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ASTOUNDING
STORIES
OF SUPER-SCIENCE
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* * * * *
VOL. IV, No. 2 CONTENTS NOVEMBER, 1930
COVER DESIGN H. W. WESSOLOWSKI
_Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "The Pirate Planet."_
THE WALL OF DEATH VICTOR ROUSSEAU 151
_Out of the Antarctic It Came--a Wall of Viscid, Grey, Half-Human
Jelly, Absorbing and Destroying All Life That It Encountered._
THE PIRATE PLANET CHARLES W. DIFFIN 168
_A Strange Light Blinks on Venus, and Over Old Earth Hovers a
Mysterious Visitant--Dread Harbinger of Interplanetary War._
(Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)
THE DESTROYER WILLIAM MERRIAM ROUSE 198
_Slowly, Insidiously, There Stole Over Allen Parker Something
Uncanny. He Could No Longer Control His Hands--Even His Brain!_
THE GRAY PLAGUE L. A. ESHBACH 210
_Maimed and Captive, in the Depths of an Interplanetary Meteor-Craft,
Lay the Only Possible Savior of Plague-Ridden Earth._
JETTA OF THE LOWLANDS RAY CUMMINGS 230
_Black-Garbed Figures Move in Ghastly Greenness As the Invisible Flyer
Speeds on Its Business of Ransom._ (Conclusion.)
VAGABONDS OF SPACE HARL VINCENT 244
_From the Depths of the Sargasso Sea of Space Came the Thought-Warning,
"Turn Back!" But Carr and His Martian Friend Found It Was Too Late!_
(A Complete Novelette.)
THE READERS' CORNER ALL OF US 271
_A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._
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New York. N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary.
Entered as second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at
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* * * * *
The Wall of Death
_By Victor Rousseau_
[Illustration: And then Kay had broken through and was hewing madly
with great sweeps of the ax.]
[Sidenote: Out of the Antarctic it came--a wall of viscid, grey,
half-human jelly, absorbing and destroying all life that it
encountered.]
"This news," said Cliff Hynes, pointing to the newspaper, "means the
end of _homo Americanus_."
The newspaper in question was the hour-sheet of the International
Broadcast Association, just delivered by pneumatic tube at the
laboratory. It was stamped 1961, Month 13, Day 7, Horometer 3, and the
headlines on the front page confirmed the news of the decisive defeat
of the American military and naval forces at the hands of the Chinese
Republic.
A gallant fight for days against hopeless odds; failure of the army
dynamos; airships cut off from ground guidance; battleships ripped to
pieces by the Chinese disintegrators; and, finally, the great wave of
black death that had wiped out two hundred thousand men.
Kay Bevan--to use the old-fashioned names which still persisted,
despite the official numerical nomenclature--glanced through the
account. He threw the sheet away. "We deserved it, Cliff," he said.
Cliff nodded. "You saw that bit about the new Chinese disintegrator?
If the Government had seriously considered our Crumbler--"
Kay glanced at the huge, humming top that filled the center of the
laboratory. It spun so fast that it appeared as nothing but a
spherical shadow, through which one could see the sparse furnishings,
the table, the apparatus ranged upon it, and the window over-looking
the upper streets of New York.
"Yes--_if!_" he answered bitterly. "And I'm willing to bet the Chinese
have an inferior machine, built upon the plans that Chinese servant
stole from us last year."
"We deserved it, Cliff," said Kay again. "For ten years we've harried
and enslaved the yellow man, and taken a hundred thousand of his men
and women to sacrifice to the Earth Giants. What would we have done,
if conditions had been reversed?"
"Self-preservation," Cliff suggested.
"Exactly. The law of the survival of the fittest. They thought that
they were fitter to survive. I tell you they had right on their side,
Cliff, and that's what's beaten us. Now--a hundred thousand of our
_own_ boys and girls must be fed into the maw of these monsters every
year. God, suppose it were Ruth!"
"Or you or I," said Cliff. "If only we could perfect the Crumbler!"
"What use would that be against the Earth Giants? There's nothing
organic about them, not even bones. Pure protoplasm!"
"We could have used it against the Chinese," said Cliff. "Now--" He
shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.
* * * * *
And if explorers had been content to leave the vast unknown Antarctic
Continent alone, they would never have taught the imprisoned Giants to
cross the great ice barrier. But that crossing had taken place fifteen
years ago, and already the mind of man had become accustomed to the
grim facts.
Who could have dreamed that the supposed table-land was merely a rim
of ice-mountains, surrounding a valley twice the size of Europe, so
far below sea-level that it was warmed to tropic heat by Earth's
interior fires? Or that this valley was peopled with what could best
be described as organized protoplasm?
Enormous, half-transparent, gelatinous organism, attaining a height of
about a hundred feet, and crudely organized into forms not unlike
those of men?
Half the members of the Rawlins Expedition, which had first entered
this valley, had fallen victims to the monsters. Most of the rest had
gone raving mad. And the stories of the two who returned, sane, to
Buenos Aires, were discredited and scoffed at as those of madmen.
But of a second expedition none had survived, and it was the solitary
survivor of the third who had confirmed the amazing story. The giant
monsters, actuated by some flickering human intelligence, had found
their way out of the central valley, where they had subsisted by
enfolding their vegetable and small animal prey with pseudopods, that
it to say, temporary projections of arms from the gelatinous bulk of
their substance.
They had floated across the shallow seas between the tip of the
Antarctic Continent and Cape Horn, as toy balloons float on water.
Then they had spread northward, extending in a wall that reached from
the Atlantic to the Andes. And, as they moved, they had devoured all
vegetables and animal life in their path. Behind them lay one great
bare, absolutely lifeless area.
* * * * *
How many of them were there? That was the hideous fact that had to be
faced. Their numbers could not be counted because, after attaining a
height of about a hundred feet, they reproduced by budding!
And within a few weeks these buds, in turn, attained their full
development.
The Argentine Government had sent a force of twenty thousand men
against them, armed with cannon, machine-guns, tanks, airplanes,
poison gas, and the new death-ray. And in the night, when it was
bivouacking, after what it had thought was glorious victory, it had
been overwhelmed _and eaten_!
Proof against the poison gas, the hideous monsters were, and
invulnerable to shot and shell. Divided and sub-divided, slashed into
ribbons, blown to fragments by bombs, each of the pieces simply became
the nucleus of a new organism, able, within a few hours, to assume the
outlines of a dwarf man, and to seize and devour its prey.
But the Argentine expedition had done worse than it at first dreamed
of. _It had given the monsters a taste for human flesh!_
After that, the wave of devastation had obliterated life in every city
clear up to the Amazonian forests. And then it had been discovered
that, by feeding these devils human flesh, they could be rendered
torpid and their advance stayed--so long as the periodical meals
continued!
At first criminals had been supplied them, then natives, then Chinese,
obtained by periodical war raids. What would you have? The savage
regions of the earth had already been depopulated, and a frenzy of
fear had taken possession of the whole world.
Now the Chinese had defeated the annual American invasion, and the
Earth Giants were budding and swarming through the heart of Brazil.
* * * * *
"Man," said the Theosophists, "is the fifth of the great root-races
that have inhabited this planet. The fourth were the Atlanteans. The
third were the Lemurians, half-human beings of whom the Australian
aborigines are the survivors. The second race was not fully organized
into human form. Of the first, nothing is known.
"These are the second race, surviving in the Antarctic valleys.
Half-human objects, groping toward that perfection of humanity of
which we ourselves fall very far short. As the Kabbala says, man,
before Adam, reached from heaven to earth."
Kay Bevan and Cliff Hynes had been working feverishly to perfect
their Crumbler for use in the Chinese wars. Convinced, as were all
fair-minded men, that these annual raids were unjustified, they
yielded to the logic of the facts. Should America sacrifice a hundred
thousand of her boys and girls each year, when human life was cheap in
China? _Boys and girls!_
It had been discovered that the Earth Giants required the flesh of
women as well as of men. Some subtle chemical constituent then
produced the state of torpidity during which the advance and the
budding of the monsters was stayed. During the ten past years their
northward advance had been almost inappreciable. Brazil had even sent
another army against them.
But the deadliest gases had failed to destroy the tenacious life of
these protoplasmic creatures, and the tanks, which had driven through
and through them, had become entangled and blocked in the gelatinous
exudations, and their occupants eaten.
All over the world scientists were striving to invent some way of
removing this menace to the world. Moreover, airplanes sent to the
polar continent had reported fresh masses mobilizing for the advance
northward. A second wave would probably burst through the Amazon
forest barrier and sweep over the Isthmus and overrun North America.
Five days after the news of the Chinese disaster was confirmed, Cliff
Hynes came back from the capital of the American Confederation,
Washington.
"It's no use, Kay," he said. "The Government won't even look at the
Crumbler. I told them it would disintegrate every inorganic substance
to powder, and they laughed at me. And it's true, Kay: they've given
up the attempt to enslave China. Henceforward a hundred thousand of
our own citizens are to be sacrificed each year. Eaten alive, Kay!
God, if only the Crumbler would destroy organic forms as well!"
* * * * *
The first year's quota of fifty thousand boys and fifty thousand
girls, thrown to the maw of the monsters to save humanity, nearly
disrupted the Confederation. Despite the utmost secrecy, despite the
penalty of death for publishing news of the sacrifice, despite the
fact that those who drew the fatal lots were snatched from their homes
at dead of night, everything became known.
On the vast pampas in the extreme north of the Argentine Republic,
where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the place
of sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whom
the monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence,
sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated in
them, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become aware
that this was their feasting ground.
By some tacit compact, the guards who had annually brought their
victims to be devoured had been unmolested, the vast wall of
semi-human shapes withdrawing into the shelter of the surrounding
forests while the Chinese were staked out in rows. Death, which would
have been a mercy, had been denied them. It was living flesh that the
Earth Giants craved. And here, on the spot known as Golgotha, the
hideous sacrifice had been annually repeated.
That first year, when the chosen victims were transported to the fatal
spot, all America went mad. Frenzied parents attacked the offices of
the Federation in every city. The cry was raised that Spanish
Americans had been selected in preference to those of more northern
blood. Civil war loomed imminent.
And year after year these scenes must be repeated. Boys and girls,
from fifteen to twenty years of age, the flower of the Federation, a
hundred thousand of them, must die a hideous death to save humanity.
Now the choice of the second year's victims was at hand.
In their laboratory, removed to the heart of the Adirondacks
wilderness, Cliff and Kay were working frantically.
"It's the last chance, Kay," said Cliff. "If I've not solved the
secret this time, it means another year's delay. The secret of
dissolving organic forms as well as inorganic ones! What is this
mysterious power that enables organic forms to withstand the terrific
bombardment of the W-ray?"
The W-ray was the Millikan cosmic ray, imprisoned and adapted for
human use. It was a million times more powerful than the highest known
voltage of electricity. Beneath it, even the diamond, the hardest
substance known, dissolved into a puff of dust; and yet the most
fragile plant growth remained unaffected.
* * * * *
The laboratory in the Adirondacks was open at one end. Here, against a
background of big forest trees, a curious medley of substances had
been assembled: old chairs, a couple of broken-down airplanes, a large
disused dynamo, a heap of discarded clothing, a miscellany of kitchen
utensils on a table, a gas stove, and a heap of metal junk of all
kinds. The place looked, in fact, like a junk heap.
The great top was set in a socket in a heavy bar of craolite, the new
metal that combined the utmost tensile strength with complete
infusibility, even in the electric furnace. About six feet in height,
it looked like nothing but what it was, a gyroscope in gimbals, with a
long and extremely narrow slit extending all around the central
bulge, but closed on the operator's side by a sliding cover of the
same craolite.
Within this top, which, by its motion, generated a field of electrical
force between the arms of an interior magnet, the W-rays were
generated in accordance with a secret formula; the speed of gyration,
exceeding anything known on earth, multiplied their force a
billionfold, converting them to wave-lengths shorter than the shortest
known to physical science. Like all great inventions, the top was of
the simplest construction.
"Well," said Cliff, "you'd better bring out Susie."
Kay left the laboratory and went to the cabin beside the lake that the
two men occupied. From her box in front of the stove a lady porcupine
looked up lazily and grunted. Kay raised the porcupine; in the box, of
course. Susie was constitutionally indolent, but one does not handle
porcupines, however smooth their quills may lie.
Kay brought her to the heap of junk and placed the box on top of it.
He went inside the laboratory. "I may as well tell you, Cliff. I
wouldn't have brought Susie if I'd thought the experiment had the
least chance of success," he said.
Cliff said nothing. He was bending over the wheel, adjusting a
micrometer. "All ready, Kay?" he asked.
* * * * *
Kay nodded and stepped back. He swallowed hard. He hated sacrificing
Susie to the cause of science; he almost hoped the experiment would
fail.
Cliff pressed a lever, and slowly the ponderous top began to revolve
upon its axis. Faster, faster, till it was nothing but a blur. Faster
yet, until only its outlines were visible. Cliff pressed a lever on
the other side.
Nothing happened apparently, except for a cloudy appearance of the air
at the open end of the laboratory. Cliff touched a foot lever. The top
began to grow visible, its rotations could be seen; it ran slower,
began to come to a stop.
The cloud was gone. Where the airplanes and other junk had been, was
nothing but a heap of grayish dust. It was this that had made the
cloud.
Nothing remained, except that impalpable powder against the background
of the trees.
Kay caught Cliff's arm. "Look out!" he shouted, pointing to the heap.
"Something's moving in there!"
Something was. A very angry lady porcupine was scrambling out, a
_quillless_ porcupine, with a white skin, looking like nothing so much
as a large, hairless rat. Cliff turned to Kay.
"We've failed," he said briefly. "Too late for this year now."
"But--the quills?"
"Inorganic material. But even the bones remain intact because there's
circulation in the marrow, you see. And the Earth Giants haven't even
bones. They're safe--this year!"
He flung himself down under a tree, staring up at the sky in abject
despair.
* * * * *
"Look, Kay, I've got my number!" Ruth Meade smiled as she handed Kay
the ticket issued by the Government announcing the lottery number
provided for each citizen.
One hundred thousand young people between the ages of fifteen and
twenty would be drawn for the sacrifice, and Ruth, being nineteen, had
come within the limits, but this would be her last year. In a few
weeks the Government would announce the numbers--drawn by a second
lottery--of those who were condemned.
Then, before these had been made public, the victims would already
have been seized and hurried to the airship depots in a hundred
places, for conveyance to the hideous Golgotha of the pampas.
The chance that any individual would be among the fated ones was
reasonably small. It was the fashion to make a jest of the whole
business. Ruth smiled as she showed her ticket.
Kay stared at it. "Ruth, if--if anything happened to you I'd go
insane. I'd--"
"Why this sudden ardor, Kay?"
* * * * *
Kay took Ruth's small hand in his. "Ruth, you mustn't play with me any
more. You know I love you. And the sight of that thing makes me almost
insane. You do care, don't you?" And, as Ruth remained silent, "Ruth,
it isn't Cliff Hymes, is it? I know you two are old friends. I'd
rather it were Cliff than anybody else, if it had to be some one,
but--tell me, Ruth!"
"It isn't Cliff," said Ruth slowly.
"Is it--some one else?"
"It's you, dear," answered Ruth. "It's always been you. It might have
been Cliff if you hadn't come along. But he knows now it can never be
he."
"Does he know it's me?" asked Kay, greatly relieved.
Ruth inclined her head. "He took it very finely," she said. "He said
just what you've said about him. Oh, Kay, if only your experiment had
succeeded, and the world could be free of this nightmare! What
happened? Why couldn't you and Cliff make it destroy life?"
"I don't know, dear," answered Kay. "Iron and steel melt into powder
at the least impact of the rays. They are so powerful that there was
even a leakage through the rubber and anelektron container. Even the
craolite socket was partly fused, and that is supposed to be an
impossibility. And there was a hole in the ground seven feet deep
where the very mineral water in the earth had been dissolved. But
against organic substances the W-ray is powerless.
"Next year, dear--next year we'll have solved our problem, and then
we'll free the world of this menace, this nightmare. Ruth--don't let's
talk about that now. I love you!"
They kissed. The Earth Giants faded out of their consciousness even
while Ruth held that ominous ticket in her hand.
* * * * *
Kay said nothing to Cliff about it, but Cliff knew. Perhaps he had put
his fate to the test with Ruth and learned the truth from her. Ruth
made no reference to the matter when she saw Kay. But between the two
men, friends for years, a coolness was inexorably developing.
They had gone to work on the new machine. They were hopeful. When they
were working, they forgot their rivalry.
"You see, Kay," said Cliff, "we mustn't forget that the Millikan rays
have been bombarding Earth since Earth became a planet, out of the
depths of space. It is their very nature not to injure organic life,
otherwise all life on Earth would have been destroyed long ago. Now,
our process is only an adaptation of these cosmic rays. We haven't
changed their nature."
"No," agreed Kay. "What we want is a death-ray strong enough to
obliterate these monsters, without simply disintegrating them and
creating new fragments to bud into the complete being. Why do you
suppose they are so tenacious of life, Cliff?"
"They represent primeval man, life itself, striving to organize
itself, and nothing is more tenacious than the life principle,"
answered Cliff.
Meanwhile the fatal weeks were passing. A few days after the tickets
had been distributed, a Government notice was broadcasted and
published, ordaining that, in view of former dissensions, no
substitutes for the condemned persons would be permitted. Rich or
poor, each of the victims chosen by lot must meet his fate.
* * * * *
And the monsters were growing active. There had been an extension of
their activities. Tongues had been creeping up the rivers that ran
into the Amazon. Suddenly a dense mass of the devils had appeared on
the north coast, near Georgetown. They had overleaped the Amazon; they
were overrunning British Guiana, eating up everything on their way.
Georgetown was abandoned; the monsters were in complete control.
"They will be cut off from the main herd," the optimistic reports
announced. "We shall deal with the main herd first. This year the
sacrifice will have to be made, but it will be the last. Scientists
have at last hit upon an infallible toxin which will utterly destroy
this menace within a few months."
Nobody believed that story, for everything had been tried and failed.
In their laboratory Cliff and Kay were working frantically. And now
the coldness that had developed between them was affecting their
collaboration too. Cliff was keeping something back from Kay.
* * * * *
Kay knew it. Cliff had made some discovery that he was not sharing
with his partner. Often Kay, entering the laboratory, would find Cliff
furtively attempting to conceal some operation that he was in the
midst of. Kay said nothing, but a brooding anger began to fill his
heart. So Cliff was trying to get all the credit for the result of
their years of work together!
And always, in the back of his mind, there was a vision of the little
Government ticket in Ruth's hand, with the numbers in staring black
type. They had burned into his brain. He could never forget them.
Often at night, after a hard day's work, he would suddenly awaken out
of a hideous nightmare, in which he saw Ruth taken away by the agents
of the Government, to be thrown as a sacrifice to the monsters.
And Cliff was hiding something! That made the situation unbearable.
The coolness between the two men was rapidly changing into open
animosity. And then one day, quite by chance, in Cliff's absence, Kay
came upon evidence of Cliff's activities.
Cliff was no longer experimenting with the W-ray! He was using a new
type of ray altogether, the next series, the psenium electron
emanation discovered only a few years before, which had the peculiar
property of non-alternation, even when the psenium electron changed
its orbit around the central nucleus of the psenium atom.
Instead of discontinuity, the psenium electron had been found to emit
radiation steadily, and this had upset the classic theories of matter
for the ninth time in the past fifteen years.
* * * * *
And Kay's wrath broke loose in a storm of reproaches when Cliff came
into the laboratory.
"You've been deliberately keeping me in the dark!" he shouted. "You're
a nice sort of partner to have! Here's where we split up the
combination, Hynes!"
"I've been thinking that for a long time," sneered Cliff. "The fact
is, Kay, you're a little too elementary in your ideas to suit me. It's
due to you that I kept hammering away on the wrong tack for years. The
sooner we part, the better."
"No time like now," said Kay. "Keep your laboratory. You put most of
the money into it, anyway. I'll build me another--where I can work
without being hampered by a partner who's out for himself all the
time. Good luck to you in your researches, and I hope you'll get all
the credit when you find a way of annihilating the Earth Giants."
And he stormed out of the laboratory, jumped into his plane, and
winged his way southward toward his apartment in New York.
* * * * *
Crowds in the streets of every town on the way. In villages and
hamlets, swarming like ants, and hurrying along the highways! Kay, who
flew one of the slow, old-fashioned planes, averaging little more than
a hundred miles an hour, winged his way methodically overhead, too
much absorbed in his anger against Cliff to pay much attention to this
phenomenon at first. But gradually it was borne in upon him that
something was wrong.
He flew lower, and now he was passing over a substantial town, and he
could hear the shouts of anger that came up to him. The whole town was
in a ferment, gathered in the town square.
Suddenly the reason came home to Kay. He saw the adjoining airport,
and dropped like a plummet, hovering down until his wheels touched the
ground. Without waiting to taxi into one of the public hangars, he
leaped out and ran through the deserted grounds into the square.
Groans, yells, shrieks of derision rent the air. The whole crowd had
gone maniacal. And it was as Kay had thought. Upon a white background
high up on the town ball building, the numbers of the local boys and
girls who had been picked for sacrifices were being shown.
* * * * *
Eight boys and fifteen girls, already on their way into the wastes of
South America, to meet a hideous death.
"They took my Sally," screamed a wizened woman, the tears raining down
her checks. "Kidnapped her at the street corner after dark. I didn't
know why she hadn't come home last night. God, my Sally, my little
girl, gone--gone--"
"People, you must be patient," boomed the Government announcer. "The
President feels with you in your affliction. But by next year a means
will have been devised of destroying these monsters. Your children
will have their sacrifice recorded in the Hall of Fame. They are true
soldiers who--"
"To hell with the Government!" roared a man. "Stop that damn talk
machine! Break her, fellows! Then we'll hang President Bogart from the
top of the Capitol!"
Yells answered him, and the crowd surged forward toward the building.
"Stand back!" shrieked the announcer. "It's death to set foot on the
step. We are now electrified. Last warning!"
The first ranks of the mob recoiled as a charge of electricity at a
voltage just short of that required to take life coursed through their
bodies. Shrieks of agony rang out. Files of writhing forms covered the
ground.
* * * * *
Kay rushed to the automatic clerk at the window beside the metal
steps, taking care to avoid contact with them. Within six feet, the
temperature of his body brought the thermostatic control into action;
the window slid upward and the dummy appeared. He turned the dial to
Albany.
"I want New York Division, Sub-station F, Loyalist Registration," he
called. "Give me Z numbers of the lottery, please."
"No numbers will be given out until Horometer 13," the dummy boomed.
"But I tell you I must know immediately!" Kay pleaded frantically.
"Stand away, please!"
"I've got to know, I tell you!"
"We are now electrified. Last warning!"
"Listen to me. My name's Kay Bevan. I--"
A mighty buffet in the chest hurled Kay ten feet backward upon the
ground. He rose, came within the electric zone, felt his arms twisted
in a giant's grasp, staggered back again and sat down gasping. The
window went down noiselessly, the dummy swung back into place. Kay got
upon his feet again, choking with impotent rage.
All about him men and women were milling in a frantic mob. He broke
through them, went back to where his plane was standing. A minute
later he was driving madly toward the district airport in New York
within three blocks of Ruth's apartment.
* * * * *
He dropped into a vacant landing place, checked hastily, and rushed
into the elevator. Once in the upper street, he bounded to the middle
platform, and, not satisfied to let it convey him at eight miles an
hour, strode on through the indignant throng until he reached his
destination. Hurling the crowds right and left he gained the exit,
and a half-minute later was on the upper level of the apartment block.
He pushed past the janitor and raced along the corridor to Ruth's
apartment. She would be in if all was well; she worked for the
Broadcast Association, correcting the proofs that came from the
district headquarters by pneumatic tube. He stopped outside the door.
The little dial of white light showed him that the apartment was
unoccupied.
As he stood there in a daze, hoping against hope, he saw a thread
hanging from the crevice between door and frame. He pulled at it, and
drew out a tiny strip of scandium, the new compressible metal that had
become fashionable for engagement rings. Plastic, all but invisible,
it could be compressed to the thickness of a sheet of paper: it was
the token of secret lovers, and Kay had given Ruth a ring of it.
It was the signal, the dreaded signal that Ruth had been on the
lottery list--the only signal that she had been able to convey, since
stringent precautions were taken to prevent the victims becoming known
until all possibility of rescue was removed.
* * * * *
No chance of rescuing her! From a hundred airports the great
Government airships had long since sailed into the skies, carrying
those selected by the wheel at Washington for sacrifice to the Earth
Giants. Only one chance remained. If Cliff had discovered the secret
that had so long eluded them, surely he would reveal it to him now!
Their quarrel was forgotten. Kay only knew that the woman he loved was
even then speeding southward to be thrown to the maw of the vile
monsters that held the world in terror. Surely Cliff would bend every
effort to save her!
Only a few hours had passed since Kay had stormed out of the
laboratory in the Adirondacks in a rage when he was back on their
little private landing field. He leaped from the plane and ran up the
trail beside the lake between the trees. The cabin was dark; and, when
Kay reached the laboratory he found it dark too.
"Cliff! Cliff!" he shouted.
No answer came, and with a sinking heart he snapped the button at the
door. It failed to throw the expected flood of light through the
interior. With shaking hand Kay pulled the little electron torch from
his pocket, and its bright beam showed that the door was padlocked. He
moved round to the window. The glass was unbreakable, but the ray from
the torch showed that the interior of the laboratory had been
dismantled, and the great top was gone.
In those few hours Cliff, for reasons best known to himself, had
removed the top, Kay's one hope of saving Ruth. And he was gone.
* * * * *
In that moment Kay went insane. He raved and cursed, calling down
vengeance upon Cliff's head. Cliff's very motive was incredible. That
he had deliberately removed the top in order that Ruth should die was
not, of course, conceivable. But in that first outburst of fury Kay
did not consider that.
Presently Kay's madness burned itself out. There was still one thing
that he could do. His plane, slow though it was, would carry him to
the pampas. He could get fresh fuel at numerous bootleg petrol
stations, even though the regulations against intersectional flight
were rigid. With luck he could reach the pampas, perhaps before the
sluggish monsters had fallen upon their prey. It was said that the
victims sometimes waited for days!
Something was rubbing against his leg, pricking it through his
anklets. Kay looked down. A lady porcupine, with tiny new quills, was
showing recognition, even affection, if such a spiny beast could be
said to possess that quality.
Somehow the presence of the beast restored Kay's mind to normal.
"Well, he's left us both in the lurch, Susie," he said. "Good luck to
you, beastie, and may you find a secure hiding place until your quills
have grown."
* * * * *
Drowning men catch at straws. Kay snatched out his watch, and the
illuminated dial showed that it was already two quintets past
horometer 13. He darted back to the cabin. The door was unfastened,
and his torch showed him that, though Cliff had evidently departed,
and taken his things, the interior was much as it had been. When Kay
picked up the telephotophone, the oblong dial flashed out. The
instrument was in working order.
He turned the crank, and swiftly a succession of scenes flashed over
the dial. On this little patch of glassite, Kay was actually making
the spatial journey to Albany, each minutest movement of the crank
representing a distance covered. The building of the New York Division
appeared, and its appearance signified that Kay was telephonically
connected. But there was no automatic voice attachment, an expense
that Kay and Cliff had decided would be unjustified. He had to rely
upon the old-fashioned telephone, such as was still widely in use in
rural districts. He took up the receiver.
"Sub-Station F, Loyalist Registration, please," he called.
"Speaking," said a girl's voice presently.
"I want the Z numbers. All from Z5 to ZA," said Kay.
And thus, in the dark hut, he listened to the doom pronounced, miles
away, by a more or less indifferent operator. When the fatal number
was read out, he thanked her and hung up. He released the crank, which
moved back to its position, putting out the light on the dial.
* * * * *
For a moment or two he stood there motionless, in a sort of daze,
though actually he was gathering all his reserves of resolution for
the task confronting him. Simply to find Ruth among the hundred
thousand victims, and die with her. A task stupendous in itself, and
yet Kay had no doubt that he would succeed, that he would be holding
her in his arms when the tide of hell flowed over them.
He knew the manner of that death. The irresistible onset of the giant
masses of protoplasm, the extrusion of temporary arms, or feelers,
that would grasp them, drag them into the heart of the yielding
substance, and slowly smother them to death while the life was drained
from their bodies. It had been said the death was painless, but that
was Government propaganda. But he would be holding Ruth in his arms.
He'd find her: he had no doubt of that at all.
And, strangely enough, now that Kay knew the worst, now that not the
slightest doubt remained, he was conscious of an elevation of spirits,
a sort of mad recklessness that was perfectly indefinable.
* * * * *
Kay turned his torch into a corner of the kitchen. Yes, there was the
thing subconsciousness had prompted him to seek. A long-shafted, heavy
woodsman's ax, a formidable weapon at close quarters. Because it is
the instinct of _homo Americanus_ to die with a weapon in his hands,
rather than let himself be butchered helplessly, Kay snatched it up.
He ran back to his plane. The gas tank was nearly empty, but there was
petrol in the ice house beside the lake.
Kay wheeled the machine up to it, and filled up with gas and oil. All
ready now! He leaped in, pressed the starter, soared vertically,
helicopter wings fluttering like a soaring hawk's. Up to the passenger
air lane at nine thousand: higher to twelve, the track of the
international and supply ships; higher still, to the fourteen thousand
ceiling of the antiquated machine. He banked, turned southward.
It was freezing cold up there, and Kay had no flying suit on him,
but, between the passenger lane and the lane of the heliospheres, at
thirty thousand, there was no air police. And he could afford to take
no chances. The Government police would be on the lookout for a score
such desperate men as he, bent on a similar mission. He drove the
plane toward the Atlantic till a red glow began to diffuse itself
beneath him, an area of conflagration covering square miles of
territory.
Swooping lower, Kay could hear the sound of detonations, the roar of
old-fashioned guns, while through the pall of lurid smoke came the
long, violet flashes of atomic guns, cleaving lanes of devastation.
New York was burning.
The frenzied populace had broken into revolt, seized the guns stored
in the arsenals, and attacked the great Bronx fortress that stood like
a mighty sentinel to protect the port.
A swarm of airships came into view, swirling in savage fight. Kay
zoomed. It was not his battle.
* * * * *
Now New York lay behind him, and he was winging southward over the
Atlantic. All night he flew. At dawn he came down in a coast hamlet
for bootleg petrol and oil.
"You come from New York?" asked the Georgian. "Hear there's war broke
out up there."
"My war's down in Brazil," muttered Kay.
"Say, if them Giants comes up here yuh know what us folks is going to
do? We're going to set the hounds on 'em. Yes, sirree, we've got a
pack of bloodhounds, raised for jest that purpose. I guess that's
something them wisecrackers at Washington ain't thought of. They took
two little fellers from Hopetown, but they won't take nobody from
here."
Kay fuelled up and resumed his flight southward.
After that it was a nightmare. The sun rose and set, alternating with
the staring moon and stars. Kay crossed the Caribbean, sighted the
South American coast, swept southward over the jungles of Brazil. He
drank, but no food passed his lips. He had become a mechanism, set for
on special purpose--self-immolation.
* * * * *
It was in a wide savannah among the jungles that he first caught sight
of the monsters. At first he thought it was the rising dawn mist; then
he began to distinguish a certain horrible resemblance to human forms,
and swooped down, banking round and round the opening in the jungle
until he could see clearly.
