color,
a thing with a fixed but intelligent stare in its slanted yellow eyes.
It had two tall ears, a wide chest, and a curling tail, and was wearing
a belt with pouches and a short kilt that only about half covered his
two long, hairy legs.
Burl spun on his heel, swooped upon the gleaming swordlike wand that had
fallen from the dead Plutonian, and racing back to the exhibit, brought
it up with all his might against the transparent surface.
The glassy stuff cracked. Another blow with all the strength of an
Earth-muscled body on a light gravity world, and the front shattered
open.
There was a puff of a greenish gas. The creature inside suddenly blinked
and moved a hand. Then, without waiting, Burl dashed to the next exhibit
and swung his metal sword again.
The barking calls of the Plutonians increased in frenzy, and they
charged him, screaming. As the second exhibit crashed open, Burl turned
to fend off his attackers, swinging his sword. It clashed against the
sword of the nearest curator-priest, who slipped and went bowling over
against his fellows. Burl reached the third exhibit and smashed it.
He turned to meet a renewed attack, and this time, out of the corner of
his eye, he saw that a purple humanoid was in action beside him. The
purple one had picked up a Plutonian, apparently with great ease, and
was using its body as a bludgeon.
Something furry and green leaped high in the air and came down in the
middle of the Plutonians. There was a wild, unearthly screech as it
landed, and exhibit number two, from heaven knew what starry world, was
in the fray.
Now Burl found himself momentarily unhampered, and rapidly he opened
exhibit after exhibit. The battle became wilder and fiercer, as
star-being after star-being joined in.
The Plutonians swung away in all directions with their wands. Their
barking voices were drowned out by a rising chorus of sounds--roaring,
inhuman voices, calling curses in languages of worlds that lay many
light-years distant--wild, birdlike calls from a winged being whose
intelligent eyes and wide brow belied the ferocity of its beaked and
taloned attack. There was a clanking, ringing sound, as a thing of half
jointed shining metal, half soft, velvety-white flesh, whirred among the
foe, doing damage with a razor-edged arm that shot out from the metallic
part of its body.
There was something like a cloud of insects--a mad thing which seemed to
be a single hive of tiny winged cells that moved and bit and stood its
ground like a single united being.
There was a Martian that had at first stood stupidly, as if unaware of
what was going on, and then had gone berserk at the first sight of a
Plutonian running past him.
And in the next case was Russ, still space-suited, staring out through
the glass. With a joyous crash, Burl smashed the front of the niche.
Russ moved, his eyes opening wide as he saw Burl. He reached down
quickly and picked up the helmet which had been taken from his head. As
soon as he had it in place, he activated the phones. "Wow!" his voice
came in Burl's earphones loud and clear, "Let's go!"
He jumped down and grabbed Burl. Together, the two danced a wild jig of
joy. Then they both remembered the Plutonians and turned, realizing that
they had momentarily left themselves wide open to attack.
But there was nothing to be afraid of. The Plutonians were all torn,
beaten, lifeless. Moving among them were their former victims--the
exhibits gathered from worlds undreamed of by human astronomers. What
hopes of vengeance had been stored in those inhuman hearts when each had
been torn from his native world, had been caught in helpless paralysis
and carried trillions of miles across trackless space as living
trophies!
Although their forms were many and strange, there seemed to be no fear
of one another among the survivors. What they had been through had
united them forever. One by one, they began to gather around Burl and
Russ, recognizing in them their saviors, grateful for their delivery.
Burl's helmet radio spoke up. "The _Magellan_ calling Burl Denning! We
have eliminated the last two enemy ships. Give us your location. We
intend to A-bomb the installations on Triton as soon as we can pick you
up!"
Burl spoke into the phone. "Hold up the explosions, colonel. We've taken
the place intact. You can land the _Magellan_ outside the main temple
and come and see. We've got allies, lots of them."
"Yes," said Russ into his phone, "we've got the secret of Pluto, we've
got a friendly, fellow world on Neptune, and we have a whole crowd of
the strangest refugees you'll ever hope to see. Bring extra space suits
with you. We have the makings here of friendship and trade with dozens
of distant star planets--a treasure in itself worth a dozen trips around
the solar system."
Burl looked around him, thoughtful at these words. Visions of the
marvels that future A-G ships would find, as, manned by Earthly crews
and carrying each star-being back to its galactic world, they opened up
on each planet new vistas of achievement, science, and artistic marvel.
He found himself staring into the yellow eyes of the big, purple
humanoid. His hand was grasped by the other's strangely shaped hand
while a yellow, powdery creature like a human moth tried to touch Burl
in fondness.
Burl smiled widely and began to grasp the proffered tentacles, pincers
and grippers.
"Welcome," he said to them all. "Welcome to the solar system. We've got
a lot to talk about."
About the Author
Donald A. Wollheim was bitten early by the science-fiction bug. As a
boy, he filled many thick notebooks and scrapbooks with clippings,
pictures, and facts about the planets, and astronomy in general.
He grew up in New York, graduating from New York University, and at once
began a successful career as a free-lance writer of science fiction.
