ORDEAL
They clung to the stanchions, watching the rocky surface of Hastur lurch
by them, even in the protection of their suits horribly jolted by the
choppy acceleration. They clung wondering how long the _Columbia_ would
stand up under a type of punishment for which it had never been
designed.
“Something’s wrong,” complained Timbie. “The fire should take place so
that, to my limited senses it seems continuous. It isn’t doing that at
all.” He pressed a button. “I can sense a distinct interval between the
release of the firing apparatus and the explosion, and another interval
before the reaction shoves us ahead.”
“Look at the stars!” cried Bob Vickers.
They glanced in the direction of his pointing finger and gasped. Above
them in the inky blackness were no longer the tiny pin-points that they
had been seeing so far; they had become huge globes of multi-colored
light. And there was one immense thing which visibly swam in the ether.
But it was more than just that. Way out beyond the globes, which looked
like glowing baseballs, and basketballs, they caught a flashing
something. It grew visibly as they watched, swelled until it seemed that
it must batter its way through the mass of luminaries around them, send
them in flaming ruin down the surface of the little world. Huger and
more terrifying it grew, like a movie closeup, until it filled the
entire vista of the heavens. The light should have been blinding; it
should have burned out their brains, yet they could behold it without so
much as being dazzled. Now the size of it was such that no longer could
they see its full circle, but only a section of the titanic surface.
Abruptly the smooth aspect of it faded and sharp prominences began to
appear. It was no perfect sphere, this body, but a roughly-circular
mass, shot through with enormous cracks, riddled with holes, jagged with
mountains. One spire-like protuberance seemed to be pointing directly at
them, aiming itself at the ship.
Paralyzed with mingled amazement and terror they stood, bracing
themselves for an impact which would destroy them utterly, volatilize
them and the ship with such titanic swiftness that their consciousness
would be obliterated before any sensations of it could reach them. They
would see the destroyer almost upon them, and that would be all.
But they were wrong. It screamed down out of the night of space above
them, not touching their ship, seemingly a good distance away. No
concussion wave struck them, yet they saw the surface of Hastur cleft
and crumpled before them, saw the monster bury itself in the planetoid.
There was a flare of light which made them blink for an instant, and
that was all.
“Veer away,” gasped Nick. “We don’t want to be tumbled into that chasm.”
Timbie’s fingers darted over the controls, and they were lurched
side-wise as the _Columbia_ went off at a tangent to their former
course. The bewilderment of what they had just seen still lay upon them;
their minds were numb with the incredibility of it.
Dorothy’s eyes met Nick’s. “Are we dead?” she whispered. “Were we all
killed in that collision and is this but the last flickers of my
consciousness?”
“I was wondering that, too,” came Nick’s voice over the space-phones.
“But it couldn’t be so if it occurred to you, too. There’s some simple
explanation for all this, but for the life of me, I can’t think what it
is.”
“Oh-oh,” said Timbie. “More fireworks!”
* * * * *
Before them loomed a vast cliff wall, so high that they could not see
its top. It had not been there an instant before. Somehow, they could
not feel the horror of a few moments back, yet they braced themselves
again for a shock.
A sudden jolt wrenched them away from the stanchions; the ship came to a
stop as a warning light flickered ominously on the control board. Yet,
as they picked themselves up, the cliff had disappeared; it was not
behind them, and before them stretched the familiar surface of Hastur,
above them the velvet of space, flecked with pinpricks of light.
“A puncture!” cried Nick. He grabbed the speaker.
“Nick,” came the voice of Marquis. “There’s a hole about the size of a
soup plate in sector seven. Don’t worry; we’ll be sealing it off
directly, and we’ve locked it off. Call you back when it’s done.”
“Okay, be careful.”
He turned to the others. “We’ll be on our way shortly. Anybody see that
pit we turned off our course to avoid?”
“It’s gone, Nick,” said Hartnett, “but the show’s still on.” He nodded
toward the port.
Something was coming over the horizon, something that looked partly like
an arm, and partly like a molten river. It was both a flow and a
wriggling, and, as they watched, another glowing thing snaked up from
behind the distant ridges. This second thing went straight up into the
sky, curving out as if looking for something upon which to swoop.
And now the main body of the thing began to be visible. It was vaguely
conical, with the apex inverted, the arms of it issuing forth from the
sides. A single glowing eye bulged from the top.
“It looks nasty,” said Nick, “but I don’t think it’s very powerful.”
“It might bang us up a bit, though,” added Timbie.
“The beastie is after something. Look at the way those three arms are
swishing around.”
The thing was virtually monochrome except for the jet black of the
single eye. The arms were flailing in the general direction of the ship,
coming closer with each cast. But apparently it had not reached them
yet.
“Do you suppose it can’t see well?” asked Dorothy.