There were perhaps a score of them, an advance guard that had pushed
forward from one of the main divisions. Men? Anthropoids, rather, for
their sex was indistinguishable! Human forms ranging from a few feet
to a hundred, composed apparently of a grayish jelly, propelling
themselves clumsily on two feet, but floating rather than walking.
Translucent, semi-transparent. Most horrible of all, these shadowy,
spheroid creatures exhibited here and there buds of various sizes,
which were taking on the similitude of fresh forms. And among them
were the young, the buds that had fallen from the parent stems, fully
formed humans of perhaps five or six feet, bouncing with a horrible
playfulness among their sires.
As Kay soared some three hundred feet overhead, a young tapir came
leaping out of the jungle and ran, apparently unconscious of their
presence, right toward the monsters. Suddenly it stopped, and Kay saw
that it was already encircled by coils of protoplasm, resembling arms,
which had shot forth from the bodies of the devils.
* * * * *
Swiftly, despite its struggles and bleatings, the tapir was drawn into
the substance of the monsters, which seemed to fuse together and form
a solid wall of protoplasm in all respects like the agglutination of
bacteria under certain conditions.
Then the beast vanished in the wall, whose agitated churnings alone
gave proof of its existence.
For perhaps ten minutes longer Kay remained hovering above the
clearing. Then the bodies divided, resuming their separate shapes. And
the white bones of the tapir lay in a huddled mass in the open.
Kay went mad. Deliberately he set down his plane, and, hatchet in
hand, advanced upon the sluggish monsters. Shouting wildly, he leaped
into their midst.
The fight that followed was like a nightmare fight. He lopped off the
slow tentacles that sought to envelop him, he slashed the devils into
long ribbons of writhing jelly, slashed until the substance blunted
the ax; wiped it clean and leaped into their midst again, hewing until
he could no longer raise his arm. Then he drew back and surveyed the
scene before him.
It was dreadful enough to drive the last remnants of sanity from his
brain. For every piece that he had cut from the monsters, every
protoplasmic ribbon was reorganizing before his eyes into the
semblance of a new creature. Where there had been a score, there were
now five hundred!
Kay ran back to his plane, leaped in, and soared southward. His face
was a grotesque mask of madness, and his cries rang out through the
ether.
* * * * *
The victims were no longer chained to stakes. The Federation, which
always acted with complete secrecy, had gone one better. It had
engaged electrical engineers, kept them housed in secret places,
transported them to Golgotha; and there a vast electrified field had
been established, an open space whose boundaries were marked out by
pillars of electron steel.
Between these pillars ran lines of electric force. To attempt to pass
them meant--not death, for dead boys and girls were spurned by the
devils--but a violent shock that hurled one backward.
On this great plain the hundred thousand victims sat huddled in the
open. Food they had none, for no purpose was to be served by
mitigating their last agonies. No shelter either, for the sight of
buildings might delay the final phase. But high above the doomed there
floated the flag of the Federation, on a lofty pole, a touch of ironic
sentimentality that had commended itself to some mind at Washington.
Over a square mile of territory, ringed with jungle the victims lay.
The majority of them ringed this terrain; that is to say, attempting
to escape, they had been hurled back by the electrical charge, and,
having no strength or will remaining, they had dropped where they had
been hurled, and lay in apathetic resignation.
There had been screams and cries for mercy, and piteous scenes when
the Government airships had deposited them there and flown away, but
now an intense silence had descended upon the doomed. Resigned to
their fate, they sat or lay in little silent groups, all eyes turned
toward the gloomy jungle.
* * * * *
And everywhere within this jungle a wraith-like mist was forming at
this dawn hour. From a thousand miles around, the devils were
mustering for their prey, agglutinating, in order that the meal of one
might become the meal of all.
Wisps of protoplasmic fog were stealing out through the trees,
changing shape every instant, but always advancing: now presenting the
appearance of an aligned regiment of huge, shadowy men, now nothing
but a wall of semi-solid vapor. And still, with eyeballs straining in
their sockets, the victims watched.
Suddenly all were seized with the same spasm of mad terror. Again they
hurled themselves against the electrified lines, and again they were
hurled back, masses of boys and girls tumbling against one another,
and screaming in one wail that, could it have been heard in
Washington, would have driven all insane. Again and again, till they
fell back, panting and helpless. And solidly the wall of devils was
creeping up from every side.
Ruth Deane, one of the few who had themselves in control, lay some
distance back from the electrified field. From the moment when she was
surprised in her apartment by the Government representatives, she had
known that there was no hope of escape.
* * * * *
She had slipped the ring off her finger, snapped the plastic metal,
and attached it to a thread torn from her dress. She had managed to
insert it in the door, hoping that Kay would find it. It would serve
as a last message of love to him.
Every removal of a selected victim was in the nature of a kidnapping.
At dead of night her apartment had been opened. She had been ordered
to dress. Nothing could be written, no arrangements made. She was
already considered as one dead.
She had been hurried out of the upper entrance to the monorail, which
conveyed her in a special car to the landing station. A few minutes
later she had been on her way to join the camp of other victims, a
hundred miles away. Within two hours she was on her way southward.
Stunned by the tragedy, none of the victims had made much of an
outcry. They had been given water by the airship police. No food for
boys and girls already dead. Days and nights had passed, and now she
was here, faint from exhaustion, and wondering at the despair shown by
those others. What difference would it make in half an hour? Besides,
that Government pamphlet had insisted that this death was painless!
But an immense longing to see Kay once more came over her. There had
been a time when she thought she loved Cliff; then Kay had come into
her life, and she had known that other affair was folly. She had
never told Kay of the bitter scene between Cliff and herself, how he
had raved against Kay and sworn to win her in the end.
Cliff had calmed down and apologized, and Ruth had never seen him
again. She wished he had not taken it like that. But above all she
wanted to see Kay, just to say good-by.
And she tried to send out her whole heart to him in an unspoken
message of love that would surely somehow convey itself to him.
* * * * *
The wall of devils was creeping up on every side, slowly,
lethargically. The monsters took their time, because they knew they
were invincible. The sobs and shrieks had died away. Collected into a
mass almost as rigid as that of the Earth Giants, the victims waited,
palsied as a rabbit that awaits the approach of the serpent.
A humming overhead. An airplane shooting down from the sky. Rescue?
No. Only a solitary pilot, armed with a woodsman's ax.
Kay drifted down, touched ground, leaped to his feet. Chance had
brought him within five hundred yards of where Ruth was standing. But
Ruth had known who that lone flyer must be. She broke through the
throng; she rushed to meet him. Her arms were around him.
"Kay, darling Kay!"
"Ruth, dearest!"
"I knew you'd come."
"I've come to die beside you!"
* * * * *
It was perhaps odd that it did not enter the head of either as a
possibility that Kay should simply place Ruth in the plane and fly
away with here to safety. Had the thought occurred to Kay, he might
have been tempted. But such black treachery was something
inconceivable by either. So long as the Federation remained, so long
as man moved in an organized society, he was bound to his fellows, to
fight, suffer, and die with them.
"Stand by me, Ruth. We're going down fighting."
They moved back toward the throng, which, momentarily stirred to hope
by Kay's appearance, had fallen into the former apathy of despair. And
now the monsters were beginning to enter the electrified zone at one
point. As they passed the line of posts, the high tension current made
their bodies luminous, but it had no appreciable effect upon them.
They moved on, inevitably.
A score or so of semi-human forms, agglutinated into a mass, and yet
individually discernible. They bore down slowly upon the crowd of
victims, who pressed backward as they advanced. On the other sides,
though they almost encircled the field of death, the monsters were
making no maneuvers to entrap their prey. Their sluggish minds were
incapable of conceiving anything of the kind. But for the electrified
zone, the great majority of the victims could have effected their
escape. The monsters were simply pressing forward to their meal; they
did not interpret its capture in terms of strategy at all.
* * * * *
A new frenzy of horror seized the crowd. They fled, struggling back
until the foremost in flight reached the other side of Golgotha, to be
repulsed by the electrified zone there. They fell in tumbled heaps.
Appalling shrieks rang through the air.
Another line of the monsters was seeping forward, converging toward
the first. As the two lines met, they coalesced into a wall of
protoplasm, a thousand feet in length by a hundred high. A wall out of
which leered phantasmal faces, like those in a frieze.
Kay stood alone, his arm around Ruth. To follow the flying mob would
but prolong the agony. He raised the ax. He looked into the girl's
eyes. She understood, and nodded.
One last embrace, one kiss, and Kay placed her behind him. He sprang
forward, shouting, and plunged into the very heart of the wall.
And Ruth, watching with eyes dilated with horror, saw it yield with a
sucking sound, and saw Kay disappear within it.
* * * * *
She saw the hideous mass fold itself upon him, and a hundred extruded
tentacles wave in the air as they blindly grappled for him. And then
Kay had broken through, and was hewing madly with great sweeps of the
ax that slashed great streamers of the amorphous tissue from the wall
of protoplasm.
It recoiled and then folded once more, and Kay's mighty sweeps were
slashing phantom limbs from phantom bodies; and lopping off tentacles
that curled and coiled, and put forth caricatures of hands and
fingers, and then, uniting with other slashed off tentacles, began to
mould themselves into the likeness of dwarf monsters. Kay's struggle
was like that of a man fighting a fog, for again and again he broke
through the wall, and always it reunited.
And behind it another wall of protoplasm was pressing forward, and on
another side a wall was drifting up. As Kay stopped, panting, and
momentarily free, Ruth saw that they were almost encircled.
She saw the nature of that fight. Inevitably that wall would close
about them; and, though the bones of last year's victims had been
gathered up and carried away by the Federation, she guessed what would
occur.
She ran to Kay and dragged him back through the closing gap. It met
behind them, and again they stood face to face with the devils. Only
this time, instead of a wall of protoplasm, it was a veritable
mountain that confronted them, and there could be no more breaking
through.
Kay thought afterward that the one touch of absolute horror was that
the reforming monsters, the young ones growing visibly before his
eyes, had the gamboling instinct of young lambs or other creatures.
They were much more lively than the parent creatures.
* * * * *
By this time perhaps a third of the space within the electrified lines
had been occupied by the devils. The wall was slowly and sluggishly
advancing, and a fresh infiltration was drifting in on another side.
As the victims were pressed closer and closer together in their
flight, half of them seemed to go insane. They raced to and fro,
laughing and screaming, flinging their arms aloft in extravagant
gestures. One young fellow, rushing across the ground, hurled himself
like a bolt from a catapult into the heart of the grisly mass, which
opened and received him.
There was a struggle, a convulsion; then the mass moved on.
Kay wiped his ax. He stood beside Ruth, gathering strength and breath
to fight again. What else was there to do?
Suddenly a humming sound came to his ears. Still some little distance
from the monsters, he glanced back. The victims were shouting, staring
upward. Over the tops of the jungle trees Kay saw a second airplane
flying toward them, a larger one than the plane which he had flown.
It opened its helicopter wings and drifted downward. Kay saw a single
pilot, and, in the baggage compartment something that at first he did
not recognize. Then he recognized both this object and the aviator.
"It's Cliff," he whispered hoarsely. "He's brought the top!"
* * * * *
The crowd was milling about Cliff as he stepped out of the plane. Kay
broke through their midst, shouting to them to clear a space, that it
was their chance, their only chance. They heard him and obeyed. And
Cliff and Kay clasped hands, and there was Ruth beside them.
The two men carried the top out of the baggage compartment and set it
up.
"Thank God I came in time," Cliff hissed. "How long have we got, Kay?"
"Five minutes, I think," Kay answered, glancing at the oncoming wall.
"They're slow. Will it work, Cliff? God, when I found you'd gone last
night--"
Cliff did not answer. Ignoring Kay's offer of assistance, he fitted
the top tightly into its socket of craolite, much heavier than the
former one. Beneath this, three heavy craolite legs formed a sort of
tripod.
"I looked forward to this possibility, Kay," said Cliff, as he
adjusted the top and turned the clamps that held it in position.
"Sorry I had to deceive you, but you we're so set on the cosmic rays,
and I knew the psenium emanations wouldn't appeal to you. You wouldn't
have believed. I had a hunch Ruth would draw one of those numbers....
_How long?_"
The swaying masses of gray jelly were very near them. Cliff worked
feverishly at the top.
"Let me help. Cliff!"
"No! I'm through! Stand back!" shouted Cliff.
* * * * *
Even then--he regretted it afterward, and knew that he would regret it
to his dying day--even then the thought flashed through Kay's mind
that Cliff wanted all the glory. Behind him the milling, screaming
crowd was huddling, as if for protection. Slowly a wisp-like tentacle
protruded from the advancing wall. Kay swung his ax and lopped it from
the phantom body. But the wall was almost upon them, and from the
other side it was advancing rapidly.
"I'm ready! Stand back!" Cliff turned upon Kay, his face white, his
voice hoarse. "I've one request to make, Kay. Keep everybody back,
including you and Ruth. Nobody is to come within twenty-five yards of
this machine!"
"That shall be done," said Kay, a little bitterness in his tone.
"Ruth, I think I'm going to save you all." Cliff looked into the
girl's face for a moment. "Please stand back twenty-five yards," he
repeated.
Kay took Ruth by the arm and drew her back. The crowd moved back,
their pressure moving back the vast multitudes behind them. The vast
mob was almost packed into the quarter of the Golgotha; there was
scarcely room to move.
Kay saw Cliff press the lever.
* * * * *
Slowly the giant top began to whirl. Faster ... faster.... Now it was
revolving so fast that it had become totally invisible. But Cliff was
almost surrounded by the wall of jelly. Only his back could be seen,
and then space was narrowing fast.
Kay gripped Ruth's arm tightly. He held his breath. The crowd, of whom
only a small part knew what was taking place, was screaming with
terror as the mass of jelly on the other side pressed them inexorably
backward. And Cliff had almost vanished. Would the machine work? Was
it possible that the psenium emanations would succeed where the
Millikan rays, the W-ray had failed?
Then of a sudden the air grew dark as night. Kay began to sneeze. He
gasped for air. He was choking. He could see nothing, and he strained
Ruth to him convulsively, while the terrified multitudes behind him
set up a last wail of despair.
He could see nothing, and he stood with the ax ready for the onset of
the monsters, more terrible now, in their invisibility, than before.
Then of a sudden there sounded subterranean rumblings. The ground
seemed to open almost under Kay's feet.
He leaped back, dragging Ruth with him. Slowly the dust was settling,
the darkness lessening. A faint, luminous glow overhead revealed the
sun. Kay was aware that Cliff had swung the top, so that the psenium
rays were being brought to bear upon the second mass of the monsters
on the other side.
The sun vanished in appalling blackness. Again the dust-choked air was
almost unbreathable. The shrieks of the crowd died away in wheezing
gasps; and then a wilder clamor began.
"The earthquake! The earthquake!" a girl was shrilling. "God help us
all!"
Kay stood still, clutching Ruth tightly in his arms. He dared not
stir, for all the world seemed to be dissolving into chaos.
* * * * *
Slowly the dust began to settle again. Perhaps five minutes passed
before the sunbeams began to struggle through. A cloud of grey dust
still obscured everything. But the wall of protoplasm was gone!
Cliff's voice came moaning out of the murk, calling Kay's name.
Kay moved forward cautiously, still holding Ruth. He seemed to be
skirting the edge of a vast crater. At the edge of it he found the
top, revolving slowly. And Cliff's voice came from beside the top.
"Kay, we've won. Don't look at me. Don't let Ruth see me! Look down!"
Kay looked down into the bottomless pit, extending clear across the
plain to the distant jungle. An enormous canyon cloven in the earth,
filled with the slowly settling cloud of dust.
"They're there, Kay. Don't look this way!"
But Kay looked--and could see nothing except a pile of debris, from
the bottom of which Cliff's voice issued.
"Cliff, you're not hurt?"
"A--a little. You must listen while I tell you how to clean up the
monsters. It's the psenium emanation. It has the same effect when our
method is applied to it. It disintegrates everything inorganic--not
organic.
"I thought, if I couldn't get them, I'd crumble the earth away--bury
them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath
the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and
minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs
oxygen. They'll trouble us no more.
"You must take the top, Kay. Use our old method. You'll find its
application to the psenium emanation written in a book fastened
beneath the hood. Wipe out the rest of them. If any more come, you'll
know how to deal with them."
"Cliff, you're not badly hurt?" Kay asked again.
"Don't look, I tell you! Keep Ruth away!"
* * * * *
But the dust was settling fast, and suddenly Ruth uttered a scream of
fear.
And a strangled cry broke from Kay's throat as he looked down at what
had been Cliff Hynes.
The man seemed to have become resolved into the same sort of
protoplasm as the Earth Giants. He lay, a little heap, incredibly
small, incredibly distorted. Flesh without bones, shapeless lumps of
flesh where arms and legs and body frame should have been.
Cliff's voice came faintly. "You remember the leakage through the
rubber and analektron container, Kay. The W-rays even fused the
craolite socket. The psenium rays are stronger. They destroy even
bone. They're fatal to the man who operates the machine, unless he
follows the directions. I've written them out for you, but I had--no
time--to apply them."
His voice broke off. Then, "Good luck to you and--Ruth, Kay," he
whispered, absent inaudibly. "Don't let--her--look at me."
Kay led Ruth gently away. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, sobbing.
"He died to save us Kay."
* * * * *
It was like a return from the grave for the amazed boys and girls
who--since the onset of the monsters had destroyed the electric
lines--poured out of the plain of Golgotha to life and freedom.
Many of them had gone mad, a few had died of fright, but the rest
would come back to normal, and the world was saved.
Hunger was their greatest problem, for, despite Kay's hurried flight
to the nearest occupied post, it was difficult to convince the
Federation officials that the devils were really gone, buried beneath
a mile of crumbled earth. And Kay had to be back to mop up other,
smaller bands that had spread through the forests.
It was six months before the last of the monsters had been
obliterated, and then Kay, now one of the highest officials in the
Federation's service, was granted a lunarian's leave of absence
pending his taking command of an Antarctic expedition for the purpose
of destroying the remaining monsters in their lair.
He took this opportunity to be married to Ruth, in the church in his
native town, which was _en fete_ for the occasion.
"Thinking of Cliff?" Kay asked his bride, as she settled in his plane
preparatory to their starting for the honeymoon in the Adirondacks. "I
think he would be happy if he knew. He saved the world, dear; he gave
his best. And that was all he wanted."
* * * * *
[Advertisement: ]
The Pirate Planet
BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL
_By Charles W. Diffin_
[Illustration: Like rats in a cage, the planes of the 91st Squadron
were darting and whirling.]
[Sidenote: A strange light blinks on Venus, and over old Earth hovers
a mysterious visitant--dread harbinger of interplanetary war.]
CHAPTER I
Lieutenant McGuire threw open his coat with its winged insignia of the
air force and leaned back in his chair to read more comfortably the
newspaper article.
He glanced at Captain Blake across the table. The captain was deep in
a game of solitaire, but he looked up at McGuire's audible chuckle.
"Gay old girl!" said Lieutenant McGuire and smoothed the paper across
his knees. "She's getting flirtatious."
The captain swore softly as he gathered up his cards. "Not
interested," he announced; "too hot to-night. Keep her away."
"Oh, she's far enough away," McGuire responded; "about seventy million
miles. Don't get excited."
"What are you talking about?" The captain shuffled his cards
irritably.
"Venus. She's winking at us, the old reprobate. One of these
star-gazers up on Mount Lawson saw the flashes a week or so ago. If
you'll cut out your solitaire and listen, I'll read you something to
improve your mind." He ignored the other's disrespectful remark and
held the paper closer to see the paragraphs.
"Is Venus Signalling?" inquired the caption which Lieutenant McGuire
read. "Professor Sykes of Mt. Lawson Observatory Reports Flashes.
"The planet Venus, now a brilliant spectacle in the evening sky, is
behaving strangely according to a report from the local observatory on
Mount Lawson. This sister star, most like Earth of all the planets, is
now at its eastern elongation, showing like a half-moon in the big
telescopes on Mt. Lawson. Shrouded in impenetrable clouds, its surface
has never been seen, but something is happening there. Professor Sykes
reports seeing a distinct flash of light upon the terminator, or
margin of light. It lasted for several seconds and was not repeated.
"No explanation of the phenomenon is offered by scientists, as
conditions on the planet's surface are unknown. Is there life there?
Are the people of Venus trying to communicate? One guess is as good as
another. But it is interesting to recall that our scientists recently
proposed to send a similar signal from Earth to Mars by firing a
tremendous flare of magnesium.
"Venus is now approaching the earth; she comes the nearest of all
planets. Have the Venusians penetrated their cloak of cloud masses
with a visible light? The planet will be watched with increased
interest as it swings toward us in space, in hope of there being a
repetition of the unexplained flash."
* * * * *
"There," said Lieutenant McGuire,"--doesn't that elevate your mind?
Take it off this infernally hot night? Carry you out through the cool
reaches of interplanetary space? If there is anything else you want to
know, just ask me."
"Yes," Captain Blake agree, "there is. I want to know how the game
came out back in New York--and you don't know that. Let's go over and
ask the radio man. He probably has the dope."
"Good idea," said McGuire; "maybe he has picked up a message from
Venus; we'll make a date." He looked vainly for the brilliant star as
they walked out into the night. There were clouds of fog from the
nearby Pacific drifting high overhead. Here and there stars showed
momentarily, then were blotted from sight.
The operator in the radio room handed the captain a paper with the
day's scores from the eastern games. But Lieutenant McGuire, despite
his ready amusement at the idea, found his thoughts clinging to the
words he had read. "Was the planet communicating?" he pictured the
great globe--another Earth--slipping silently through space, coming
nearer and nearer.
Did they have radio? he wondered. Would they send recognizable
signals--words--or some mathematical sequence to prove their reality?
He turned to the radio operator on duty.
"Have you picked up anything peculiar," he asked, and laughed inwardly
at himself for the asking. "Any new dots and dashes? The scientists
say that Venus is calling. You'll have to be learning a new code."
The man glanced at him strangely and looked quickly away.
"No, sir," he said. And added after a pause: "No new dots and dashes."
"Don't take that stuff too seriously, Mac," the captain remonstrated.
"The day of miracles is past; we don't want to commit you to the
psychopathic ward. Now here is something real: the Giants won, and I
had ten dollars on them. How shall we celebrate?"
* * * * *
The radio man was listening intently as they started to leave. His
voice was hesitating as he stopped them; he seemed reluctant to put
his thoughts into words.
"Just a minute, sir," he said to Captain Blake.
"Well?" the captain asked. And again the man waited before he replied.
Then--
"Lieutenant McGuire asked me," he began, "if I had heard any strange
dots and dashes. I have not; but ... well, the fact is, sir, that I
have been getting some mighty queer sounds for the past few nights.
They've got me guessing.
"If you wouldn't mind waiting. Captain; they're about due now--" He
listened again to some signal inaudible to the others, then hooked up
two extra head-sets for the officers.
"It's on now," he said. "If you don't mind--"
McGuire grinned at the captain as they took up the ear-phones. "Power
of suggestion," he whispered, but the smile was erased from his lips
as he listened. For in his ear was sounding a weird and wailing note.
No dots or dashes, as the operator had said, but the signal was
strong. It rose and fell and wavered into shrill tremolos, a ghostly,
unearthly sound, and it kept on and on in a shrill despairing wail.
Abruptly it stopped.
The captain would have removed the receiver from his ear, but the
operator stopped him. "Listen," he said, "to the answer."
* * * * *
There was silence, broken only by an occasional hiss and crackle of
some far distant mountain storm. Then, faint as a whisper, came an
answering, whistling breath.
It, too, trembled and quavered. It went up--up--to the limit of
hearing; then slid down the scale to catch and tremble and again
ascend in endless unvarying ups and downs of sound. It was another
unbroken, unceasing, but always changing vibration.
"What in thunder is that?" Captain Blake demanded.
"Communication of some sort, I should say," McGuire said slowly, and
he caught the operator's eyes upon him in silent agreement.
"No letters," Blake objected; "no breaks; just that screech." He
listened again. "Darned if it doesn't almost seem to say something,"
he admitted.
"When did you first hear this?" he demanded of the radio man.
"Night before last, sir. I did not report it. It seemed too--too--"
"Quite so," said Captain Blake in understanding, "but it is some form
of broadcasting on a variable wave; though how a thing like that can
make sense--"
"They talk back and forth," said the operator; "all night, most.
Notice the loud one and the faint one; two stations sending and
answering."
Captain Blake waved him to silence. "Wait--wait!" he ordered. "It's
growing louder!"
* * * * *
In the ears of the listening men the noise dropped to a loud grumble; rose
to a piercing shriek; wavered and leaped rapidly from note to note. It was
increasing; rushing upon them with unbearable sound. The sense of something
approaching, driving toward them swiftly, was strong upon Lieutenant
McGuire. He tore the head-phones from his ears and rushed to the door. The
captain was beside him. Whoever--whatever--was sending that mysterious
signal was coming near--but was that nearness a matter of miles or of
thousands of miles?
They stared at the stormy night sky above. A moon was glowing faintly
behind scudding clouds, and the gray-black of flying shadows formed an
opening as they watched, a wind-blown opening like a doorway to the
infinity beyond, where, blocking out the stars, was a something that
brought a breath-catching shout from the watching men.
Some five thousand feet up in the night was a gleaming ship. There
were rows of portholes that shone twinkling against the black
sky--portholes in multiple rows on the side. The craft was
inconceivably huge. Formless and dim of outline in the darkness, its
vast bulk was unmistakable.
And as they watched with staring, incredulous eyes, it seemed to take
alarm as if it sensed the parting of its concealing cloud blanket. It
shot with dizzy speed and the roar of a mighty meteor straight up into
the night. The gleam of its twinkling lights merged to a distant star
that dwindled, shrank and vanished in the heights.
The men were wordless and open-mouthed. They stared at each other in
disbelief of what their eyes had registered.
"A liner!" gasped Captain Blake. "A--a--liner! Mac, there is no such
thing."
* * * * *
McGuire pointed where the real cause of their visitor's departure
appeared. A plane with engine wide open came tearing down through the
clouds. It swung in a great spiral down over the field and dropped a
white flare as it straightened away; then returned for the landing. It
taxied at reckless speed toward the hangars and stopped a short
distance from the men. The pilot threw himself out of the cockpit and
raced drunkenly toward them.
"Did you see it?" he shouted, his voice a cracked scream. "Did you see
it?"
"We saw it," said Captain Blake; "yes, we saw it. Big as--" He sought
vainly for a proper comparison, then repeated his former words: "Big
as an ocean liner!"
The pilot nodded; he was breathing heavily.
"Any markings?" asked his superior. "Anything to identify it?"
"Yes, there were markings, but I don't know what they mean. There was
a circle painted on her bow and marks like clouds around it, but I
didn't have time to see much. I came out of a cloud, and there the
thing was. I was flying at five thousand, and they hung there dead
ahead. I couldn't believe it; it was monstrous; tremendous. Then they
sighted me, I guess, and they up-ended that ship in mid-air and shot
straight up till they were out of sight."
It was the captain's turn to nod mutely.
"There's your miracle," said Lieutenant McGuire softly.
"Miracle is right," agreed Captain Blake; "nothing less! But it is no
miracle of ours, and I am betting it doesn't mean any good to us. Some
other country has got the jump on us."
To the pilot he ordered: "Say nothing of this--not a word--get that?
Let me have a written report: full details, but concise as possible."
He went back to the radio room, and the operator there received the
same instructions.
"What are you going to do?" the lieutenant questioned.
Captain Blake was reaching for a head-set. "Listen in," he said
briefly; "try to link up that impossible ship with those messages,
then report at once to the colonel and whoever he calls in. I'll want
you along, Mac, to swear I am sober."
* * * * *
He had a head-set adjusted, and McGuire took up the other. Again the
room was still, and again from the far reaches of space the dark night
sent to them its quavering call.
The weird shrillness cried less loudly now, and the men listened in
strained silence to the go and come of that variable shriek. Musical
at times as it leaped from one clear note to another, again it would
merge into discordant blendings of half-tones that sent shivers of
nervous reaction up the listeners' spines.
"Listen," said McGuire abruptly. "Check me on this. There are two of
them, one loud and one faint--right?"
"Right," said Captain Blake.
"Now notice the time intervals--there! The faint one stops, and the
big boy cuts in immediately. No waiting; he answers quickly. He does
it every time."
"Well?" the captain asked.
"Listen when he stops and see how long before the faint one answers.
Call the loud one the ship and the faint one the station.... There!
The ship is through!"
There was pause; some seconds elapsed before the answer that whispered
so faintly in their ears came out of the night.
"You are right, sir," the operator said in corroboration of McGuire's
remark. "There is that wait every time."
"The ship answers at once," said McGuire; "the station only after a
wait."
"Meaning--?" inquired the captain.
"Meaning, as I take it, that there is time required for the message to
go from the ship to the station and for them to reply."
"An appreciable time like that," Captain Blake exclaimed, "--with
radio! Why, a few seconds, even, would carry it around the world a
score of times!"
Lieutenant McGuire hesitated a moment. "It happens every time," he
reminded the captain: "it is no coincidence. And if that other station
is out in space--another ship perhaps, relaying the messages to yet
others between here and--Venus, let us say...."
* * * * *
He left the thought unfinished. Captain Blake was staring at him as
one who beholds a fellow-man suddenly insane. But the look in his eyes
changed slowly, and his lips that had been opened in remonstrance came
gradually in a firm, straight line.
"Crazy!" he said, but it was apparent that he was speaking as much to
himself as to McGuire. "Plumb, raving crazy!... Yet that ship _did_ go
straight up out of sight--an acceleration in the upper air beyond
anything we know. It might be--" And he, too, stopped at the actual
voicing of the wild surmise. He shook his head sharply as if to rid it
of intruding, unwelcome thoughts.
"Forget that!" he told McGuire, and repeated it in a less commanding
tone. "Forget it, Mac: we've got to render a report to sane men, you
and I. What we know will be hard enough for them to believe without
any wild guesses.
"That new craft is real. It has got it all over us for size and speed
and potential offensive action. Who made it? Who mans it? Red Russia?
Japan? That's what the brass hats will be wondering; that's what they
will want to find out.
"Not a word!" he repeated to the radio man. "You will keep mum on
this."
He took McGuire with him as he left to seek out his colonel. But it
was a disturbed and shaken man, instead of the cool, methodical
Captain Blake of ordinary days, who went in search of his commanding
officer. And he clung to McGuire for corroboration of his impossible
story.
* * * * *
There was a group of officers to whom Blake made his full report.
Colonel Boynton had heard but little when he halted his subordinate
curtly and reached for a phone. And his words over that instrument
brought a quick conference of officers and a quiet man whom McGuire
did not recognize. The "brass hats," as Blake had foreseen, were avid
for details.
The pilot of the incoming plane was there, too, and the radio man.
Their stories were told in a disconcerting silence, broken only by
some officer's abrupt and skeptical question on one point and another.
"Now, for heaven's sake, shut up about Venus," McGuire had been told.
But he did not need Captain Blake's warning to hold himself strictly
to what he had seen and let the others draw their own conclusions.
Lieutenant McGuire was the last one to speak. There was silence in the
office of Colonel Boynton as he finished, a silence that almost echoed
from the grim walls. And the faces of the men who gathered there were
carefully masked from any expression that might betray their thoughts.
It was the quiet man in civilian attire who spoke first. He sat beside
another whose insignia proclaimed him of general's rank, but he
addressed himself to Colonel Boynton.
"I am very glad," he said quietly, "very glad. Colonel, that my
unofficial visit came at just this time. I should like to ask some few
questions."
