Marlin woke with a smothering sensation and a foreboding. Fumbling for
his flashlight, he sought the others.
Maw Barstow was snoring stertoriously in her cubbyhole. Pearl, who
should have occupied the pallet next to her, was gone. Sally, pale from
the retching she had endured, was sleeping fitfully.
In the storeroom, he found DuChane, lying in a stupor beside an empty
bottle. There were several empties, in fact. DuChane and McGruder must
have returned to make a night of it. But McGruder was nowhere in sight.
With a grunt of distaste, Marlin turned his attention to the hull. It
was progressively deteriorating. The blow had ruptured the corroded
shell-plates in numerous places, and they were constantly giving way
under the shifting stresses.
His thoughts returned to Pearl. Strange that he had not come across
the girl. He made an unavailing search of the staterooms, storerooms,
the control room, and all passages and aisles of the unsteady
superstructure.
A taut feeling constricted his chest. She was so defenseless in her
childish simplicity. She might have wandered out in the dark and fallen
from any one of a dozen or more points of danger he could imagine.
Memory of the fate that had overtaken Link, and presumably Norma's
body, caused him to shudder.
From searching the likely places, he fell to searching the unlikely
ones. His flashlight beam unexpectedly picked up the two of them--Pearl
and McGruder--in a segment between the outcurving hull and the end-wall
of the cabin-like structure containing their sleeping compartments. The
narrow crevice between the corner of the straight wall and the hull
made it an almost inaccessible retreat.
In the brief glimpse Marlin caught before McGruder turned his startled,
snarling face toward the flashlight, the whole story was apparent.
McGruder had pursued the girl and finally cornered her. She was
struggling to escape from his grasp.
The man cringed away from the light. "Get outa here!" he yelled
hoarsely. "This don't concern you."
"No?" Marlin spoke with deadly intensity. "Take your hands off that
girl."
"Says who?"
"I've still got the gun, McGruder--and I don't mind admitting that I've
itched all along for an excuse to use it on your carcass. Let go, damn
you!"
McGruder jerked the girl roughly around so that she offered a shield
for his body.
"Come ahead--shoot!" he taunted.
Marlin pocketed his gun. "I'm coming after you."
The lower part of the crevice was too narrow to admit his body, but
it widened out above, where the hull sloped away from the wall. Pearl
could have squeezed through at the floor level, but McGruder must have
had to inch himself up a couple of feet before he could follow her.
Methodically, Marlin set out to do the same.
* * * * *
The feat required both hands, and McGruder seized the opportunity, when
Marlin had squirmed himself part way up, to release the girl and plunge
toward him with clenched fist. Marlin saved himself from a paralyzing
blow in the midriff by leaping backward.
He snatched for the gun, but before he could recover it, McGruder was
well back inside, again using Pearl for a shield.
"Smart guy!" he yelled tauntingly. "Coming in, are you!"
This time, Marlin held his flashlight in one hand and the automatic in
the other, training both on McGruder, while he slowly worked himself up
the angle formed by the two walls by pressure of his out-thrust knees
and elbows.
McGruder, eyes glittering, backed away, still holding the bewildered
girl before him. Slowly, keeping the gun and flashlight trained upon
him, Marlin squeezed his bulk through the crevice.
The vessel gave one of its now frequent lurches, groaning with the
strain on yielding hull and weakened girders. In that instant, Marlin
felt a movement of the two steel walls as they spread apart. He would
have fallen if he had not involuntarily spread his elbows and shoulders
to maintain his position. The next instant, the walls closed in on him,
crushing--crushing--squeezing the life out of his body.
Even in that agonized moment, a horrified gasp escaped his lips, at
what was revealed by the stabbing ray of the flashlight.
The heaving side of the vessel tightened cruelly, then released him
from its vice-like grip. Limp with pain, Marlin dropped heavily to the
floor within the narrow enclosure.
He lay for a moment gasping for breath, neither knowing nor caring
whether any bones were cracked. Then he gathered himself for a supreme
effort. His body was one solid ache as tortured muscles strained to
obey his will.
"Look!" he gasped hoarsely, flashlight pointing. "Look--behind--!"
McGruder, struggling dazedly to his feet with the girl still clutched
in his embrace, swung around at the warning, but it was already too
late. A great seam had opened in the hull directly behind him, and a
mass of ooze was pouring in, like a surge of lava.
Caught off-balance, he stumbled and slipped on one knee in the
encroaching tide. As he floundered a bellow like that of a mired bull
escaped his distorted lips. He was gripped tenaciously by the pitiless
exudation. His eyes roved frantically. Then, as Marlin dragged himself
partly erect, he saw McGruder do an incredible thing.
Desperately, the detective twisted himself half around, with the girl
in his arms, and forced her into the viscous tide. She struggled in a
faintly bewildered manner. Bracing himself against her body, he gained
a leverage which enabled him to release, first one foot and then the
other. As he stumbled free, the girl was engulfed, almost before she
could cry out.
In that moment of horror, Marlin was conscious only of a consuming
rage--a lust to kill that obliterated all else. Forgetful of the
automatic, he dived toward McGruder, with hands that had suddenly
become claws.
"Don't! Don't! We've got to squeeze out of here! Before it catches--"
McGruder's screaming protest was strangled as ruthless fingers closed
around his windpipe.
When the smothering ooze closed over both heaving bodies, Marlin was
scarcely aware, through the red fury of his demoniac rage, that the end
had come....
* * * * *
... _"But, mother, the goddesses were all beautiful, were they not?"_
_"Yes, son, but Pi-Ruh-Al was the most beautiful."_
_"Then why do the carvings always show Sa-Hala-Lee with a face, while
Pi-Ruh-Al has none? I would think--"_
_"Hush child! The beauty of Pi-Ruh-Al was so dazzling that no mortal
might look upon it. Even the gods could scarce endure its splendor,
and no sculptor has dared presume to represent her features. Not so
with Sa-Hala-Lee, who is the goddess of N'urthly beauty and constancy.
A touching legend relates to the manner by which she was wooed by
Mah-Gurru-Dah, Lord of the East, patron of the forge. He was forced
to wound her sore unto death with a lightning bolt forged in his
smithy before she yielded--but thereafter she remained loyal with a
faithfulness beyond mortal understanding. Yea, though it is reputed
that both Maha-Ra-Lin and Bar-Du-Chan sought her because of her
siren-like allure, she repulsed them with scorn._
_"Thus wrote the prophets of old: 'In the beginning was El-Leighi,
dweller in the sun, who looked upon the sea of space and saw that
it was a void, barren of all things. And El-Leighi hurled forth his
thunderbolt and created a sphere of matter within that void. And he
cast his thunderbolts again and yet again until he had created many
spheres which circled slowly through the emptiness of space._
_"'El-Leighi looked upon his work, yet was not satisfied. Four of his
bolts had formed spheres revolving so close to the sun that its rays
scorched them with heat unbearable. Others--the mightiest bolts of
all--formed planets immeasurably far away, lost in frigid coldness._
_"'So once again El-Leighi gathered his forces and hurled a thunderbolt
into space. And on that thunderbolt rode great beings--gods inferior
only to El-Leighi himself--whom he commanded to create a world on which
life might exist._
_"'When the thunderbolt shattered, in a temperate region of space
beyond the fourth planet, these gods fulfilled their destiny by
gathering its fragments and out of them creating a new world....'"_