Since 1946 he has been editor of a publishing house specializing in
paperback books. A number of anthologies of the fantastic are the result
of his editing.
Aware of the wide-spread interest in this subject, Mr. Wollheim decided
to inaugurate science fiction conventions, and founded the Fantasy
Amateur Press Association as well. He considers himself a true science
fiction pioneer.
Among his hobbies are model soldiers. He is considered an authority on
them and has a fabulous collection.
_Other Winston Science Fiction Novels by the Author_
THE SECRET of the MARTIAN MOONS
THE SECRET of SATURN'S RINGS
_The Secret of the Ninth Planet_
On the day that the theft of the solar system's light begins. Burl
Denning is with an archaeological expedition in the Andes, only a few
miles from the source of the "disturbance." Within hours the United
States Air Force has ordered the expedition to investigate the strange
phenomenon that is causing a dimness and a drop in temperature
throughout the world.
This is the start of a fantastic adventure that eventually takes Burl, a
high-school senior, on the first circumnavigation of the solar system.
On planet after planet, he and the crew of the _Magellan_, a gleaming,
powerful, and virtually untested spaceship, discover the weird trappings
of a brilliantly-designed Sun-tap station. Each planetfall brings
unexpected hazards, as the ship draws closer and closer to solving the
mystery of the theft.
The author has based his story on science fact. Researchers are actually
at work on the possibilities of just such a circumnavigation, and on
another surprising theory brought out in this book.
Other Winston Science Fiction Novels
ANT MEN, THE by Eric North--_Geologists find living fossils in the
badlands of Central Australia_
ATTACK FROM ATLANTIS by Lester del Rey--_An atomic submarine crew
discovers the lost city of Atlantis_
BATTLE ON MERCURY by Erik Van Lhin--_Sun storms sweep Mercury and
threaten man's existence_
DANGER: DINOSAURS! by Richard Marsten--_A treacherous big-game hunter
leads an expedition back to the Age of Reptiles_
EARTHBOUND by Milton Lesser--_An ex-space cadet is forced to plunder
ships he was trained to protect_
FIVE AGAINST VENUS by Philip Latham--_A Moon-bound rocket crashes in the
misty wilds of Venus_
ISLANDS IN THE SKY by Arthur C. Clarke--_A teen-ager's adventures aboard
a space station_
LOST PLANET, THE by Paul Dallas--_Two worlds on the verge of war_
MAROONED ON MARS by Lester del Rey--_A teen-ager on the first
Moon-to-Mars expedition_
MISSING MEN OF SATURN by Philip Latham--_A space crew is held prisoner
by froglike men on Saturn_
MISSION TO THE MOON by Lester del Rey--_Scientists make man's first
journey to the Moon_
MISTS OF DAWN by Chad Oliver--_A space-time machine hurls a 20th-century
boy back to 50,000 B. C._
MYSTERIOUS PLANT, THE by Kenneth Wright--_A young captive on Planet X
prevents Earth's destruction_
MYSTERY OF THE THIRD MINE by R.W. Lowndes--_Prospecting in the dangerous
asteroid belt_
PLANET OF LIGHT by Raymond F. Jones--_A trip to another planet shows how
the universe can be saved from destruction_
ROCKET JOCKEY by Philip St. John--_A space pilot battles Martians in
rocket race_
ROCKET TO LUNA by Richard Marsten--_A stowaway on a Moon-bound rocket
proves his worth_
ROCKETS TO NOWHERE by Philip St. John--_Scientists establish a colony on
the Moon_
SECRET OF THE NINTH PLANET, THE by Donald A. Wollheim--_A high-school
senior investigates the theft of the solar system's light_
SECRET OF SATURN'S RINGS, THE by Donald A. Wollheim--_A scientist proves
his theories by means of a unique invention_
SECRET OF THE MARTIAN MOONS, THE by Donald A. Wollheim--_Scientists
discover the secrets of Martian civilization_
SON OF THE STARS by Raymond F. Jones--_An interplanetary friendship
brings Earth to the brink of destruction_
SONS OF THE OCEAN DEEPS by Bryce Walton--_Undersea terrors nearly thwart
a project aimed at saving a continent_
STAR CONQUERORS, THE by Ben Bova--_The Terran Confederation battles for
its existence against the all-powerful rulers of the Milky Way Galaxy_
STAR SEEKERS, THE by Milton Lesser--_A tale of a spaceship doomed to
crash_
STEP TO THE STARS by Lester del Rey--_The U. S. builds a space
station_
TROUBLE ON TITAN by Alan E. Nourse--_A rocket experimenter discovers a
plot threatening Earth's existence_
VANDALS OF THE VOID by Jack Vance--_A tale of space pirates_
VAULT OF THE AGES by Poul Anderson--_Life 500 years after the flaming
collapse of 20th-century civilization_
WORLD AT BAY, THE by Paul Capon--_Men from another planet attack
Earth_
YEAR WHEN STARDUST FELL, THE by Raymond Jones--_A mysterious "fall-out"
paralyzes civilization_