Within a year Earth would be a vassal world,
with the Sirian invaders triumphant. Only
Standish, Earth's Defense Engineer, could
halt that last victorious onslaught--and
he was helpless, the lone survivor of a
prison ship wrecked in uncharted space.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Standish came back to consciousness, a dull pain surging in his head
and a feeling of nausea in his midsection. The room about him was
strange: grey _arelium_ walls, a single light burning above the iron
cot, and a low vibration that trembled the floor beneath his feet.
For a time he lay there, fighting off a cloud of dizziness. Then he
groped unsteadily to his feet. As he did, the vibration ceased, and
far off he fancied he heard voices pitched in alarm. A bell clanged
hollowly several times.
He recognized those sounds now, as his thoughts struggled to bridge the
gap in his brain and the memory of past events came rushing to him.
He was on a Sirian prison ship!
The silence grew upon him, and he stood there uncertainly, listening.
Something was wrong. There was no familiar drone of atomic motors, and
there should be....
When the shock came, he was hurled completely across the room to the
far bulkhead. Yet it wasn't a severe shock. It was as if the ship
faltered suddenly and heeled over on her side.
Above him, Standish saw induction and exhaust pipes, coated with
sulphur dioxide frost, writhe and twist like so many serpents. The
explosion that followed was deafening. The floor buckled upward under
the pressure. The door to the cabin was torn from its hinges, and a
sheet of flame and a column of smoke gushed inward.
In an instant, Standish understood. The prison ship, well on its voyage
from Earth, had entered the danger zone, that part of space swarming
with planetoids and miniature planets. A sleepy pilot had failed to
make the proper gravitational allowances. They had struck!
The ship was almost over on her beam ends now. It righted slowly, and
Standish fought his way into the outer passageway, every muscle tensed
for instant action.
The corridor was empty. Gas and smoke searing his nostrils, the
Earthman made his way to the companion. Up he climbed. Emerging on the
second level, he stood rigid, stark horror gripping him.
The cages were there. Tier after tier of them stretching into the
bowels of the space ship as far as the grey light permitted him to see.
In those cages, he knew, were men of his own race: Earth soldiers,
prisoners of war.
But over each cage the heavy ceiling plates had been ripped free by the
force of the explosion, and where the imprisoned men had been, only
twisted bars and sheets of _arelium_ steel were visible. The entire
level was a tomb of silence.
Standish choked back a sob. His men all dead! Crushed like rats in a
trap.
He crossed to the ladder leading to the third and main level, climbing
slowly.
Reaching the crew deck, he rocked backward again with a cry of dismay.
Here, too, the fearful destruction was evident on all sides. Uniformed
Sirians lay dead in the scuppers. The entire bridge house was a mass of
fallen girders and broken metal.
The officers' quarters had been crushed like an eggshell. Only the
steering cuddy and control room had been spared. But here, too,
Standish found death had not spared the occupants. A pintax bar,
ripped free from its rocker arms, had jammed itself like an exploded
cartridge into the pilot's skull. All in the control room had died of
fumes forced into the chamber when the motors backcharged through the
instrument pipes.
* * * * *
From cabin to cabin Standish went from the living quarters of the crew
in the forecastle, to the ammunition chamber in the stern. Everywhere
he found destruction and death.
And slowly the fact dawned upon him that he alone aboard was alive.
He had been spared because he had been imprisoned in the lower hull,
and that section of the ship had escaped damage. Slowly he sank onto a
settee and tried to reconstruct his thoughts.
A few hours ago as defense engineer for Earth, he had generaled
a daring undercover attack against the Sirian's main base at San
Francisco. For ten years--since 3010--the war between Earth and
Sirius had been going on, with Earth the stage for all battles of
the conflict. The cause of the war was long forgotten. Earth people
only knew that the Sirians, greedy for more land, had successfully
vanquished Mars and Venus and were steadily closing in on terrestrial
territory.
Already Australia and Asia had fallen. With every known device of
interplanetary warfare, the Sirians had captured district after
district, until the American continent alone remained untrampled by the
invaders.
But Standish's story had begun a week before. Through an operative
in his vast espionage system, he had learned that the Sirians under
command of the ruthless Drum Faggard, were preparing for the "big push."
With a dozen chosen companions disguised as Sirians, the Earth engineer
had successfully passed through the enemy lines. He had hoped to
capture Drum Faggard and a number of his officers-of-staff and race
with them back to the Earth's front line breastworks at Omaha. It was a
wild scheme; but Standish knew if Faggard were captured, the war would
collapse.
The plan had failed. Counter-spies had warned the Sirians. The little
band of twelve had been permitted to penetrate deep into Sirian
territory, then had been overwhelmed. And after that--Standish's fists
clenched--he had been brought face to face with Drum Faggard.
He was a renegade, this Sirian master of conquest. He had been born on
Earth of low parentage, but at the beginning of hostilities he had
wormed his way into the graces of the Sirians and by cunning and force
of will had risen to Chief of Command.
The Sirians were a wafter-headed race with featureless faces and
short barrel-like bodies. Their legs were the same as those of the
men of Earth, but their arms possessed tumor-like swellings above the
wrists, secondary nerve centers. Faggard, a huge man with a gross face,
pig-like eyes and thin lips, had smiled sardonically when Standish was
brought before him.
"So your little plan failed, eh?" he said, swallowing a glass of
Sirian whiskey and wiping his mouth with the flat of his hand. "Well,
Standish, you may as well realize it, you're quite in our power now,
and you'll be treated with no more consideration than the rest of the
prisoners, unless you answer a few questions."
"What sort of questions?" Standish had demanded.
Faggard smiled again. "Now that your connections with Earth have been
forever severed, it can be of little concern to you what happens to
that planet. What I want to know is this: How many anti-rocket guns has
Earth located at its Omaha base? What is the number of strato-cruisers
stationed at Powerville? How heavy are the reserves in the Electra City
sector?
"Answer those question, Standish, and you will be virtually a free man.
You will be released on our colony planet of Pluto, with five hundred
_planetoles_ in your pocket. That money will enable you to live a life
of ease for the rest of your days."
For a moment Standish had stood there, face emotionless. Then like an
uncapped bottle spewing forth, he had given in to blind rage. He lunged
across the room, seized Faggard's thick throat and pounded his right
fist into the smirking lips. Twice he had struck before a guard had
rushed forward and pulled him off. Then something hard and heavy had
crashed down upon his skull, and he knew no more.
He had awakened on this prison ship. But had not this accident occurred
he knew well enough the fate that would have been in store for him. All
prisoners captured by the Sirian army were transported back to Sirius
where they were put to work as slaves in the marsh fields, extracting
hydro-carbon gas for use in the food-distillation plants. It was said a
terrestrial man could live only one year there.
Only one thing puzzled the Earthman. Why had he been given special
quarters on the prison ship instead of being placed in one of the cages
with the other prisoners? To that he could give no answer, and as the
ringing silence of space closed in on him, he got to his feet and made
his way slowly back to the control room.