The Space Men Attack
First stepping to the oxygen supply valve and opening it a trifle wider,
Shelby hastened to assist the girl in her quest. Their ears were
ringing. The air pressure within the hull was dropping rapidly.
Diligently they ransacked every nook and corner, but found nothing more
valuable than a can of thick grease. Shelby smeared some of it over the
crevice; it helped but did not by any means check the flow of the
escaping air entirely.
"It's a race with time now, Jan," he said quietly.
She looked at him. Her face was a trifle pale, but her lips and eyes
were smiling. "Are we on our way to Mars, Captain?" she enquired.
He nodded. "We are, Admiral. The fuel tanks are full and if our air
lasts we'll get there."
"And when we do," she put in, "the best of luck to Hekki and his
friends!"
A vision swept through Shelby's mind--batteries of fantastic machines
whose maws spewed flames of faint lavender fire--blinding flashes of
light and world-rocking explosions: a hideous thing to dream of--hideous
yet glorious, for the civilizations and freedom of two worlds depended
upon it. To the Red Planet--they _must_ make it!
Janice Darell had placed her hand lightly on Shelby's arm. Her
expression was serious, almost hard. "Austin," she said, "tell me
truthfully, can we really reach Mars? It is likely that we shall get
there before we go out?"
"Certainly, darling," he replied, putting as much assurance into the
words and expression as was possible. "Why do you ask?"
There was something that suggested doubt, perhaps even displeasure in
her answer: "We have a duty to perform, Austin--a duty infinitely bigger
than our own petty existences. You have not seen what I have seen--small
scouting patrols that came to the _Selba_ riding strange round things
that must have been machines of some kind. One look at those henchmen of
Alkebar, their great black bodies, their quick nervous movements--like
eager panthers, their wicked-looking weapons which they carried with
such an air of easy assurance, and you would have known what they hoped
to do. Most of these devils are within the orbit of Mars for the first
time. Certainly Hekki has told you something about them?"
Shelby nodded. "Very little; but I have noticed a few of Alkebar's
remarkable peculiarities," he said.
"Well," she continued, "if we can't get to Taboor, there is one thing we
can do--destroy the _Selba_, and with it Hekki and Alkebar."
"Destroy the _Selba_!" Shelby exploded, "with what? Those toy machine
guns on the nose of this bus? The bullets wouldn't even make noticeable
scratches in the hide of that tough old girl."
"Not with the machine guns," Jan said slowly, "with this flier! A little
luck and it would work."
The idea flashed through Shelby's brain. Ram the _Selba_ at high speed!
Absolutely certain self-murder! A wave of tremendous admiration for the
girl came over him. She had something more in her favor than mere beauty
and intelligence.
"Your idea is a pretty good one, Jan," he told her. "But rest assured
that unless you can overpower me, it will never be put into execution.
However, I'll tell you the truth: we have about a fifty-fifty chance of
reaching the Red Planet alive."
And so they tore on their way across the void while they watched the
dial on the oxygen tank. They were racing with a tiny needle that crept
ever nearer to the zero point that was its goal.
By allowing the pressure within the flier to drop to the lowest point
that they could endure, they managed to conserve considerable oxygen,
for then the rate of escape from the crevice the torpedo fragment had
made was naturally not so rapid.
Frequently they examined the sky behind them, expecting momentarily to
discover the tiny speck of flitting silver that would be the _Selba_.
But if the ship was pursuing them it had not yet come close enough to be
seen.
However, there was another, and perhaps greater menace which kept their
eyes turning this way and that, searching for signs of danger. Clusters
of dully-glowing specks in any quarter of the heavens would be the first
indications of its presence. They would grow larger, come hurtling on
like racing meteors in the sun's glow. Only there would be an odd wobbly
motion about their darting flight. Shelby tested the trips of the two
machine guns. Spurts of green flame plumed out of the muzzles.
He had set the radio transmitter in operation, and was sending
occasional signals for assistance. But he knew that this was practically
a useless move. Hekalu had taken them far off the beaten track, and they
were still half a million miles from the Terrestro-Martian traffic lane.
The range of the transmitter of this craft was only ten thousand miles.
Even if they had been much nearer the chances of their signals being
picked up were slight.
The Martian disc was growing larger. It had become an ochre sphere
delicately ringed and mottled with greens and browns like a cloudy opal.
The flier was fairly eating up the distance.
Shelby had just said: "I believe we're going to make it, Jan," and then
the signs which they had hoped would not appear came. Ahead of them and
a little to their right, a vague cluster of specks glimmered into view.
It wavered like a wisp of luminous smoke buffeted by a light breeze.
