Asteroid Horror
The pirate encampment was a big clearing hacked from the jungle a mile
west of the little lake. In this space lay the long, looming black
mass of the most dreaded corsair ship ever to sail the void. The
_Falcon_ had been righted to even keel, but its crippled condition
was evident in the fused, wrecked condition of its tail rocket-tubes.
The whole camp was enclosed and protected by a shimmering blue dome of
electric force. This emanated from a heavy copper cable that
completely encircled the clearing, and which drew its power from
insulated cables that led into the ship to generators driven by the
few cyclotrons still functioning. This protective electric wall had
been set up at John Dark's orders to keep out the dreaded Vestans.
John Dark raised his voice as he and his men with their prisoners
approached the shimmering wall of the camp.
"Kin Ibo! Drop the wall for us!"
They saw the hard-looking Martian who was Dark's second-in-command
dive into the ship to turn off the power of the electric barrier. It
died, and Dark's party entered the clearing. Then the electric wall
sprang into being again behind them.
Kenniston looked swiftly around. There were a score more of the motley
pirates here in the camp. Also, near the side of the looming black
_Falcon_, were the small, rough log huts that Dark's men had
constructed.
Dark's black eyes were triumphant as he told his Martian lieutenant,
"Kenniston and Holk Or brought back the equipment all right, and also
brought some people who'll bring big ransom. Their wrecked ship is a
few miles south. You go down there with half the men here and help the
others bring up the equipment."
Kin Ibo, looking a little apprehensively out at the jungle, obeyed.
Dark motioned Kenniston and the other captives toward one of the huts
by the big ship.
"That hut will be your quarters until we get the _Falcon_ repaired,"
declared the pirate leader. "Any of you who try to leave it will be
shot at sight. I hope you'll not be foolish enough to attempt escape."
"That's right, folks, you wouldn't have a chance," Holk Or told them
earnestly. "Even if you could get out through the electric wall, the
Vestans would get you. They're thick in the jungle around here."
They silently entered the hut. Its broad open windows admitted enough
of the dazzling moonslight to brighten its interior.
A dark, eager-looking young Earthman sprang up as they entered, and
rushed to pump Kenniston's hand.
"Lance, you got back safely!" he exclaimed. "Thank the Lord--I've been
worrying myself almost crazy about you."
"How about you, Ricky?" Kenniston asked his young brother anxiously.
"You're all right?"
Ricky Kenniston nodded quickly. "Sure, I'm okay. But things haven't
been so good here, Lance. The Vestans have got a half-dozen pirates
who ventured outside the wall in the last few days. These creatures
literally haunt the jungles around here now--I think they've been
drawn here from all over the asteroid."
Ricky looked wonderingly at Gloria and the others who were entering
the hut. "Lance, who are all these people? Are they prisoners of Dark
too?"
"Yes, we're prisoners," Hugh Murdock told him bitterly, with a savage
glance at Kenniston. "We're prisoners because your brother sacrificed
us all to get back here and save _your_ neck."
"Lance, you didn't do that?" Ricky exclaimed in distress.
"I had to, Ricky," Kenniston protested. "It meant your life if I
didn't."
"Of course," Murdock agreed ironically. "What importance are we,
compared to saving your young brother's life?"
Kenniston spoke slowly, to Murdock and Gloria and the others. "It
wasn't merely Ricky's life at stake that made me sacrifice you all. It
was more than that. I tried to tell you before, but you wouldn't
listen."
* * * * *
Kenniston went across the hut and brought back the square black
medicine-case of his young physician-brother. He opened it, and out of
the vials and instruments inside he took a square bottle of milky
fluid.
"This is what I sacrificed everything to save," Kenniston said simply.
They all stared. "What is it?" Gloria asked, puzzled.
"It's Ricky's discovery," Kenniston said. "It's a preventative and
cure for gravitation-paralysis."
Captain Walls, himself an old-time space-man, was first of the group
to appreciate the significance of the statement. The captain gasped.
"A preventative for gravitation-paralysis? Kenniston, are you _sure_?"