Before anyone could answer her the creature had already acted. For
caught now in one of the brilliant arms was a flattish many-legged
thing, looking more like a centipede than anything else. It had a barbed
tail like a scorpion, and was writhing and trying to spear the other
desperately. But the hunter had calculated well and encircled its prey
in such a manner that the barb could not reach it. Closer to the
brilliant body the struggling thing was borne, then a slit appeared in
the side of the victor, and a deep red orifice grew. The flattish
creature was popped into this; the cavity closed with a snap and again
the shell of brilliant cone-thing seemed to be unbroken.
[Illustration: _Caught in the brilliant arms was a flattish thing that
looked more like a centipede than anything else._]
“Nice fauna here,” remarked Nick. “Did your party ever meet up with that
beauty?”
Hartnett grinned. “In a way. But watch closely, now. There’s more to
come.”
The bright cone rested motionless on the ridge, two of its three arms
lying motionless. They couldn’t see the third, but supposed that it,
too, was at rest. Unwinking, the huge eyes stared apparently upward.
But off in another direction what looked like a cloud was approaching.
It drifted easily, dropping to the surface now and then and lazing along
for a while, then rising up again. The size of it made them gasp. It
seemed to be larger than the _Columbia_.
Now the cone-thing was aware of its approach and the bright arms was in
play again. Like a fisherman casting after trout, the arms threw out.
The cloud came on until it hovered over the cone-creature, then suddenly
it dropped down enveloping it. An instant later it rose and the
cone-creature was gone; the whitish cloud started to drift away.
But something was wrong. It didn’t move as easily as it had done before;
it lurched in a distressed manner.
“What’s wrong with it?” murmured Nick.
“Look, it’s changing color,” cried Dorothy.
A rusty stain had suddenly appeared in the cloud. Before their eyes it
grew rapidly, the core of it an angry red, the spreading stain rust. The
cloud-thing rose up slowly, but the red spot grew. And as they watched,
a bulge appeared in the red, grew like a blister and finally burst. From
the cavity the brilliant arms of the cone-thing appeared, followed by
the rest of the creature.
It lingered in the opening as the stricken cloud sank slowly to the
surface of the planetoid. Now the red stain had almost completely
blotted out the normal white of the cloud and they saw that the thing
was beginning to crumble where the cone-creature had emerged. It
dissolved into a sort of dust leaving the cone-thing in much the same
position it had been in before, with the single great eye staring up at
the stars.
“I’ll be damned,” murmured Nick. “It must have poisoned the cloud. But
why did the cloud try to eat it, then?”
“These creatures haven’t any intelligence at all, apparently,”
explained Hartnett. “I’ve seen that happen any number of times. I’d
say offhand that the cloud-mass is attracted by something in the
cone-creature—perhaps that scorpion-thing it just ate, because the
clouds can envelope them without danger. But the cone-creature is
rather well developed as you saw.”
* * * * *
The light on the control board winked. Timbie picked up the phone. “It’s
Marquis,” he said. “They’ve got the patch on the puncture and we’ll be
able to go ahead shortly.”
“Okay,” said Nick. “Tell them to wink when all’s ready.” He turned to
the others. “It doesn’t look as if we’ll make the equator.”
Hartnett smiled grimly. “Well, if we can’t get off, we can at least
gather some valuable data here on such things as the Doppler effect, the
Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction effect, the Einstein effect——”
“Hey!” burst in Dorothy, “did you say Einstein?”
“That’s right. This will be the first opportunity anyone’s ever had to
get real observational data for primary sources.”
“Wait a minute,” she continued. “According to Einstein, there’s an
increase in mass with an increase in speed, isn’t there?”
“Correct, but why get so excited about it?”
“Lots of reasons, Nick. We’re dopes, that’s why. There’s no sense in our
going to the equator; our mass would be so terrific there that we could
never get off.
“But, if there’s a point where the centrifugal force will throw us off,
it’s between here and the equator.”
“She’s right!” screamed Edgar. “And I’m a seventh order moron not to
have thought of it myself. If such a point exists, we must be pretty
close to it now.”
The light flickered again. “All set,” said Joe. “Get ready; we’re
moving.”
Again they grasped the stanchions, their hearts hammering in hopeful
anticipation. Now the effect that Timbie had mentioned was painfully
apparent. They saw him press the firing button, counted beneath their
breath as they waited for the light which would indicate that the rocket
had fired correctly—ordinarily, that light flicked so soon after the
button was pressed that it appeared simultaneous—then braced themselves
for a spurt ahead.
When it came the scene outside had altered again. Now the entire
topography of Hastur seemed to be a vast concavity and they were
climbing up the rim of the great cup. Ahead of them strange wrinkles
appeared in the surface which became normal again as they approached
nearer; behind them, the planetoid had become an incline sloping down to
the edge where the great globes of stars wheeled in the abyss.
“Are we crazy—or is it Hastur?” burst out Bob Vickers.
Hartnett smiled. “These distortions are purely illusionary. It’s the
effect of the rotation.”