This was the one thing that distinguished it from a meteor cluster.
* * * * *
Rapidly the individual points of light grew, becoming tiny stars that
glowed by the reflected light of the sun. Within five minutes there was
no longer any chance of mistaking their identity, for their flat
disc-like shapes and the half-human forms of the things that rode them
were already visible through the binoculars. They were approaching at
terrific velocity. Both Jan and Austin knew them to be subjects of
Alkebar. There was no mistaking their motive. Doubtless orders had been
flashed to them from the disabled _Selba_.
Realizing that these fleet space riders could easily catch up with his
flier if they so chose, Shelby made no attempt to elude them. Instead he
clung doggedly to the straight course toward Mars.
The twin machine guns, responding obediently to their directing
mechanism, swung on their swivel toward the hurtling foes. Shelby peered
into the eye-piece of the "sighter," a complicated arrangement of
mirrors and lenses which enabled the pilot to always look directly
through the ring-sights regardless of what direction the gun barrels
were pointing. He pressed the trips, and soundlessly, out in the vacuum
of space, the guns went into action. Flickering green flames of
detonating radio-active explosive darted from their muzzles.
Almost immediately there were answering flashes among the approaching
shapes, for the high-calibre bullets were also loaded with explosive.
One projectile took effect--another! Emerald flares of light, and
nothing remained of two bold space men and their queer disc-like
vehicles but torn fragments of flesh and metal.
The Space Men were very close now. Jan and Shelby could see the light
flashing on their jeweled harnesses and on the weapons which they
flourished defiantly. There must have been almost five hundred in the
party. Somehow their wild charge was vaguely reminiscent of a band of
fierce Bedouin marauders, racing madly across the desert, bent on
pillage. Only it was the Arabs who suffered by this comparison, for the
desert of these mysterious Space Men was the whole of interstellar
emptiness; and their forms and those of the things they rode, were the
forms of the forces of Iblees himself.
Apparently these henchmen of Alkebar had some object in view other than
the mere destruction of the flier, for they made no move to use their
weapons. They were pulling upon levers on their vehicles, checking their
headlong flight.
Now they were coursing with the little craft, swarming about it, edging
nearer, at the same time taking care to keep out of range of Shelby's
guns.
There was a scraping against the hull and a light jolt as a talon
secured a hold on an eyelet ring. A black bulk dropped down on the nose
of the craft. A pair of hands gripped the barrels of the machine guns,
and with an easy tug, tore them from their mountings. There were
shifting scratching sounds coming through the flier's light shell--heavy
bodies moving about, and then a sudden ripping vibration. The control
lever felt loose in Shelby's hand. He could no longer guide the vessel.
And there was nothing either he or Jan could do except wait. The rocket
motors still purred evenly.
"I guess they've got us this time, Jan," the young man said to his
companion. "I wonder what they are going to do with us?" He spoke as
casually as though this latest unfavorable turn of fortune was no more
serious than the loss of a game of chess.
Janice Darell was equally cool. "Next time we win," she laughed. It is
odd how human beings so often react to strange and terrifying
situations. "I'm always ready, you see. Here I was crouching behind you
throughout the fight with this perfectly useless pistol in my hand,
hoping foolishly that I might be able to use it. That's loyalty."
They fell to studying the two monsters which rested on the nose of the
craft in front of the pilot's observation window, where the guns had
been. The Space Man was crouching out there trying to peer in at them.
He was very much like Alkebar--only not so large, and his equipment and
adornment did not boast so many jewels.
Shelby felt a peculiar sense of the unreality of the creature. He looked
into its face and saw its eyes. Beside the left orb was a mottled area
that must have been a scar. It seemed as concrete as anything he had
ever seen, and yet for the second time, he told himself that such a
creature wasn't possible!
Time honored tradition had said: "Life can exist only where there is
oxygen, water and warmth." And all three of the requisites were lacking
in the void. Shelby realized that tradition might be wrong, but the
question still remained: How did these creatures of space live? Whence
came the energy that kept their bodies functioning? If not from the
combustion of food with oxygen, then where? If there were no moisture in
their bodies, and there certainly couldn't be, for it would have been
frozen in an instant and diffused through sublimation, how could vital
fluids flow through their veins? He put these questions to Jan, but she
shook her head.
"Hekki informed me that these people inhabited a region somewhere beyond
Mars, but he did not tell how it was that they could live in space," she
said. "It might be that they have had a development similar to
terrestrial insects with the skeleton of armor enclosing their flesh."
