Lovely Brenda Carson, scholarly Jerome, pompous
Livingston ... everyone aboard the _Seven Stars_
scoffed at the idea of a Phantom Pirate. But I.P.
agent Jim Fanning didn't laugh. He knew the luxury-liner's
innocent looking cargo was already marked for plunder.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Part of my assignment on this space-flight of the _Seven Stars_ was to
watch the girl. That much, at least, wasn't hard. She was certainly
easy to look at--a little beauty, slim with a pert, oval little face
framed by unruly pale-gold hair. With mingled starlight and earthlight
gleaming in that hair, it was like spun platinum. Her name was Brenda
Carson. Certainly, she was an inspiring figure to any young man, in her
white blouse and corded black and white trousers and her long black
traveling cape with its hood dangling at the back of her neck and the
cape folds flowing from her slim shoulders almost to the ground.
We were several days out from New York, with Mars, our destination,
hanging like a great dull-red ball among the blazing stars in the black
firmament ahead of us, when I first noticed that there was anything
queer about Brenda. We were sitting under the glassite pressure-dome on
the forepeak of the _Seven Stars_, bathed in the pallid starlight. By
ship-routine it was mid-evening.
I gestured toward one of the side bull's-eyes of the bow-peak.
"Gloomy-looking world, that Asteroid-9," I said.
The little asteroid, one of the many out here in the belt between the
orbits of Earth and Mars, was a small leaden crescent of sunlight
with the unlighted portion faintly putty-colored. It was, I knew, a
world some five-hundred miles in diameter, amazingly dense so that
its gravity was not a great deal less than Earth. A bleak, barren
little globe. It had an atmosphere breathable for humans; there was
water--occasional rainfall; but chemicals in the cloud-vapors poisoned
the water for human consumption. The rocks were heavily laden with
metals. But they were all base metals, of no particular value. So far
as I knew, nobody had ever bothered to settle on Asteroid-9. It was
completely uninhabited.
"Asteroid-9?" Brenda murmured. "Is that what it's called?"
Something in my chance remark had frightened her. Her blue eyes as she
flung me a quick, startled glance were suddenly clouded with what might
have been terror.
Her brother Philip was with us. He quickly said, "Asteroid-9? Somebody
said we pass pretty close to it this voyage." He laughed. "Rotten sort
of place, by what I've heard. You can have it and welcome."
I must explain that I was--and still am--an IP Man. My name, Jim
Fanning. I was assigned as Lieutenant to Patrolship two. I had
been on vacation, in New York. My ship, one of the biggest in the
Interplanetary Patrol, was now on roving duty somewhere in the vicinity
of Mars. Then suddenly an emergency with the _Seven Stars_ had arisen.
Chief Rankin had planted me on her. Only the captain knew my identity.
To the dozen or so passengers, I was merely a young civilian traveler.
"I've never been to Asteroid-9," I was saying. And I, too, laughed
casually, "I agree with you, Carson. Nice place to die in, but I guess
that's all."
There was no question but what Brenda was trying to hide her sudden
emotion. Terror? Was that it? We said no more about the asteroid;
chatted of other things, and we were presently joined by another of the
passengers.
"Ah, beautiful night," he greeted us. "I never get tired of the glories
of the starways. Good evening, Miss Carson." He nodded smilingly to
Philip Carson and me, and drew up a chair with us. His name was Arthur
Jerome, well-known to me, though I had never before met him. He was
a big, florid, distinguished-looking man of forty-odd; a habitual
Interplanetary traveler, who between flights lectured over the earth
television networks on things astronomical.
We talked for a while, and then suddenly Arthur Jerome said, "Nobody
mentions the Phantom bandit. You know, if anything could spoil my
interest in Interplanetary travel, it's to have a weird thing like that
come up."
"Phantom bandit?" Brenda Carson murmured. "Is there--is there really
such a thing?"
Arthur Jerome shrugged. "Naturally it's had no publicity. But things
get out. Those last three accidents to space-liners--you can't hide
that sort of thing. And you wouldn't call it supernatural. Or would
you?"
* * * * *
The Phantom of the starways! That was the crux of my being here on the
_Seven Stars_. Weird, mysterious thing--no wonder the Earth, Mars and
Venus governments had not dared let it get any publicity which they
could possibly avoid. For three months now, this Earth-year of 2170,
mysterious accidents had been happening to commercial space-ships.
Non-arrival at destination, and then later found by the Interplanetary
Patrol, derelicts in space. Gruesome damn' thing. A ship unharmed, save
that its air was gone. As though some mysterious accident had broken
one of the pressure valves, or deranged the machinery of an exit-porte,
so that the air had all hissed out. Ship of the dead. Everyone aboard
lying asphyxiated.
It was eerie.
A "ghost-vessel" attacking the liners? A modern version of the ancient
_Flying Dutchman_ legend? Radio newscasters talked of things like
that. A vengeful ghost-ship roaming the starways, with dead pirates
aboard, bent on attacking the living navigators whom they hated just
because they were alive. It made nice gruesome broadcasting to give
the television audience the shivers. Supernatural legends easily get
support. Particularly from hysterical, imaginative women, or cranks who
crave publicity. Reports had come from amateur astronomers who owned
fairly decent telescopes that they had seen the wraith of a pallid
ghost-ship hovering up in Earth's stratosphere; passengers on liners
had hysterically thought they saw the same thing.