Colonel Boynton shifted the responsibility with a gesture almost of
relief. "It is in your hands. Mr. Secretary," he said. "You and
General Clinton have dropped in opportunely. There is something here
that will tax all our minds."
The man in civilian clothes nodded assent. He turned to Captain Blake.
"Captain," he said, "you saw this at first hand. You have told us what
you saw. I should like greatly to know what you think. Will you give
us your opinion, your impressions?"
* * * * *
The captain arose smartly, but his words came with less ease.
"My opinion," he stated, "will be of little value, but it is based
upon these facts. I have seen to-night, sir, a new type of aircraft,
with speed, climb and ceiling beyond anything we are capable of. I
can only regard it as a menace. It may or may not have been armed, but
it had the size to permit the armament of a cruiser; it had power to
carry that weight. It hung stationary in the air, so it is independent
of wing-lift, yet it turned and shot upward like a feather in a gale.
That spells maneuverability.
"That combination, sir, can mean only that we are out-flown,
out-maneuvered and out-fought in the air. It means that the planes in
our hangars are obsolete, our armament so much old iron.
"The menace is potential at present. Whether it is an actual threat or
not is another matter. Who mans that ship--what country's insignia she
carries--is something on which I can have no opinion. The power is
there: who wields it I wish we knew."
The questioner nodded at the conclusion of Blake's words, and he
exchanged quiet, grave glances with the general beside him. Then--
"I think we all would wish to know that, Captain Blake," he observed.
And to the colonel: "You may be able to answer that soon. It would be
my idea that this craft should be--ah--drawn out, if we can do it. We
would not attack it, of course, until its mission is proved definitely
unfriendly, but you will resist any offensive from them.
"And now," he added, "let us thank these officers for their able
reports and excuse them. We have much to discuss...."
* * * * *
Captain Blake took McGuire's arm as they went out into the night. And
he drew him away where they walked for silent minutes by themselves.
The eyes of Lieutenant McGuire roamed upward to the scudding clouds
and the glimpse of far, lonely stars; he stumbled occasionally as he
walked. But for Captain Blake there was thought only of matters
nearby.
"The old fox!" he exclaimed. "Didn't he 'sic us on' neatly? If we mix
it with that stranger there will be no censure from the Secretary of
War."
"I assumed that was who it was," said McGuire. "Well, they have
something to think about, that bunch; something to study over....
Perhaps more than they know.
"And that's their job," he concluded after a silence. "I'm going to
bed; but I would like a leave of absence to-morrow if that's O. K."
"Sure," said Captain Blake, "though I should think you would like to
stick around. Perhaps we will see something. What's on your mind,
Mac?"
"A little drive to the top of Mount Lawson," said Lieutenant McGuire.
"I want to talk to a bird named Sykes."
CHAPTER II
Lieutenant McGuire, U. S. A., was not given as a usual thing to vain
conjectures, nor did his imagination carry him beyond the practical
boundaries of accepted facts. Yet his mind, as he drove for hours
through the orange-scented hills of California, reverted time and
again to one persistent thought. And it was with him still, even when
he was consciously concentrating on the hairpin turns of Mount
Lawson's narrow road.
There was a picture there, printed indelibly in his mind--a picture of
a monstrous craft, a liner of the air, that swung its glowing lights
in a swift arc and, like a projectile from some huge gun, shot up and
up and still up until it vanished in a jet-black sky. Its altitude
when it passed from sight he could not even guess, but the sense of
ever-increasing speed, of power that mocked at gravitation's puny
force, had struck deep into his mind. And McGuire saw plainly this
mystery ship going on and on far into the empty night where man had
never been.
No lagging in that swift flight that he had seen; an acceleration that
threw the ship faster and yet faster, regardless of the thin air and
the lessened buoyancy in an ocean of atmosphere that held man-made
machines so close to Earth. That constant acceleration, hour after
hour, day after day--the speed would be almost unlimited;
inconceivable!
He stopped his car where the mountain road held straight for a hundred
feet, and he looked out over the coastal plain spread like a toy world
far below.
"Now, how about it?" he asked himself. "Blake thinks I am making a
fool of myself. Perhaps I am. I wonder. It's a long time since I fell
for any fairy stories. But this thing has got me. A sort of hunch, I
guess."
* * * * *
The sun was shining now from a vault of clear blue. It was lighting a
world of reality, of houses where people lived their commonplace
lives, tiny houses squared off in blocks a mile below. There was smoke
here and there from factories; it spread in a haze, and it meant
boilers and engines and sound practical machinery of a practical world
to the watching man.
What had all this to do with Venus? he asked himself. This was the
world he knew. It was real; space was impenetrable; there were no men
or beings of any sort that could travel through space. Blake was
right: he was on a fool's errand. They couldn't tell him anything up
here at the observatory; they would laugh at him as he deserved....
Wondering vaguely if there was a place to turn around, he looked ahead
and then up; his eyes passed from the gash of roadway on the
mountainside to the deep blue beyond. And within the man some driving,
insistent, mental force etched strongly before his eyes that picture
and its problem unanswered. There was the ship--he saw it in
memory--and it went up and still up; and he knew as surely as if he
had guided the craft that the meteor-like flight could be endless.
Lieutenant McGuire could not reason it out--such power was beyond his
imagining--but suddenly he dared to believe, and he knew it was true.
"Earthbound!" he said in contempt of his own human kind, and he looked
again at the map spread below. "Ants! Mites! That's what we
are--swarming across the surface of the globe. And we think we're so
damn clever if we lift ourselves up a few miles from the surface!
"Guess I'll see Sykes," he muttered aloud. "He and his kind at least
dare to look out into space; take their eyes off the world; be
impractical!"
He swung the car slowly around the curve ahead, eased noiselessly into
second gear and went on with the climb.
* * * * *
There were domed observatories where he stopped: rounded structures
that gleamed silvery in the air; and offices, laboratories: it was a
place of busy men. And Professor Sykes, he found, was busy. But he
spared a few minutes to answer courteously the questions of this slim
young fellow in the khaki uniform of the air service.
"What can I do for you?" asked Professor Sykes.
"No dreamer, this man," thought McGuire as he looked at the short,
stocky figure of the scientist. Clear eyes glanced sharply from under
shaggy brows; there were papers in his hand scrawled over with strange
mathematical symbols.
"You can answer some fool questions," said Lieutenant McGuire
abruptly, "if you don't mind."
The scientist smiled broadly. "We're used to that," he told the young
officer; "you can't think of any worse ones than those we have heard.
Have a chair."
McGuire drew a clipping from his pocket--it was the newspaper account
he had read--and he handed it to Professor Sykes.
"I came to see you about this," he began.
The lips of Professor Sykes lost their genial curve; they straightened
to a hard line. "Nothing for publication," he said curtly. "As usual
they enlarged upon the report and made assumptions and inferences not
warranted by facts."
"But you did see that flash?"
"By visual observation I saw a bright area formed on the
terminator--yes! We have no photographic corroboration."
"I am wondering what it meant."
"That is your privilege--and mine," said the scientist coldly.
"But it said there," McGuire persisted, "that it might have been a
signal of some sort."
"_I_ did not say so: that is an inference only. I have told you,
Lieutenant"--he glanced at the card in his hand--"--Lieutenant
McGuire--all that I know. We deal in facts up here, and we leave the
brilliant theorizing to the journalists."
* * * * *
The young officer felt distinctly disconcerted. He did not know
exactly what he had expected from this man--what corroboration of his
wild surmises--but he was getting nowhere, he admitted. And he
resented the cold aloofness of the scientist before him.
"I am not trying to pin you down on anything," he said, and his tone
carried a hint of the nervous strain that had been his. "I am trying
to learn something."
"Just what?" the other inquired.
"Could that flash have been a signal?"
"You may think so if you wish: I have told you all that I know. And
now," he added, and rose from his chair, "I must ask to be excused; I
have work to do."
McGuire came slowly to his feet. He had learned nothing; perhaps there
was nothing to be learned. A fool's errand! Blake was right. But the
inner urge for some definite knowledge drove him on. His eyes were
serious and his face drawn to a scowl of earnestness as he turned once
more to the waiting man.
"Professor Sykes," he demanded, "just one more question. Could that
have been the flash of a--a rocket? Like the proposed experiments in
Germany. Could it have meant in any way the launching of a
projectile--a ship--to travel Earthward through space?"
* * * * *
Professor Sykes knew what it was to be harassed by the curious mob, to
avoid traps set by ingenious reporters, but he knew, too, when he was
meeting with honest bewilderment and a longing for knowledge. His
fists were placed firmly on the hips of his stocky figure as he stood
looking at the persistent questioner, and his eyes passed from the
intent face to the snug khaki coat and the spread wings that
proclaimed the wearer's work. A ship out of space--a projectile--this
young man had said.
"Lieutenant," he suggested quietly--and again the smile had returned
to his lips as he spoke--"sit down. I'm not as busy as I pretend to
be. Now tell me: what in the devil have you got in your mind?"
And McGuire told him. "Like some of your dope," he said, "this is not
for publication. But I have not been instructed to hush it up, and I
know you will keep it to yourself."
He told the clear-eyed, listening man of the previous night's events.
Of the radio's weird call and the mystery ship.
"Hallucination," suggested the scientist. "You saw the stars very
clearly, and they suggested a ship."
"Tell that to Jim Burgess," said McGuire: "he was the pilot of that
plane." And the scientist nodded as if the answer were what he
expected.
He asked again about the ship's flight. And he, too, bore down heavily
upon the matter of acceleration in the thin upper air. He rose to lay
a friendly hand on McGuire's shoulder.
"We can't know what it means," he said, "but we can form our own
theories, you and I--and anything is possible.
"It is getting late," he added, "and you have had a long drive. Come
over and eat; spend the night here. Perhaps you would like to have a
look at our equipment--see Venus for yourself. I will be observing her
through the sixty-inch refractor to-night. Would you care to?"
"Would I?" McGuire demanded with enthusiasm. "Say, that will be
great!"
* * * * *
The sun was dropping toward the horizon when the two men again came
out into the cool mountain air.
"Just time for a quick look around," suggested Professor Sykes, "if
you are interested."
He took the lieutenant first to an enormous dome that bulged high
above the ground, and admitted him to the dark interior. They climbed
a stairway and came out into a room that held a skeleton frame of
steel. "This is the big boy," said Professor Sykes, "the one
hundred-inch reflector."
There were other workers there, one a man standing upon a raised
platform beside the steel frame, who arranged big holders for
photographic plates. The slotted ceiling opened as McGuire watched,
and the whole structure swung slowly around. It was still, and the
towering steel frame began to swing noiselessly when a man at a desk
touched various controls. McGuire looked about him in bewilderment.
"Quite a shop," he admitted; "but where is the telescope?"
Professor Sykes pointed to the towering latticework of steel. "Right
there," he said. "Like everyone else, you were expecting to see a big
tube."
He explained in simple words the operation of the great instrument
that brought in light rays from sources millions of light years away.
He pointed out where the big mirror was placed--the one hundred-inch
reflector--and he traced for the wondering man the pathway of light
that finally converged upon a sensitized plate to catch and record
what no eye had ever seen.
He checked the younger man's flow of questions and turned him back
toward the stairs. "We will leave them to their work," he said; "they
will be gathering light that has been traveling millions of years on
its ways. But you and I have something a great deal nearer to study."
* * * * *
Another building held the big refractor, and it was a matter of only a
few seconds and some cryptic instructions from Sykes until the
eye-piece showed the image of the brilliant planet.
"The moon!" McGuire exclaimed in disappointed tones when the professor
motioned him to see for himself. His eyes saw a familiar half-circle
of light.
"Venus," the professor informed him. "It has phases like the moon. The
planet is approaching; the sun's light strikes it from the side." But
McGuire hardly heard. He was gazing with all his faculties centered
upon that distant world, so near to him now.
"Venus," he whispered half aloud. Then to the professor: "It's all
hazy. There are no markings--"
"Clouds," said the other. "The goddess is veiled; Venus is blanketed
in clouds. What lies underneath we may never know, but we do know that
of all the planets this is most like the earth; most probably is an
inhabited world. Its size, its density, your weight if you were
there--and the temperature under the sun's rays about double that of
ours. Still, the cloud envelope would shield it."
McGuire was fascinated, and his thoughts raced wildly in speculation
of what might be transpiring before his eyes. People, living in that
tropical world; living and going through their daily routine under
that cloud-filled sky where the sun was never seen. The margin of
light that made the clear shape of a half-moon marked their daylight
and dark; there was one small dot of light forming just beyond that
margin. It penetrated the dark side. And it grew, as he watched, to a
bright patch.
"What is that?" he inquired abstractedly--his thoughts were still
filled with those beings of his imagination. "There is a light that
extends into the dark part. It is spreading--"
* * * * *
He found himself thrust roughly aside as Professor Sykes applied a
more understanding eye to the instrument.
The professor whirled abruptly to his assistant. "Phone Professor
Giles," he said sharply; "he is working on the reflector. Tell him to
get a photograph of Venus at once; the cloud envelope is broken." He
returned hurriedly to his observations. One hand sketched on a waiting
pad.
"Markings!" he said exultantly. "If it would only hold!... There, it
is closing ... gone...."
His hand was quiet now upon the paper, but where he had marked was a
crude sketch of what might have been an island. It was "L" shaped;
sharply bent.
"Whew!" breathed Professor Sykes and looked up for a moment. "Now that
was interesting."
"You saw through?" asked McGuire eagerly. "Glimpsed the surface?--an
island?"
The scientist's face relaxed. "Don't jump to conclusions," he told the
aviator: "we are not ready to make a geography of Venus quite yet. But
we shall know that mark if we ever see it again. I hardly think they
had time to get a picture.
* * * * *
"And now there is only a matter of three hours for observation: I must
watch every minute. Stay here if you wish. But," he added, "don't let
your imagination run wild. Some eruption, perhaps, this we have
seen--an ignition of gasses in the upper air--who knows? But don't
connect this with your mysterious ship. If the ship is a menace, if it
means war, that is your field of action, not mine. And you will be
fighting with someone on Earth. It must be that some country has
gained a big lead in aeronautics. Now I must get to work."
"I'll not wait," said McGuire. "I will start for the field; get there
by daylight, if I can find my way down that road in the dark."
"Thanks a lot." He paused a moment before concluding slowly: "And in
spite of what you say, Professor, I believe that we will have
something to get together on again in this matter."
The scientist, he saw, had turned again to his instrument. McGuire
picked his way carefully along the narrow path that led where he had
parked his car. "Good scout, this Sykes!" he was thinking, and he
stopped to look overhead in the quick-gathering dark at that
laboratory of the heavens, where Sykes and his kind delved and probed,
measured and weighed, and gathered painstakingly the messages from
suns beyond counting, from universe out there in space that added
their bit of enlightenment to the great story of the mystery of
creation.
He was humbly aware of his own deep ignorance as he backed his car,
slipped it into second, and began the long drive down the tortuous
grade. He would have liked to talk more with Sykes. But he had no
thought as he wound round the curves how soon that wish was to be
gratified.
* * * * *
Part way down the mountainside he again checked his car where he had
stopped on the upward climb and reasoned with himself about his
errand. Once more he looked out over the level ground below, a vast
glowing expanse of electric lights now, that stretched to the ocean
beyond. He was suddenly unthrilled by this man-made illumination, and
he got out of his car to stare again at the blackness above and its
myriad of stars that gathered and multiplied as he watched.
One brighter than the rest winked suddenly out. There was a
constellation of twinkling lights that clustered nearby, and they too
vanished. The eyes of the watcher strained themselves to see more
clearly a dim-lit outline. There were no lights: it was a black
shape, lost in the blackness of the mountain sky, that was blocking
out the stars. But it was a shape, and from near the horizon the pale
gleams of the rising moon picked it out in softest of outline; a vague
ghost of a curve that reflected a silvery contour to the watching eyes
below.
There had been a wider space in the road that McGuire had passed; he
backed carefully till he could swing his car and turn it to head once
more at desperate speed toward the mountain top. And it was less than
an hour since he had left when he was racing back along the narrow
footpath to slam open the door where Professor Sykes looked up in
amazement at his abrupt return.
The aviator's voice was hoarse with excitement as he shouted: "It's
here--the ship! It's here! Where's your phone?--I must call the field!
It's right overhead--descending slowly--no lights, but I saw it--I saw
it!"
He was working with trembling fingers at the phone where Sykes had
pointed. "Long distance!" he shouted. He gave a number to the
operator. "Make it quick," he implored. "Quick!"
CHAPTER III
Back at Maricopa Flying Field the daily routine had been disturbed.
There were conferences of officers, instructions from Colonel Boynton,
and a curiosity-provoking lack of explanations. Only with Captain
Blake did the colonel indulge in any discussion.
"We'll keep this under our hats," he said, "and out of the newspapers
as long as we can. You can imagine what the yellow journals would do
with a scarehead like that. Why, they would have us all wiped off the
map and the country devastated by imaginary fleets in the first three
paragraphs."
Blake regarded his superior gravely. "I feel somewhat the same way,
myself. Colonel," he admitted. "When I think what this can mean--some
other country so far ahead of us in air force that we are back in the
dark ages--well, it doesn't look any too good to me if they mean
trouble."
"We will meet it when it comes," said Colonel Boynton. "But, between
ourselves, I am in the same state of mind.
"The whole occurrence is so damn mysterious. Washington hasn't a
whisper of information of any such construction; the Secretary
admitted that last night. It's a surprise, a complete surprise, to
everyone.
"But, Blake, you get that new ship ready as quickly as you can.
Prepare for an altitude test the same as we planned, but get into the
air the first minute possible. She ought to show a better ceiling than
anything we have here, and you may have to fly high to say 'Good
morning' to that liner you saw. Put all the mechanics on it that can
work to advantage. I think they have it pretty well along now."
"Engine's tested and installed, sir," was Blake's instant report. "I
think I can take it up this afternoon."
* * * * *
He left immediately to hurry to the hangar where a new plane stood
glistening in pristine freshness, and where hurrying mechanics
grumbled under their breaths at the sudden rush for a ship that was
expected to take the air a week later.
An altitude test under full load! Well, what of it? they demanded one
of another; wouldn't another day do as well as this one? And they
worked as they growled, worked with swift sureness and skill, and the
final instruments took their place in the ship that she might roll
from the hangar complete under that day's sun.
Her supercharger was tested--the adjunct to a powerful engine that
would feed the hungry cylinders with heavy air up in the heights where
the air is thin; there were oxygen flasks to keep life in the pilot in
the same thin air. And the hot southern sun made ludicrous that
afternoon the bulky, heavily-wrapped figure of Captain Blake as he
sat at the controls and listened approvingly to the roaring engine.
He waved good-by and smiled understandingly as he met the eyes of
Colonel Boynton; then pulled on his helmet, settled himself in his
seat and took off in a thunderous blast of sound to begin his long
ascent.
* * * * *
He had long since cracked open the valve of his oxygen flask when the
climb was ended, and his goggles were frosted in the arctic cold so
that it was only with difficulty he could read his instrument board.
"That's the top," he thought in that mind so light and so curiously
not his own. He throttled the engine and went into a long spiral that
was to end within a rod of where he had started on the brown sun-baked
field. The last rays of the sun were slanting over distant mountains
as he climbed stiffly from the machine.
"Better than fifty thousand," exulted Colonel Boynton. "Of course your
barograph will have to be calibrated and verified, but it looks like a
record, Blake--and you had a full load.
"Ready to go up and give merry hell to that other ship if she shows
up?" he asked. But Captain Blake shook a dubious head.
"Fifty thousand is just a start for that bird," he said. "You didn't
see them shoot out of sight, Colonel. Lord knows when they quit
_their_ climb--or where."
"Well, we'll just have a squadron ready in any event," the colonel
assured him. "We will make him show his stuff or take a beating--if
that is what he wants."
They were in the colonel's office. "You had better go and get warmed
up," he told the flyer: "then come back here for instructions." But
Blake was more anxious for information than for other comforts.
"I'm all right," he said: "just tired a bit. Let me stretch out here,
Colonel, and give me the dope on what you expect of our visitor and
what we will do."
* * * * *
He settled back comfortably in a big chair. The office was warm, and
Blake knew now he had been doing a day's work.
"We will just take it as it comes," Colonel Boynton explained. "I
can't for the life of me figure why the craft was spying around here.
What are they looking for? We haven't any big secrets the whole world
doesn't know.
"Of course he may not return. But if he does I want you to go up and
give him the once over. I can trust you to note every significant
detail.
"You saw no wings. If it is a dirigible, let's know something of their
power and how they can throw themselves up into the air the way you
described. Watch for anything that may serve to identify it and its
probable place of manufacture--any peculiarity of marking or design or
construction that may give us a lead. Then return and report."
Blake nodded his understanding of what was wanted, but his mind was on
further contingencies: he wanted definite instructions.
"And," he asked; "if they attack--what then? Is their fire to be
returned?"
"If they make one single false move," said Colonel Boynton savagely,
"give them everything you've got. And the 91st Squadron will be off
the ground to support you at the first sign of trouble. We don't want
to start anything, nor appear to do so. But, by the gods, Blake, this
fellow means trouble eventually as sure as you're a flyer, and we
won't wait for him to ask for it twice."
* * * * *
They sat in silence, while the field outside became shrouded in night.
And they speculated, as best they could from the few facts they had,
as to what this might mean to the world, to their country, to
themselves. It was an hour before Blake was aware of the fact that he
was hungry.
He rose to leave, but paused while Colonel Boynton answered the phone.
The first startled exclamation held him rigid while he tried to piece
together the officer's curt responses and guess at what was being
told.
"Colonel Boynton speaking.... McGuire?... Yes, Lieutenant.... Over
Mount Lawson?... Yes--yes, the same ship, I've no doubt."
His voice was even and cool in contrast to the excited tones that
carried faintly to Blake standing by.
"Quite right!" he said shortly. "You will remain where you are: act as
observer: hold this line open and keep me informed. Captain Blake will
leave immediately for observation. A squadron will follow. Let me know
promptly what you see."
He turned abruptly to the waiting man.
"It is back!" he said. "We're in luck! Over the observatories at Mount
Lawson; descending, so Lieutenant McGuire says. Take the same ship you
had up to-day. Look them over--get up close--good luck!" He turned
again to the phone.
There were planes rolling from their hangars before Blake could reach
his own ship. Their engines were thundering: men were rushing across
the field, pulling on leather helmets and coats as they ran--all this
while he warmed up his engine.
A mechanic thrust in a package of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee
while he waited. And Captain Blake grinned cheerfully and gulped the
last of his food as he waved to the mechanics to pull out the wheel
blocks. He opened the throttle and shot out into the dark.
He climbed and circled the field, saw the waving motion of lights in
red and green that marked the take-off of the planes of the 91st, and
he straightened out on a course that in less than two hours would
bring him over the heights of Mount Lawson and the mystery that
awaited him there. And he fingered the trigger grip that was part of
the stick and nodded within his dark cockpit at the rattle of a
machine gun that merged its staccato notes with the engine's roar.
But he felt, as he thought of that monster shape, as some primordial
man might have felt, setting forth with a stone in his hand to wage
war on a saurian beast.
CHAPTER IV
If Colonel Boynton could have stood with one of his lieutenants and
Professor Sykes on a mountain top, he would have found, perhaps, the
answer to his question. He had wondered in a puzzled fashion why the
great ship had shown its mysterious presence over the flying field. He
had questioned whether it was indeed the field that had been the
object of their attention or whether in the cloudy murk they had
merely wandered past. Could he have seen with the eyes of Lieutenant
McGuire the descent of the great shape over Mount Lawson, he would
have known beyond doubt that here was the magnet that drew the eyes of
whatever crew was manning the big craft.
It was dark where the two men stood. Others had come running at their
call, but their forms, too, were lost in the shadows of the towering
pines. The light from an open door struck across an open space beyond
which McGuire and Professor Sykes stood alone, stood silent and
spellbound, their heads craned back at a neck-wrenching angle. They
were oblivious to all discomforts; their eyes and their whole minds
were on the unbelievable thing in the sky.
Beyond the fact that no lights were showing along the hull, there was
no effort at concealment. The moon was up now to illumine the scene,
and it showed plainly the gleaming cylinder with its long body and
blunt, shining ends, dropping, slowly, inexorably down.
"Like a dirigible," said McGuire huskily. "But the size, man--the
size! And its shape is not right; it isn't streamlined correctly; the
air--" He stopped his half-unconscious analysis abruptly. "The air!"
What had this craft to do with the air? A thin layer of gas that hung
close to the earth--the skin on an apple! And beyond--space! There was
the ethereal ocean in which this great shape swam!
The reality of the big ship, the very substance of it, made the space
ship idea the harder to grasp. Lieutenant McGuire found that it was
easier to see an imaginary craft taking off into space than to
conceive of this monstrous shape, many hundreds of tons in weight,
being thrown through vast emptiness. Yet he knew; he knew!
And his mind was a chaos of grim threats and forebodings as he looked
at the unbelievable reality and tried to picture what manner of men
were watching, peering, from those rows of ports.
* * * * *
At last it was motionless. It hung soundless and silent except for a
soft roar, a scant thousand feet in the air. And its huge bulk was
dwarfing the giant pines, the rounded buildings; it threw the men's
familiar surroundings into a new and smaller scale.
He had many times flown over these mountains, and Lieutenant McGuire
had seen the silvery domes of the observatories shining among the
trees. Like fortresses for aerial defense, he had thought, and the
memory returned to him now. What did these new-comers think of them?
Had they, too, found them suggestive of forts on the frontier of a
world, defenses against invasion from out there? Or did they know them
for what they were? Did they wish only to learn the extent of our
knowledge, our culture? Were they friendly, perhaps?--half-timid and
fearful of what they might find?
A star moved in the sky, a pin-point of light that was plain in its
message to the aviator. It was Blake, flying high, volplaning to make
contact and learn from the air what this stranger might mean. The
light of his plane slanted down in an easy descent; the flyer was
gliding in on a long aerial toboggan slide. His motor was throttled;
there was only the whistle of torn air on the monoplane's wings.
McGuire was with the captain in his mind, and like him he was waiting
for whatever the stranger might do.
Other lights were clustered where the one plane had been. The men of
the 91st had their orders, and the fingers of the watching, silent man
gripped an imaginary stick while he wished with his whole heart that
he was up in the air. To be with Blake or the others! His thoughts
whipped back to the mysterious stranger: the great shape was in
motion: it rose sharply a thousand feet in the air.
* * * * *
The approaching plane showed clear in the moon's light. It swung and
banked, and the vibrant song of its engine came down to the men as
Blake swept in a great circle about the big ship. He was looking it
over, but he began his inspection at a distance, and the orbit of his
plane made a tightening spiral as he edged for a closer look. He was
still swinging in the monotonous round when the ship made its first
forward move.
It leaped in the air: it swept faster and faster. And it was moving
with terrific speed as it crashed silently through the path of the
tiny plane. And Blake, as he leaned forward on the stick to throw his
plane downward in a power dive, could have had a vision, not of a ship
of the air, but only of a shining projectile as the great monster
shrieked overhead.
McGuire trembled for the safety of those wings as he saw Blake pull
his little ship out of the dive and shoot upward to a straight climb.
But--"That's dodging them!" he exulted: "that's flying! I wonder, did
they mean to wipe him out or were they only scared off?"
His question was answered as, out of the night, a whistling shriek
proclaimed the passage of the meteor ship that drove unmistakably at
the lone plane. And again the pilot with superb skill waited until the
last moment and threw himself out of the path of the oncoming mass,
though his own plane was tossed and whirled like an autumn leaf in the
vortex that the enemy created. Not a second was lost as Blake opened
his throttle and forced his plane into a steep climb.
"Atta-boy!" said McGuire, as if words could span across to the man in
the plane. "Altitude, Blake--get altitude!"
The meteor had turned in a tremendous circle; so swift its motion that
it made an actual line of light as the moon marked its course. And the
curved line straightened abruptly to a flashing mark that shot
straight toward the struggling plane.
* * * * *
This time another sound came down to the listening ears of the two
men. The plane tore head on to meet the onslaught, to swing at the
last instant in a frantic leap that ended as before in the maelstrom
of air back of the ship. But the muffled roar was changed, punctured
with a machine-gun's familiar rattle, and the stabbing flashes from
Blake's ship before he threw it out of the other's path were a song of
joy to the tense nerves of the men down below.
This deadly rush could only be construed as an attack, and Blake was
fighting back. The very speed of the great projectile must hold it to
its course; the faster it went the more difficult to swerve it from a
line. This and much more was flashing sharply in McGuire's mind.
But--Blake!--alone against this huge antagonist!... It was coming
back. Another rush like a star through space....
And McGuire shouted aloud in a frenzy of emotion as a cluster of
lights came falling from on high. No lone machine gun now that tore
the air with this clattering bedlam of shots: the planes of the 91st
Squadron were diving from the heights. They came on a steep slant
that seemed marking them for crashing death against the huge cylinder
flashing past. And their stabbing needles of machine-gun fire made a
drumming tattoo, till the planes, with the swiftness of hawks, swept
aside, formed to groups, tore on down toward the ground and then
curved in great circles of speed to climb back to the theater of
action.
* * * * *
Lieutenant McGuire was rigid and quivering. He should go to the phone
and report to the colonel, but the thought left him as quickly as it
came. He was frozen in place, and his mind could hold only the scene
that was being pictured before him.
The enemy ship had described its swift curve, and the planes of the
defenders were climbing desperately for advantage. So slowly they
moved as compared with the swiftness of the other!
But the great ship was slowing; it came on, but its wild speed was
checked. The light of the full moon showed plainly now what McGuire
had seen but dimly before--a great metal beak on the ship, pointed and
shining, a ram whose touch must bring annihilation to anything it
struck.
The squadron of planes made a group in the sky, and Blake's monoplane,
too, was with them. The huge enemy was approaching slowly: was it
damaged? McGuire hardly dared hope ... yet that raking fire might well
have been deadly: it might be that some bullets had torn and
penetrated to the vitals of this ship's machinery and damaged some
part.
It came back slowly, ominously, toward the circling planes. Then,
throwing itself through the air, it leaped not directly toward them
but off to one side.
* * * * *
Like a stone on the end of a cord it swung with inconceivable speed in
a circle that enclosed the group of planes. Again and again it
whipped around them, while the planes, by comparison, were motionless.
Its orbit was flat with the ground: then tilting, more yet, it made a
last circle that stood like a hoop in the air. And behind it as it
circled it left a faint trace of vapor. Nebulous!--milky in the
moonlight!--but the ship had built a sphere, a great globe of the gas,
and within it, like rats in a cage, the planes of the 91st Squadron
were darting and whirling.
"Gas!" groaned the watching man: "gas! What is it? Why don't they
break through?"
The thin clouds of vapor were mingling now and expanding: they
blossomed and mushroomed, and the light of the moon came in pale
iridescence from their billowing folds.
"Break through!" McGuire had prayed--and he stood in voiceless horror
as he saw the attempt.
The mist was touching here and there a plane: they were engulfed, yet
he could see them plainly. And he saw with staring, fear-filled eyes
the clumsy tumbling and fluttering of unguided wings as the great
eagles of the 91st fell roaring to earth with no conscious minds
guiding their flight.
The valleys were deep about the mountain, and their shadowed blackness
opened to receive the maimed, stricken things that came fluttering or
swooping wildly to that last embrace, where, in the concealing
shadows, the deeper shadows of death awaited....
* * * * *
There was a room where a telephone waited: McGuire sensed this but
dumbly, and the way to that room was long to his stumbling feet. He
was blinded: his mind would not function: he saw only those fluttering
things, and the moonlight on their wings, and the shadows that took
them so softly at the last.