Kenniston nodded gravely. "Yes. Ricky had been working on the problem
a long time, back in the Institute of Planetary Medicine. He thought
he'd found a way to prevent gravitation-paralysis, the most awful
scourge of all the outer System, the thing that's doomed so many
space-men. But his formula required rare elements found only in the
outer planets.
"Ricky and I," he continued, "went out there and secured those elements.
He made up this formula, and tried it on a gravitation-paralysis case--a
space-man who's lain paralyzed for years. The formula was designed to
strengthen the human nervous system against the shock of varying
gravitations, to re-establish an already damaged nerve-web. And it
worked."
Kenniston's voice was husky as he concluded. "It worked, and that
living log became a man again. The formula was a success. Ricky and I
started back for Earth, where he intended to announce the discovery
and arrange for its manufacture on a big scale. But, on the way back,
Dark's pirates captured us."
Kenniston flung out his hand in a tortured gesture. "_That's_ why I
went to any lengths to save Ricky's life! It's because Ricky is the
only person who knows the intricate formula of this serum. If he were
to die, the secret of the cure would die with him. And that would mean
that thousands on thousands more of space-men would be stricken into
living death by gravitation-paralysis in the future, just as so many
thousands of old friends and shipmates of mine have been stricken in
the past!"
Captain Walls was the first to speak. Quietly, the plump master of the
_Sunsprite_ extended his hand.
"Kenniston, will you shake hands with me? And will you forgive me for
everything? You did absolutely right. I'm an old space-man and I
_know_ what gravitation-paralysis is."
Gloria's dark eyes were glimmering with tears. "If we'd only known,"
she murmured to Kenniston. "No one could blame you for sacrificing a
lot of worthless idlers like us, for a thing like this."
"But you're going to be all right--all of you," Kenniston assured her.
"John Dark will make you pay a big ransom, but you can afford that and
you'll get back safely to Earth."
"Thank Heaven for that!" exclaimed Mrs. Milsom. "I can't understand
all this scientific talk of yours, but I do know that that pirate
chief means no good to me. Didn't you see the lustful looks he gave
me?"
The laugh that greeted this lessened the tension. Kenniston turned as
Ricky plucked at his arm.
"What about ourselves, Lance?" Ricky asked quietly. "Dark still won't
let us go, you know. He still needs me as a doctor."
Hugh Murdock stepped forward. "Dark would let you both go, for a big
enough ransom. I'd like to pay it for you."
The handsomeness of Murdock's gesture moved Kenniston. He was only
able to mutter his thanks.
* * * * *
While Ricky was treating Captain Walls' burned arm, the officer kept
looking fascinatedly at that square bottle of milky fluid.
He said hesitantly, "I've a son--back on Earth. For five years he's
lain in a cot from the gravitation-paralysis that hit him out on
Jupiter. Do you suppose--"
Ricky nodded. "Yes, Captain. I'm sure that we can cure him, now."
There was an uproar out in the clearing. Kenniston went to the door
and looked out.
The electric wall had temporarily been dropped, and Kin Ibo and the
main body of the pirates were hastily entering the camp with their
improvised power-sledges that bore heavy loads of machinery and
materials.
Kenniston heard Kin Ibo reporting shrilly to John Dark, "We lost two
men to the Vestans on the way here--and nearly lost two more! All this
activity has drawn them from all over the asteroid! Look at that!"
Outside the electric wall, which had been hastily re-raised, could be
glimpsed the shapes of lurking asteroidal animals. Meteor-rats, big
striped cats, flame-birds--and every one of those lurking animals bore
attached to its neck one of the little gray Vestan parasites.
John Dark was saying harshly, "We've got to have the rest of those
materials to repair the _Falcon_."
"I tell you, it'd be suicide to try another trip through those
jungles!" expostulated the Martian. "Those Vestans are devils!"
"Bah, you Martians are all alike--no good when your superstitions get
aroused," snorted Dark contemptuously. "I'll take the men down myself.
Come on, men--unload those sledges and we'll go back to the wreck."
His indomitable personality drove the scared, unwilling pirates into
the task. Again the electric wall was faded out for a moment to let
them out.
When they returned some time toward morning, Kenniston heard the crash
of atom-guns heralding their approach. And when the wall was
momentarily dropped, John Dark and his men stumbled into the camp with
their loaded sledges in sweating haste.