A supernatural menace. But no reputable observer had ever seen
anything. Our Interplanetary Patrol was completely baffled. And what
the public didn't know was that those wrecked vessels--one of them,
at least--had shown evidence that it had been hit by an electronic
space-gun with a range of several hundred miles, which had broken the
pressure-dome and let the air out. And in every case the wrecked ship
was looted; the passengers' money and jewelry gone; the Purser's safe
rifled.
"Anyway, it's a good thing for us," Arthur Jerome was saying, "the
little _Seven Stars_ ought not to be much of a prize for the phantom
raider." He grinned, with his hand ruffling his sandy hair. "Let's hope
we escape."
The _Seven Stars_ not much of a prize? It was certainly reasonable
enough to think that. We had a few Martians in the second-class
section, and a few Earthmen passengers; and just an average commercial
cargo. That's what anyone would think; and only the captain and I knew
differently. Our cargo was anything but average. The boxes, as they
had come aboard and been stored in the hold, were labeled as American
preserved food-stuffs; technical commercial instruments, German-made
prisms, lenses and the like. But in reality those boxes were crammed
only with modern electronic weapons of war. It was a shipment purchased
by the Martian government which was faced by the insurrection of its
wealthy colony on Deimos. They were unusual weapons of exclusive
Earth-manufacture. Small, for short-range, hand-use only; weapons to
disable, but not injure. The recently publicized so-called "paralysis
gun" was one of them. The Martian government, humane at least in battle
with its own people, desperately needed this type of weapon in its
forthcoming invasion of Deimos to subdue the rebels.
* * * * *
Not much of a prize, our little commercial liner _Seven Stars_
this voyage? Just the opposite! Those rich colonists of Deimos
most certainly would pay well to keep this shipment away for Mars!
Would news of it have leaked out? Would the Phantom of the Starways
attack the _Seven Stars_ for just that purpose? Chief Rankin, of
the Interplanetary Patrol, certainly thought it a possibility. He
had put me aboard here; and as only the Captain and I knew, my
ship--Patrolship-2--had been ordered to join us out here somewhere and
convoy us to Mars. Convoy us against an attack by an enemy that you
couldn't see!
"The Phantom raider!" Young Philip Carson was echoing Arthur Jerome's
lugubrious words. "You suppose there is really any such thing?" I saw
him exchange a glance with his sister. He laughed, but it wasn't much
of a success.
"I doubt it," I agreed. "So far as I ever heard, those accidents
were--well, just accidents. An air-valve can go wrong, you know,
and dump the air out of a ship. Air goes quickly, and with a pretty
powerful rush, if it once gets started.... Gruesome kind of talk, Miss
Carson," I added lightly.
She tried to smile. My heart went out to her in that moment. Her
beauty, I suppose; but somehow she seemed horribly pathetic. That
mention of Asteroid-9 mysteriously frightened her; and now this mention
of the phantom spaceship terrified her even more.
"You're right," Arthur Jerome agreed. "The supernatural is fascinating.
Or a thing that you can't see but still can kill you--that's just as
gruesome."
"And fascinating?" Philip Carson put in sourly. "Well, it may be to
you, but it's frightening my sister. Let's talk of something else."
Then another passenger joined us. That girl was a magnet to men.
"Well, well, Miss Carson," he boomed as he came up. "You are looking
very beautiful in the starlight." He sat down with us. His name was
Walter J. Livingston--the Very Honorable Walter J. Livingston to give
him his official title. He had just been appointed by the President
of the World-Federation as Earth Ambassador to the Martian Government;
was on his way there now to present his credentials. He was a big,
heavy-set fellow, with a mass of iron-gray hair, a ribbon across his
ruffled shirt-bosom; and the out-jutting jaw and booming voice of a
born politician. Did he by any chance know the contents of the _Seven
Stars'_ cargo, this voyage? So far as I had been informed, he did
not. I studied him now, and instinctively I didn't like him--possibly
because of the extravagant compliments he was paying Brenda Carson.
The talk went on, and presently as I glanced up to the little control
tower under the pressure-dome above us, I saw the bulky figure of
Captain Wilkes standing there. He caught my gaze and furtively
gestured. I excused myself in a moment; sauntered down the narrow side
deck, turned a distant corner of the little superstructure. Then I went
up to its roof, and forward again. In a moment I was in the control
tower.
* * * * *
Captain Wilkes was there, seated alone with his electro-telescope
beside him. He slid the oval doors closed upon us.
"Your ship's in sight," he greeted me. "Thought you'd be interested."
Patrolship-2, coming to convoy us. I took a look through the eye-piece
of the telescope. Familiar vessel on which I had spent so many months.
Its long cylindrical alumite hull, with the pressure-dome over its
single upper deck, was painted by sunlight on one side and starlight on
the other as it headed diagonally toward us. By the range-finder on the
telescope I measured its visual length.
"Ten thousand miles off us," I said to the captain.
"Yes. Just about. Now listen, Fanning--there'll be no contact. It will
circle us, close at hand. If the passengers ask you why we need any
convoy--we don't want any panic here you know."
What he had in mind about explaining this convoy was never disclosed.
He was staring through a duplicate eye-piece, and suddenly his words
were checked as he sucked in his breath.