One plane whistled close overhead. McGuire stopped where he stood to
follow it with unbelieving eyes. That one man had lived, escaped the
net--it was inconceivable! The plane returned: it was flying low, and
it swerved erratically as it flew. It was a monoplane: a new ship.
Its motor was silenced: it stalled as he watched, to pancake and crash
where the towering pines made a cradle of great branches to cushion
its fall.
No thought now of the colonel waiting impatiently for a report; even
the enemy, there in the sky was forgotten. It was Blake in that ship,
and he was alive--or had been--for he had cut his motor. McGuire
screamed out for Professor Sykes, and there were others, too, who came
running at his call. He tore recklessly through the scrub and
undergrowth and gained at last the place where wreckage hung dangling
from the trees. The fuselage of a plane, scarred and broken, was still
held in the strong limbs.
* * * * *
Captain Blake was in the cockpit, half hanging from the side. He was
motionless, quiet, and his face shone white and ghastly as they
released him and drew him out. But one hand still clung with a grip
like death itself to a hose that led from an oxygen tank. McGuire
stared in wonder and slowly gathering comprehension.
"He was fixed for an altitude test," he said dazedly; "this ship was
to be used, and he was to find her ceiling. He saw what the others
were getting, and he flew himself through on a jet of pure oxygen--"
He stopped in utter admiration of the quickness of thought that could
outwit death in an instant like that.
They carried the limp body to the light. "No bones broken so far as I
can see," said the voice of Professor Sykes. "Leave him here in the
air. He must have got a whiff of their devilish mist in spite of his
oxygen; he was flying mighty awkwardly when he came in here."
But he was alive!--and Lieutenant McGuire hastened with all speed now
to the room where a telephone was ringing wildly and a colonel of the
air force must be told of the annihilation of a crack squadron and of
a threat that menaced all the world.
* * * * *
In that far room there were others waiting where Colonel Boynton sat
with receiver to his ear. A general's uniform was gleaming in the
light to make more sober by contrast the civilian clothing of that
quiet, clear-eyed man who held the portfolio of the Secretary of War.
They stared silently at Colonel Boynton, and they saw the blood recede
from his face, while his cool voice went on unmoved with its replies.
"... I understand," he said; "a washout, complete except for Captain
Blake; his oxygen saved him.... It attacked with gas, you say?... And
why did not our own planes escape?... Its speed!--yes, we'll have to
imagine it, but it is unbelievable. One moment--" He turned to those
who waited for his report.
"The squadron," he said with forced quiet, though his lips twitched in
a bloodless line, "--the 91st--is destroyed. The enemy put them down
with one blow; enveloped them with gas." He recounted the essence of
McGuire's report, then turned once more to the phone.
"Hello, Lieutenant--the enemy ship--where is it now?"
He listened--listened--to a silent receiver: silent save for the sound
of a shot--a crashing fall--a loud, panting breath. He heard the
breathing close to the distant instrument; it ended in a choking gasp;
the instrument was silent in his ear....
He signalled violently for the operator: ordered the ringing of any
and all phones about the observatory, and listened in vain for a sound
or syllable in reply.
"A plane," he told an orderly, "at once! Phone the commercial flying
field near the base of Mount Lawson. Have them hold a car ready for
me: I shall land there!"
CHAPTER V
To Captain Blake alone, of all those persons on the summit of Mount
Lawson, it was given to see and to know and be able to relate what
transpired there and in the air above. For Blake, although he appeared
like one dead, was never unconscious throughout his experience.
Driving head on toward the ship, he had emptied his drum of cartridges
before he threw his plane over and down in a dive that escaped the
onrush of the great craft by a scant margin, and that carried him down
in company with the men and machines of the squadron that dived from
above.
He turned as they turned and climbed as they climbed for the advantage
that altitude might give. And he climbed faster: his ship outdistanced
them in that tearing, scrambling rush for the heights. The squadron
was spiraling upward in close formation with his plane above them when
the enemy struck.
He saw that great shape swing around them, terrible in its silent
swiftness, and, like the others, he failed to realize at first the net
she was weaving. So thin was the gas and so rapid the circling of the
enemy craft, they were captured and cut off inside of the gaseous
sphere before the purpose of the maneuver was seen or understood.
He saw the first faint vapor form above him; swung over for a steep
bank that carried him around the inside of the great cage of gas and
that showed him the spiraling planes as the first wisps of vapor swept
past them.
He held that bank with his swift machine, while below him a squadron
of close-formed fighting craft dissolved before his eyes into unguided
units. The formations melted: wings touched and locked; the planes
fell dizzily or shot off in wild, ungoverned, swerving flight. The air
was misty about him; it was fragrant in his nostrils; the world was
swimming....
* * * * *
It was gas, he knew, and with the light-headedness that was upon him,
so curiously like that of excessive altitudes, he reached
unconsciously for the oxygen supply. The blast of pure gas in his face
revived him for an instant, and in that instant of clear thinking his
plan was formed. He threw his weight on stick and rudder, corrected
the skid his ship was taking, and, with one hand holding the tube of
life-giving oxygen before his face, he drove straight down in a dive
toward the earth.
There were great weights fastened to his arm, it seemed, when he tried
to bring the ship from her fearful dive. He moved only with greatest
effort, and it was force of will alone that compelled his hands to do
their work. His brain, as he saw the gleaming roundness of observatory
buildings beneath him, was as clear as ever in his life, but his
muscles, his arms and legs, refused to work: even his head; he was
slowly sinking beneath a load of utter fatigue.
The observatories were behind him; he must swing back; he could not
last long, he knew; each slightest movement was intolerable effort.
Was this death? he wondered; but his mind was so clear! There were the
buildings, the trees! How thickly they were massed beyond--
He brought every ounce of will power to bear ... the throttle!--and a
slow glide in ... he was losing speed ... the stick--must--come--back!
The crashing branches whipped about him, bending, crackling--and the
world went dark....
* * * * *
There were stars above him when he awoke, and his back was wrenched
and aching. He tried to move, to call, but found that the paralysing
effect of the gas still held him fast. He was lying on the ground, he
knew: a door was open in a building beyond, and the light in the room
showed him men, a small group of them, standing silent while
someone--yes, it was McGuire--shouted into a phone.
"... The squadron," he was saying. "... Lost! Every plane down and
destroyed.... Blake is living but injured...." And then Blake
remembered. And the tumbling, helpless planes came again before his
eyes while he cursed silently at this freezing grip that would not let
him cover his face with his hands to shut out the sight.
The figure of a man hurried past him, nor saw the body lying helpless
in the cool dark. McGuire was still at the phone. And the enemy
ship--?
His mind, filled with a welter of words as he tried to find phrases to
compass his hate for that ship. And then, as if conjured out of
nothing by his thoughts, the great craft itself came in view overhead
in all its mighty bulk.
It settled down swiftly: it was riding on an even keel. And in silence
and darkness it came from above. Blake tried to call out, but no sound
could be formed by his paralyzed throat. Doors opened in silence,
swinging down from the belly of the thing to show in the darkness
square openings through which shot beams of brilliant yellow light.
There were cages that lowered--great platforms in slings--and the
platforms came softly to rest on the ground. They were moving with
life; living beings clustered upon them thick in the dark. Oh God! for
an instant's release from the numbness that held his lips and throat
to cry out one word!... The shapes were passing now in the shelter of
darkness, going toward the room.... He could see McGuire's back turned
toward the door.
Man-shapes, tall and thin, distorted humans, each swathed in bulging
garments; horrible staring eyes of glass in the masks about their
heads, and each hand ready with a shining weapon as they stood waiting
for the men within to move.
* * * * *
McGuire must have seen them first, though his figure was half
concealed from Blake where he was lying. But he saw the head turn;
knew by the quick twist of the shoulders the man was reaching for a
gun. One shot echoed in Blake's ears; one bulging figure spun and fell
awkwardly to the ground; then the weapons in those clumsy hands hissed
savagely while jets of vapor, half liquid and half gas, shot
blindingly into the room. The faces dropped from his sight....
There had been the clamor of surprised and shouting men: there was
silence now. And the awkward figures in the bloated casings that
protected their bodies from the gas passed in safety to the room.
Blake, bound in the invisible chains of enemy gas, struggled silently,
futilely, to pit his will against this grip that held him. To lie
there helpless, to see these men slaughtered! He saw one of the
creatures push the body of his fallen comrade out of the way: it was
cast aside with an indifferent foot.
They were coming back: Blake saw the form of McGuire in unmistakable
khaki. He and another man were carried high on the shoulders of some
of the invaders. They were going toward the platforms, the slings
beneath the ship.... They passed close to Blake, and again he was
unnoticed in the dark.
A clamor came from distant buildings, a babel of howls and shrieks,
inhuman, unearthly. There were no phrases or syllables, but to Blake
it was familiar ... somewhere he had heard it ... and then he
remembered the radio and the weird wailing note that told of
communication. These things were talking in the same discordant din.
* * * * *
They were gathering now on the platforms slung under the ship. A
whistling note from somewhere within the great structure and the
platforms went high in the air. They were loaded, he saw, with papers
and books and instruments plundered from the observatories. Some made
a second trip to take up the loot they had gathered. Then the black
doorways closed; the huge bulk of the ship floated high above the
trees; it took form, dwindled smaller and smaller, then vanished from
sight in the star-studded sky.
Blake thought of their unconscious passenger--the slim figure of
Lieutenant McGuire. Mac had been a close friend and a good one; his
ready smile; his steady eyes that could tear a problem to pieces with
their analytic scrutiny or gaze far into space to see those visions of
a dreamer!
"Far into space." Blake repeated the words in his mind. And: "Good-by
Mac," he said softly; "you've shipped for a long cruise, I'm
thinking." He hardly realized he had spoken the words aloud.
* * * * *
Lying there in the cold night he felt his strength returning slowly.
The pines sang their soothing, whispered message, and the faint night
noises served but to intensify the silence of the mountain. It was
some time before the grind of straining gears came faintly in the air
to announce the coming of a car up the long grade. And still later he
heard it come to a stop some distance beyond. There were footsteps,
and voices calling: he heard the voice of Colonel Boynton. And he was
able to call out in reply, even to move his head and turn it to see
the approaching figures in the night.
Colonel Boynton knelt beside him. "Did they get you, old man?" he
asked.
"Almost," Blake told him. "My oxygen--I was lucky. But the others--".
He did not need to complete the sentence. The silent canyons among
those wooded hills told plainly the story of the lost men.
"We will fight them with gas masks," said the colonel; "your
experience has taught us the way."
"Gas-tight uniforms and our own supplies of oxygen," Blake
supplemented. He told Boynton of the man-things he had seen come from
the ship, of their baggy suits, their helmets.... And he had seen a
small generator on the back of each helmet. He told him of the small,
shining weapons and their powerful jets of gas. Deadly and unescapable
at short range, he well knew.
"They got McGuire," Blake concluded; "carried him off a prisoner. Took
another man, too."
For a moment Colonel Boynton's quiet tones lost their even steadiness.
"We'll get them," he said savagely, and it was plain that it was the
invaders that filled his mind; "we'll go after them, and we'll get
them in spite of their damn gas, and we'll rip their big ship into
ribbons--"
Captain Blake was able to raise a dissenting hand. "We will have to go
where they are, Colonel, to do that."
Colonel Boynton stared at him. "Well?" he demanded. "Why not?"
"We can't go where _they_ went," said Blake simply. "I laughed at
McGuire; told him not to be a fool. But I was the fool--the blind one;
we all were, Colonel. That thing came here out of space. It has gone
back; it is far beyond our air. I saw it go up out of sight, and I
know. Those creatures were men, if you like, but no men that we
know--not those shrieking, wailing devils! And we're going to hear
more from them, now that they've found their way here!"
CHAPTER VI
A score of bodies where men had died in strangling fumes in the
observatories on Mount Lawson; one of the country's leading
astronomical scientists vanished utterly; the buildings on the
mountain top ransacked; papers and documents blowing in vagrant winds;
tales of a monster ship in the air, incredibly huge, unbelievably
swift--
There are matters that at times are not allowed to reach the press,
but not happenings like these. And the papers of the United States
blazed out with headlines to tell the world of this latest mystery.
Then came corroboration from the far corners of the world. The mystery
ship had not visited one section only; it had made a survey of the
whole civilized sphere, and the tales of those who had seen it were no
longer laughed to scorn but went on the wires of the great press
agencies to be given to the world. And with that the censorship
imposed by the Department of War broke down, and the tragic story of
the destruction of the 91st Air Squadron passed into written history.
The wild tale of Captain Blake was on every tongue.
An invasion from space! The idea was difficult to accept. There were
scoffers who tried to find something here for their easy wit. Why
should we be attacked? What had that other world to gain? There was no
answer ready, but the silent lips of the men who had fallen spoke
eloquently of the truth. And the world, in wonder and consternation,
was forced to believe.
Were there more to come? How meet them? Was this war--and with whom?
What neighboring planet could reasonably be suspected. What had
science to say?
The scientists! The scientists! The clamor of the world was beating at
the doors of science and demanding explanations and answers. And
science answered.
A conference was arranged in London; the best minds in the realms of
astronomy and physics came together. They were the last to admit the
truth that would not be denied, but admit it they must. And to some of
the questions they found their answer.
* * * * *
It was not Mars, they said, though this in the popular mind was the
source of the trouble. Not Mars, for that planet was far in the
heavens. But Venus!--misnamed for the Goddess of Love. It was Venus,
and she alone, who by any stretch of the imagination could be
threatening Earth.
What did it mean? They had no answer. The ship was the only answer to
that. Would there be more?--could we meet them?--defeat them? And
again the wise men of the world refused to hazard a guess.
But they told what they knew; that Venus was past her eastern
elongation, was approaching the earth. She of all the planets that
swung around the sun came nearest to Earth--twenty-six million miles
in another few weeks. Then whirling away she would pass to the western
elongation in a month and a half and drive out into space. Venus
circled the sun in a year of 225 days, and in 534 days she would again
reach her eastern elongation with reference to the earth, and draw
near us again.
They were reluctant to express themselves, these men who made nothing
of weighing and analyzing stars a million of light years away, but
_if_ the popular conception was correct and _if_ we could pass through
the following weeks without further assault, we could count on a year
and a half before the menace would again return. And in a year and a
half--well, the physicists would be working--and we might be prepared.
Captain Blake had made his report, but this, it seemed, was not
enough. He was ordered to come to Washington, and, with Colonel
Boynton, he flew across the country to tell again his incredible
story.
* * * * *
It was a notable gathering before which he appeared. All the branches
of the service were represented; there were men in the uniform of
admirals and generals; there were heads of Departments. And the
Secretary of War was in charge.
He told his story, did Blake, before a battery of hostile eyes. This
was not a gathering to be stampeded by wild scareheads, nor by popular
clamor. They wanted facts, and they wanted them proved. But the
gravity with which they regarded the investigation was shown by their
invitation to the representatives of foreign powers to attend.
"I have told you all that happened," Blake concluded, "up to the
coming of Colonel Boynton. May I reiterate one fact? I do not wonder
at your questioning my state of mind and my ability to observe
correctly. But I must insist, gentlemen, that while I got a shot of
their gas and my muscles and my nervous system were paralyzed, my
brain was entirely clear. I saw what I saw; those creatures were
there; they entered the buildings; they carried off Lieutenant McGuire
and another man.
"What they were or who they were I cannot say. I do not know that they
were men, but their insane shrieking in that queer unintelligible talk
is significant. And that means of communication corresponds with the
radio reception of which you know.
"If you gentlemen know of any part of this earth that can produce such
a people, if you know of any people or country in this world that can
produce such a ship--then we can forget all our wild fancies. And we
can prepare to submit to that country and that people as the masters
of this earth. For I must tell you, gentlemen, with all the
earnestness at my command, that until you have seen that ship in
action, seen its incredible speed, its maneuverability, its
lightning-like attack and its curtain of gas, you can have no
conception of our helplessness. And the insignia that she carries is
the flag of our conquerors."
* * * * *
Blake got an approving nod from the Secretary of War as he took his
seat. That quiet man rose slowly from his chair to add his words. He
spoke earnestly, impressively.
"Captain Blake has hit the nail squarely on the head," he stated. "We
have here in this room a representative gathering from the whole
world. If there is any one of you who can say that this mystery ship
was built and manned by your people, let him speak, and we will send
you at once a commission to acknowledge your power and negotiate for
peace."
The great hall was silent, in a silence that held only uneasy
rustlings as men glanced one at another in wondering dismay.
"The time has come," said the Secretary with solemn emphasis, "when
all dissensions among our peoples must cease. Whatever there is or
ever has been of discord between us fades into insignificance before
this new threat. It is the world, now, against a power unknown; we can
only face it as a united world.
"I shall recommend to the President of the United States that a
commission be appointed, that it may co-operate with similar bodies
from all lands. I ask you, gentlemen, to make like representations to
your governments, to the end that we may meet this menace as one
country and one man; meet it, God grant, successfully through a War
Department of the World."
* * * * *
It was a brave gesture of the President of the United States; he dared
the scorn and laughter of the world in standing behind his Secretary
of War. The world is quick to turn and rend with ridicule a false
prophet. And despite the unanswerable facts, the scope and power of
the menace was not entirely believed. It was difficult for the
conscious minds of men to conceive of the barriers of vast space as
swept aside and the earth laid open to attack.
England was slow to respond to the invitation of the President: this
matter required thought and grave deliberation in parliament. It might
not be true: the thought, whether spoken or unexpressed, was clinging
to their minds. And even if true--even if this lone ship had wandered
in from space--there might be no further attack.
"Why," they asked, "should there be more unprovoked assaults from the
people of another planet? What was their object? What had they to
gain? ... Perhaps we were safe after all." The answer that destroyed
all hope came to them borne in upon a wall of water that swept the
British coast.
The telescopes of the world were centered now on just one object in
the heavens. The bright evening star that adorned the western sky was
the target for instruments great and small. It was past the half-moon
phase now, and it became under magnification a gleaming crescent, a
crescent that emitted from the dark sphere it embraced vivid flashes
of light. Sykes' report had ample corroboration; the flash was seen by
many, and it was repeated the next night and the next.
What was it? the waiting world asked. And the answer came not from the
telescopes and their far-reaching gaze but from the waters of the
Atlantic. In the full blaze of day came a meteor that swept to the
earth in an arc of fire to outshine the sun. There must have been
those who saw it strike--passengers and crews of passing ships--but
its plunge into the depths of the Atlantic spelled death for each
witness.
* * * * *
The earth trembled with the explosion that followed. A gas--some new
compound that united with water to give volumes tremendous--that only
could explain it. The ocean rose from its depths and flung wave after
wave to race outward in circles of death.
Hundreds of feet in height at their source--this could only be
estimated--they were devastating when they struck. The ocean raged
over the frail bulwark of England in wave upon wave, and, retreating,
the waters left smooth, shining rock where cities had been. The stone
and steel of their buildings was scattered far over the desolate land
or drawn in the suction of retreating waters to the sea.
Ireland, too, and France and Spain. Even the coast of America felt the
shock of the explosion and was swept by tidal waves of huge
proportions. But the coast of Britain took the blow at its worst.
The world was stunned and waiting--waiting!--when the next blow fell.
The flashes were coming from Venus at regular intervals, just twenty
hours and nineteen minutes apart. And with exactly the same time
intervals the bolts arrived from space to lay waste the earth.
They struck where they would: the ocean again; the Sahara; in the
mountains of China; the Pacific was thrown into fearful convulsions;
the wheat fields of Canada trembled and vanished before a blast of
flaming gas....
Twenty hours and nineteen minutes! Where it would strike, the next
star-shell, no man might say; that it surely would come was a deadly
and nerve-shattering certainty. The earth waited and prayed under
actual bombardment.
* * * * *
Some super-gun, said science with conviction; a great bore in the
planet itself, perhaps. But it was fixed, and the planet itself aimed
with an accuracy that was deadly; aimed once as each revolution
brought its gun on the target. Herein, said science, lay a basis for
hope.
If, in that distant world, there was only one such bore, it must be
altering its aim as the planet approached; the gun must cease to bear
upon the earth. And the changing sweep of the missiles' flight
confirmed their belief.
Each meteor-shell that came rushing into Earth's embrace burned
brilliantly as it tore into the air. And each flaming arc was
increasingly bent, until--twenty hours and nineteen minutes had
passed--twenty minutes--thirty--another hour ... and the peoples of
Earth dropped humbly to their knees in thankful prayer, or raised
vengeful eyes and clenched fists toward the heavens while their
quivering lips uttered blasphemous curses. The menace, for the time,
had passed; the great gun of Venus no longer was aiming toward the
earth.
"No more ships," was the belief; "not this time." And the world turned
to an accounting of its losses, and to wonder--wonder--what the
planet's return would bring. A year and one half was theirs; one year
and a half in which to live in safety, in which to plan and build.
* * * * *
A column, double leaded, in the _London Times_ voiced the feeling of
the world. It was copied and broadcast everywhere.
"Another attack," it concluded, "is not a probability--it is a
certainty. They are destroying us for some reason known only to
themselves. Who can doubt that when the planet returns there will be a
further bombardment; an invasion by armed forces in giant ships; bombs
dropped from them miles high in the air. This is what we must look
forward to--death and destruction dealt out by a force we are unable
to meet.
"Our munitions factories may build larger guns, but can they reach the
heights at which these monster ships of space will lie, with any faint
probability of inflicting damage? It is doubtful.
"Our aircraft is less than useless; its very name condemns it as
inept. Craft of the air!--and we have to war against space ships which
can rise beyond the thin envelope of gas that encircles the earth.
"The world is doomed--utterly and finally doomed; it is the end of
humankind; slavery to a conquering race at the very best, unless--
"Let us face the facts fairly. It is war--war to the death--between
the inhabitants of this world and of that other. We are men. What they
are God alone can say. But they are creatures of mind as are we; what
they have done, we may do.
"There is our only hope. It is vain, perhaps--preposterous in its
assumption--but our sole and only hope. We must meet the enemy and
defeat him, and we must do it on his own ground. To destroy their
fleet we must penetrate space; to silence their deadly bombardment we
must go out into space as they have done, reach their distant world
as they have reached ours, and conquer as we would have been
conquered.
"It is a tenuous hope, but our only one. Let our men of mundane
warfare do their best--it will be useless. But if there be one spark
of God-given genius in the world that can point the way to victory,
let those in authority turn no deaf ear.
"It is a battle now of minds, and the best minds will win. Humanity--all
humankind--is facing the end. In less than one year and a half we must
succeed--or perish. And unless we conquer finally and decisively, the story
of man in the history of the universe will be a tale that is told, a record
of life in a book that is ended--closed--and forgotten through all
eternity."
CHAPTER VII
A breath of a lethal gas shot from the flying ship had made Captain
Blake as helpless as if every muscle were frozen hard, and he had got
it only lightly, mixed with the saving blast of oxygen. His heart had
gone on, and his breathing, though it became shallow, did not cease;
he was even able to turn his eyes. But to the men in the observatory
room the gas from the weapons of the attacking force came as a
devastating, choking cloud that struck them senseless as if with a
blow. Lieutenant McGuire hardly heard the sound of his own pistol
before unconsciousness took him.
It was death for the men who were left--for them the quick darkness
never lifted--but for McGuire and his companion there was reprieve.
He was lying flat on a hard floor when remembrance crept slowly back
to his benumbed brain. An odor, sickish-sweet, was in his nostrils;
the breath of life was being forcibly pumped and withdrawn from
laboring lungs; a mask was tight against his face. He struggled to
throw it off, and someone bending over removed it.
Someone! His eyes stared wonderingly at the grotesque face like a
lingering phantasm of fevered dreams. There were others, he saw, and
they were working over a body not far away upon the floor. He
recognized the figure of Professor Sykes. Short, stocky, his clothes
disheveled--but Sykes, unmistakably, despite the mask upon his face.
He, too, revived as McGuire watched, and, like the flyer, he looked
wonderingly about him at his strange companions. The eyes of the two
met and held in wordless communication and astonishment.
* * * * *
The unreal creatures that hovered near withdrew to the far side of the
room. The walls beyond them were of metal, white and gleaming; there
were doorways. In another wall were portholes--round windows of thick
glass that framed circles of absolute night. It was dark out beyond
them with a blackness that was relieved only by sharp pin-points of
brilliance--stars in a night sky such as McGuire had never seen.
Past and present alike were hazy to the flyer; the spark of life had
been brought back to his body from a far distance; there was time
needed to part the unreal from the real in these new and strange
surroundings.
There were doorways in the ceiling, and others in the floor near where
he lay; ladders fastened to the wall gave access to these doors. A
grotesque figure appeared above the floor and, after a curious glance
at the two men, scrambled into the room and vanished through the
opening in the ceiling. It was some time before the significance of
this was plain to the wondering man--before he reasoned that he was in
the enemy ship, aimed outward from the earth, and the pull of
gravitation and the greater force of the vessel's constant
acceleration held its occupants to the rear walls of each room. That
lanky figure had been making its way forward toward the bow of the
ship. McGuire's mind was clearing; he turned his attention now to the
curious, waiting creatures, his captors.
There were five of them standing in the room, five shapes like men,
yet curiously, strangely, different. They were tall of stature, narrow
across the shoulders, muscular in a lean, attenuated fashion. But
their faces! McGuire found his eyes returning in horrified fascination
to each hideous, inhuman countenance.
A colorless color, like the dead gray of ashes; a skin like that of an
African savage from which all but the last vestige of color had been
drained. It was transparent, parchment-like, and even in the light of
the room that glowed from some hidden source, he could see the
throbbing lines of blood-vessels that showed livid through the
translucent skin. And he remembered, now, the fingers, half-seen in
his moments of awakening--they were like clinging tendrils, colorless,
too, in that ashy gray, and showed the network of veins as if each
hand had been flayed alive.
* * * * *
The observer found himself analyzing, comparing, trying to find some
earthly analogy for these unearthly creatures. Why did he think of
potatoes sprouting in a cellar? What possible connection had these
half-human things with that boyhood recollection? And he had seen some
laboratory experiments with plants and animals that had been cut off
from the sunlight--and now the connection was clear; he knew what this
idea was that was trying to form.
These were creatures of the dark. These bleached, drained faces showed
skin that had never known the actinic rays of the sun; their whole
framework proclaimed the process that had been going on through
countless generations. Here was a race that had lived, if not in
absolute darkness, then in some place where sunlight never shone--a
place of half-light--or of clouds.
"Clouds!" The exclamation was startled from him. And: "Clouds!" he
repeated meditatively; he was seeing again a cloud-wrapped world in
the eye-piece of a big refracting telescope. "Blanketed in clouds,"
Professor Sykes had said. The scientist himself was speaking to him
now in bewildered tones.
"Clouds?" he inquired. "That's a strange remark to make. Where are we,
Lieutenant McGuire? I remember nothing after you fired. Are we
flying--in the clouds?"
"A long, long way beyond them, is my guess," said McGuire grimly. It
was staggering what all this might mean; there was time needed for
fuller comprehension. But the lean bronzed face of the flyer flushed
with animation, and in spite of the terrors that must surely lie ahead
he felt strangely elated at the actuality of an incredible adventure.
* * * * *
Slowly he got to his feet to find that his muscles still were
reluctant to respond to orders; he helped the professor to arise. And
from the group that drew back further into the far end of the room
came a subdued and rasping tumult of discordant sound.
One, seemingly in charge, held a weapon in his hand, a slender tube no
thicker than a common wire; and ending in a cylinder within the
creature's hand. He pointed it in threatening fashion while his voice
rose in a shrill call. McGuire and Professor Sykes stood quiet and
waited for what the next moment might have in store, but McGuire waved
the weapon aside in a gesture that none could fail to read.
"Steady," he told his companion. "We're in a ticklish position. Do
nothing to alarm them."
From up above them came an answering shrill note. Another of the
beings was descending into the room.
"Ah!" said Lieutenant McGuire softly, "the big boss, himself. Now
let's see what will happen."
If there had seemed something of timidity in the repulsive faces of
the waiting creatures, this newcomer was of a different type. He
opened flabby thin lips to give one sharp note of command. It was as
sibilant as the hissing of a snake. The man with the weapon returned
it to a holder at his side; the whole group cringed before the power
and authority of the new arrival.
The men that they had seen thus far were all garbed alike; a
loose-fitting garment of one piece that was ludicrously like the play
rompers that children might wear. These were dull red in color, the
red of drying blood, made of strong woven cloth. But this other was
uniformed differently.
McGuire noted the fineness of the silky robe. Like the others this was
made of one piece, loosely fitting, but its bright vivid scarlet made
the first seem drab and dull. A belt of metal about his waist shone
like gold and matched the emblem of precious metal in the turban on
his head.
* * * * *
All this the eyes of the flyer took in at a glance; his attention was
only momentarily diverted from the ashen face with eyes narrow and
slitted, that stared with the cold hatred of a cat into those of the
men.
He made a sound with a whistling breath. It seemed to be a question
directed to them, but the import of it was lost.
"An exceedingly queer lot," Professor Sykes observed. "And this chap
seems distinctly hostile."
"He's no friend of mine," said McGuire as the thin, pendulous lips
repeated their whistling interrogation.
"I can't place them," mused the scientist. "Those facial
characteristics.... But they must be of some nationality, speak some
tongue."
He addressed himself to the figure with the immobile, horrid face.
"We do not understand you," he said with an ingratiating smile.
"_Comprenez vous Francaise?_... _Non?_"... German, perhaps, or
Spanish?... "_Sprecken sie Deutsche?_ _Usted habla Espanola?_..."
He followed with a fusillade of questions in strange and varying
tongues. "I've even tried him with Chinese," he protested in
bewilderment and stared amazed at his companion's laughter.
There had to be a reaction from the strain of the past hours, and
Lieutenant McGuire found the serious questioning in polyglot tongues
and the unchanging feline stare of that hideous face too much for his
mental restraint. He held his sides, while he shook and roared with
laughter beyond control, and the figure before him glared with evident
disapproval of his mirth.
* * * * *
There was a hissing order, and two figures from the corner sprang
forward to seize the flyer with long clinging fingers. Their strength
he had overestimated, for a violent throw of his body twisted him
free, and his outstretched hands sent the two sprawling across the
room. Their leader took one quick step forward, then paused as if
hesitating to meet this young adversary.
"Do go easy," Professor Sykes was imploring. "We do not know where we
are nor who they are, but we must do nothing to antagonize them."
McGuire had reacted from his hilarious seizure with an emotional swing
to the opposite extreme. "I'll break their damn necks," he growled,
"if they get rough with me." And his narrow eyes exchanged glare for
glare with those in the face like blood and ashes before him.
The cold cat eyes held steadily upon him while the scarlet figure
retreated. A louder call, shrill and vibrant, came from the thin lips,
and a swarm of bodies in dull red were scrambling into the room to
mass about their scarlet leader. Above and behind them the face under
its brilliant turban and golden clasp was glaring in triumph.
The tall figures crouched, grotesque and awkward; their long arms and
hands with grasping, tendril-like fingers were ready. McGuire waited
for the sharp hissing order that would throw these things upon him,
and he met the attack when it came with his own shoulders dropped to
the fighter's pose, head drawn in close and both fists swinging free.
There were lean fingers clutching at his throat, a press of blood-red
bodies thick about him, and a clustering of faces where color blotched
and flowed.
The thud of fists in blows that started from the floor was new to
these lean creatures that clawed and clung like cats. But they
trampled on those who went down before the flyer's blows and stood
upon them to spring at his head; they crowded in in overwhelming
numbers while their red hands tore and twined about his face.