"Turn on the wall again--quick!" bellowed Dark's bull voice. "The
jungle's swarming with the gray devils now--they got five of us on the
way back!"
Ricky, looking over Kenniston's shoulder, spoke appalledly. "Good God,
Lance--look at them! I didn't know there _were_ so many Vestans!"
Outside the barrier of shimmering electricity, scores of animals and
birds dominated by the dreaded little gray parasitical creatures were
now swarming. And their number seemed growing every minute.
"All this activity of the night has drawn the Vestans from far and
wide," Kenniston muttered. "I don't like it. If that electric wall
should fail, the creatures would be in on us in a moment."
Dark himself seemed to feel something of the same apprehension, for
he was shouting urgent orders. "Hook up those atomic welders, and
start putting the new plates into the _Falcon's_ tail. Kin Ibo, have
your gang fit in the new rocket-tubes. I'll see to installing the new
cycs. If we work, we can get the job done by tomorrow night and get
out of here."
Through the day, the pirates toiled with an energy that showed their
earnest desire to leave the asteroid. That desire was reinforced by
the ever-larger number of Vestans that now swarmed outside the wall.
There were literally hundreds of the gray parasites now outside the
barrier. To have tried going outside the wall now would have been
sheer suicide. The creatures were apparently driven by unholy
eagerness to possess themselves of human bodies.
Gloria, looking out with Kenniston, shuddered deeply. "This horrible
world! It's like a nightmare."
"We'll soon be away from it," Kenniston reassured. "See, they've
almost finished repairing the _Falcon_."
* * * * *
The urgent toil of the pirates was showing results. By the time night
came again, and the meteor-moonlets blazed forth with magic beauty in
the dark heavens, the task of repair was almost done.
Kenniston and his companions had not ventured forth from the hut.
Pirates were everywhere in the clearing, and all had heard John Dark's
strict order to blast down the captives if they left their prison.
But from the hut, Kenniston and the others could see that the horde of
Vestan-dominated animals around the camp had further increased. With
ghastly avidity, they kept circling the shimmering, electric wall.
Kenniston turned in alarm at a ripping sound from the back of the log
hut. Two of the logs were being torn out bodily. The battered green
face and giant shoulders of Holk Or came through the opening.
"Kenniston, I came in this way because I didn't dare let Dark see me
talking to you!" the Jovian exclaimed. His face was urgent in
expression. "I've found out that Dark doesn't mean to let your friends
here get away from Vesta alive."
"What?" exclaimed Kenniston. "That's impossible! Dark said he was
going to hold Gloria and the others for ransom."
Holk Or nodded hastily. "I know, and he meant it, then. But since
then, he's found out something that's changed his plans. He found it
out from me--like a big fool, I told him everything when he questioned
me."
The Jovian continued rapidly. "I told him that Murdock had sent that
telaudio message back to Patrol headquarters, asking about my record.
Now Dark figures that the Patrol will come out here to find out if
that message meant that some of John Dark's outfit had actually
escaped.
"Dark wants the Patrol to keep thinking that he and his outfit were
destroyed--so he can slip out to Pluto and prepare a new base. So
Dark, when he leaves here, is going to drop Miss Loring and her
friends by the wrecked _Sunsprite_, so the Patrol will find 'em dead
by the wreck and will believe their cruiser crashed accidentally. That
way, they won't go on searching as they would if Miss Loring's party
was all missing. And Dark will have a chance to get out to Pluto
without an alarm going out."
Kenniston was suspicious. "Why do you tell us this, Holk? You're one
of the pirates yourself."
"I know, but I'm afraid Dark means to drop _me_ with the others by
the _Sunsprite_!" Holk Or exclaimed. "He didn't say so, but I believe
he figures on doing it so that the telaudio inquiry about me would be
explained when I was found dead with the others by the wreck."
Murdock said swiftly, "The Jovian's right, Kenniston. All this is just
what Dark _would_ do, to hide his trail, now that he knows my telaudio
message may have aroused the Patrol's suspicion."
Holk Or said emphatically, "I'm with you if you can figure out any way
to take the _Falcon_, Kenniston!"