"Good Lord, Fanning--"
I saw it also--a tiny puff of electronic light at the top of the
oncoming patrolship's dome. There was nothing else to be seen, I
searched the starfield in that second of premonitory horror. Absolutely
nothing visible. Just that puff of light where an electronic shot must
have struck.
"Fanning--you saw that?" Captain Wilkes murmured.
"Yes."
Another few seconds. It seemed an eternity. And then the Patrolship
wavered; drunkenly lurching and slowly turning over! Ghastly silent
drama, out there in space ten thousand miles away. We could not see its
details; just the tiny image of the ship, lurching, turning end over
end.
A derelict in space. My horrified imagination pictured the air hissing
out, spewing wreckage and bodies out perhaps. Ship of the dead, all in
those seconds. Then it was hanging poised, slowly turning on a drunken
axis of its own. The leprous, smashed dome was for a moment visible as
it turned.
The Phantom raider had struck again!
* * * * *
My comrades. Thirty of them meeting their deaths out there in that
moment. The thought numbed me. Captain Wilkes had leaped to his feet.
"Why--why, good Lord, it got them! And now--us next!"
Our convoy gone. Unquestionably that was because the phantom was after
us!
"What are you going to do?" I murmured. "Not tell the passengers--"
"Good Lord, no. Nor the crew. What good would it do? We're not armed
with long-range guns--no preparations to make. Only spread panic maybe
among my men. Some of them might want to try and persuade me to turn
back to Earth."
"And you're not going to do that?"
"Hell, no." Captain Wilkes was a choleric fellow. His ham-like fist
crashed down on his desk. "I was told to run this cargo to Mars, and
by Heaven, Fanning, that's what I'm going to do. Make a run for it."
He swung for his controls. "I can use a greater Earth-repulsion and
once we get past Asteroid-9, by a little jockeying I can use that, too.
We'll see if there's any damn' phantom-ship going to overtake us."
It was a weird, gruesome feeling, realization that in all probability
we were being pursued by something we couldn't see. Something still ten
thousand miles away. Could it overtake us? Certainly not in less than a
few hours, perhaps not even in a day. And then, would there be a flash
of an electronic space-gun, weirdly from its unseen source? The crash
of our hull, or our pressure-dome exploding outward; the wild rush
and hiss of our air out into the vacuum of space? And then death by
suffocation all in a minute or two.
The thing had me shuddering. I must have been murmuring something of my
thoughts, for Captain Wilkes retorted:
"If they crash us with a shot they might very easily injure the cargo.
More apt to try running in close to us--a boarding party with powered
pressure-suits." His fist thumped his desk again. "An' by Heaven, if
they try that--you got a gun, Fanning?"
"Yes," I agreed. I had a small weapon of the paralyzer-gun type,
efficient at a few feet of range. But of what use against an enemy you
couldn't see?
Wilkes presently dismissed me. "You keep your own counsel," he told me.
He lowered his voice. "By what your Chief Rankin intimated, there's at
least a reasonable possibility that we've some damn' spy on board."
"Well, if that's a fact," I said, "the Phantom won't try cracking us
with a long-range gun and killing the spy as well as the rest of us."
"Exactly. That's what I'm counting on. Keep your eyes open and your
ears stretched. Report to me anything that looks queer."
* * * * *
I left him presently. Dogged, indomitable old fellow. He was seated
grimly at his desk with his astronomical charts as he figured by what
ingenuity he could map an emergency course to give the little _Seven
Stars_ its greatest speed. The ship was silent as I padded the length
of the superstructure roof and went down to the stern triangle. By
ship-routine it was now about eleven at night. The Martian Passengers
were out of sight, sleeping probably. None of the crew were about,
save the man in the aft peak with his small, wide-angle telescope.
The wreck of the patrolship was certainly far beyond sight of the
naked eye. This stern lookout evidently hadn't spotted it, and in a
moment now I knew it would be beyond his range also. The captain and I,
doubtless, were the only ones who knew what had happened.
I went forward along the side deck. In the men's smoking lounge,
amidships in the superstructure, I heard voices, caught a glimpse as I
went past of Arthur Jerome, the television lecturer, and Livingston,
the Earth Ambassador to Mars, in there with Green, the ship's purser.
Did that mean that Brenda Carson and her brother were still on the
forward peak? I went cautiously forward. They were there--the blobs of
them, faintly starlit, showed where they were standing together at one
of the side bull's-eyes. Upon impulse, instead of joining them, I slid
unseen into the shadows of a loading engine.
"Oh, Philip--" The girl's voice was faintly audible in the silence.
"I'm so frightened. You think we can do it safely?"
"Yes, of course. I'll make sure--" He lowered his voice and I lost the
rest of it.
"When?" she murmured.
"I'll just take a look presently. We're not there yet--closer in a few
hours."
What, in Heaven's name, could that mean? Were these two spies, planted
here on the _Seven Stars_ by the phantom-bandits? Were they discussing
the attack which Captain Wilkes and I feared? Certainly it did not
seem so. Young Philip Carson wasn't much older than his sister. Slim,
handsome, rather effeminate-looking fellow, with a weak jaw and slack
mouth. He wore black and white trousers, somewhat like hers. He and she
seemed devoted to each other. Rankin had told me that Philip Carson had
a bad record of gambling and bad companions. Was the girl entangled
because of him?
My mind went back to the meager details which Rankin had given me.