* * * * *
It was no place now for long swings; McGuire twisted his body and
threw his weight into quick short jabs at the faces before him. He was
clear for an instant and swung his heavy boot at something that clung
to one leg; then met with a rain of hooks and short punches the faces
that closed in again. He saw in that instant a wild whirl of bodies
where the stocky figure of Professor Sykes was smothered beneath his
taller antagonists. But the professor, if he was forgetting the
science of the laboratory, was remembering that of the squared
circle--and the battle was not entirely one sided.
McGuire was free; the blood was trickling down his face from
innumerable cuts where sharp-nailed fingers had sunk deep. He wiped
the red stream from his eyes and threw himself at the weaving mass of
bodies that eddied about Sykes in frantic struggle across the room.
The face of the professor showed clear for a moment. Like McGuire he
was bleeding, and his breath came in short explosive gasps, but he was
holding his own! The eyes of McGuire glimpsed a wildly gesticulating,
shouting figure in the rear. The face, contorted with rage, was almost
the color of the brilliant scarlet that the creature wore. The
blood-stained man in khaki left his companion to fight his own battle,
and plunged headlong at a leaping cluster of dull red, smashed through
with a frenzied attack of straight rights and lefts, and freed himself
to make one final leap at the leader of this unholy pack.
He was fighting in blind desperation now; the two were out-numbered by
the writhing, lean-bodied creatures, and this thing that showed in
blurred crimson before him was the directing power of them all. The
figure symbolized and personified to the raging man all the repulsive
ugliness of the leaping horde. The face came clear before him through
the mist of blood, and he put the last ounce of his remaining strength
and every pound of weight behind a straight, clean drive with his
right fist.
His last conscious impression was of a red, clawing hand that was
closed around the thick butt of a tube of steel ... then down, and
still down, he plunged into a bottomless pit of whirling, red flashes
and choking fumes....
There were memories that were to occur to Lieutenant McGuire
afterward--visions, dim and hazy and blurred, of half-waking moments
when strange creatures forced food and water into his mouth, then held
a mask upon his face while he resisted weakly the breathing of sweet,
sickly fumes that sent him back to unconsciousness.
There were many such times; some when he came sufficiently awake to
know that Sykes was lying near him, receiving similar care. Their
lives were being preserved: How, or why, or what life might hold in
store he neither knew nor cared; the mask and the deep-drawn fumes
brought stupor and numbness to his brain.
A window was in the floor beside him when he awoke--a circular window of
thick glass or quartz. But no longer did it frame a picture of a sky in
velvet blackness; no unwinking pin-points of distant stars pricked keenly
through the night; but, clear and dazzling, came a blessed radiance that
could mean only sunshine. A glowing light that was dazzling to his
sleep-filled eyes, it streamed in golden--beautiful--to light the
unfamiliar room and show motionless upon the floor the figure of Professor
Sykes. His torn clothing had been neatly arranged, and his face showed
livid lines of healing cuts and bruises.
McGuire tried gingerly to move his arms and legs; they were still
functioning though stiff and weak from disuse. He raised himself
slowly and stood swaying on his feet, then made his uncertain way to
his companion and shook him weakly by the shoulder.
Professor Sykes breathed deeply and raised leaden lids from tired eyes
to stare uncomprehendingly at McGuire. Soon his dark pupils ceased to
dilate, and he, too, could see their prison and the light of day.
"Sunlight!" he said in a thin voice, and he seemed to know now that
they were in the air; "I wonder--I wonder--if we shall land--what
country? ... Some wilderness and a strange race--a strange, strange
race!"
He was muttering half to himself; the mystery of these people whom he
could not identify was still troubling him.
* * * * *
McGuire helped the other man to his feet, and they clung to each to
the other for support as they crossed to kneel beside the floor-window
and learn finally where their captors meant to take them.
A wilderness, indeed, the sight that met their eyes, but a wilderness
of clouds--no unfamiliar sight to Lieutenant McGuire of the United
States Army air service. But to settle softly into them instead of
driving through with glistening wings--this was new and vastly
different from anything he had known.
Sounds came to them in the silence, penetrating faintly through thick
walls--the same familiar wailing call that trembled and quavered and
seemed to the listening men to be guiding them down through the mist.
Gone was the sunlight, and the clouds beyond the deep-set window were
gloriously ablaze with a brilliance softly diffused. The cloud bank
was deep, and they felt the craft under them sink slowly, steadily
into the misty embrace. It thinned below them to drifting vapor, and
the first hazy shadows of the ground showed through from far beneath.
Their altitude, the flyer knew, was still many thousands of feet.
"Water," said McGuire, as his trained eyes made plain to him what was
still indistinct to the scientist. "An ocean--and a shore-line--" More
clouds obscured the view; they parted suddenly to show a portion only
of a clear-cut map.
* * * * *
It stretched beyond the confines of their window, that unfamiliar line
of wave-marked shore; the water was like frozen gold, wrinkled in
countless tiny corrugations and reflecting the bright glow from above.
But the land,--that drew their eyes!
Were those cities, those shadow-splashed areas of gray and rose?...
The last veiling clouds dissolved, and the whole circle was plain to
their view.
The men leaned forward, breathless, intent, till the scientist,
Sykes--the man whose eyes had seen and whose brain recorded a dim
shape in the lens of a great telescope--Sykes drew back with a
quivering, incredulous breath. For below them, so plain, so
unmistakable, there lay an island, large even from this height, and it
formed on this round map a sharp angle like a great letter "L."
"We shall know that if we ever see it again," Professor Sykes had
remarked in the quiet and security of that domed building surmounting
the heights of Mount Lawson. But he said nothing now, as he stared at
his companion with eyes that implored McGuire to arouse him from this
sleep, this dream that could never be real. But McGuire, lieutenant
one-time in the forces of the U. S. A., had seen it too, and he stared
back with a look that gave dreadful confirmation.
The observatory--Mount Lawson--the earth!--those were the things
unreal and far away. And here before them, in brain-stunning
actuality, were the markings unmistakable--the markings of Venus. And
they were landing, these two, in the company of creatures wild and
strange as the planet--on Venus itself!
(_To be continued._)
* * * * *
[Advertisement: ]
The Destroyer
_By William Merriam Rouse_
[Illustration: "The connection is made," murmured Von Stein.]
[Sidenote: Slowly, insidiously, there stole over Allen Parker
something uncanny. He could no longer control his hands--even his
brain!]
The pencil in the hand of Allen Parker refused to obey his will. A
strange unseen force pushed his will aside and took possession of the
pencil point so that what he drew was not his own. It was the same
when he turned from drawing board to typewriter. The sentences were
not of his framing; the ideas were utterly foreign to him. This was
the first hint he received of the fate that was drawing in like night
upon him and his beautiful wife.
Parker, a young writer of growing reputation who illustrated his own
work, was making a series of pencil sketches for a romance partly
finished. The story was as joyous and elusive as sunlight, and until
to-day his sketches had held the same quality. Now he could not tap
the reservoir from which he had taken the wind-blown hair and smiling
eyes of Madelon, his heroine.
When he drew or wrote he seemed to be submerged in the dark waters of
a measureless evil pit. The face that mocked him from the paper was
stamped with a world-old knowledge of forbidden things.
Parker dropped his pencil and leaned back, tortured. He and his wife,
Betty, had taken this house in Pine Hills, a small and extremely
quiet suburban village, solely for the purpose of concentration on the
book which was to be the most important work he had done. He went to
the door of the room that he used for a studio and called:
"Betty! Can you come here a moment, please?"
* * * * *
There was a patter of running feet on the stairs and then a girl of
twenty, or thereabout, came into the room. Any man would have said she
was a blessing. Her hair "was yellow like ripe corn," and her vivid
blue eyes held depth and character and charm.
"Look!" exclaimed Parker. "What do you think of this stuff?"
For a moment there was silence. Then Allen Parker saw something he had
never before seen in his wife's face for him or his work--a look of
complete disgust.
"I wouldn't have believed you capable of doing anything so ... so
horrid!" she said coldly. "How could you?"
"I don't know!" His arms, which had been ready to take her to him for
comfort, dropped. "The work has been ... difficult, lately. As though
something were pulling at my mind. But not like this! It isn't _me_!"
"It must be you, since it came out of you!" She turned away and moved
restlessly to one of the windows.
"Through me!" muttered Parker. "Ideas _come_!"
"You'll have to do something!"
"But what? I don't know what to do!"
"Why not go to see that new doctor?" asked Betty, over her shoulder.
"Dr. Friedrich von Stein?"
"Von Stein?" repeated Parker, vaguely. "Don't know him. Anyhow, I
don't need a doctor. What in the world made you think of that?"
* * * * *
"Nothing, except that I can see his house from here. He's taken what
they call 'the old Reynolds place.' You know--opposite the church. We
looked at it and thought it was too large for us. He's made a lot of
alterations."
"Oh, yes!" Parker had placed the newcomer, more recent than himself.
"I had an idea that he was a doctor of philosophy, not medicine."
"He has half a dozen degrees, they say. Certainly he's a stunning
looking man. I saw him on the street."
"Maybe he doesn't practice." The artist was gazing, baffled and sick
at heart, upon what he had wrought. "And what could he do, unless it's
my liver?"
"He might be a psycho-analyst, or something like that," she replied,
slowly.
"But why the wild interest in this particular doctor?" Parker roused
himself and looked at her. He felt irritable, and was ashamed of it.
"Only for your work," said Betty. A faint pink touched her cheeks.
Allen Parker had a sudden feeling of certainty that his wife was lying
to him. To one who knew the Parkers it would have been equally
impossible to think of Betty as lying, or of her husband as believing
such a thing. Parker was outraged by his own suspicion. He sprang up
and began to pace the floor.
"All right, then!" he exploded. "My work is going to the dogs! Why,
there's an appointment with Cartwright to-morrow to show him these
sketches, and the last few chapters I've done! We'll go now! If this
man can't do anything for me I'll try somebody else!"
* * * * *
In ten minutes they were walking up the quiet street toward the
present home of Dr. Friedrich von Stein. Despite his self-absorption
Parker could not help noticing that his wife had never looked more
attractive than she did at this moment. Her color had deepened, little
wisps of hair curled against her cheeks, and there was a sparkle in
her eyes which he knew came only on very particular occasions.
Even from the outside it was apparent that many strange things had
been done to the staid and dignified house of Reynolds. A mass of
aerials hung above the roof. Some new windows had been cut at the
second floor and filled with glass of a peculiar reddish-purple tinge.
A residence had been turned into a laboratory, in sharp contrast to
the charming houses up and down the street and the church of gray
stone that stood opposite.
Beside the door, at the main entrance, a modest plate bore the legend:
"Dr. Friedrich von Stein." Parker pressed the bell. Then he squared
his broad shoulders and waited: a very miserable, very likeable young
man, with a finely shaped head and a good set of muscles under his
well cut clothes. He had brought his sketches, but he was
uncomfortable with the portfolio under his arm. It seemed to
contaminate him.
* * * * *
The door opened to reveal a blocky figure of a man in a workman's
blouse and overalls. The fellow was pale of eye, towheaded; he
appeared to be good natured but of little intelligence. The only
remarkable thing about him was a livid welt that ran across one cheek,
from nose to ear. Beside him a glossy-coated dachshund wagged
furiously, after having barked once as a matter of duty.
"May we see Dr. von Stein?" asked Parker. "If he is in?"
"I will ask the Herr Doktor if he iss in," replied the man, stiffly.
"_Dummkopf!_" roared a voice from inside the house. An instant later
man and dog shrank back along the hall and there appeared in their
place one of the most striking personalities Allen Parker had ever
seen.
Dr. Friedrich von Stein was inches more than six feet tall and he
stood perfectly erect, with the unmistakable carriage of a well
drilled soldier. He was big boned, but lean, and every movement was
made with military precision. More than any other feature his eyes
impressed Parker: they were steady, penetrating, and absolutely black.
But for a thread of gray here and there his well-kept beard and hair
were black. He might have been any age from forty to sixty, so
deceptive was his appearance.
"Come in, if you please," he said, before Parker could speak. Von
Stein's voice was rich and deep, but with a metallic quality which
somehow corresponded with his mechanical smile. Except for the
guttural r's there was hardly a hint of the foreigner in his speech.
"It is Mr. and Mrs. Parker, I believe? I am Dr. von Stein."
* * * * *
He stood aside for them to pass into the hallway, and while they
murmured their thanks he shot a volley of German at the man, whom he
called Heinrich. The frightened servant vanished; and the Parkers were
taken into a living room furnished carelessly, but in good enough
taste. Betty took her place on a couch, to which the doctor led her
with a bow. Parker sank into an overstuffed chair not far from a
window.
"I learned your names because of the beauty of madame," said Von
Stein, as he stood looming above the mantel. Again he bowed. "One
could not see her without wishing to know how such a charming woman
was called. You are my neighbors from down the street, I believe."
"Yes," replied Allen. He wanted to be agreeable, but found it
difficult. "And I think Mrs. Parker has developed a great admiration
for you. She persuaded me to come here to-day. Are you, by chance, a
psycho-analyst? I don't even know that you are a doctor of medicine,
but--"
"I know a very great deal about the human mind," interrupted Dr. von
Stein calmly. "I know a great deal about many things. I am not going
to practice medicine here in Pine Hills because I have research work
to do, but I will help you if I can. What is your trouble?"
* * * * *
The question brought back to Parker the mood of half an hour ago.
Almost savagely he snapped the portfolio open and spread out a few of
his recent drawings, with some of the earlier ones for comparison.
"Look!" he cried. "These vicious things are what I am doing now! I
can't help myself! The pencil does not obey me! Apparently I have no
emotional control. It's as though my normal ideas were shouldered
aside, like people in a crowd. And my writing to-day was as bad as
these illustrations. I'm doing a book. Consider these things
carefully, Doctor. They are not obscene, except by inference. They
can't be censored. The book would go through the mails. Yet they are
deadly! Look at my heroine in these two pictures. In one she is
like--like violets! In the other she looks capable of any crime! What
is she? A vampire, if there is such a thing? A witch? I can almost
believe in demonology since I made these last drawings!"
Parker, in spite of his excitement, tried to read the face of Dr.
Friedrich von Stein. He found nothing but the automatic smile upon
that mask. Yet it seemed to the artist that this time there was a hint
of real pleasure in the curve of the lips. Was it possible that anyone
could like those drawings? Parker began to think that he was going
insane.
"This is most unfortunate for you," rumbled the doctor. "I understand.
But I trust that the condition can be remedied, if it persists. You,
Mr. Parker, and you, Madame, do you understand something of physics,
of psychology, of metaphysics?"
"I fear that I'm rather ignorant," answered Betty. "Certainly I am in
comparison with a man of your attainments."
* * * * *
Dr. von Stein bowed. He turned his black eyes upon Parker.
"And you, sir? I must adjust my explanation to--what shall I say? To
your knowledge of the higher reaches of scientific thought?"
"Why, I majored in philosophy in college," said Parker, hesitatingly.
"But that's quite a time ago, Herr Doktor. Of course I've tried to
keep up with the conclusions of science. But a writer or a painter
doesn't have any too much opportunity. He has his own problems to
concern him."
"Yes, indeed!" Dr. von Stein was thoughtful. "So, and especially for
the benefit of madame, I shall speak in terms of the concrete."
"Please consider me stupid!" begged Betty. "But I want to understand!"
"Certainly, except that you are not stupid, Madame. I will proceed.
Both of you, I assume, know something of the radio? Very good! You
know that an etheric wave transmits the message, and that it is
received and amplified so that it is within the range of the human
ear. These waves were there when paleolithic man hunted his meat with
a stone-tipped club. To use them it was necessary to invent the
microphone, and a receiving instrument.
"What I have said you already know. But here is what may startle you.
Human thought is an etheric wave of the same essential nature as the
radio wave. They are both electrical currents external to man.
Thoughts sweep across the human mind as sound currents sweep across
the aerials of a radio--"
"I told you!" Allen Parker turned a triumphant face to his wife.
"Pardon me, Herr Doktor! I have tried to convince Mrs. Parker that my
idea came from outside!"
* * * * *
"Exactly!" Dr. von Stein took no offense. "And a difference between
the mind and the radio set is that with the radio you tune in upon
whatever you choose, and when you choose. The mind is not under such
control, although it should be. It receives that to which it happens
to be open. Or that thought which has been intensified and
strengthened by having been received and entertained by other minds.
In India they say: 'Five thousand died of the plague and fifty
thousand died of fear.' Do you both follow me?"
It was unnecessary to ask. Betty sat on the edge of the couch, intent
upon every word. Parker, although more restrained, was equally
interested. Moreover he was delighted to have what he had felt
instinctively confirmed, in a way, by a man of science.
"Herbert Spencer said," continued the doctor, "that no thought, no
feeling, is ever manifested save as the result of a physical force.
This principle will before long be a scientific commonplace. And
Huxley predicted that we would arrive at a mechanical equivalent of
consciousness. But I will not attempt to bolster my position with
authorities. I know, and I can prove what I know.
"You, Mr. Parker, have been receiving some particularly annoying
thoughts which have been intensified, it may be, by others, or
another. Human will power can alter the rate of vibration of the line
of force, or etheric wave. So-called good thoughts have a high rate of
vibration, and those which are called bad ordinarily have a low rate.
Have you, perhaps, an enemy?"
"Not that I know of," replied Parker, in a low voice.
"Then it would follow that this is accidental."
* * * * *
"Good heavens! Do you mean to say that someone could do this to me
maliciously?"
"So far my experiments leave something to be desired," said Dr. von
Stein, without answering directly. "No doubt you are peculiarly
susceptible to thoughts which bear in any way on your work."
"But isn't there any help for it?" asked Betty. She was regarding her
husband with the eyes of a stranger.
"I believe I can do something for Mr. Parker."
There was a knock at the door. The doctor boomed an order to come in.
Heinrich, with the dachshund at his heels, entered bearing a tray with
a bottle of wine and some slices of heavy fruit cake. He drew out a
table and placed the tray.
"Do not bring that dog in when I have guests," said Von Stein. He
spoke with a gleam of white teeth. "You know what will happen,
Heinrich?"
"_Ja_, Herr Doktor! I take Hans oudt!" The man was terrified. He
gathered the dog into his arms and fairly fled from the room. Dr. von
Stein turned with a smile.
"I have to discipline him," he explained. "He's a stupid fellow, but
faithful. I can't have ordinary servants about. There are scientific
men who would be willing to bribe them for a look at my laboratory."
"I did not know such things were done among scholars," said Betty,
slowly.
"What I have accomplished means power, Madame!" exclaimed the doctor.
"There are jackals in every walk of life. If an unscrupulous man of
science got into my laboratory, a physicist for instance, he might ...
find out things!"
* * * * *
Dr. von Stein turned to his duties as host. He filled their glasses,
and watched with satisfaction Betty's obvious enjoyment of the cake. A
box of mellow Havanas appeared from a cabinet: imported cigarettes
from a smoking stand. But Parker, in spite of a liking for good wine
and tobacco, was far too much concerned about his work to forget the
errand that had brought him there.
"So you think," he said, when there was opportunity, "that you can
help me, Dr. von Stein?"
"I can," replied von Stein, firmly; "but before attempting anything
I'd like to wait a day or two. The attacking thoughts may become less
violent, or your resistance greater, in either of which cases the
condition will fade out. You will either get better or much worse. If
you are worse come to see me again, and I promise you that I will do
something!"
"I'll come, and thank you!" Parker felt better, and more cheerful than
he had since the beginning of the disturbance. "Few things could make
me suffer so much as trouble with my work."
"That is what I thought," agreed Dr. von Stein.
* * * * *
Betty rose. Her husband caught the look in her eyes as they met the
bright, black gaze of Dr. von Stein, and he went cold. That look had
always been for him alone. Her feet seemed to linger on the way to the
door.
"He's wonderful!" she breathed, as they started down the uneventful
street. "Scientific things never interested me before. But he makes
them vital, living!"
"And yet," said Parker, thoughtfully, "there's something uncanny about
that man!"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Betty. "It's because he's a genius! Don't be
small, Allen!"
Parker gasped, and remained silent. He could not remember that his
wife had ever spoken to him in quite that way. They finished the
little journey home without speaking again and Parker went directly to
studio. He sat down, with drooping shoulders, and considered the mess
he had made of his book. Well, there was nothing to do but see
Cartwright to-morrow and face the music!
Dinner that night was a mournful affair. The soft footsteps of the
servant going in and out of the dining room, the ticking of the clock,
were almost the only sounds. Betty was deep in her own thoughts;
Parker was too miserable to talk. He went to bed early and lay staring
into the darkness for what seemed like an eternity of slow moving
hours.
The tall, deep voiced clock in the hall downstairs had just struck
one when suddenly Parker's room was flooded with light. He sat up,
blinking, and saw Betty standing near his bed. Her fingers twisted
against each other; her face was drawn and white.
"Allen!" she whispered. "I'm afraid!"
Instantly he was on his feet; his arms went around her and the yellow
head dropped wearily against his shoulder.
"Afraid of what?" he cried. "What is it, sweetheart?"
"I don't know!" All at once her body stiffened and she pulled away
from him. Then she laughed--"What nonsense! I must have been having a
bad dream ... it's nothing. Sorry I bothered you, Allen!"
She was gone before his could stop her. Bewildered, he did not know
whether to follow. Better not, he thought. She would sleep now, and
perhaps he would. But he was worried. Betty was becoming less and less
like herself.
* * * * *
At last Parker did sleep, to awake shortly after daylight. He got a
hasty breakfast and took an early train to New York. When John
Cartwright, a shrewd and kindly man well advanced in years, arrived at
his office Allen Parker was right there waiting for him.
Cartwright had shown a real affection for the younger man, a paternal
interest. He beamed, as usual, until he sat down with the new
drawings. Slowly the smile faded from his face. He went over them
twice, three times, and then he looked up.
"My boy," he said, "did you do these?"
"Yes."
"Do you know that you are turning a delicate and beautiful romance
into a lascivious libel on the human race?"
"It is being done," replied Parker, in a low voice. "And I--I can't
help myself!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that when I start to draw Madelon my hand produces that woman
of Babylon! The writing is just as bad. It's full of sneering hints,
double meanings ... I shall destroy the stuff. I've been to see a
psycho-analyst."
"Ah!" thoughtfully. "Perhaps you're tired, Allen. Why not take Betty
for a sea trip? There'll still be time for fall publication."
"I'm going to try everything possible. I'd rather be dead than do work
like this!"
* * * * *
When Parker left his friend he was somewhat encouraged. After the
first shock Cartwright had been inclined to make light of the
difficulty, and by the time Allen Parker reached Pine Hills his stride
had the usual swing and snap.
He ran up the steps of his house and burst into the living room with a
smile. Betty was sitting by one of the windows, her hands lying
relaxed in her lap. She turned a somber face toward her husband, and
spoke before he had time to say a word of greeting.
"You knew that Cordelia Lyman died a short time ago, didn't you?"
"What's that?" exclaimed Parker, bewildered. "Lyman? Oh, the old lady
down the street who left her money to found a home for aged spinsters?
What about it?"
"But she didn't leave her money to found a home for aged spinsters,
Allen. She had said she was going to, and everybody thought so. Her
will was admitted to probate, or whatever they call it, yesterday. She
left half a million, all she had, to Dr. Friedrich von Stein, to be
used as he thinks best for the advancement of science!"
"Good heavens!" Parker stared. "Why, I didn't know she knew him. He'd
only been here a week or so when she died."
"There isn't a flaw in the will, they say. You can imagine that Pine
Hills is talking!"
"Well," said Parker philosophically, "he's lucky. I hope he does
something with it."
"He will," replied Betty, with conviction. "He'll do a great many
things!"
* * * * *
Parker told her of his interview with Cartwright, but she seemed
little interested. He did not try to work that day but, after he had
put the offending drawings and manuscript out of sight, he wandered,
read, smoked, and in the evening persuaded Betty to take a moonlight
walk with him.
They passed the house of Dr. von Stein, from which came a faint
humming that sounded like a dynamo. Across the street the church was
alight for some service. Triumphant music drifted to them. The moon
hung above the spire, with its cross outlined darkly against the
brilliant sky. The windows were great jewels. Betty drew a deep
breath.
"Sometimes, Allen," she said, "I feel like praying!"
"You _are_ a beautiful prayer," whispered Parker.
She walked close to him, holding his arm, and repeated softly:
"Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?"
But that was the end of that mood. By the time they arrived home Betty
was again the strange, aloof, cold, slightly hard woman of the past
few days. Again depression settled upon Allen Parker.
* * * * *
The next morning he breakfasted alone and went directly to the studio,
without seeing Betty. Sun streamed into the room; the pencil moved
swiftly. For a brief time Parker thought that he was himself again, as
Madelon grew upon the block of paper. But the end was terrible. The
last few strokes made her grotesque. This time the woman he had drawn
was not merely evil; she was a mocking parody of his heroine. He threw
drawing and pencil across the room.
But no real artist can be discouraged short of death. He went to work
again and labored until luncheon time. The results were no better,
although they varied. Now it seemed that some malevolent power was
playing with him, torturing him to the accompaniment of devilish
laughter. He was haggard and actually stooped of body when he bathed
his face and went down to the dining room. From across the table Betty
regarded him curiously.
"Fleming Proctor shot himself last night," she announced, calmly.
"This morning they found him dead in his office."
"Proctor? You don't mean the president of the Pine Hills National
Bank?"
"Yes." The expression of Betty's face did not change. "There was a
note saying that he was sorry. It seems he'd made a large loan without
security to an unknown person, and the bank examiner was coming
to-day. Proctor said he couldn't help what he did. The note was
confused as though he were trying to tell something and couldn't. They
think his mind must have given way, particularly as they can't trace
the loan, although the money is undoubtedly gone."
* * * * *
"That kind of thing doesn't happen!" Parker was stunned. He had known
Fleming Proctor, and liked him. They met often at the country club.
"Proctor was honest, and a fine business man!"
"It did happen, Allen!"
"I'd like to know more about it. That would have been a case for Dr.
von Stein to take in hand."
"Perhaps," said Betty, in a voice like ice. "But I'm more interested
in finding out how soon you are going to return to normal. Frankly,
I'm beginning to get bored."
Without a word Parker rose and left the room. Never before had his
wife hurt him like this. Doubly sensitive just now, he was suffering
alone in the studio when the telephone rang.
"Dr. von Stein speaking. Are you better, Mr. Parker?"
"Worse! Much worse!"
"Then come to my house this evening at nine. May I expect you? And
alone?"
"Yes." There was much Parker wanted to say, but he choked the words
back. "I'll be there, and alone."
"I shall be ready for you. Good-by."
Allen Parker hung up the receiver. He did not leave the studio again
until evening.
* * * * *
As Parker approached the house of Dr. Friedrich von Stein he saw that
the church was lighted as it had been the night before. In a clear sky
the moon rode above the spire. He paused to let his glance sweep up
along the beautiful line that ran from earth to the slender cross.
That was how he felt. He wanted to rise, as that line rose, from
cumbering earth to clarity and beauty.
He mounted the steps and rang. Dr. von Stein met him, with eyes and
teeth agleam in the hall light. Wearily Parker stepped inside. His
mood of the moment before was fading.
"Go upstairs to my laboratory, if you please," said the doctor. "It is
best that I see you there, for it may be that you will need
treatment."
"I need something," replied Parker as he went up a long flight of
stairs. "I'm in a bad way."
Without answer von Stein led him down a short corridor and held open a
door. Allen Parker stepped into a room that bewildered him with its
strange contrasts.
At a glance he saw that nearly the whole upper floor of the building
had been converted into one gigantic room. Near a big stone fireplace,
where burning driftwood sent up its many tinted flames, Heinrich stood
rigidly at attention. Hans, the dachshund, crouched at his feet. When
the dog started to meet Parker a guttural command stopped him.
Here there were bearskins on the floor, huge stuffed chairs,
footrests, little tables, humidors, pipe racks, all that one could
desire for comfort. Two German duelling swords were crossed above the
mantel.
* * * * *
But beyond this corner everything was different. Parker saw the massed
windows of reddish-purple glass; he saw apparatus for which he had no
name, as well as some of the ordinary paraphernalia of the chemical
laboratory. There was wiring everywhere, and a multitude of lighting
fixtures. Utilitarian tables, desks and chairs were placed about with
mathematical precision. There were plates and strips of metal set into
the glass smooth flooring, which was broken by depressions and
elevations of unusual form.
The most striking thing in the room was a huge copper bowl that hung
inverted from the ceiling. In it, and extending down below the rim,
was what seemed to be a thick and stationary mist. It looked as though
the bowl had been filled with a silver gray mist and then turned
bottom side up. But the cloud did not fall or float away.
"I can think and speak best from my desk," Von Stein was saying.
"Please sit down facing me in the chair which Heinrich will place for
you. Then we will talk."
Heinrich rolled one of the overstuffed chairs noiselessly to a
position about six feet from the desk. Parker noticed a long metal
strip in the floor between him and the doctor.
Just then Hans wriggled forward and the artist scratched his ears, to
be rewarded by a grateful tongue. Again a command from Heinrich
brought the dog to heel, but the voice was not so gruff this time.
Together they returned to the fireplace.
Von Stein let his hands rest upon the desk top--a surface covered with
levers, electric switches, push buttons, and contrivances the nature
of which Parker could not guess. The doctor leaned forward. He threw
over a switch. The lights in the room became less bright. He pressed a
button. The Danse Macabre of Saint-Saens floated weirdly upon the
air, as though the music came from afar off.
"Is that part of the treatment?" asked Parker, with a faint smile.
"It's not cheering, exactly."
"Merely an idiosyncrasy of mine," answered Von Stein, showing his
teeth. "Before anything is done I must, in order to aid the
receptivity of your mind, go a little further with the explanation of
certain things which I mentioned the other day. I promise not to bore
you. More than that, Mr. Parker, I promise that you will be more
interested than you have ever been in anything!"
* * * * *
It seemed to Parker that there was something sinister in the manner
and speech of Dr. von Stein. The Dance of Death! Did that music have a
meaning? Impossible! It was only his own sick mind that was allowing
such thoughts to come to him.
"Anything that will help," he murmured.
"You have noticed that copper bowl?" Von Stein did not wait for a
reply. "The misty appearance inside and underneath it is given by
thousands upon thousands of minute platinum wires. When it is in use a
slight electrical current is passed through it, varying in power
according to the rate of vibration needed. That instrument, my dear
sir, is a transmitter of thought. I may call it the microphone of the
mind. I can tune in on any mind in the world, by experimenting up and
down the vibration range to determine the susceptibility of the
particular person. The human mind does not need an amplifier, as the
radio receiving set does. Rather, it acts as its own amplifier, once
having received the thought. I invented one, however, to prove that it
could be done. I equipped Heinrich with it and in half an hour by
suggestion reduced him to his present state of docile stupidity. I
have, Mr. Parker, the means of moving people to do my bidding!"
* * * * *
Von Stein stopped abruptly, as though for emphasis and to allow his
astounding statements to take effect. Parker sat stunned, struggling
to grasp all the implications of what he had just heard. Suddenly they
became clear. He saw events in order, and in relation to each other.
"So that's how it was with Cordelia Lyman!" he cried hoarsely, leaning
forward. "And it was you who had that money from Fleming Proctor!"
"You are not unintelligent," remarked Dr. von Stein. "Better that
science should have the Lyman money than a few old women of no
particular use. As for Proctor, he was a fool. I would have protected
him."
"And my pictures ... my book...."