The vehicles of the Space Men were even greater puzzles. How did they
fly out here where the rocket was the only human invention that could
move? Many of the vehicles were visible now through the flier's windows.
They were disc shaped platforms of a strange lusterless metal. In the
center of the top was an opening in which the Space Men sat. Projecting
from the discs were a series of levers, permitting evidently simple
control. But no hint of their principle of operation was given. They
emitted no rocket jets; no beams projected from them.
Austin realized that there were many mysteries of the universe with
which he was not acquainted; this was certainly one.
* * * * *
The sound of bodies moving about on the outer shell of the flier was
still audible. Presently there was a sharp explosion somewhere toward
the stern. The rockets immediately fell silent. The fugitives saw that
some of the Space Men were now busying themselves with long metal
cables. Deftly and expertly they were looping them through the eyelet
rings set at frequent intervals along the sides of the flier.
The other ends of the cables they fastened firmly to similar rings on
their vehicles. They finished the job with all the efficiency of trained
military engineers. Then, with the small interplanetary vessel in tow,
the Space Men began to move off toward Mars, rapidly gaining momentum
until their speed must have considerably exceeded that which most space
craft could equal. They deflected their course somewhat from the direct
path to the Red Planet, probably to avoid a meeting with any wandering
ship.
Throughout the fantastic voyage Shelby and Janice Darell found little to
do but stare dumbfounded at their weird captors and to watch the rapidly
dropping needle of their oxygen supply-gauge. But as it proved, there
was little danger of suffocation, for the Space Men were making good
time.
And so, after two hours of flying they came to Mars--not to Taboor
which the fugitives had previously hoped to reach, but to a deep valley
in the desert of the Taraal. The strange caravan circled around to the
night side of the planet, and then, slowly and carefully, but with a
hint that they understood their work well, they proceeded to lower the
disabled craft through the atmosphere to the ground below.
The door of the flier was torn open like a paper thing, and a black
giant fully as huge and burly as Alkebar himself hustled the adventurers
roughly out into the open.
The pock-marked face of Loo, the Martian name for their nearer moon, was
in the sky, and by its light they could see hundreds of Space Men
crowding about them. Plainly this Martian colony was fairly well
peopled, for there were many more than the five hundred who captured
them. The attitude of the onlookers was one of casual curiosity. For the
moment at least they were not showing the more brutal side of their
characters.
The fugitives were given but a moment to look about, while their jailer
apparently carried on a silent conversation with one of his lieutenants.
They saw the sandy floor of the huge rectangular enclosure dotted with
strange mounds which must have been some kind of shelter, the encircling
walls crowned by square towers at regular intervals. Those walls were
amber-colored in the moonlight, and cast dense shadows that shifted
visibly as Loo raced in its meteoric course toward the east. Here and
there before the mounds huge vague shapes squatted. At the center of the
enclosure a tall spire of silvery girders rose, supporting at its summit
a cone of a dull black substance. It looked like the creation of either
Earthmen or Martians.
Beyond the wall the rounded summits of desert hills, over which in ages
past, a restless ocean had poured and flowed, were visible. In spite of
their position the two young Earthians could not help but marvel at the
silent grandeur of this exotic scenery. A light though chilly desert
wind blew refreshingly against their faces.
The black giant had kept a hand on each of his prisoners during his
brief conference, and now, none too gently, he guided them to the
entrance of one of the mound dwellings. The Space Man ushered his
charges into a corridor, and then, fumbling with a curious lock he
opened a heavy door and shoved them into the dim-lit room beyond. With a
rattling clink the great stone panel closed behind them.
A lump of self-luminous rock set in the stone ceiling gave a faint
illumination to the bare interior. There was no furniture--only the
sand-covered floor and rough rocky walls. On the floor a Space Man,
larger and more magnificently-muscled by far than any they had yet seen,
sprawled. He was either unconscious or dead; they could not tell which.
There were hideous welts and gashes and half-healed scars all over his
body. The gashes were caked with a viscid purplish substance.
With the coming of the sudden Martian dawn which flashed through a
narrow embrasure high in the wall, the jailer returned. His first act
was to thrust the needle of what appeared to be a form of hypodermic
syringe into the arm of the unconscious Space Man. Then he led his
Earthian captives out into the open.
Neither Jan nor Austin were surprised when they saw the _Selba_
squatting near the base of the spire. Several Space Men, directed by the
slave Koo Faya, moved about the ship, working the fueling pump.
Walking down the gangplank which led up to the entrance of the vessel
was Alkebar, and beside him, Hekalu himself. The latter sauntered
leisurely toward his captives, and the Chieftain moved off toward a
group of Space Men standing some distance away.