Brenda and Philip Carson came of a cultured and once-rich family in
New York. Their father--their only close living relative--had been a
research physicist. An eccentric old fellow; he had built a laboratory
down on Long Island where, working in secret, he was laboriously
experimenting on something. Two years ago the place had exploded.
Presumably he had been killed. But in the wreckage his body had not
been found; nor was there anything to give a clue as to what he had
been doing there.
Had he been building the phantom space-raider? The thought was obvious
now. Brenda and Philip had denied knowing, when the authorities had
questioned them. And now they were going to Mars, on this of all
voyages, and for no reason that they had been able to give. Was the
vanished eccentric Professor Robert Carson the Phantom raider? My heart
leaped as I heard another fragment from the girl.
"You think you got his message correctly?"
"Yes, of course I did."
"If we can do it safely--Oh, Phil--the location."
"I've got it all figured out, Bren," he insisted. "Even made a little
map--got it in the wallet of my jacket."
That stiffened me. I could see the blob of him standing there with
her. The folds of his hooded cape, like hers, fell almost to his feet.
But his arm held the cape draped a little to one side. I could see his
white shirt; he was wearing no jacket. It would be in his sleeping
cubby then.
For a moment more I crouched in the shelter of the little loading
engine; I caught a few more fragments, but they were not important.
* * * * *
A wallet in young Carson's cubby, with a map in it? I shifted silently
backward, reached the side deck and padded aft. The smoking lounge was
empty now. The little interior cross corridor of the superstructure
was dim and silent. Carson and his sister had connecting rooms, with
corridor doors side by side. Cautiously I tried them. They were locked.
In a moment I was out to the side deck. Carson's window was closed;
I pulled at the vertical sash and it yielded, slid outward. The room
was dim, with just a faint glow of the corridor light coming over the
lattice-grille above the door.
I jumped over the sill; landed silently in the room. No need for any
lengthy search; his jacket was here, folded on a chair. The wallet was
in a pocket. Swiftly I riffled through it, came upon a folded square
of notepaper. The map? I was opening it. By the dim sheen of reflected
light I could see its penciled scrawl. And suddenly I was stricken
by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Someone coming. I
jumped on the chair. Through the grille I could catch a glimpse of a
cloaked figure coming along the corridor. Carson or the girl--in that
second I could not tell which.
But at all events I had no desire to get caught here by either of them.
I got back out the window just in time. Aft down the side deck there
was the blob of a loitering figure, a big, bulky silhouette. It was
Walter Livingston, the Earth-Mars Ambassador. The tip of his cigarette
glowed in the dimness as he stood by one of the side bull's-eyes. Was
he watching these windows of Carson and the girl? Did he see me? I had
no way of telling. I ran forward, ducked around the superstructure
corner. The bow-peak triangle was empty; the chairs where the group of
us had been sitting were still here.
There was enough light for me to examine the folded sheet of paper I
had purloined. It seemed a crude map. A rough, penciled sketch. But a
map of what? There were the ragged outlines of what might be intended
to represent mountains. The scribbled word: "Andros." A dotted line
through what might be a mountain pass. And then a tiny X.
I stared at the thing, puzzled. A few hundred years ago the fabled
surface-ship pirates of Earth's romantic sea-history supposedly made
maps like this. Maps of buried treasure. Pirates' gold. Were Carson and
his young sister after some treasure? Where? On Earth? Mars? Little
Deimos? Asteroid-9? That thought leaped at me. Certainly they had
shown a queer interest in my chance remark about Asteroid-9. We were
not far from it now. Fifty thousand miles perhaps--would pass at our
closest point to it in an hour of two. I stared through the bull's-eye
beside me. It was down there, diagonally ahead of us--a full-round,
putty-colored disk, with the configurations of its mountains and the
turgid clouds of its atmosphere beginning to be visible.
But what could any of that have to do with the Phantom raider, or the
attack on the patrolship and the impending attack upon us? Surely there
was no treasure on Asteroid-9. The treasure, if you could call it that,
was right here on board the little _Seven Stars_.
I was crouching now in the shadow of the loading engine on the
bow-peak, puzzled by my rush of thoughts. Should I take this to Captain
Wilkes? Vaguely I realized that perhaps I should, but something stopped
me. My own instinctive feelings for Brenda Carson. She seemed somehow
so pathetic. Surely she was no plotting murderess. Her brother--yes.
But the girl--protecting someone she loved? Was her father really the
Phantom raider? His invention an X-flyer endowed with mechanical,
electronic invisibility? I knew that such a thing was scientifically
possible, of course. But Professor Carson was a frail old man. And my
mind leaped back to some other things Chief Rankin had told me. The
Phantom was thought to be a notorious Earth-criminal who, a few years
ago, had been known as the "Chameleon." A fellow skilled in the art of
wax disguise so that none of the Earth crime-trackers really knew what
he looked like. He was wanted in both Great New York and Great London
for mail-tube murders. Nothing was known of his identity save that he
had once had an operation for a fractured skull, where in the back of
the skull a big triangular platinum plate had been inserted to take the
place of the shattered bone. A criminal surgeon, dying, had confessed
that much; had said he had performed the operation. And then he had
mumbled something about the Chameleon being the Phantom raider.
Surely such a notorious skilled adventurer could not be old Professor
Carson. I decided not to have Brenda and Philip hauled before the
captain now for questioning.