"I can cure you, Mr. Parker. _If I will!_"
"And anyone is at the mercy of this man!" groaned Parker.
"Not absolutely, I'm sorry to say," said the doctor. "The action of
thought on the human consciousness is exactly like that of sound on
the tuning fork. When the mind is tuned right, we'll say for
illustration, the lower vibrations are not picked out of the ether.
But as few minds are tuned right, and as all vary from time to time,
I'm practically omnipotent."
"You have changed the nature of my wife!" Parker was getting hold of
himself and he could speak with a degree of calmness. "That is a worse
crime than the one you've committed against me directly!"
"Mr. Parker," said the doctor, impressively, "you are in a web. I am
the spider. You are the fly. I don't particularly desire to hurt you,
but I want your wife. This is the crux of the matter. She is the woman
to share my triumphs. Already I have aroused her interest. Give her up
and you will continue your work as before. Refuse, and you will lose
her just as certainly as though you give her to me. For, my dear sir,
you will be insane in less than a month from now. I promise you
that!"
* * * * *
Allen Parker was not one to indulge in melodrama. For a long moment he
sat looking into the black eyes of Von Stein. Then he spoke carefully.
"If my wife of her own will loved you, and wanted freedom, I'd let her
go. But this is a kind of hypnosis. It's diabolical!"
"Who but the devil was the father of magic?" asked the doctor,
cheerfully. "Hypnosis is unconsciously based on a scientific principle
which I have mastered. Repeated advertising of a tooth brush or a box
of crackers is mild mental suggestion--hypnosis, if you will. My dear
fellow, be sensible!"
"Sophistry!" growled Parker.
Von Stein laughed. He moved a lever upon a dial and a sheet of blue
flame quivered between them. With another movement of the lever it
vanished.
"I could destroy you instantly," he said, "and completely, and no one
could prove a crime! I shall not do it. I have no time to be bothered
with investigations. Think of the fate I have promised you. Think, and
you will give her up!"
"I shall not!" Parker wiped cold drops from his forehead. The doctor
frowned thoughtfully.
"I'll intensify her desire to come here to-night," he said. "She
herself will persuade you."
* * * * *
Parker set his fingers into the arms of his chair as Von Stein rose
and walked to the copper bowl. He stood directly under it, and put on
goggles with shields fitting close to his feet. At the pressure of his
foot a tablelike affair rose from the floor in front of him. This,
like the desk, was equipped with numerous dials, buttons and levers.
Von Stein manipulated them. The great cap of copper descended until
his head was enveloped by the mist of platinum wires. A faint humming
grew in the room. A tiny bell tinkled.
"The connection is made," murmured Von Stein. He lifted a hand for
silence: then his fingers leaped among the gadgets on the table. After
that came a brief period, measured by seconds, of immobility. Then the
table sank from view, the copper bowl lifted, and Dr. von Stein went
back to his chair.
"She will be here shortly," he said. "If that does not change your
mind...."
He shrugged. Parker knew what that shrug meant. He searched his mind
for a plan and found none. Better die fighting than yield, or risk the
vengeance of Friedrich von Stein. If he could get the doctor away from
the desk where he controlled the blue-white flame there might be a
chance to do something. Von Stein was by far the larger man, but
Parker had been an athlete all his life. If....
"That mass of copper and platinum," he said, tentatively, "will make
you master of the world!"
"My brain, my intelligence, has made me master of the world!"
corrected Von Stein, proudly. He was touched in the right spot now.
"You have not seen all!"
* * * * *
He sprang up and went to one of the tables. From his pocket he took a
piece of paper and crumpled it into a ball while, with the other hand,
he made some electrical connections to a plate of metal set into the
surface of the table. Next he placed the wad of paper on the plate.
Then, standing at arm's length from the apparatus, he pressed a
button. Instantly the paper disappeared behind a screen of the colors
of the spectrum, from red to violet. The banded colors were there for
a minute fraction of a second. Then there was nothing where the paper
had been on the plate. Von Stein smiled as he stepped away from the
table.
"The electron is formed by the crossing of two lines of force," he
said, "and the interaction of positive and negative polarity. The
electron is a stress in the ether, nothing more, but it is the stuff
of which all matter is made. Thought is vibration in one dimension;
matter in two. You have just seen me untie the knot, dissociate the
electrons, or what you will. In plain language I have caused matter to
vanish utterly. That paper is not burned up. It no longer exists in
any form. The earth upon which we stand, Parker, can be dissolved like
mist before the sun!"
Appalled as he was at this man who boasted and made good his terrible
boasts Allen Parker had not forgotten the purpose that was in him. Now
was his chance, while Von Stein stood smiling triumphantly between
table and desk.
Parker shot from his chair with the speed of utter desperation. He
feinted, and drove a vicious uppercut to the jaw of Dr. Friedrich von
Stein. The doctor reeled but he did not go down. His fists swung.
Parker found him no boxer, and beat a tattoo upon his middle. Von
Stein began to slump.
Then two thick muscled arms closed around the artist from behind and
he was lifted clear of the floor. He kicked, and tried to turn, but it
was useless. The doctor recovered himself. His eyes blazed fury.
"Put him in the chair, Heinrich!" he roared. "For this I will show you
what I can do, Herr Parker!"
* * * * *
At that instant little Hans, who had been yelping on the edge of the
battle, dashed in. He leaped for the throat of Von Stein. The doctor
kicked him brutally.
The shriek of agony from Hans loosened the arms of Heinrich. Parker
got his footing again. He saw the clumsy serving man spring forward
and gather his dog up to his breast. Again Parker rushed for his
enemy.
It was clear now that Von Stein was cut off from the controls he
wanted, and without Heinrich he could not master Parker in a fight.
For an instant he stood baffled. Then he retreated the length of the
room, taking what blows he could not beat off. He staggered upon a
plate of metal set into the floor, righted himself, and failed in an
attempt to catch hold of Parker. Suddenly he bowed in the direction of
the distant doorway.
Allen half turned. Betty was coming down the room, staring and
breathless.
"_Leben sie wohl!_" cried Von Stein. "Farewell, Madame! I should like
to take you with me!"
A great flash of the colors of the spectrum sent Parker reeling back.
Dr. Friedrich von Stein had gone the way of the crumpled ball of
paper.
There was a long moment of silence. Then Allen Parker found his wife
in his arms, clinging to him.
"'Are not two prayers a perfect strength?'" she murmured, sobbing
against his heart.
A HUNDRED MILES UNDERGROUND
Scientists bidding their families good-by in the morning to drop fifty
or a hundred miles underground in high speed elevators, there to
undertake researches not possible nearer to the earth's surface, may
be realities of the next decade or two if some wealthy individual or
institution accepts the recommendation of Dr. Harlow Shapley,
distinguished astronomer of Harvard, in a talk recently before the
American Geographical Society.
The earth's interior, Dr. Shapley said, is the "third dimension" of
geography. Exploration of the planet's surface soon must cease from
lack of places to explore. Even the upper air is coming to be
reasonably well known scientifically, thanks to instruments sent up
with balloons and to the radio and other investigators who have been
uncovering secrets of upper-air electricity. But the interior of the
earth is still one of the great mysteries. It is a paradox of
astronomy that much more is known about the center of the sun or a
star like Sirius than about the center of the earth.
Deep shafts of bore holes into the earth have been suggested often as
sources of heat for human use. It is doubtful, however, whether such
heat supplies could be obtained. For one thing, the supposed internal
heat of the earth is still nothing but a guess. It may be that the
relatively slight increases of heat found as one goes deeper in
existing mines are due to radioactivity in the rocks instead of to
outward seepage from the internal fires. Another difficulty about
utilizing earth heat is that heat moves so slowly through substances
like rock, as any housewife can prove by trying to fry an egg on a
brick placed over a gas flame. As soon as the rock heat immediately at
the bottom of a bore hole had been exhausted heat supply would stop
until more could diffuse in from the sides.
Dr. Shapley's suggestion, in any event, is not to search for heat but
for facts. Even in existing, relatively shallow mines, he believes,
scientific laboratories at different depths under the surface might
yield valuable data not now obtainable. Most scientific men will
agree. Revolutionary as the idea may seem to those familiar only with
the standardized laboratories of physics or chemistry, there are sound
reasons why a half-dozen or so of the sciences should do precisely
what Dr. Shapley suggests.
At least one underground laboratory has already been installed, for
Prof. E. B. Babcock of the University of California has such a
workroom in the Twin Peaks Tunnel, underneath the mountain that rises
above the city of San Francisco. Natural radioactivity in the rocks
thereabouts is greater than normal and Prof. Babcock finds that this
apparently increases new species among fruit flies.
To dig out laboratory rooms a mile or so down in existing deep mines
probably would cost far less than many enterprises already financed by
philanthropists. Even to deepen these shafts for several miles would
be much less difficult than most people imagine.
Increasing heat, if it is found that heat does increase, would not be
difficult to overcome had the engineers sufficient money. Ventilation
and transportation to and from the surface, while too costly for the
business enterprise of winning metals from very deep mines, probably
would present no serious difficulty were facts the chief object
instead of profit. The only question to be decided before intending
benefactors of science are urged to consider some such project is
whether or not the facts likely to be won promise enough value to
mankind.
An excellent case can be made out for answering yes. Dr. Shapley
mentioned four chief lines of investigation suitable for such
deep-mine laboratories: studies of gravity and of the variable length
of the day, researches on the various kinds of earthquake waves,
experiments on ether drift and tests of the biological effects of
cosmic rays and of the rays from radium.
Astronomical theories indicate that the day ought to be growing
slightly longer as the earth's rotation decreases a trifle from
century to century because of friction from the tides. The actual
length of the days seems, however, sometimes to be decreasing a tiny
fraction of a second from year to year, as theory says that it should;
sometimes to be increasing in a way for which no present theory
provides. Observations underneath the earth, with a portion of the
planet's crust and gravity overhead, might yield important clues to
the cause of this mysterious wrong time kept by the terrestrial
clock.
The Gray Plague
_By L. A. Eshbach_
[Sidenote: Maimed and captive, in the depths of an interplanetary
meteor-craft, lay the only possible savior of plague-ridden Earth.]
[Illustration: _They were almost upon him when he leaped into
action._]
CHAPTER I
Five months before the beginning of that period of madness, that time
of chaos and death that became known as the Gray Plague, the first of
the strange meteors fell to Earth. It landed a few miles west of El
Paso, Texas, on the morning of March 11th.
In a few hours a great throng of people gathered around the dully
smoldering mass of fire-pitted rock, the upper half of which protruded
from the Earth where it had buried itself, like a huge, roughly
outlined hemisphere. And then, when the crowd had assumed its
greatest proportions, the meteor, with a mighty, Earth-shaking roar,
exploded.
A vast flood of radiance, more brilliant than the light of the sun,
lit up the sky for miles around. One moment, a throng of curious
people, a number of scientists, newspaper men--a crashing
explosion--and then a great, yawning pit sending forth a blinding
radiance! Destruction and death where life had been.
The brilliant light streamed from the pit for about ten minutes; then
like a snuffed-out candle flame, it vanished.
The second of the strange meteors landed on the evening of March 13th,
in the city of Peking, China. It demolished several buildings, and
buried itself beneath the ruins. The Chinese, unaware of the tragedy
at El Paso, gathered in the vicinity, and when the meteor exploded at
about ten o'clock that night, were instantly destroyed. As in Texas,
the great pit emitted a cloud of dazzling light for about ten minutes,
throwing a brilliant glow over the city and its surroundings; then
was extinguished.
The people of the world awoke to the fact that events worthy of more
than passing interest were occurring. The press of every nation begin
giving the strange meteors more and more publicity. Statements of
different pseudo-scientists were published in explanation of the
meteor's origin, statements that aroused world wide conjecture.
* * * * *
Approximately twenty-four hours after the falling of the second
missile, the third one fell, landing near Madrid, Spain. The
Spaniards, having received news of the El Paso and Peking tragedies,
avoided the ugly mass of rock as though it were a dreaded pestilence.
In every way its action was similar to that of its two predecessors.
The interest of the world was doubled now. The unusual similarity of
the action of the meteors, and the regularity of their landings,
seemed indicative of a definite, hostile purpose behind it all. A
menace from the unknown--a peril from the skies!
Scientists began giving serious consideration to the unusual
phenomenon, pottering around in the pits, wearing airs of puzzlement.
But their investigations were of no avail, for nothing of any great
significance came to light through their efforts.
At about that time, an announcement was made that created a furor.
Astronomers in different parts of the United States reported that they
had observed a bright flare of light leaping up from the darkened
portion of the planet Venus. The astronomers had no definite idea of
anything of importance in back of what they had seen; but not so the
masses. The flare, they said, was caused by the release of another
meteor!
From Venus! Missiles, hurled by Venerians, menacing the Earth! The
silver planet became the subject of universal discussion; innumerable
fantastic articles about it appeared in magazine sections of Sunday
newspapers. And the astronomers of Earth turned their telescopes
toward Venus with an interest they had never felt before.
* * * * *
Four days of expectant waiting passed by after the third meteor had
fallen, while interest continued mounting at an accelerating pace. And
then, at about two o'clock in the morning of the 18th, three great
observatories, two in North America and one in England, recorded the
falling of an extraordinarily large and unusually brilliant meteor
that glowed with an intense, bluish-white light as it entered the
Earth's atmosphere. And, unlike most meteors, this one was not
consumed by its intense heat, but continued gleaming brilliantly until
it vanished below the horizon. Simultaneous with the falling of the
meteor, the Earth was rocked by one of the worst quakes in history.
Seismographs in all parts of the world recorded the tremors of the
Earth, each indicating that the disturbance had occurred somewhere
beneath the Atlantic ocean. Evidently the fourth meteor had fallen
into the ocean, for the shaking of the Earth was obviously the result
of the collision. That quakes had not followed the landing of the
first three was due to the fact that they had been far smaller than
the fourth.
And then, a short time after the earthquake, the worst storm in two
hundred years broke over the Atlantic. Waves, mountain high, piled
themselves upon each other in a wild frenzy; a shrieking wind lashed
the waters into a liquid chaos. Great ocean-liners were tossed about
like tiny chips; an appalling number of smaller ships were lost in
that insane storm.
Nor was the destruction confined to the sea, for all along the
Atlantic coast of North America and Europe, mighty walls of water
rushed in, and wrecked entire towns and cities.
Fortunately the storm was of short duration; a few hours after it
began, it subsided.
For a number of weeks public attention was centered upon the meteors
and storm; but gradually, when nothing further occurred, the fickle
interest of the masses began to wane. A month after the storm, the
strange meteors were no longer mentioned by the press, and
consequently, had passed from the public mind. Only the astronomers
remembered, keeping their telescopes trained on Venus night after
night.
Four months passed by during which nothing of an unusual nature came
to the attention of the world. But at the end of that time, it
suddenly dawned upon those nations whose shores touched the Atlantic
ocean, that something extraordinary was happening. It was taking place
so insidiously, so quietly, that it had attracted no great attention.
A series of inexplicable sea disasters had begun. Every ship that had
traveled over a certain, regular steamship route, had disappeared,
leaving no trace. Mysteriously, without warning, they had vanished;
without a single S O S being sent, seven freighters had been lost. The
disappearances had been called to the world's attention by the
shipping companies, alarmed at the gradual loss of their boats.
Then other mysterious vanishings came to the attention of the world.
Ships in all parts of the Atlantic were being lost. When this fact
became known, trans-Atlantic commerce ceased almost over night. With
the exception of a few privately owned yachts and freighters, the
Atlantic became deserted.
And finally, a few days after the world became aware of the strange
disappearances on the Atlantic, the Gray Plague introduced itself to
humanity. Attempts were made to repress the facts: but the tragedy of
the freighter, _Charleston_, in all its ghastliness and horror, became
known in spite of all attempts at secrecy.
On the morning of August 3rd, the _Charleston_ was found, half buried
in the sand of a beach on the coast of Florida, cast there, evidently,
by a passing storm. The freighter had been one of the first boats to
disappear.
When the ship's discoverers boarded her, their eyes were greeted by a
sight whose ghastliness filled them with a numbing horror. Indeed, so
terrifying was the spectacle on the _Charleston_, that the
discoverers, four boys of adolescent age, left in fear-stricken haste.
Nor could they be induced to return to the ship's deck.
* * * * *
Later, a group of men from a nearby town boarded the freighter to
investigate the boys' amazing report. In the group was a newspaper
reporter who chanced to be in the vicinity on a minor story. It was
through the reporter's account that the facts became known as quickly
as they did.
When the men clambered up the side of the _Charleston_ to her deck,
they saw a spectacle the like of which had never before been seen on
Earth. Although they had been prepared for the horror to some extent
by the story of the boys, the sight on the _Charleston_ exceeded their
description to such a degree that, for the moment, the men were
rendered speechless.
The deck of the _Charleston_ was a shambles--a scene of sudden,
chilling death. All about were strewn gray, lifeless bodies. Death had
overtaken the crew in the midst of their duties, suddenly, without
warning, it seemed. Bodies strewn about--yet nowhere was there sign of
decay! Bodies, lifeless for days, or weeks--yet intact!
The men were fearfully impressed by the strangely grotesque positions
of the corpses. With a few exceptions, they lay on the deck in
abnormal, twisted masses of gray covered flesh. Somehow, they seemed
flattened, as though they had been soft, jellylike, and had flowed,
had settled, flat against the deck. Some were no more than three
inches thick, and had spread out to such an extent that they looked
like fantastic caricatures of human bodies. That unnatural change in
their structure, and the ghastly, dead-gray color of their skins gave
the corpses a horrifying, utterly repulsive appearance that made the
flesh of the men crawl.
The bodies had a strangely soft aspect, as though they were still
jellylike. One of the men, bolder than the rest, touched a body--and
withdrew his hand in revulsion and surprise. For the ugly mass was
cold, and as hard as bone: the tissues of the flesh seemingly replaced
by a solid, bony substance. Later investigation revealed that all the
dead on the _Charleston_ had assumed a similar, bonelike solidity.
When the men left the freighter to report the tragedy to the proper
authorities, their faces were blanched, and their nerves badly shaken.
Yet their horror was nothing when compared with what it would have
been, had they known what was to follow.
* * * * *
Rapidly the story of the_ Charleston_ spread. By means of the press,
over the radio, even by word of mouth, the story of the horror on the
freighter was given publicity. All over the United States and Canada
it spread, and from thence to the rest of the world. Eagerly was the
story accepted: here, at last, was the explanation of the sea
disasters! And then, more than ever before, was the Atlantic ocean
shunned.
The bodies of the seamen on the freighter were turned over to
scientists for experimentation and research. It was thought that they
might be able to discover the cause of the Gray Death, and with a
knowledge of its cause, create something with which to free the
Atlantic from its scourge.
The scientists' investigations only served to mystify the world to a
greater degree. The only thing that came to light was the cause of the
bodies' bonelike rigidity. In some inexplicable way the bones in the
seamen had dissolved, and according to appearances, while the bodies
were plastic, had flattened out. And then, strange and unnatural
though it seemed, the calcium from the dissolved bones had gathered at
the surface of each body, and combining with the flesh and skin, had
formed the hard, bony shell that gave them their ghastly grayness, and
their appearance of petrification. Aside from this, the scientists
learned nothing; the cause of this amazing phenomenon was a complete
mystery to them.
Slowly, methodically, step by step, the unusual had been taking place.
From the time of the landing of the first strange meteor, up to the
discovery of the _Charleston_, there had been a gradual increase in
the significance of each succeeding event.
Then finally came the climax: the Gray Plague itself. All that
preceded it faded into significance before the horror of the dread
pestilence that seized the world with its destroying talons.
* * * * *
A short time after the discovery of the _Charleston_, the Plague made
its first appearance on land. Slowly, pitilessly, inexorably, it
began, taking its toll all along the Atlantic coast. From Newfoundland
to Brazil; from the British Isles to Egypt, wherever people lived near
the ocean, thousands were stricken with the dread malady.
The old and infirm were the most quickly affected; their weakened
bodies could not withstand the ravage of the Plague as could those of
younger people. An old man, walking along a large thoroughfare in
Savannah, Georgia, suddenly uttered a fearful shriek and sank to the
pavement. While the pedestrians watched with bulging eyes, he seemed
to shrink, to flatten, to flow liquidly, turning a ghastly gray.
Within an hour he was as hard as the men of the _Charleston_. Of all
the millions, perhaps he was the first.
Others followed in the wake of the first victim, young as well as old;
three hours after the death in Savannah, every channel of
communication was choked with news of a constantly increasing number
of casualties. A Boston minister, preaching a funeral sermon,
collapsing beside the coffin; a lineman on a telegraph pole, overcome,
falling--and splashing! A thousand incongruous tragedies shocking
humanity.
In Europe the action of the Plague was the same as in North America.
Death stalking the sea-coast, destroying thousands; ignorant
fishermen, men of learning, women and children of every age--all were
grist to be ground in the mill of the Gray Plague.
Before a week had gone by, no one remained alive in the villages,
towns and cities all along the Atlantic. New York, London, all the
large coast cities were deserted by the living, left to the rigid
dead. From the largest metropolis to the smallest hamlet, all became
body-glutted tombs.
And then, on the morning of October 12th, news was given to the world
that threw mankind into a panic. The Plague was moving inland! Slowly,
yet relentlessly it spread, no longer confining its effect to the
sea-coast, but moving farther and farther inland toward the heart of
the two continents, driving mankind before it. For people fled in
insane terror before the advancing death. Nor was there escape from
the menace--no antidote to counteract, no sanctuary wherein to hide.
To North and South, to East and West, the pestilence spread,
destroying as it went. Unless there were some miraculous intervention,
the human race would be destroyed!
* * * * *
Officials of the world were at their wits' end; scientists threw up their
hands in despair. The Plague was an insoluble puzzle--enigmatical, utterly
inexplicable, beyond the knowledge of Earth.
Scientists and doctors were brutally slain during that period by
fear-crazed mobs, because of their inability to rescue the world from
the grip of the Plague. Thousands of people died while striving to
escape from the Gray Death, crushed by passing motor vehicles, or
starving in the congested areas. Gone was the boasted civilization of
man--humanity sinking rapidly to the level of the beast; gone,
destroyed in a few weeks!
And then one day when the end seemed perilously close, there was
ushered into the presence of the remnant of the United States
officials who had gathered in San Francisco, a twisted monstrosity of
a man, fearfully scarred and deformed. He was closeted with them for
two hours. At the end of that time an excited official communicated
with the leader of the American scientists.
"A cure for the Plague has been discovered!" he cried in joyful tones.
"Man still has a chance!"
Before an hour had passed by, scientists were in possession of
cultures of germs that would destroy the bacilli of the Gray Death.
The hope of salvation restored some semblance of order; and in a very
short time the development of the germs was going forward as rapidly
as skilled bacteriologists could carry it. Forces of doctors were
marshalled to administer the cure, inoculating all who were untouched
by the Plague.
At about that time, a small, bronze-colored sphere arose into the air
above San Francisco, and sped eastward with amazing velocity. It
flashed over the United States, over the Atlantic ocean, and over
western Europe, finally landing in the midst of the European hordes.
There its operator, a deformed cripple, left bacteria similar to those
he had given to the United States.
In a short time Europe, too, was busily engaged in developing the
bacteria, and inoculating her people.
Many others died before the world was rendered immune, but at last
mankind let its labors cease. The Gray Plague was overcome.
Then the work of reclaiming the deserted areas was begun; then, too,
was started the ghastly task of disposing of the countless, rigid
dead. And finally, a great steamer left New York harbor, and started
across the Atlantic. It was the purpose of the men on board to destroy
utterly the source of the Plague.
But long before that occurred, humanity had heard the story of Phillip
Parkinson, the man who saved the world--had heard, and had honored the
deliverer of mankind.
Parkinson's story follows:
CHAPTER II
The steam yacht, Diana, bound for the Azores and points south, was two
days out from Miami when the great meteor fell into the Atlantic. On
the after deck, leaning over the rail, watching the moonlit waters,
stood Phillip Parkinson, owner of the yacht. A bacteriologist of
international fame was Parkinson, on an early vacation to recuperate
from the effects of a strenuous winter of research. Nervous, rather
high-strung, he had been unable to sleep; at about one in the morning
of the 18th of March, he had come up on deck.
He had stood there for about an hour when suddenly there appeared in
the sky above him, a meteor, a great disc of blue-white incandescence.
It seemed to be rushing straight down toward him; instinctively he
leaped back, as though to avoid the fiery missile.
As the constantly expanding disc flashed through the hundred miles of
Earth's atmosphere, the ocean, as far as eye could see, became as
light as day. Bathed in that baleful, white glare, Parkinson,
bewildered, dazed, half-blinded, watched the approaching stellar
visitant.
In a few moments it struck--no more than two miles away. In the last,
bright flare of blue-white light, Parkinson saw a gigantic column of
steam and boiling water leap up from the sea. Then thick, impenetrable
darkness fell--darkness that was intensified by its contrast with the
meteor's blinding light.
For ten tense, breathless seconds utter silence hung over the sea ...
then, for those on the yacht, the world went mad! A shrill, unearthly
shriek--the sound of the meteor's passage through the atmosphere; an
ear-splitting roar, as of the simultaneous release of the
thunder-drums of ages; a howling demon of wind; a solid wall of
raging, swirling water of immeasurable height--all united in an
indescribable chaos that bewildered those on board the Diana, and that
lifted the yacht and--threw it upon its side!
When the first rushing mountain of lathering, thundering water crashed
upon the yacht, Parkinson felt himself hurtling through the roaring
air. For a moment he heard the infernal pandemonium of noise ... then
the strangling, irresistible brine closed over his head.
A blackness deeper than that of the night--and Parkinson knew no
more....
* * * * *
Slowly consciousness returned to the bacteriologist. It came under the
guise of a dull, yet penetrating throbbing coming from beneath the
surface on which he lay. Vaguely he wondered at it; he had not yet
entirely cast off the enshrouding stupor that gripped him.
Gradually he came into full possession of his faculties--and became
aware of a dull aching throughout his entire body. In his chest it
seemed to be intensified; every breath caused a sharp pang of pain.
Faltering and uncertain, he arose and peered around. Before, lay the
open sea, calm now, and peaceful. Long, rolling swell swept in and
dashed themselves against the rocks a few feet away. Rocks? For a
moment Parkinson stared at the irregular shore-line in dazed wonder.
Then as his mind cleared, the strangeness of his position flashed upon
him.
Solid earth was under his feet! Although he must be hundreds of miles
from shore, in some way he had drifted upon land. So far as he knew,
there were no islands in that part of the Atlantic; yet his very
position belied the truth. He could not have drifted to the mainland;
the fact that he was alive precluded all possibilities of that, for he
would have drowned in far less time than the latter thought implied.
He turned and inspected the land upon which he had been cast. A small,
barren island, bleak and inhospitable, and strangely metallic, met his
gaze. The rays of the sun beating down upon it were thrown back with
an uncomfortable intensity; the substance of the island was a
lustrous, copperlike metal. No soil softened the harshness of the
surface; indescribably rugged and pitted was the two hundred-foot
expanse. It reminded Parkinson of a bronze relief-map of the moon.
For a moment he puzzled over the strangeness of the unnatural island;
then suddenly he realized the truth. This was the meteor! Obviously,
this was the upper side of the great sphere from space, protruding
above the sea.
* * * * *
Fortunate for him that the meteor had not been completely covered by
water, he thought--but was it fortunate? True, he was alive now,
thanks to the tiny island, but how long would he remain alive without
food or water, and without hope of securing either? Unless he would be
picked up by a passing steamer, he would die a far more unpleasant
death than that of drowning. Some miracle had saved him from a watery
grave; it would require another to rescue him from a worse fate.
Even now he was beginning to feel thirsty. He had no way of
determining how long he had been unconscious, but that it was at least
ten hours, he was certain, for the sun had been at its zenith when he
had awakened. No less than fifteen hours had gone by since
water--other than that of the sea--had passed his lips. And the fact
that it was impossible for him to quench his thirst only served to
render it more acute.
In order to take his mind from thoughts of his thirst and of the
immediate future, he rapidly circled the island. As he had expected,
it was utterly barren. With shoulders drooping in despair he settled
wearily to a seat on the jagged mass of metal high up on top of the
meteor.
An expression of sudden interest lit up his face. For a second time he
felt that particular throbbing, that strange pulsing beneath the
surface of the meteor. But now it was far more noticeable than before.
It seemed to be directly below him, and very close to the surface.
Parkinson could not tell how long he sat there, but from the
appearance of the sun, he thought that at the very shortest, an hour
passed by while he remained on that spot. And during that time, the
throbbing gradually increased until the metal began vibrating under
his feet.
Suddenly the bacteriologist leaped aside. The vibrating had reached
its height, and the meteor seemed to lurch, to tilt at a sharp angle.
His leap carried him to firm footing again. And then, his thirst and
hopeless position completely forgotten, Parkinson stared in
fascination at the amazing spectacle before him.
* * * * *
An eighteen-foot disc of metal, a perfect circle, seemed to have been
cut out of the top of the meteor. While he watched, it began turning
slowly, ponderously, and started sinking into the meteor. As it sank,
Parkinson fancied that it grew transparent, and gradually vanished
into nothingness--but he wasn't sure.
A great pit, eighteen feet wide, but far deeper, lay before him in the
very place where, not more than ten minutes before, he had stood. Not
a moment too soon had he leaped.
Motionless he stood there, waiting in tense expectation. What would
happen next, he had not the least idea, but he couldn't prevent his
imagination from running riot.
He hadn't long to wait before his watching was rewarded. A few minutes
after the pit appeared, he heard a loud, high-pitched whir coming from
the heart of the meteor. As it grew louder, it assumed a higher and
still higher key, finally rising above the range of human ears. And at
that moment the strange vehicle arose to the surface.
A simple-appearing mechanism was the car, consisting of a twelve-foot
sphere of the same bronze-like metal that made up the meteor, with a
huge wheel, like a bronze cincture, around its middle. It was the
whirling of this great wheel that had caused the high-pitched
whirring. The entire, strange machine was surrounded by a peculiar
green radiance, a radiance that seemed to crackle ominously as the
sphere hovered over the mouth of the pit.
For a moment the car hung motionless, then it drifted slowly to the
surface of the meteor, landing a few feet away from Parkinson. Hastily
he drew back from the greenly phosphorescent thing--but not before he
had experienced an unpleasant prickling sensation over his entire
body.
As the bacteriologist drew away, there was a sharp, audible click
within the interior of the sphere; and the green radiance vanished. At
the same moment, three heavy metal supports sprang from equi-distant
points in the sides of the car, and held the sphere in a balanced
position on the rounded top of the meteor.
There was a soft, grating sound on the opposite side of the car.
Quickly, Parkinson circled it--and stopped short in surprise.
* * * * *
Men were descending from an opening in the side of the sphere!
Parkinson had reasoned that since the meteor had come from the depths
of space, any being in its interior, unnatural as that seemed, would
have assumed a form quite different from the human. Of course,
conditions on Earth could be approximated on another planet. At any
rate, whatever the explanation, the sphere was emitting men!
They were men--but there was something queer about them. They were
very tall--seven feet or more--and very thin; and their skins were a
delicate, transparent white. They looked rather ghostly in their
tight-fitting white suits. It was not this that made them seem queer,
however: it was an indefinite something, a vague suggestion of
heartless inhumanity, of unearthliness, that was somehow repulsive and
loathsome.
There were three of them, all very similar in appearance and bearing.
Their surprise at the sight of Parkinson, if anything, was greater
than the start their appearance had given him. He, at least, had
expected to see beings of some sort, while the three had been taken
completely by surprise.