Kenniston paced to and fro. His whole mind was suddenly in a wild
turmoil of stark fears. This meant death for Gloria and the others,
and the ultimate responsibility for that death would be his.
"There is one possible chance for us to take the _Falcon_," he
muttered finally. "But my God, it seems like an insane idea--"
"Wait a minute!" Captain Walls interrupted. "Dark won't drop you and
your brother to die, Kenniston. He still needs your brother as a
physician. You two will be safe even if we are killed."
"What of that? I can't let Gloria and the rest of you be murdered! I
was willing to sacrifice you when I thought it was only a question of
your being held for ransom, but this changes everything," Kenniston
said wildly.
"It doesn't change anything," the captain said firmly. "Your duty is
to keep your brother alive at all costs, to save that formula that
means life and hope for thousands of gravitation-paralysis victims
like my son."
"You mean--I should let you all be killed so Ricky and I can be
saved?" Kenniston cried. "I'm damned if I will!"
"We'll never do that!" Ricky Kenniston agreed warmly. "No formula in
the world is worth that."
"_This_ formula is," Gloria said earnestly to Kenniston. "The captain
is right."
"I won't do it," Kenniston repeated. "I have an idea by which we might
be able to take the _Falcon_. We're going to try it."
"Be reasonable, Kenniston," pleaded Hugh Murdock. "None of us except
Holk Or has a weapon. What chance would we have against half a hundred
armed pirates?"
* * * * *
Kenniston looked at his brother. "Ricky, your formula strengthens the
nervous system against any form of shock or damage, doesn't it? You
said it did it by sheathing the nerves themselves with an impenetrable
coating."
Ricky nodded puzzledly. "Yes, that's the principle. But how is that
going to help us?"
"The Vestans," Kenniston reminded, "seize control of their victims by
inserting those tiny needle antennae of theirs into the victim's
nerve-system to establish contact. Wouldn't your formula insulate the
nerves against such contact? Wouldn't it make a man immune to Vestan
attack?"
"Why, it would!" Ricky declared wonderingly. "I never thought of it,
yet it's entirely logical."
"Then," Kenniston said swiftly, "I want you to give every one of us,
including yourself, an injection of the formula right now."
The driving purpose in his voice brushed aside all their bewildered
questions and objections. Hastily, Ricky prepared his hypodermics and
rapidly made an injection of the milky fluid into the big
nerve-centers in the neck of each of them. Kenniston did the same for
Ricky himself.
"We _should_ be immune now to Vestan attack," Kenniston said
prayerfully.
"But what good's that going to do us?" Holk Or demanded. "Are you
figuring to try an escape into the jungle?"
"No, I'm figuring on taking the _Falcon_--by using the Vestans,"
Kenniston replied. "Holk, can you get into the ship and turn off the
power that keeps the electric wall going? Can you drop the wall?"
The Jovian's jaw dropped. "Why, sure, I could do that, but if I did,
all those hordes of Vestans outside the wall will burst in here--"
He stopped, his eyes bulging. "Good God, then that's your plan? To let
the Vestans in?"
"That's it," Kenniston said tightly, his face grim. "To let the
Vestans in on the pirates. That'll give us a chance to take the
ship--if the formula really makes us immune to the Vestans."
The terrible nature of the proposal stunned them all. But in a moment
a flame of purpose lit in the Jovian's eyes.
"I'll do it!" he swore. "It's better than waiting for Dark to kill me
like he's planning. You be ready!"
The Jovian slipped out of the opening in the back of the hut. They saw
him presently, casually approaching the door of the _Falcon_.
John Dark stood, a tall, dominant figure in the moonslight, barking
orders to the scores of pirates who were bolting in the last of the
new rocket-tubes. Kenniston's eyes swung toward the shimmering
electric wall, and the horde of Vestan-dominated animals outside it.
The wall suddenly died! And as the electric barrier vanished, into the
clearing came rushing the swarm of asteroidal animals.
"The wall's down!" John Dark yelled, his atom-gun leaping into his
hand. "Get back into the ship--get back--"
The crash of his atom-gun drowned his own shout. Other pirates were
firing wildly at the hideous creatures assailing them.