* * * * *
Thoughts are instant things. I was crouching there behind the engine
loader no more than a moment; and suddenly down the other side deck
just beyond the smoking lounge, I saw a moving figure. A slight figure
in dark cloak and hood--the bottoms of black and white trousers were
visible. Brenda? It made my heart pound. For a second I stared as she
ducked into a doorway. I was there in twenty seconds, until I saw the
cloaked shadow of her going down a companion ladder into the ship's
hold.
Swiftly I followed. Down two eight-foot levels, and then I caught
another glimpse of her as she moved into the lower passage. It was
a metal catwalk with small cubbies opening from it. The ship's
air-renewers, ventilating system; a cubby controlling the hull
gravity-plate shifters; other mechanism rooms. She went past them, a
furtive little shadow. And stopped at what seemed the door to one of
the tiny pressure chambers of an exit-porte in the side of the hull.
"Oh, you, Mr. Fanning? What do you want down here?" The voice in the
silence so startled me that I whirled. It was Kellogg, the ship's
gravity-control operator. In his shirtsleeves, pipe in hand, with a
green eyeshade on his forehead, he had seen me from the door of his
little cubby.
"Why--" I murmured. "Just coming down to see you." I turned to join
him. And suddenly a buzzer in his control room interrupted him. I stood
while he answered it--an audio-tube for direct voice-transmission.
"Yes, Captain Wilkes--" And then Kellogg gasped and clutched at the
table beside him; then he whirled upon me, his face chalk-white. "Our
radio-helio is smashed! Someone--something smashed it!"
Our little _Seven Stars_ was cut off from Earth or Mars communication!
Captain Wilkes had evidently decided to flash a call for help to Earth,
and found that the apparatus had been smashed! But even that startling
news instantly was stricken from Kellogg and me. Out in the corridor
quite near us a low scream sounded! And then there was the sound of air
hissing!
"What the devil!" Kellogg gasped.
My gun was in my hand as we ran. There was nothing in sight on the dim
little catwalk. The scream had died. The air-hissing stopped.
"Somebody went into the pressure-chamber!" Kellogg muttered. "What in
the hell--"
"The pressure-chamber door-slide was closed. I knew the mechanism
of these exit-portes. There were four of them in the hull-bottom of
the _Seven Stars_--two on each side. There was an inner door-slide; a
sealed pressure-room some ten feet square and six feet high; and an
outer door-slide. Ordinarily the mechanism was automatic. The outer
slide must be closed if the inner one was open. To make an exit, one
went into the pressure-room; closed the catwalk door, and with manual
control slowly opened the outer slide, so that the air in the sealed
room would hiss out into space. After which, with a thirty-second
interval, the outer slide would close and the inner one slowly open,
admitting the ship's air again into the pressure-room.
"Someone worked the manual controls wrong!" Kellogg was muttering. He
gestured to where there was a duplicate set of controls out here in the
corridor. "That outer slide opened too quickly!"
We could hear the last of the air rushing out with a wild gush. A stab
of horror went into my heart. Brenda Carson in there, trying to escape
from the ship--not knowing how to work the controls--opening that outer
slide too quickly.
The air in the pressure-room was gone in a few seconds. Then we heard
the click of the outer slide closing. The inner door began very slowly
opening. With a muttered curse of impatience Kellogg twitched at the
control levers here. The inner door slid wide.
We clutched at the catwalk rail to hold ourselves against the gust
of wind as the little pressure-room filled. And then we rushed into
it. Pressure suits, powered as I knew by tiny gravity-repulsers and a
rocket-stream mechanism, stood here in racks. One of them lay here on
the floor, entangled with a rack-post so that it had not blown out.
Brenda evidently had tried to get into it and failed.
"Look! Good Lord--poor little thing--" Kellogg murmured. He had slid
aside a tiny bull's-eye shade. Through it a segment of space outside
the hull was visible.
We had only a glimpse of a ghastly body, mangled by the explosion of
the pressure within itself, out in the pressureless vacuum of space.
It floated past us, some forty feet out. Held poised by the gravity,
the nearness and bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Horrible little satellite,
already finding an orbit of its own, slowly circling around us.
* * * * *
I staggered back from the bull's-eye. As I rushed back along the
catwalk my horrified mind was clamoring with the vague thought: had
Brenda operated that pressure-mechanism wrongly? Or had someone on the
catwalk, at the controls there, done it?
That thought, too, was stricken away. I reached the forward deck
triangle. The bow-peak lookout was calling up to Captain Wilkes:
"Passenger overboard! Brenda Carson! It's Miss Brenda Carson!"
Dead girl in the space-light. I could not look at the horrible thing as
it rounded our bow and came slowly floating past again.
"You, Fanning--what's happened? Brenda Carson, he says."
Arthur Jerome stood calling to me from his stateroom door at the bow
superstructure corner. He was in his nightrobe with a negligee hastily
wrapped around him.
"Yes--" I gasped. "Brenda Carson. She--"
"And I heard something about radio-helio room wrecked." The big, florid
television lecturer seemed in a panic. Experienced space-traveler,
but he had never run into anything like this before. I wouldn't blame
him for his terror. But I had no time for him now. The ship was in
confusion. I could hear the Martians, below deck in the bow, shouting
with frightened questions. Two or three members of the crew were
running up to Captain Wilkes who was outside his turret calling down
orders.