Slowly, strangely slow, the _Columbia_ dragged itself forward, sliding
along the planetoid’s surface, more fantastically distorted to their
eyes every instant. Now it seemed to shrink before them until it
appeared that the entire world was smaller than their ship, that the
_Columbia_ was balancing precariously on the ridiculous little globe of
it, and the first spurt from the rockets would send them off into space.
Then Hastur was an incredible long, winding ribbon, lined with
impassable mountains on either side, and they must travel along the
millions of miles of it, as on a runway until at last they came to the
rim. Then it was a geometrical nightmare, a riot of planes and angles
which hurt their eyes to see; up from the surface reared hideously
formed ridges and equally ghastly orifices yawned before them. And
before them stretched leagues upon leagues of glassy surface....
then....
The weird terrain was slipping away from them; they felt themselves
buffeted as the entire ship was rocked violently. “We’ve hit it,” yelled
Bob.
Below them Hastur was already a sphere, and, as Timbie’s fingers pressed
buttons releasing full fire on the rockets, it became again the
incredible globe they had seen when approaching it. They were free.
Dorothy raised her hand to her face to wipe away a tear that was
streaming down her cheek, smiled despite herself when her mailed finger
touched the glassite of her helmet.
“Goodbye, Harry,” she whispered.
* * * * *
“We have here,” declared Edgar, picking his nose, “a small list of the
mysteries of Hastur. So far as I can see, the only way really to break
them is to make up another expedition sometime.”
“Read ’em off, bucko,” said Dorothy.
“First of all—what is Hastur made of? Why, with the terrific speed of
rotation, doesn’t it fly to pieces?”
“I devoted five pages to that in my book,” put in Hartnett. “To sum up
briefly: there’s no reason I know why it should be, but it is.
Therefore, there must be a reason.” They glared at him. “Good way of
wasting time,” he protested.
“Then,” continued Edgar, “we have the matter of the reverse English
radio reception. And I shall personally slay and dismember anyone who
tries to pass it off merely as ‘Einstein effect’.” He looked up. “Well?”
Dorothy smiled. “We like living, Edgar.”
“Speaking of ‘Einstein effect’,” broke in Hartnett, “I presume you
realize by now that all the weird things we saw were enormously
distorted. The stars, for example, were never actually closer. That was
easy to realize, because no more than the customary amount of light was
visible, and no gravitational eccentricities were noted.”
“What about the thing that nearly wiped us out?” asked Bob Vickers.
“A meteor—and a very small one at that. It landed a little distance
away from the ship. Had it hit us, it wouldn’t have blotted us out, but
could have caused considerable damage nonetheless.”
“And the—creatures?”
“Microscopic. Had we been able to move at the time, we could have
ploughed right through them. I’ve seen those illusions a number of
times—we wasted quite a bit of ammunition on them before we got wise.
“And just imagine their consternation when they saw us, apparently
microscopic, too, yet always out of grasp. That’s why the cone-creature
was flailing away at nothing at all. It was trying to catch us.”
“Can you explain wave n?” burst in Edgar.
“I have seven pages on that in my book,” smiled Hartnett. “Summed up, I
say: wave n was discovered while we were looking for something else. We
played around with it until it began to sit up and say ‘uncle.’ We don’t
know from nothing about it.”
Nick puzzled. “What kind of a book is this, Steve?”
Hartnett laughed. “A joke. A beautiful joke on the dear public. Three
hundred pages of pompous drivel, harebrained speculations,
pseudo-science, and what not.
“I made a solemn vow many years ago, Nick, that if I ever became an
explorer, I would write a book to end all travel books, in retaliation
for the ghastly piles of dung about which pedants rave so heartily and
which are crammed down the throats of otherwise innocent schoolboys.
“Here on Hastur I had the time to do it—and it was a good way of
keeping my spirits up. Oh yes—I worked on solid stuff, too—but that
isn’t for public consumption; too deep.”
“But seriously,” broke in Edgar, “haven’t you any idea as to the reason
for the signals in reverse English?”
“I don’t want to be personally slain and dismembered, Edgar. That tabu
explanation very frankly is the only one I’ve found so far. The signals
were warped—unless you want something utterly fantastic like their
traveling around the universe, or being slipped through the continuum.”
“What does that mean?” asked Dorothy.
“Nothing. It’s a sort of gibberish which some people use to explain
things otherwise inexplicable.” He paused as the familiar figure of
Grenville, wreathed with beatific smiles, entered the room. “What’s in
the bottle?”
“I have here,” sighed the chemical engineer, “the ne-plus-ultra of our
own private rocket-blast. It’s smooth!”
“Yeah? What happened to your fingernails?”
“I got hungry!—Okay, if you don’t trust me, I’ll sample it first.” He
uncorked the bottle and took a mighty quaff of the curiously-colored
contents.
“If he starts rolling over on the floor, kicking feebly, we’ll know that
it’s a good roach spray if nothing else,” observed Edgar.
Hastur was behind them now; soon the contracels would be flashing them
back to Earth. Dorothy drew close to Nick, glad that the cumbersome
suits were no longer necessary.
It would be a little blue sweater, she thought, just for luck.