For a moment they surveyed him with staring, cold-blue eyes. Then
Parkinson extended his hand, and as cordially as he could, exclaimed:
"Hello! Welcome to Earth!"
The visitors from space ignored his advances and continued staring at
him. Their attitude at first was quizzical, speculative, but slowly a
hostile expression crept into their eyes.
Suddenly, with what seemed like common consent, they faced each other,
and conversed in low tones in some unintelligible tongue. For almost a
minute they talked, while Parkinson watched them in growing
apprehension.
Finally they seemed to have reached some definite conclusion; with one
accord they turned and moved slowly toward the bacteriologist,
something distinctly menacing in their attitudes. The men from the
meteor were tall, but they were thin; Parkinson, too, was large, and
his six-foot length was covered with layers of solid muscle. As the
three advanced toward him, he doubled his fists, and crouched in
readiness for the expected attack.
* * * * *
They were almost upon him when he leaped into action. A crushing left
to his stomach sent the first one to the meteor-top, where he lay
doubled up in pain. But that was the only blow that Parkinson struck;
in a moment he found himself lying prone upon his back, utterly
helpless, his body completely paralyzed. What they had done to him, he
did not know; all that he could remember was two thin bodies twining
themselves around him--a sharp twinge of pain at the base of his
skull; then absolute helplessness.
One of the tall beings grasped Parkinson about the waist, and with
surprising strength, threw him over his shoulder. The other assisted
his groaning fellow. When the latter had recovered to some extent, the
three ascended the ladder that led into the metal sphere.
The interior of the strange vehicle, as far as Parkinson could see,
was as simple as its exterior. There was no intricate machinery of any
sort in the square room; probably what machinery there was lay between
the interior and exterior walls of the sphere. As for controls, these
consisted of several hundred little buttons that studded one of the
walls.
When they entered the vehicle, Parkinson was literally, and none too
gently, dumped upon the floor. The man who had carried him stepped
over to the controls. Like those of a skilled typist, his long, thin
fingers darted over the buttons. In a moment the sphere was in motion.
There were no more thrills for Parkinson in that ride than he would
have derived from a similar ride in an elevator. They sank very slowly
for some minutes, it seemed to him; then they stopped with a barely
noticeable jar.
The door of the car was thrust aside by one of the three, and
Parkinson was borne from the sphere. A bright, coppery light flooded
the interior of the meteor, seeming to radiate from its walls. In his
helpless state, and in the awkward position in which he was carried,
with his head close to the floor, he could see little of the room
through which they passed, in spite of the light. Later, however, he
learned that it was circular in shape, and about twice the diameter of
the cylindrical tube that led into it. The wall that bound this
chamber was broken at regular intervals by tall, narrow, doorways,
each leading into a different room.
Parkinson was carried into one of these, and was placed in a
high-backed metal chair. After he had been strapped fast, one of the
men placed his hands at the base of the bacteriologist's skull; he
felt a sudden twinge of pain; and his strange paralysis left him
suddenly.
* * * * *
He knew it was useless to struggle; without resisting, he let them
place upon his head a cap-like device that seemed lost in a tangled
maze of machinery. Each meteor-man grasped one of the instruments
resembling old-time radio head-phones that were fastened to
Parkinson's head-gear, and clamped it over his ears.
The bacteriologist heard a steady, humming drone, like a swarm of
angry bees--felt a peculiar, soothing warmth about his head; and then
he slept.
Only a moment or two seemed to have passed when he awoke. The strange
device on his head was removed and put away; and then, to Parkinson's
amazement, one of the three men, evidently the leader, spoke--in
English!
"Now that you have recovered consciousness," he remarked in a cold,
expressionless voice, "you had better realize at the very beginning
that you are completely in our power. Any effort to escape will be
futile, for there is only one way to reach the outside; the opening
through the top; and only one means of travel through that opening:
the sphere. And since you know nothing about the operation of the
machine, any attempt to run it would be disastrous to you.
"If you promise to refrain from violence, we'll release you, and give
you some measure of freedom. We'll do this because you can be of
assistance to us in one of our tasks here on your planet."
Parkinson assented readily; he knew he could gain nothing by rejecting
their offer. "Of course I'll promise. But--but, how did you learn
English?" he asked in bewilderment.
"You taught us," the leader replied. "That device we placed upon your
head created a duplicate of your knowledge in our minds. We knew your
language, your world, indeed, yourself, as well as you do."
Parkinson shook his head in amazement. Another question came to his
mind as the men released him. He was interrupted before he could give
it expression.
* * * * *
"Don't ask," the leader exclaimed. "I'll tell our entire story so that
you'll have no occasion to annoy us with your questions.
"We're Venerians," he began, "inhabitants of the planet you call
Venus. For ages our world has been overcrowded. A short time ago, the
conditions became so acute that something had to be done. It was
suggested that we seek another habitable planet to which our people
could migrate.
"Your Earth was thought to be the world with physical conditions most
closely resembling those of Acor, or Venus. Our scientists set to work
immediately, using forces and devices with which you are totally
unfamiliar, and constructed several missiles which they hurled at
Earth. These missiles, spherical masses closely resembling meteors,
were set to explode after a certain period of contact with an
atmosphere similar to our own. By their explosion we on Venus could
determine whether or not this world had a breathable atmosphere.
"Upon our deciding that the Earth was habitable, we built this great
machine. It is chiefly composed of our greatest heat-resister, a
metal we call thoque; I see no corresponding word in your vocabulary;
evidently you are unfamiliar with the element, or else it is unknown
on Earth.
"After our flight through space, automatically controlled, by the way,
on Venus, we landed here. With our thoque disintegrator, we bored a
passageway to the surface of this great sphere. Then we entered the
car, rose to the top of the passageway, and discovered you.
"That is a brief synopsis of our actions--and it must suffice! Ask no
questions; we do not wish to be disturbed by the blind gropings of
your primitive mind!"
There was a cold finality in the Venerian's voice that convinced
Parkinson that for the moment, at least, he had better forget the many
questions that had surged up in his mind.
The Venerian leader spoke again. "From our observations of your mind,
we know that you have not had food or water for a rather lengthy
period of time. It is not our purpose to starve you: you shall eat and
drink."
A minute later Parkinson sat at a very high table in one of the rooms,
drinking water from Venus, and eating the fare of an alien world.
* * * * *
Days passed by, merging into weeks, while Parkinson lost all track of
time. The bacteriologist's existence became a ceaseless round of toil.
The Venerian had said that he would be given some measure of freedom,
because he would be of use to them; he had not been with them long ere
he learned what that use was.
One of the rooms was filled with great slabs of thoque; it was
Parkinson's task to carry the slabs to the vehicle at the base of the
shaft, one by one; to rise to the surface with them, accompanied by
two of the men--the third was working on the surface--and there unload
them. Day after day this continued.
Hope of escaping was almost dead in Parkinson's breast, because he
was constantly under the surveillance of those hard, blue eyes. Only
one thing kept hope alive: by watching the Venerians operate the car,
he was slowly gaining a knowledge of the meaning of the many buttons
in the wall. Some day, if an opportunity came, he meant to be ready to
take advantage of it.
Once, shortly after his monotonous toil began, Parkinson experienced a
great flare of hope for deliverance. They had just brought another
slab to the surface, when a steamer appeared above the horizon. It was
far away, but its crew must surely have seen the island.
But his expectations were short-lived. One of the three drew from
beneath his tight-fitting, white garments a little, metal object, a
long tube, with a handle at one end, and pointed it at the vessel. For
a moment he held it thus, moving it slowly backward and forward: then
he returned it to its place of concealment, and turned away with an
air of indifference. And Parkinson saw the ship burst suddenly into
flame, a few minutes later to sink beneath the waves.
* * * * *
Shaken to the depths of his being, Parkinson resumed his work. The
inhumanity of these saturnine Venerians filled him with a dread so
great that he refused to admit it to himself. That that had not been
the first time that they had destroyed a ship, he felt sure; his heart
sank, and grew more hopeless.
At last his task of carrying slabs was finished. The room was empty,
and the work completed. A great tower, entirely covering the island,
reared its head into the sky. In appearance, it resembled a very tall
lighthouse. This resemblance held true only until its top was reached;
there it ended. From the tower's top extended four long, hollow arms,
so constructed that they whirled about the tower at a mad pace when
the machinery with which they were connected was started. In addition,
arrangement was made for a powerful blast of air to be sent through
the tubes when the Venerians so desired.
What the purpose of this great edifice was, Parkinson could not guess:
later, he learned the horrible significance of it all.
After the tower was finished, the bacteriologist was left to his own
devices to a great extent, though always closely watched by one of his
captors. They let him eat all the food he desired, and let him lie
around as much as he wished, regaining his health and strength. This
was a pleasant surprise for him: he took full advantage of his
privileges.
Then, one day when Parkinson had fully recovered from the effects of
his grueling labors, the leader of the Venerians approached him from
behind, and before he could raise a hand in defense, had rendered him
helplessly paralyzed.
"You will now be given a second opportunity to help the cause of Venus
on Earth," he said in his expressionless voice. And so saying, he
lifted Parkinson, and bore him into one of the rooms.
CHAPTER III
At no time while he was held captive by the Venerians was Parkinson as
hopeless, or as completely filled with despair as when he was carried
into this room. There was something depressing about the chamber,
something that gripped his heart with the chill hand of dread. He had
a feeling of impending evil.
The few momentary glimpses of the chamber that he had gotten while he
was being carried, sufficed to convince Parkinson that this was a
laboratory, or--he shuddered at the thought--an operating room. The
walls, floor and ceiling were composed of a white porcelainlike
substance: from these walls, strangely, streamed the same coppery
light that filled the entire meteor.
Entirely concealing one wall was a long, glass case, constructed to
form countless little niches, each of which held a small, transparent
vessel. At the back of the room was a high table, covered with
transparent cases which were filled with complex instruments of every
description, some similar to those on Earth; others entirely
different.
The thing that brought the thought of an operating room to Parkinson's
mind was the long, white slab that rested on metal uprights in the
room's center--an operating table. A moment after they entered the
room, he had his theory substantiated: the Venerian leader placed him
on the white slab, stretching him to full length. It was an operating
table--and he was to be the subject of their operation!
He had lain there but a moment when two of the Venerians approached,
one on either side, and began removing his clothing. It was not long
before he lay on the cold slab, entirely nude.
* * * * *
While he was being stripped, he heard the leader of the Venerians
moving about, heard the click of glass, the rasp of metal upon metal.
But, unable to move his eyes, he had seen none of his activities,
except to note that several of the little vessels had been taken from
their resting places.
When the two had finished disrobing him, and had replaced him upon his
back, the leader appeared. He looked down at Parkinson, a queer
expression in his hard, blue eyes. He seemed to hesitate a moment:
then he spoke.
"Earthling," he said in his toneless voice, "I have decided to tell
you of our intentions. You are going to play a very important part in
our scheme, and it is only fitting that you should know. You can do
nothing to hinder our plans: you are giving us incalculable aid: and
it affords me some degree of satisfaction to tell you this.
"As you know, Earthling, we purpose to have the people of Acor to come
to Earth to live, to relieve the congested conditions of our own
world. Obviously, there is no room for two types of intelligent
beings on one planet--your race must go! It is our intention to
destroy all human life on Earth!
"We intend accomplishing this with Venerian microbes. From the record
of your knowledge, I've learned that diseases of various kinds are
common on Earth. We expected that such would be the case, and thus,
you would not be immune to germs, so we came prepared. Each of the
small compartments in that case that you may have seen, contains a
culture of a different germ. After we have determined which Venerian
bacilli will be the most effective, we will develop them in great
quantities, and loose them upon your world.
"In the selecting process, you will play your part. Since our germs
may have a different effect upon your bodies than they do upon
Venerians, we will inoculate you with different diseases, and watch
their effects upon you.
"Of course, you yourself will be in no great danger, for we will have
the diseases under our constant control. On Acor we have abolished
disease entirely, having a reagent or an antitoxin for every malady;
we will use our cures upon you immediately after we have seen how you
react to each disease.
"What we desire is a bacillus that will take effect when it is
breathed in through the lungs. If the disease is of such a nature as
to instill fear in the minds of observers, so much the better; but
that is unnecessary. When we discover a microbe of that nature, we
will be ready to act.
"By the way, our work has been lessened to a great degree by the fact
that you are a bacteriologist. The knowledge we gain from you has
enabled us to eliminate at least half of our microbes. All Venerian
germs that are duplicated on Earth will be left out of our
calculations. Only those unknown to your planet will be tried upon
you."
* * * * *
When the Venerian had finished his explanation, each word of which had
sounded like a death knell to Parkinson, the bacteriologist lay on
the slab in the grip of a nightmare of horror. The cold-blooded
brutality of these Venerian beasts, and the thought of lying there
helpless with his body the prey of unknown diseases, filled him with a
maddening fear and dread.
Mightily he struggled to break the uncanny bonds that held him
paralyzed, but it was of no avail. His body retained its helpless
rigidity.
Only for a moment was Parkinson left to his fearful musings; then the
Venerians begin their work. A tall table on wheels was brought from
somewhere, and drawn to the side of the slab. Upon this various
instruments were placed, side by side with numerous flat vessels
containing germ cultures. Parkinson saw none of this, but from the
sounds that came to his ears he could infer what was taking place.
Finally, everything seemed to be in readiness. The Venerian leader
bent over Parkinson for a moment: and the latter felt a sharp pain in
his side. Then the Venerian withdrew.
Slowly, interminably, the time dragged by while the microbes that had
been introduced into his body were at their work. How long he lay
there with the Venerians watching, he could not tell, but it seemed to
be hours. During that time he felt himself gripped by an increasingly
violent fever. Unbearable heat flooded his body. And because of his
helplessness, he could do nothing to relieve his pain and discomfort.
It was maddening!
When he thought he had reached the limit of his endurance, and felt
that he would go insane in another moment, the Venerian leader
injected something into his side. He became aware of an immediate
sense of relief; in an unbelievably short time the fever had left him
and he was himself again.
There followed for Parkinson hours of nightmare agony, while the
Venerians experimented with his living body. Time after time he was
inoculated with strange bacilli that wracked him with tortures
indescribable. Hideous diseases covered him with festering sores;
twisted his flesh into a repellent mass of scars; left him weakened
and deformed. Had it not been for the incredible curative powers of
the Venerians, he would have died then; but always, when the end
seemed at hand, they brought him back to life, only to subject him to
other horrors.
* * * * *
After what seemed countless ages, the Venerians left him alone. Under
the powerful effects of their cures, Parkinson began to recover. Hope
welled up in his heart; perhaps the terrible experiments were ended.
When he was almost certain that the torture was over, his hopes were
suddenly destroyed. The three Venerians approached again, each bearing
a number of vessels containing germ cultures. These they placed on the
table at Parkinson's side; then two of them withdrew, leaving the
leader to continue his work. Uttering a few words in the Venerian
tongue, he occupied himself with something on the table, and a moment
later turned toward the bacteriologist, a long needle in his hands.
Parkinson felt a great burning pain in his left arm, as though a
searing, hot needle had been thrust into his flesh. In a moment this
vanished. Then a feeling of irresistible lassitude overwhelmed him; an
unbearable weariness filled him with longing for rest, peace--death.
This, too, was of short duration.
With the passing of the weariness, Parkinson became aware of a sharp
throbbing in his arm. Rapidly this increased in violence, until
suddenly an unbearable, excruciating agony seized him. Far greater was
this than any pain he had suffered before. For a moment he struggled
to scream, to move, to do anything to relieve his agony. There seemed
to be a sudden snap--a cry of anguish burst from his lips--and his
senses left him. Just as the bonds of paralysis had broken, he had
lost consciousness.
Life returned to Parkinson very slowly. In a daze he stared around,
uncomprehending. Then suddenly he realized that he was no longer
paralyzed: nor was he in the operating room. The bed on which he lay
was soft, comfortable; the room, unfamiliar. But not for long did his
mind dwell upon this; in a few moments his eyelids closed, and he
slept the sleep of complete mental and physical exhaustion.
Daring the weeks that followed, Parkinson did little other than sleep.
Occasionally he arose, either to stretch himself, or to secure food,
but for the greater part of the time he remained in bed. His body was
a mere shadow of its former self as the result of his terrible
experience on the white slab: his incessant sleeping, necessary
because of his weakened condition, served to bring him back to his
former health. The Venerians seemed glad to have it thus: asleep, he
did not disturb their activities.
* * * * *
When he had awakened from his first period of natural slumber, he had
received a terrible shock. His left arm was gone, amputated at the
shoulder. Strangely, the wound had healed while he slept, probably the
result of the Venerian doctoring, so there was no pain: but the shock
had been terrible.
After he had recovered from the effects of that shock, he had resolved
to make the Venerians pay for what they had done. And then he had
realized that the inhuman brutes must be destroyed for a greater
reason: unless he interfered, he believed that they would carry out
their intention of destroying all human life.
As the weeks passed by, while strength was returning to Parkinson, he
learned in a general way what the invaders were doing. They were
engaged in developing vast quantities of microbes to be spread over
Earth. When these were ready, a great amount of fine dust that the
Venerians had brought with them, was impregnated with the bacilli.
This was then taken up into the tower, where, as Parkinson learned
later, it was blown out through the four tubes that spun around the
tower's top, to drift through the air--to enter human bodies--to
destroy life.
The Venerians worked with the cultures and impregnated dust without
protection of any sort: evidently they were immune to the disease.
Later Parkinson learned that he was likewise immune; they had rendered
him so after trying the germs upon him.
Gradually the bacteriologist's health returned--so gradually that his
captors seemed not to notice it. He was glad of this, for their
vigilance had relaxed, and he did not want it renewed. Even when he
was as strong and well as ever, he spent much time in bed, shamming
illness. And when he could do so without danger of detection, he kept
a close watch upon the three, waiting for a time when he would be
entirely alone.
* * * * *
At last his opportunity came. The three Venerians rose to the surface
together, leaving him in his room, to all outward appearances, asleep.
But sleep was far from him at that moment; he had been watching.
Shortly after the sphere had vanished up the shaft, Parkinson emerged
from his room. For a moment he surveyed the circle of doors: then he
shrugged his shoulders. They all looked alike to him. Quickly he
crossed the room, and pressed a button that mechanically opened a
door. It was his purpose, first of all, to secure a weapon; one room
would do as well as another for a beginning.
At first glance Parkinson was struck by the strange familiarity of
this chamber: then, after a moment, he recognized it. A tall,
high-backed metal chair in its center was its mark of identification.
This was the chamber wherein the Venerians had transferred a record of
his knowledge to their minds.
Carefully he looked around in search of a weapon, but the room held
nothing but the chair and the thought transference device. In a moment
he withdrew, closing the door behind him.
In the next room he entered, he was fortunate. This chamber was filled
with strange devices of various kinds. While curiously inspecting the
intricate machines, he saw something that brought a smile of
satisfaction to his lips.
Against one wall stood a tall, glass case, one of the shelves of which
held several metal devices that Parkinson immediately recognized as
being the Venerians' weapons. Poignantly he remembered how a similar
device had destroyed a ship.
Leaving the door slightly ajar, he crossed to the case and secured one
of the weapons. For a moment he studied it. There was nothing complex
about the mechanism; a cursory examination sufficed to reveal how it
was operated. Pressure on a little knob at the back of the handle
released the devastating ray.
He was about to slip the device into his pocket when he stiffened
involuntarily. There was a sound of movement outside the room--he
heard a step on the metal floor--then he whirled.
* * * * *
One of the Venerians stood in the doorway, a menacing frown on his
face. He was crouching, ready to spring upon Parkinson.
Quick as thought, the bacteriologist leveled his newly-acquired
weapon, and pressed on the knob. There was a sudden spurt of flame
from the Venerian's body; then it crumpled, sagging, shrinking
together.
Hastily Parkinson released the pressure on the little knob, aghast at
the destructive power of his little weapon. Then, as he remembered the
torture he had endured at their hands, he directed the ray upon the
ashes, until they, too, were consumed, leaving naught but a dark patch
on the floor.
For several minutes Parkinson stood there in deep thought. There was
no immediate danger from the two remaining Venerians, for they were
up in the tower, while the sphere was in the meteor; so he could think
with utmost safety. Deep thought and careful planning were necessary
now, for he had taken the step that must mean either his death or the
death of the Venerians.
Suddenly he leaped into action; he had decided upon his next move.
Crossing to the case he secured another weapon. He wasn't sure that
they could be effectively discharged without re-loading; handicapped
as he was with one arm gone, he had to be certain of the reliability
of his means of defense. Then he left the room, and crossed to the
huge thoque sphere.
It was the work of a moment to enter this, and prepare to ascend. This
done, he turned his attention to the numerous knobs on the wall. He
had not seen them for quite a while; it was with difficulty that he
recalled which knobs controlled the car's ascent. At last, hesitantly,
but correctly, he pressed on the knobs, and the sphere rose slowly
toward the surface.
At the proper moment, Parkinson, brought the vehicle to a halt, and
slid back the door. Furtively he peered around. The Venerians were on
the other side of the tower. Quickly he lowered the ladder and
descended.
* * * * *
As he stepped to the floor, a sudden cry of dismay fell upon his ears.
One of the Venerians, coming around the car, had discovered him.
Without a moment's hesitation, Parkinson aimed his little weapon, and
pressed upon the knob. Like his fellow, the Venerian fell to the
floor, a heap of charred ashes.
With the second Venerian destroyed, Parkinson dashed around the
sphere, metal cylinder held in readiness. The leader of the Venerians
was stealing stealthily around the other side of the car, his hand
fumbling beneath his garment.
"Stop!" Parkinson cried. "Raise your hands above your head--empty!" A
cylinder clattered to the metal floor as the Venerian's hands moved
skyward.
"Keep your back turned!" Parkinson snapped as the invader began about.
"I won't hesitate to press on this little knob, at your first hostile
move! I'd thoroughly enjoy burning you to a crisp, so be very
careful."
While talking, Parkinson had moved slowly toward the man from Venus;
now, almost upon him, he quickly dropped his weapon into a pocket, and
swung a terrible blow at the base of his skull. The Venerian fell to
the floor without a groan, unconscious.
Parkinson stared at the recumbent figure rather dubiously for a
moment. If only he had his other arm! But it was gone; with an
impatient shake of his head he stooped and raised the senseless
invader.
It was anything but an easy task for the bacteriologist to carry his
seven-foot burden up the ladder and into the sphere, but finally, he
succeeded in doing so. Then, without delay, he lowered the car into
the meteor again.
As he bore the Venerian from the vehicle, he tried to decide upon his
next move. Obviously, he had to secure the one surviving invader, so
that he would not be a menace to Parkinson when he revived. And then
the logical thing to do would be, in some way, to secure information
from him as to how to cure the disease that was spreading over the
world.
* * * * *
The logical thing to do, yes--but how? With only one arm, the simple
task of binding the Venerian presented considerable difficulty. How
much more difficult would it be to force anything from him?
Then the solution of the first problem presented itself to Parkinson.
What was to prevent his strapping this being into the high-backed
chair to which he had been secured some time before? Quickly he
crossed the circular room to the door he had first passed through
while searching for a weapon.
Ten minutes later, when the Venerian regained his senses, he was
fastened securely to the tall, metal chair.
"Well," Parkinson addressed him, "conditions seem to be reversed now,
and you're the underdog. I've nipped your invasion in the bud. All
your elaborate preparations are wasted."
Something resembling a sneer wreathed the Venerian's thin lips; a
mocking gleam lit his cold, blue eyes.
"So our efforts have been wasted, have they? I'm afraid I can't agree
with you. Already, enough bacteria have been released to destroy all
life, though it will take longer than we desire. Even though you kill
me, our goal will still be reached. The human race will die!"
A cloud of gloom fell upon Parkinson. He had expected this; but he had
been hoping that he was wrong.
"Then there's only one thing for me to do, and that is: I'll have to
force you to tell me how to undo the damage you've done."
The Venerian smiled mirthlessly. "You have absolutely no chance of
accomplishing that," he said. "We've done our work too well to allow
any interference now.
"You do not know this, but we have released upon your world the worst
malady ever known to Venus. There is only one remedy; and I'm the only
one who knows it, or who has the means wherewith to accomplish it. And
I certainly won't tell!"
The worried expression on Parkinson's face increased in intensity.
There was something in the Venerian's voice that convinced him that he
meant what he said.
Then suddenly his countenance cleared, and a happy smile replaced his
frown.
"Perhaps you won't tell, but I think you will. There are more ways
than one of forcing you."
* * * * *
Parkinson had hit upon a solution to his problem. The Venerians had
reproduced his knowledge in their brains; why wouldn't it be possible
for him to reverse the operation?
In a moment he secured the thought-transference apparatus from a case
in the rear of the room, and bore it to the chair, and in spite of the
Venerian leader's struggles, placed it upon his head. He put the
head-phones over his own ears, and began fumbling with the controls.
Suddenly he seemed to strike the right combination. There was a faint,
humming drone in his ears; after a moment this was replaced by a loud
crackling--and the knowledge of the man from Venus was becoming his
own.
Somewhat dazed, Parkinson shut off the current. His mind was in a
turmoil. He was in possession of knowledge of such an amazing
character that, for the moment he had lost his mental equilibrium.
Indeed, so strange was his new-found knowledge, that he could not
grasp the significance of even half of the facts in his mind.
But already, he knew how, with animal electricity, they had paralyzed
him; knew what had happened to him on the operating table; knew the
nature of the dread disease that destroyed his arm; the Gray
Plague--and knew the cure!
A sudden thought arrested this review of his new knowledge. The Gray
Plague! At that very moment incalculable quantities of the deadly
bacilli were being cast into the air. And he was doing nothing about
it!
He glanced at the Venerian. He was still unconscious, and would remain
so for some minutes to come. And even if he did recover his senses, he
was securely fastened to the chair; Parkinson dashed out of the room,
crossed to the sphere, and passed through the open doorway.
Without hesitation he manipulated the controls, directed by his
Venerian knowledge. Rapidly the sphere rose to the surface.
As it came to rest on the floor of the tower, Parkinson sprang from
the car, and headed toward a mass of intricate machinery that filled
fully a quarter of the great building.
Even this caused him no great concern; he was as familiar with it as
he would have been had he constructed it. For some moments he was busy
with numerous dials and levers; then the release of the germs was
stopped.
* * * * *
Parkinson spent several minutes in examining the contents of the
tower, his Earthly mind lost in wonder at the strange things his
Venerian knowledge revealed to him. Then he entered the sphere again,
and sank into the meteor.
As he moved toward the room that held the Venerian, his mind was busy
with conjectures as to what he would do with his prisoner. It was
necessary for the bacteriologist to reach the mainland as quickly as
possible, and make use of his knowledge of the cure for the Gray
Plague. He didn't want to kill the man; he couldn't free him; yet if
he left him strapped to the chair, he'd surely die of starvation.
Still undecided, he thrust open the door. With a startled gasp he
stopped short. Somehow the Venerian had freed himself; at that moment
he leaped toward Parkinson.
Instinctively the bacteriologist flung up his hand in a defensive
attitude. The onrushing Venerian caught Parkinson's out-thrust fist in
the pit of his stomach, and doubled up in pain. While he was thus
defenseless, Parkinson placed a well-directed blow on the side of the
Venerian's jaw, a blow carrying every ounce of his strength.
So great was the force of the punch, that it lifted the man from Venus
and cast him headlong upon the floor. His head landed with a sickening
thud. Unmoving, he lay where he had fallen.
Parkinson knelt over him for a moment, then arose. Without question,
the man was dead. The Venerian had solved the bacteriologist's last
problem; he was free to return to the United States with his means of
saving mankind.
* * * * *
Drawing the little metal cylinder from his pocket, he burned the body
of the Venerian leader to a heap of ashes, ridding the world of the
last invader. Then he turned and entered the glass-lined operating
room.
Following the dictates of his Venerian knowledge, he crossed to one of
the walls, and drew therefrom a flat, glass vessel, somewhat like a
petri dish. This contained bacteria that were harmless in themselves,
and were hostile to those of the Gray Plague. These germs, brought
from Venus, were the only cure for the terrible disease.[1]
[Footnote 1: The work of the English bacteriologist Twort, in 1915,
and the Frenchman, d'Herelle, in 1917, brought to the attention of the
scientific world the fact that many bacteria are subject to attack and
destruction by some unknown active agent with which they are
associated in infected material. This agent, whatever its character,
changed growing germ cultures to a dead, glassy substance.
Twort advanced the thought that the agent might be a living, filtered
virus, although he favored the theory that it was an enzyme derived
from the bacteria themselves.
D'Herelle, on the contrary, believed that this phenomenon was due to a
living, multiplying, ultra-microscopic microbe that destroyed certain
bacteria.
Evidence favoring both theories has come to light, with the result
that, at present, controversy is rife. Up to date, the contention of
neither side has been proved.]
Parkinson's adventure was almost at an end. He had not emerged
unscathed, but he had won!
The details of his further actions need not be recorded. Suffice it to
say that he entered the sphere, carrying his precious, curative germs,
arose to the top of the tower, and passed through a round opening in
its side. His borrowed knowledge revealed that the car possessed
abilities that he had not suspected; with amazing speed he caused it
to flash across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.
There he saw the frightful carnage that the Plague had caused, saw the
deserted cities--and was filled with self-reproach because he had not
acted sooner.
Across the miles and miles of deserted country he sped, following the
fleeing hordes, finally passing over the stragglers and landing in
the heart of the congested areas. After making a few inquiries, he
returned to the sphere, and continued on toward the West. He landed,
finally, outside the city of San Francisco.
A short time later, twisted, deformed, yet triumphant, he was ushered
into the presence of the United States government as--the man who had
saved the human race.
CHAPTER IV
The terrible days of the Gray Plague ended in mystery. Much that had
puzzled the world, Parkinson, with his Venerian knowledge, explained;
but there was one thing, the final, enigmatical act in the strange
drama, that was as much of a mystery to him as it was to the rest of
the world.
Enigma! Of what significance, of what portent--who could tell?
When the great vessel from the United States, equipped to destroy the
meteor of the Venetians, neared the great thoque sphere, they came
upon a scene quite different from what they had expected. Parkinson,
who was on the ship, was more surprised than the rest, for he had
definite knowledge of what, in the natural course of events, they
should see. For the others there was nothing so very strange in what
they saw; Parkinson had lied, that was all.
When the bacteriologist had left the meteor, there had been a high,
bronze-colored tower, a burnished lighthouse, covering its entire top.
It had been there--but now it was gone! Only the jagged, arched
surface of the meteor remained.
They lowered boats and rowed to the strange island. There they saw
something that filled them--Parkinson especially--with a very definite
uneasiness. The entire top of the meteor was a twisted, fire-blasted
mass of bronze-like metal. Where the tower had been, where the shaft
had led into the remarkable interplanetary vehicle, there was now a
broken expanse of thoque that flashed fire under the rays of the sun.
Something seemed to have melted, to have fused the tower, until it had
crumpled, and had run, filling the entrance of the meteor. There was
irrefutable evidence to that effect; no one thought otherwise.
But what agency had done this strange thing?
Someone suggested that it might have been the work of some prearranged
mechanism. Parkinson shook his head. Had such been the case, his
Venerian knowledge would have told him so.
Obviously, nothing of Earth had done it, nothing of Earth--then
something of Venus! Inconclusive conjecture, perhaps, but no other
explanation offered itself. Something had sealed the contents of the
meteor from the sight of man, something with a purpose. From Venus?
The thought was logical, to say the least.