I ran down the side deck. One of the excited crew stopped me. "You seen
young Philip Carson? Captain wants him."
I shook my head and ran on. Somebody else was calling Carson's name. I
mounted the companionway to the superstructure roof. Had Philip Carson
vanished? They couldn't find him? Well, what I knew about Philip Carson
now I'd certainly tell Captain Wilkes! Suddenly I realized fully that
because of Brenda I had wanted to keep silent--but there was no need of
that now.
From the superstructure roof, as I ran forward along it, I could see
down to the side deck. A cloaked figure there. Philip Carson. I had
just a glimpse as he darted into a door under me. A ladder was nearby.
My little paralyzer-gun was in my hand as I climbed down the ladder,
reached the dark side-deck. The commotion was all up forward; there was
no one here at the moment. The corridor door into which Carson had run
was beside me. I ran into it, ten feet or so and into a cross corridor.
Came to his doorway. It was locked. I ran around to the deck again. His
window was near here.
The glassite pane of the window was closed and locked. The inner
fabric-shade was drawn down. What was he doing in there? Searching for
his map? For other things which might be incriminating?
I had a few instruments hidden in my clothes, tiny devices which we
of the Interplanetary Patrol sometimes have occasion to use--a small
electric listener and a tiny X-ray fluoroscope screen. The listener
yielded the sound of a man's panting breath, his furtive, fumbling
movements within the dark little cubby. Then I tried the X-ray, through
the fabric-shrouded glassite pane of the window. It shot its invisible,
soundless rays through the window into the cubby. The little hooded
three-inch screen in my palm glowed with the greenish fluoroscopic
X-ray image.
A kneeling skeleton was revealed--the skeleton of a man kneeling in
there with his back to me. I stared, and suddenly gasped, with my
breath stopped. The back of the skeleton's skull was visible--the
image-shadow there was of a different density from the bones of his
skull! A dark triangular patch--not bone, but metal! The man with the
metal skull! Philip Carson, of notorious Chameleon fame! The Phantom
raider! I had him here identified at last! Had him trapped here!
* * * * *
With a blow of my gun-butt I smashed through the glassite pane; tore
the fabric-shade aside. This room was dark. I had an instant's glimpse
of the dark blob of his crouching figure. There was the whiz of
something he threw at me; the tinkling of glass as some fragile little
thing struck against my forehead. I recall that my paralyzer ray darted
into the dark room. Perhaps it caught him, held him for a second.
But my head was reeling; my senses swiftly fading, with a cold sweat
breaking out all over me.
And then I was aware that I had fallen to the deck with my gun
clattering away. With my last dim thought came the realization that
I was fainting. That tiny glass globe which had broken against my
forehead--I knew what it was! A little bomb of acetycholine, a weird
drug to lower the blood-pressure and cause me to faint. I fought, but
it was useless. My senses faded.
Then after an interval I seemed vaguely to be conscious that someone
was bending over me. A dark cloak.... Again I knew only blankness;
and then slowly my senses were coming back. Weak, dizzy, with my head
roaring, my body bathed in cold sweat, I found myself still lying on
the dark deck. Perhaps I had been out only a moment or two. I could
still hear the commotion up forward. I staggered to my feet; saw the
cloaked figure as it ran into the superstructure. Carson making his
getaway! I had a glimpse of him again, two levels down on the dim
catwalk, and saw him dart into the pressure-chamber. I was too late
getting there. The metal pressure-door closed in my face.
But I had him! I could do to him what he had done to Brenda! I started
for the manual controls. I could open that outer slide, let the
pressure-room air out with a rush before he could get into his space
suit, blast him out into space, or suffocate him in the pressure-room.
But I had over-taxed my strength. My blood-pressure was still too low
from that accursed drug. My senses were fading again and I sank to the
floor. Weakly I tried to call Kellogg. But he wasn't in his little
nearby cubby now.
I did not quite lose consciousness this time. I heard the air slowly
going out through the outside opening slide. Then heard the click
as the automatic mechanism closed it. The corridor slide in another
moment, automatically was slowly opening. The rush of air into the
little room helped revive me. I got to my feet again; ran into the
room. I could see the empty space on the rack where he had taken one of
the powered pressure suits and escaped. At the bull's-eye observation
porte I had a glimpse of him--a bloated figure in his air-filled
suit--a tiny comet with a radiance of rocket-stream like a tail behind
it.
The blob of him in a moment had vanished. Where did he expect to go?
Diagonally ahead, and far down in the glittering starfield, the round,
putty-colored disk of Asteroid-9 was visible.
My strength had almost fully come back to me now. Quickly I got
into another of the power-suits. They were a somewhat old-fashioned
model, but adequate enough, a double-shelled fabric with electronic
pressure-absorbing current in it; air-renewers, and the small
power-units. I bloated the suit in another moment; closed the corridor
slide. I let the air rush out through the outer slide as quickly as I
dared.
And then I catapulted out, not bothering with the rocket-stream but
using full gravity-repulsion against the bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Far
down, ahead of me, for an instant I could just see the speck which was
the fleeing Carson. Over me the bulk of the _Seven Stars_ hung, a great
alumite cylinder, receding, dwindled by distance until it was only a
tiny speck, lost among the blazing stars.
With the huge, dull-lead disk of Asteroid-9 growing in visual size
under me, I hurtled downward, using the asteroid's full attraction now
as I sped after the escaping Carson.