For the little gray Vestans had detached themselves from their animal
victims and were swarming upon the pirates, clambering with blurring
speed up their legs and backs, sinking into their necks the tiny
antennae.
Kenniston glimpsed John Dark, with a hideous little gray bunch now
fastened to the back of his neck, drop his gun and stalk stiffly away
toward the jungle. His face was an unhuman, lifeless mask--he was a
human automaton, dominated utterly by the alien creature.
"Come on!" Kenniston yelled to his friends. "Now's our chance to get
into the ship!"
* * * * *
They plunged out of the hut into the gruesome melee. Screaming pirates
were now running into the jungle in vain effort to escape the hordes
of Vestans. More than half the corsairs were now overcome.
Kenniston heard a scream from Gloria as they ran, felt a swift
scurrying up his back, then the needle-like stab of antennae sinking
into his neck.
But the parasitic creature did _not_ overpower his will! He reached
around, grasped and tore loose the hideous little thing, and with
strong revulsion flung it to the ground.
"Your formula works, Ricky--we're immune to them!" he gasped. "But
hurry!"
Other Vestans were clambering up on them like ghastly gray spiders as
they ran, but were powerless to overcome them. They tore away the
creatures and plunged on.
Holk Or appeared in the door of the _Falcon_, his green face blazing
as his atom-pistol pumped crashing fire into pirates inside the ship.
"I've got the ship cleared of them!" the Jovian shouted to Kenniston.
"Let's get out of here!"
It was time they did so. Almost the last of John Dark's pirates had
been possessed by Vestans and had become parasite-dominated robots
stumbling off into the jungle. The remaining swarms of gray creatures
were scurrying toward Kenniston's group.
They tumbled into the _Falcon_ and slammed shut the space-door. The
ship, completely if roughly repaired, was ready for take-off. Captain
Walls and the men of the _Sunsprite_ crew hastily started the
newly-installed cyclotrons while Kenniston and the others raced up to
the bridge.
Kenniston took the controls. He sent the big black pirate ship leaping
up into the darkness upon flaming keel and tail-jets, and then it
climbed steeply toward the wonderful sky of countless rushing
moonlets.
By the time an hour had passed, the _Falcon_ had groped out through
the periodic break in the meteor-swarm around the asteroid. And it was
throbbing at steadily increasing speed out into the vault of space,
away from the World with a Thousand Moons.
"We'll head for Mars," Kenniston told the others. "We can report there
to the Patrol."
"If you don't mind," Holk Or put in hastily, "I'd just as soon you
dropped me at some asteroid before then. I've no desire to meet the
Patrol."
Captain Walls told the Jovian, "Nonsense! After what you've done,
you'll get a full pardon from the Patrol."
"You can count on it," Hugh Murdock told the doubtful Jovian. "We have
some influence, back at Earth."
"Well, I guess I'll have to go honest, then," sighed Holk Or. "All the
real pirate outfits are gone now, anyway." He shook his head heavily
as he walked away. "The System sure isn't what it used to be."
Captain Walls was asking Ricky earnestly, "You're quite sure your
formula will cure my son? All these years, I've hoped and prayed--"
"I'm certain," Ricky smiled. "Within a few weeks after we get back to
Earth, gravitation-paralysis will be a thing of the past."
They moved off with the others. But Gloria lingered in the bridge with
Kenniston.
"Where will you be going, after we get back?" she asked him quietly.
"Oh, back to space," he answered, a little uncomfortably. "There's
nothing to hold me on Earth now that Ricky's work has succeeded."
"Nothing to hold you on Earth?" Gloria repeated. "That, I would say,
is about the most ungallant speech on record."
He flushed. "You don't mean--that night on the _Sunsprite_--you
weren't in earnest, surely--"
"Your passionate proposal is accepted," Gloria said calmly.
Kenniston was aghast. "But I didn't propose! I mean--I do love you,
and you know it, but you're an heiress, and I--"
"We'll have all the way back to Mars to argue _that_ out," she told
him. "And I have an idea you'll lose."
Kenniston had the same idea.
The End.
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's The World with a Thousand Moons, by Edmond Hamilton