* * * * *
Alone in space; a little drifting world of yourself. It is an eerie
feeling. I have no idea how long that descent to Asteroid-9 took; one
loses all sense of time as well as space, hurtling alone through the
starry universe. The _Seven Stars_ long since was gone, vanished in the
black illimitable distances of the blazing firmament above me. Head
down, with full attraction in the little gravity plates of the padded
shoulders of my bloated suit, like a diver I headed, hurtling for the
dull-lead surface.
I had picked up velocity swiftly. The great round disk of Asteroid-9
widened, spread, crawled outward and seemed visually coming up. For
a time, sunlight was a thin stream on its distant curving limb of
mountains. Then I went into the cone of its shadow. At once the look of
the weird leaden mountains changed; starlight and earthlight mellow
with a faint sheen that struck down through the clouds and tinged the
giant ragged peaks with a tinting glow.
The clouds, still far down, were broken in thin stratas here over this
hemisphere. The disk had widened now so that presently it filled all
the lower half of the firmament; and a visual convexity had come to
it. I tried to calculate my velocity by the apparent enlarging of the
desolate scene as it rushed up at me.
Where was Carson? Long since, I had lost sight of the tiny speck
which had been he. Was I overtaking him? I could not tell. With the
leaden glow of the asteroid's surface as a background, I knew I could
be quite close to him and still not see him. Undoubtedly he was not
using his rocket-stream now; had only used it in starting, for quick
repulsion against the ship's hull. I was sure he could not be very far
below me unless, during the time which had passed, he had headed in
some other direction, departing from a straight, swift descent. Could
he drop faster than I was dropping? I doubted it. Unless he was very
skilled--or very desperate, holding the asteroid's attraction to a
dangerous point. I held my own until I dared hold it no longer. I was
in the upper atmosphere now. In every direction, save above me, the
planet's dark surface spread out to its jagged, circular horizon.
Then at last I dared not hold the attraction longer. With all the tiny
plates in my suit electronized to full repulsion, I began slackening my
fall. Still I had not glimpsed Carson. Disappointment was within me.
What a long chance was this! A five-hundred-mile hemisphere of utter
desolation. No food; no water. And I had no weapons or instruments,
save the single little paralyzer-gun which I had snatched from the deck
when I recovered my senses. I was beginning to be sorry now that I had
so hastily left the _Seven Stars_. No chance of getting back; the die
was cast, here on little Asteroid-9 pitted against this resourceful,
youthful astonishing Interplanetary murderer.
What was Carson's plan? Escape from the ship had been a desperate
necessity for him, of course. And my memory was back to the fragments
I had heard between him and Brenda. I could understand them better
now! They had planned from the beginning to escape to Asteroid-9! And
poor little Brenda, entangled in this criminality with her brother, had
left the ship first, and met her death. Memory of the map they had had
came suddenly to me. I had it in my pocket now; I tried to conjure what
it had looked like. Outlines of mountains; the word Andros. Was that
the name of one of the asteroid's mountain peaks? Probably it was. I
cursed myself for my ignorance. The Phantom raider probably was based
upon this desolate asteroid. A hide-out here, with food and water and
possibly with some of the raiders' men living here. And Carson was
dropping now to join them.
What chance had I against a layout like that?
But I had no choice now but hurtle downward, trying to check my descent
as best I could. For a time, as I came out from under the clouds, with
the dark, fantastic surface of naked, ragged little peaks no more than
twenty or thirty thousand feet down, it seemed that I had been too
brash; I was dropping too fast; never would I be able to check it. I
would crash....
* * * * *
But that, too, was an error, born of my momentarily despairing
thoughts. I was presently poised, some ten thousand feet up. The
highest of the little peaks was no more than half that. They stood
in a tumbled mass--jagged needle-spires--rocks and buttes and great
round-top boulders, with ravines and gullies between them. Scene of
utter, naked desolation, convulsed landscape, frozen into immobility.
And suddenly my heart was pounding with abrupt exultation. Far down,
where the starlight and Earthlight bathed a little peak, I saw the
speck which was the descending Carson! Just for a second the tiny
outline of his bloated suit was clear against the background of a
shining rock. Then he dropped into an inky shadow and was gone again.
I tried to mark the spot. A little triplet of spires, standing like
sentinels above a small dark valley. Was that Andros, a landmark here?
Probably it was.
I was down in perhaps another half hour, with the triplet of spires
standing up against what was now a sullen sky of broken leaden clouds
through which the starlight and Earthlight fitfully shone. I had
landed, by all that I could judge, about half an Earth-mile from where
Carson had dropped. Had he seen me coming down above him? Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
With my helmet off, and with my lungs panting as they tried to adjust
themselves to the weird air, I crouched for a moment in the shadow of
a rock, peering, listening. There was nothing. It seemed a dead world,
myself its only inhabitant--a silence so utter that my own breath, my
pounding heart were roaring in my ears.
I started in a moment, heading along a ridged, fantastic little terrain
at the bottom of a shadowed valley. The deflated suit hung in baggy
folds upon me; the bulky helmet was folded, hanging down from the back
of my neck. Half a mile to where Carson had dropped. Gun in hand I
advanced as cautiously as I could, until presently I was following a
ragged ditch with the triple spires of Andros looming above me.
Was this where Carson had landed? So far as I could judge, it seemed
so. I was tense, alert with the vague, horrible feeling that I was
walking into ambush.
Then ahead of me, in a distant shadow, it seemed that there was a faint
stir of movement. Soundlessly I melted down to the lead-gray rocks. I
could not see the shadow now, but every instant I expected the luminous
darkness to be stabbed with a bursting bolt. There was nothing.
Suddenly the stillness was broken by a faint scraping sound. It seemed
fairly close, and into the darkness from whence it had come I aimed my
ray; pressed its lever.
There was a faint, gasping scream; then a choked silence. I jumped to
my feet, holding the paralyzer-gun leveled as it throbbed and quivered
in my grip. Got him! He couldn't move. He was rooted there in the
darkness, with rigid, stiffened muscles as the ray held him.
I saw him in an instant, the dark blob of him almost merged with the
shadows, with his baggy space-suit like my own deflated in folds upon
him, and his helmet folded back.
Triumphant, I dashed forward; and then stopped transfixed, amazed.
The paralyzed figure, stricken upright here on the rocks wasn't young
Carson! Above the folded helmet there was a head of bobbed blonde hair!
Brenda! Brenda, not dead! Not that ghastly thing that was a gruesome
little satellite of the _Seven Stars_!
I saw her rigid face, with goggling mouth and staring eyes. Brenda
mute, stricken by my ray. I snapped it off frantically; called to her
as I dashed up. And as the ray released her, I saw her waver; then,
with her knees buckling, she sank into a little heap on the ground.
If only I had some water to dash into her face! Frantically I knelt,
holding her head, brushing her curls from her damp forehead. The ray, I
knew, upon her for so short a time, should not quite do this to her. It
was her emotion, her terror which had caused her to faint.
My mind went back to that hooded figure, cloaked, which I had chased
in the ship's corridor. I had had a vague indecision, then had decided
it was Brenda--and the ship's lookout at the bow-peak had confirmed my
fears. But that had been Philip, and it was Brenda whom I had chased
that second time, following her out the porte, hurtling into space
after her.
"Brenda--"
She opened her eyes presently, bewildered, but she was unharmed.
"Oh--you--I was so frightened."
* * * * *
I held her as she recovered, and presently she was filling in all the
grim details of her tragic little story. Whatever her brother Philip's
propensities for gambling and bad companions, he had been no criminal.
They had lost their father; had been truthful when they said they did
not know what Professor Carson had been building in his lonely little
laboratory. But they knew enough so that when the Phantom bandit began
his mysterious raids, they suspected it was their father's ship; the
laboratory explosion merely a blind. He had often mentioned, when they
were children, that the dream of his life was to discover and perfect
electronic invisibility.
"Albert Einstein of two hundred years ago," she was telling me now.
"Father studied his writings and his theories very closely. He said
that the secret of practical mechanical invisibility was clearly
forecast by Einstein's discoveries."
"And you think now," I murmured, "your father is this mysterious
Phantom raider?"
Her little face clouded. Her blue eyes, misty with Earthlight which
was striking down upon us now through the clouds, gazed at me with a
pathetic appeal.
"We did not know. We--we were afraid so. And then Philip got a message
one night--"
Weird occurrence. Young Carson had been on the porch of their Long
Island home. From the sky overhead, where nothing was to be seen, had
come a little stab of waving white light. A helio signal. From their
father? Certainly it seemed so. It told them to come secretly to
Asteroid-9. He would be there, at the base of Andros. And so they had
come to try and help their father.
"Help him?" I murmured.
"Yes. Oh, Mr. Fanning--"
"Jim is shorter," I interjected.
"--Jim, you see, we couldn't believe father is a criminal. Captured
maybe and forced to operate his ship by these bandits, and appealing to
us for help."
Desperate adventure indeed. But they had tackled it; had taken passage
on the little _Seven Stars_ which they understood would pass very close
to Asteroid-9, this voyage. And they had known completely nothing of
the _Seven Stars'_ cargo or of any plot which the raider might have
against her! Brenda gasped now when I told her of those angles.
And there were still other angles that puzzled me. "Brenda, have you
ever heard of an Earth-criminal called the Chameleon?"
She had not; and when I described his exploits of a few years ago,
she was convinced that by no possible chance could her aged father
have been secretly doing things like that. Nor Philip either, for that
matter. She declared it vehemently, and I believed her. But the man
with the metal skull had been on the _Seven Stars_ as stowaway, or spy
among the passengers, ship's officers or crew. I had seen him there in
young Carson's stateroom.
Brenda, when I was chasing her, had eluded me. "I saw you fighting with
somebody at Philip's window," she told me now. "I was going to escape
from the ship then."
"Even though Philip was dead, you were going on with your plans alone?"
"Yes, why not?" She smiled her twisted little smile. "Then I saw you
fall to the deck. I ran, bent over you. I--I thought you were dead. So
I--I ran down to the porte and took off. Philip and I had planned it so
carefully. Oh, poor Philip!"
"He didn't miscalculate those air-mechanisms," I muttered. "That damned
villain must have been there in the corridor for an instant while I was
talking to Kellogg, and shoved the controls--killed Philip."
And I had tried to do the same thing to Brenda! I could only thank the
Lord now that I had failed!
* * * * *
The two of us, alone here on Asteroid-9. No food nor water. Perhaps the
only inhabitants of this desolate little world.