Not for long did they remain there beside the Venerian vehicle; there
was naught for them to do, so they turned about and headed toward the
United States. They bore tidings that were vaguely disturbing, tidings
that none were glad to hear. For, according to all indications,
something alien to Earth was still within her confines.
* * * * *
Behind it all--the meteors, the Plague, the sealing of the Venerian
vehicle--is one fact of great significance. No longer is man alone in
the universe; no longer is he in isolation! Out of space came a
menace, an intelligence striving to wrest from him his right to rule
over Earth. No longer can man in his smug complacency think of himself
as being secure in his strength. He has been shown the utter folly of
such thinking.
The menace--the invaders from Venus--came, and were destroyed, their
purposes defeated. Yet--in the vast reaches of space, in worlds of
other dimensions, in the cosmic crucible of life that embodies all
creation, there may be other forms of life, other menaces, hovering
clouds of death, preparing to sweep down upon Earth to snuff out her
life. Who can tell?
And who may say that man is free from the Venerian danger? The strange
sealing of the meteor implies that the menace is still present. Who
knows but what those inhuman Venerian brutes may even now be planning
some new invasion, may be preparing to renew their attack upon Earth?
Time alone will tell.
ROBOT PILOTS FOR AIRCRAFT
Perfection of an automatic mechanical piloting mechanism for airplanes
has been achieved after several years of experiment at the royal
aircraft establishment of Farnborough.
The apparatus has been successfully tried out on various types of
planes--two-seater day bombers, large twin-engine night bombers and
big flying boats. Its use as a second or relief pilot on long distance
flights by Royal Air Force machines is now being considered.
In every test the robot pilot has steered an accurate course for hours
at a time and over distances up to 400 miles while human members of
the crew have been concerned with other duties.
The basis of the mechanical pilot is a gyroscope that controls pistons
connected with the rudder and elevators of the plane. These pistons
are actuated by compressed air.
Once a course is set the robot pilot keeps the machine on that route
and errors of even a fraction of a degree are instantly and
automatically detected and corrected. All the human pilot has to do in
a plane so equipped is to take off and land the machine.
The Pilot's Assister is the official name of the new English device.
It weighs about 120 pounds.
Flights have been made with the mechanical pilot in all sorts of
weather. In dense fog and clouds, when a human pilot would have found
it almost impossible to maintain straight or level flight because of
the absence of any visible horizon by which to steer, the mechanical
pilot flew the plane with absolute accuracy. On one test flight the
automatic pilot steered a dead true course from Farnborough in South
England, to Newcastle, 270 miles farther north. The human pilot did
not touch the controls until it was necessary to land the plane at the
destination.
Jetta of the Lowlands
Conclusion
_By Ray Cummings_
[Sidenote: Black-garbed figures move in ghastly greenness as the
invisible flyer speeds on its business of ransom.]
[Illustration: _Hans and I hauled out the heavy casket._]
CHAPTER XV
_In the Bandit Camp_
The dark cave, with its small spots of tube-light mounted upon movable
tripods, was eery with grotesque swaying shadows. The bandit camp.
Hidden down here in the depths of the Mid-Atlantic Lowlands. An
inaccessible retreat, this cave in what once was the ocean floor. Only
a few years ago water had been here, water black and cold and
soundless. Tremendous pressure, with three thousand or more fathoms of
the ocean above it. Fishes had roamed these passages, no doubt.
Strange monsters of the deeps: sightless, or with eyes like
phosphorescent torches.
But the water was gone now. Blue ooze was caked upon the cave floor.
Eroded walls; niches and tiny gullies; crevices and an arching dome
high overhead. A fantastic cave--no one, seeing it as I saw it that
morning at dawn, could have believed it was upon this earth. From
where De Boer had put me--on the flat top of a small, butte-like dome
near the upper end of the sloping cave floor--all the area of this
strange bandit camp was visible to me.
A little tent of parchment was set upon the dome-top.
"Yours," said De Boer, with a grin. "Make yourself comfortable.
Gutierrez will be your willing servant, until we see about this
ransom. It will have to be one very large, for you are a damn trouble
to me, Grant. And a risk. Food will come shortly. Then you can sleep:
I think you will want it."
He leaped from the little butte, leaving the taciturn ever-watchful
Gutierrez sitting cross-legged on the ledge near me, with his
projector across his knees.
* * * * *
The cave was irregularly circular, with perhaps, a hundred-feet
diameter and a ceiling fifty feet high. A drift of the fetid, Lowland
air went through it--into a rift at this upper end, and out through
the lower passage entrance which sloped downward thirty feet and
debouched upon a rippled ramp of ooze outside. It was daylight out
there now. From my perch I could see the sullen heavy walls of a
ridge. Mist hung against them, but the early morning sunlight came
down in shafts penetrating the mist and striking the oily surface of a
spread of water left here in the depths of a cauldron.
De Boer's flyer was outside. We had landed by the shore of the sea,
and the bandits had pushed the vehicle into an arching recess which
seemed as though made to hide it. All this camp was hidden. Arching
crags of the ridge-wall jutted out over the cave entrance. From above,
any passing flyer--even though well below the zero-height--would see
nothing but this black breathing sea, lapping against its eroded,
fantastic shore-line.
Within the cave, there was only a vague filtering daylight from the
lower entrance, a thin shaft from the rift overhead, and the blue
tube-light, throwing great shadows of the tents and the men against
the black rock walls.
There seemed perhaps a hundred of the bandits here. A semi-permanent
camp, by its aspect. Grey parchment tents were set up about the floor,
some small, others more elaborate. It seemed as though it were a
huddled little group of buildings in the open air, instead of in a
cave. One tent, just at the foot of my dome, seemed De Boer's personal
room. He went into it after leaving me, and came out to join the main
group of his fellows near the center of the cave where a large
electron stove, and piped water from a nearby subterranean freshet,
and a long table set with glassware and silver, stood these men for
kitchen and eating place.
* * * * *
The treasure had not yet been brought in from the flyer. But, from
what I overheard, it seemed that the radiumized ingots of the
ill-fated Spawn and Perona were to be stored for a year at least, here
in this cave. I could see the strong-room cubby. It was hewn from the
rock of the cave wall, its sealed-grid door-oval set with metal bars.
I saw also what seemed a small but well-equipped machine shop, in a
recess room at one side of the cave. Men were working in there under
the light of tubes. And there was a niche hollowed out in the wall to
make a room for De Boer's instruments--ether-wave receivers and
transmitters, the aerial receiving wires of which stretched in banks
along the low ceiling.
There was no activity in there now, except for one man who was
operating what I imagined might be an aerial insulator, guarding the
place from any prying search-vibrations.
The main cave was a bustle of activity. The arriving bandits were
greeting their fellows and exchanging news. The men who had been left
here were jubilant at the success of the Chief's latest enterprise.
Bottles were unsealed and they began to prepare the morning meal.
My presence caused considerable comment. I was a complication at which
most of the men were ill pleased, especially when the arriving bandits
told who I was, and that the patrols of the United States were
doubtless even now trying to find me.
But De Boer silenced the grumbling with rough words.
"My business, not yours. But you will take your share of his ransom,
won't you? Have done!"
And Jetta, she had caused comment also. But when the bottles were well
distributed the grumbling turned to ribald banter which made me
shudder that it should fall upon Jetta's ears. De Boer had kept his
men away from her, shoving them aside when they crowded to see her.
She was in a little tent now, not far from the base of my ledge.
My meal presently was brought from where most of the bandits now were
roistering at the long table in the center of the cave.
"Eat," said Gutierrez. "I eat with you, Americano. _Madre Mia_, when
you are ransomed away from here it will please me! De Boer is fool,
with taking such a chance."
* * * * *
With the meal ended, another guard came to take Gutierrez' place and I
was ordered into my tent. The routine of the camp, it seemed, was to
use the daylight hours for the time of sleep. There were lookouts and
guards at the entrance, and a little arsenal of ready weapons stocked
in the passage. The men at the table were still at their meal. It
would end, I did not doubt, by most of them falling into heavy
alcoholic slumber.
I was tired, poisoned by the need of sleep. I lay on fabric cushions
piled in one corner of my tent. But sleep would not come; my thoughts
ran like a tumbling mountain torrent, and as aimlessly. I hoped that
Jetta was sleeping. De Boer was now at the center table with his men.
Hans was guarding Jetta. He was a phlegmatic, heavy Dutchman, and
seemed decent enough.
I wondered what Hanley might be doing to rescue me. But as I thought
about it, I could only hope that his patrols would not find us out
here. An attack and most certainly De Boer and his men in their anger
would kill me out of hand. And possibly Jetta also.
I had not had a word alone with Jetta since that scene in the control
room. When we disembarked, she had stayed close by De Boer. But I knew
that Jetta had fathomed my purpose, that she was working to the same
end. We must find a way of arranging the ransom which would give us an
opportunity to escape.
I pondered it. And at last an idea came to me, vague in all its
details, as yet. But it seemed feasible, and I thought it would sound
plausible to De Boer. I would watch my chance and explain it to him.
Then I realized how much aid Jetta would be. She would agree with my
plan, and help me convince him. And when the crucial time came, though
I would be a captive, watched by Gutierrez, bound and gagged,
perhaps--Jetta would be at liberty. De Boer and Gutierrez would not be
on their guard with her.
I drifted off to sleep, working out the details of my plan.
CHAPTER XVI
_Planning The Ransom_
I was awakened by the sound of low voices outside my tent. Jetta's
voice, and De Boer's, and, mingled with them, the babble of the still
hilarious bandits in the center of the cave. But there were only a few
left now; most of them had fallen into heavy slumber. I had been
asleep for several hours, I figured. The daylight shadows outside the
cave entrance showed that it was at least noon.
I lay listening to the voices which had awakened me. De Boer was
saying:
"But why, Jetta, should I bother with your ideas? I know what is best.
This ransom is too dangerous to arrange." His voice sounded calmly
good humored; I could hear in it now more than a trace of alcoholic
influence. He added, "I think we had better kill him and have done. My
men think so, too; already I have caused trouble with them, by
bringing him."
It jolted me into full wakefulness.
Jetta's voice: "No! I tell you it can be arranged, Hendrick. I have
been thinking of it, planning it--"
"Child! Well what? The least I can do is listen; I am no pig-headed
American. Say it out. What would you do to ransom him safely?"
* * * * *
They were just at the foot of my ledge, in front of De Boer's tent.
Their voices rose so that I could hear them plainly. For all my start
at being awakened to hear my death determined upon, I recall that I
was almost equally startled by Jetta's voice. Her tone, her manner
with De Boer. Whatever opportunities they had had for talking
together, the change in their relationship was remarkable. De Boer was
now flushed with drink, but for all that he had obviously still a firm
grip upon his wits. And I heard Jetta now urging her ideas upon him
with calm confidence. An outward confidence; yet under it there was a
vibrant emotion suppressed within her even tone; a hint of tremulous
fright; a careful calculation of the effect she might be making upon
De Boer. Had he not been intoxicated--with drink and with her--he
might have sensed it. But he did not.
"Hendrick, it can be done. A big price. Why not?"
"Because if we are trapped and caught, of what use is the price we
might have gotten? Tell me that, wise one?"
"We will not be trapped. And suppose you kill him--won't they track
you just the same, Hendrick?"
"No. We would leave his body on some crag where it would be found. The
patrols would more quickly tire of chasing a killer when the damage is
done. They want Grant alive."
"Then let them have him alive--for a big price. Hendrick, listen--"
"Well, what?" he demanded again. "What is your plan?"
"Why--well, Hendrick, like this--"
She stammered, and I realized that she had no plausible plan. She was
fumbling, groping, urging upon De Boer that I must be ransomed alive.
But she had not good reason for it.
"Well?" he prompted impatiently.
"You--can you raise Great New York on the audiphone, Hendrick?"
"Yes," he said.
"Hanley's office?"
"Yes, no doubt. Chah--that would give him a start, wouldn't it? De
Boer calmly calling him!"
* * * * *
He was laughing. I heard what sounded as though he were gulping
another drink. "By damn, Jetta, you are not the timid bird you look.
Call Hanley, eh?"
"Yes. Can it be done and still bar his instruments from locating us?"
"Yes, and bar his television. Believe it, Jetta. I have every device
for hiding. But--call Hanley!"
"Why not? ... Hendrick, stop!"
I started. It seemed that he was embracing her; forcing half drunken
caresses upon her.
I scrambled through my tent doorway, but Gutierrez, who had come back
on guard, at once seized me.
"_Hui_--so haste! Back, you."
The Spaniard spoke softly, and he was grinning. "The chief plays with
woman's words, no? Charming senorita, though she dresses like a boy.
But that is the more charming, eh? Listen to her, Grant."
He gripped me, and prodded my side with the point of his knife blade.
"Lie down Americano: we will listen."
Jetta was insisting. "Hendrick, stop!"
"Why?"
* * * * *
I could see them now. They were seated before the opening of De Boer's
tent. A little stove in front of them. Coffee for Jetta, who was
seated cross-legged, pouring it; a bowl of drink for De Boer. And some
baked breadstuff dainties on a platter.
"Hendrick--"
She pushed him away as he leaned to embrace her. Although she was
laughing with him, I could only guess at the chill of fear that might
be in her heart.
"Foolish, Hendrick!"
"Foolish little bird, Jetta mine."
"You--it is you who are foolish, Hendrick." She slid from his embrace
and held her brimming coffee cup balanced before her, to ward him off.
"You think I am really clever, so trust me, Hendrick. Oh there is a
great future for us: you say I inspire you; let me! Hendrick De Boer,
Chieftain of the Lowlands! My father would have helped you become
that. You can build a little empire. Hendrick--why not? Father wanted
to make you President of Nareda. Why not build your own Lowland
Empire? We have a hundred men now? Why not gather a thousand? Ten
thousand? An empire!"
"_Ave Maria_," from Gutierrez. "This _nina_ thinks big thoughts!"
De Boer raised his bowl. "An empire--De Boer of the Lowlands! Go on;
you amuse me. We have a nice start, with this treasure."
"Yes. And the ransom money. But you will take me first to Cape Town,
Hendrick? We can be married there: I am seventeen in a month."
"Of course, Jetta. Haven't I promised?" There was no convincingness to
me in the way he said it. "Of course. To Cape Town for our marriage."
"Stop! Hendrick, be serious!" He had reached for her again. "Don't be
a fool, Hendrick."
"Very well," he said. "I am all serious. What is your plan?"
* * * * *
She was more resourceful this time. She retorted, "This craven Grant,
he fears for his life--but he is very smart, Hendrick. I think he is
scheming every moment how he can be safely ransomed."
"Hah! No doubt of that!"
"And he has had experience with Chief Hanley. He knows Hanley's
methods, how Hanley will act. Let us see what Grant says of this."
She had no plan of her own, but she hoped that by now I had one! And
she was making an opportunity for me to put it before De Boer.
He said, "There is sense to that, Jetta. If there is any way to fool
Hanley, that craven American has no doubt thought it out."
She held another drink before him. "Yes. Let us see what he says."
He drank; and again as they were near together he caressed her.
"What a schemer you are, little bird. You and I are well matched, eh?"
"Gutierrez may be watching us!" she warned.
They suddenly looked up and saw Gutierrez and me.
"Hah!" Fortunately it struck De Boer into further good humor. "Hah--we
have an audience! Bring down the prisoner, Gutierrez! Let us see if
his wits can get him out of this plight. Come down, Grant!"
Gutierrez shoved me down the ladder ahead of him. De Boer stood up and
seized me. His great fingers dug into my shoulders.
"Sit down, American! It seems you are not to die. _Perhaps_ not."
The strength of his fingers was hurting me: he hoped I would wince.
Mine was now an ignominious role, indeed, yet I knew it was best.
I gasped. "Don't do that: you hurt!"
He chuckled and cast me loose. I added, with a show of spirit, "You
are a bullying giant. Just because you are bigger than I am--"
"Hear that, Jetta? The American finds courage with his coming ransom!"
* * * * *
He shoved me to the ground. Gutierrez grinned, and withdrew a trifle.
Jetta avoided meeting my gaze.
"Have some coffee," De Boer offered. "Alcohol is not good for you. Now
say: have you any suggestions on how I can safely ransom you?"
It seemed that Jetta was holding her breath with anxiety. But I
answered with an appearance of ready eagerness. "Yes. I have. I can
arrange it with complete safety to you, if you give me a chance."
"You've got your chance. Speak out."
"You promise you will return me alive? Not hurt me?"
"De duvel--yes! You have my promise. But your plan had better be very
good."
"It is."
I told it carefully. The details of it grew with my words. Jetta
joined in it. But, most of all, it did indeed sound feasible. "But it
must be done at once," I urged. "The weather is right; to-night it
will be dark; overcast; not much wind. Don't you think so?"
He sent Gutierrez to the cave's instrument room to read the weather
forecast instruments. My guess was right.
"To-night then," I said. "If we linger, it only gives Hanley more time
to plan trickery."
"Let us try and raise him now," Jetta suggested.
The Dutchman, Hans, had joined us. He too, seemed to think my ideas
were good.
Except for the guards at the cave entrance, all the other bandits were
far gone in drink. With Hans and Gutierrez, we went to the instrument
room to call Hanley. As we crossed the cave, with Hans and De Boer
walking ahead together, De Boer spoke louder than he realized, and the
words came back to me.
"Not so bad, Hans? We will use him--but I am not a fool. I'll send him
back dead, not alive! A little knife-thrust, just at the end! Safest
for us, eh, Hans?"
CHAPTER XVII
_Within the Black Sack_
We left the bandit stronghold just after nightfall that same day.
There were five of us on the X-flyer. Jetta and De Boer, Hans and
Gutierrez and myself. The negotiations with Hanley had come through
satisfactorily; to De Boer, certainly, for he was in a triumphant mood
as they cast off the aero and we rose over the mist-hung depths.
It was part of my plan, this meager manning of the bandit ship. But it
was mechanically practical: there was only Hans needed at the controls
for this short-time flight: with De Boer plotting his course, working
out his last details--and with Gutierrez to guard me.
De Boer had been quite willing to take no other men--and most of them
were too far gone in their cups to be of much use. I never have
fathomed De Boer's final purpose. He promised Jetta now that when I
was successfully ransomed he would proceed to Cape Town by comfortable
night flights and marry her. It pleased Gutierrez and Hans, for they
wanted none of their comrades. The treasure was still on the flyer.
The ransom gold would be added to it. I think that De Boer, Gutierrez
and Hans planned never to return to their band. Why, when the treasure
divided so nicely among three, break it up to enrich a hundred?
I shall never forget Hanley's grim face as we saw it that afternoon on
De Boer's image-grid. My chief sat at his desk with all his location
detectors impotent, listening to my disembodied voice explaining what
I wanted him to do. My humble, earnest, frightened desire to be
ransomed safely at all costs! My plea that he do nothing to try and
trap De Boer!
It hurt me to appear so craven. But with it all, I knew that Hanley
understood. He could imagine my leering captor standing at my elbow,
prompting my words, dictating my very tone--prodding me with a knife
in the ribs. I tried, by every shade of meaning, to convey to Hanley
that I hoped to escape and save the ransom money. And I think that he
guessed it, though he was wary in the tone he used for De Boer to
hear. He accepted, unhesitatingly, De Boer's proposition: assured us
he would do nothing to assail De Boer; and never once did his grim
face convey a hint of anything but complete acquiescence.
* * * * *
We had President Markes on the circuit. De Boer, with nothing to lose,
promised to return Jetta with me. In gold coin, sixty thousand U. S.
dollar-standards for me; a third as much from Nareda, for Jetta.
The details were swiftly arranged. We cut the circuit. I had a last
look at Hanley's face as the image of it faded. He seemed trying to
tell me to do the best I could; that he was powerless, and would do
nothing to jeopardize my life and Jetta's. Everything was ready for
the affair to be consummated at once. The weather was right; there was
time for Hanley and De Boer each comfortably to reach the assigned
meeting place.
We flew, for the first hour, nearly due west. The meeting place was at
35 deg. N. by 59 deg. W., a few hundred miles east by north of the
fairy-like mountaintop of the Bermudas. Our charts showed the Lowlands
there to run down to what once was measured as nearly three thousand
fathoms--called now eighteen thousand feet below the zero-height. A
broken region, a depth-ridge fairly level, and no Lowland sea, nor
any settlements in the neighborhood.
The time was set at an hour before midnight. No mail, passenger or
freight flyers were scheduled to pass near there at that hour, and,
save for some chance private craft, we would be undisturbed. The
ransom gold was available to Hanley. He had said he would bring it in
his personal Wasp.
* * * * *
The details of the exchange were simple. Hanley, with only one
mechanic, would hover at the zero-height, his Wasp lighted so that we
could see it plainly. The wind drift, according to forecast, would be
southerly. At 11 P.M. Hanley would release from his Wasp a small
helium-gas baloon-car--a ten-foot basket with the supporting gas bag
above it, weighted so that it would slowly descend into the depths,
with a southern drift.
Our flyer, invisible and soundless, would pick up the baloon-car at
some point in its descent. The gold would be there, in a black casket.
De Boer would take the gold, deposit Jetta and me in the car, and
release it again. And when the balloon finally settled to the rocks
beneath, Hanley could pick it up. No men would be hidden by Hanley in
that basket. De Boer had stipulated that when casting loose the
balloon, its car must be swept by Hanley with a visible electronic
ray. No hidden men could withstand that blast!
Such was the arrangement with Hanley. I was convinced that he intended
to carry it out to the letter. He would have his own invisible X-flyer
in the neighborhood, no doubt. But it would not interfere with the
safe transfer of Jetta and me.
That De Boer would carry out his part, Hanley could only trust. He had
said so this afternoon bluntly. And De Boer had laughed and interposed
his voice in our circuit.
"Government money against these two lives, Hanley! Of course you have
to trust me!"
* * * * *
It was a flight, for us, of something less than four hours to the
meeting place. Hans was piloting, seated alone in the little cubby
upon the forward wing-base, directly over the control room. De Boer,
with Jetta at his side, worked over his course and watched his
instrument banks. I was, at the start of the flight, lashed in a chair
of the control room, my ankles and wrists tied and Gutierrez guarding
me.
Jetta did not seem to notice me. She did not look at me, nor I at her.
She pretended interest only in the success of the transfer; in her
father's treasure on board, the coming ransom money, and then a flight
to Cape Town, dividing the treasure only with Hans and Gutierrez; and
in her marriage with De Boer. She said she wanted me returned to
Hanley alive; craven coward that I was, still I did not deserve death.
De Boer had agreed. But I knew that at last, as they tumbled me into
the basket, someone would slip a knife into me!
I had, as we came on board, just the chance for a few whispered
sentences with Jetta. But they were enough! We both knew what we had
to do. Desperate expedient, indeed! It seemed more desperate now as
the time approached than it had when I planned it.
The weather at 7 P.M. was heavily overcast. Sultry, breathless, with
solid, wide-flung cloud areas spread low over the zero-height. Night
settled black in the Lowlands. The mists gathered.
We flew well down--under the minus two thousand-foot level--so that
out of the mists the highest dome peaks often passed close beneath us.
* * * * *
At 8 P.M. De Boer flung on the mechanism of invisibility. The interior
of the ship faded to its gruesome green darkness. My senses reeled as
the current surged through me. Lashed in my chair, I sat straining my
adjusting eyes, straining my hearing to cope with this gruesome
unreality. And my heart was pounding. Would Jetta and I succeed? Or
was our love--unspoken love, born of a glance and the pressure of our
hands in that moonlit Nareda garden--was our love star-crossed,
foredoomed to tragedy? A few hours, now, would tell us.
De Boer was taking no chances. He was using his greatest intensity of
power, with every safeguard for complete invisibility and silence.
From where I sat I could make out the black form of Hans through the
ceiling grid, at his pilot controls in the overhead cubby. A queer
glow like an aura was around him. The same green radiance suffused the
control room. It could not penetrate the opened windows of the ship;
could not pass beyond the electro-magnetic field enveloping us. Nor
could the curious hum which permeated the ship's interior get past the
barrage barrier. From outside, I knew, we were invisible and
inaudible.
Strange unreality, here in the control room! The black-garbed figures
of De Boer and Jetta at their table were unreal, spectral. At the door
oval, which I could barely see, Gutierrez lurked like a shadow. All of
them, and Hans in the cubby above, were garbed in tight-fitting
dead-black suits of silklene fabric. Thin, elastic as sheer silk web,
opaque, lustreless. It covered their feet, legs and bodies; and their
arms and hands like black, silk gloves. Their heads were helmeted with
it. And they had black masks which as yet were flapped up and fastened
to the helmet above their foreheads. Their faces only were exposed,
tinted a ghastly, lurid green by this strange light. It glowed and
glistened like phosphorescence on their eyeballs, making them the eyes
of animals in a hunter's torchlight, at night.
* * * * *
De Boer moved upon an errand across the control room. He was a burly
black spectre in the skin-tight suit. His footfalls faintly sounded on
the metal floor. They were toneless footfalls. Unreal. They might
have been bells, or jangling thuds; they had lost their identity in
this soundless, vibrating hum.
And he spoke, "We are making good progress, Jetta. We will be on
time."
Ghastly voice! So devoid of every human timbre, every overtone shade
to give it meaning, that it might have been a man's voice, or a
woman's, the voice of something living, or something dead. Sepulchral.
A stripped shell of voice. Yet to me, inside here with it, it was
perfectly audible.
And Jetta said, "Yes, Hendrick, that is good."
A voice like his: no different.
Gruesome. Weird.
* * * * *
I try now to picture the scene in detail, for out of these strange
conditions Jetta and I were to make our opportunity.
9 P.M. De Boer was a methodical fellow. He checked his position on the
chart. He signalled the routine orders to Hans. And he gestured to
Gutierrez. The movements and acts of everyone had been definitely
planned. And this, too, Jetta and I had anticipated.
"Time to make him ready, Gutierrez. Bring the sack in here. I'll
fasten him away."
I was not garbed like the others. They could move out on the wing
runway under Hanley's eyes at short range, or climb in and out of the
balloon car, and not be visible.
Gutierrez brought the sack. A dead-black fabric.
"Shall I cut him loose now from his chair, Commander?"
"I'll do it."
De Boer drew a long knife blade, coated black, and thin and sharp as a
half-length rapier. Gutierrez had one of similar fashion. No
electronic weapons were in evidence, probably because the hiss of one
fired would have been too loud for our barrage, and its flash too
bright. But a knife thrust is dark and silent!
The Spaniard's eyes were gleaming as he approached me with the bag,
as though he were thinking of that silent knife thrust he would give
me at the last.
Dr. Boer said, "Stand up, Grant." He cut the fastenings that held me
in my chair. But my ankles and wrists remained tied.
"Stand up, can't you?"
"Yes."
* * * * *
I got unsteadily to my feet. In the blurred green darkness I could see
that Jetta was not looking at me. Gutierrez held the mouth of the sack
open. As though I were an upright log of wood, De Boer lifted me.
"Pull it up over his feet, Gutierrez."
The oblong sack was longer than my body. They drew it over me, and
bunched its top over my head. And De Boer laid me none too gently on
the floor.
"Lie still. Do you get enough air?"
"Yes."
The black fabric was sufficiently porous for me to breathe comfortably
inside the sack.
"All right, Gutierrez, I have the gag."
I felt them carrying me from the control room, twenty feet or so along
the corridor, where a door-porte opened to a small balcony runway hung
beneath the forward wing. Jutting from it was a little take-off
platform some six feet by twelve in size. It was here that the
balloon-basket was to be boarded. The casket containing the ransom
gold would be landed here, and the sack containing me placed in the
car and cast loose. It was all within the area of invisibility of our
flyer.
De Boer knelt over me, and drew back the top of the sack to expose my
face.
"A little gag for you, Grant, so you will not be tempted to call out."
"I won't do that."
"You might. Well, good-by, American."
"Good-by." And I breathed, "Good-by Jetta." Would I ever see her
again? Was this the end of everything for us?
* * * * *
He forced the gag into my mouth, tied it, and verified that my ankles
and wrists were securely lashed. In the green radiance he and
Gutierrez were like ghouls prowling over me, and their muffled
toneless voices, tomblike.
The sack came up over my head.
"Good-by, Grant." I could not tell which one said it. And the other
chuckled.
I could feel them tying the mouth of the sack above my head. I lay
stiff. Then I heard their steps. Then silence.
I moved. I might have rolled, but I did not try it. I could raise my
knees within the sack--double up like a folded pocket knife--but that
was all.
A long, dark silence. It seemed interminable. Was Gutierrez guarding
me here in the corridor? I could not tell; I heard nothing save the
vague hum of the electronite current.
It had been 9 o'clock. Then I fancied that it must be 10. And then,
perhaps, almost 11. I wondered what the weather outside was like. Soon
we would be nearing the meeting place. Would Hanley be there? Would
Jetta soon, very soon now, be able to do her part? I listened,
horribly tense, with every interval between the thumps of my heart
seeming so long a gap of waiting.
* * * * *
I heard a sound! A toneless, unidentifiable sound. Another like it; a
little sequence of faint sounds. Growing louder. Approaching
footsteps? Jetta's? I prayed so.
Then a low voice. Two voices. Both the same in quality. But from the
words I could identify them.
"Hello, Gutierrez."
"_Nina_, hello."
Jetta! She had come!
"The captive is safe? No trouble?"
"No. He has not moved."
"Careful of him, Gutierrez. He is worth a lot of money to us."
"Well you say it. Senorita. In half an hour now, we will be away.
Santa Maria, when this is over I shall breathe with more comfort!"
"We'll have no trouble, Gutierrez. We're almost there. In ten minutes
now, or a little more."
"So soon? What time is it?"
"Well, after half-past ten. When it's over, Gutierrez, we head for
Cape Town. Clever of me, don't you think, to persuade Hendrick to take
us to Cape Town? Just you three men to divide all this treasure. It
would be foolish to let a hundred others have it."
"True, _Nina_; true enough."
"I insisted upon you and Hans--Gutierrez, what is that?"
A silence.
"I heard nothing."
"A voice, was it?"
"The Americano?"
"No! No--the commander calling? Was it? Calling you, Gutierrez?
Perhaps we have sighted Hanley's Wasp. Go! I'll stand here, and come
quickly back."
* * * * *
Footsteps. Now! Our chance, come at last! I twisted over on my side,
and lay motionless. Ah, if only those were Gutierrez' fading
footfalls! And Jetta, here alone with me in the green darkness! Just
for this one vital moment.
Fingers were fumbling at the top of my sack, unfastening the cord.
Hands and arms came swiftly in. Fingers ran down my back as I lay on
my side to admit them quickly. Fingers went fumbling at the cords that
lashed my crossed wrists behind me. A knee pressed against me. A
hurried, panting, half sobbing breath close over me--
Just a hurried moment. The hands withdrew. The sack went back over my
head. The knees, the slight weight against me, was gone. A few seconds
only.
Footsteps. The voices again.
"Was it the commander, Gutierrez?"
"No. I do not know what it was. Nothing, probably."
"The Wasp in sight?"
"Not yet, _Nina_. You had best go back: De Boer, he might be jealous
of us, no? He is busy with his instruments, but should he realize you
are here, talking with me--"
"Senseless, Gutierrez!"
"Is it so, _Nina_? I have no attraction? Go back to him. Gold I want,
not trouble over you!"
Faint laughter.
"When we sight the Wasp, I'll call and tell you, Gutierrez. Too bad
you won't let me stay with you. I like you."
"Yes. But go now!"
Faint laughter. Footsteps. Then silence.
Our vital moment had come and passed. And Jetta had done her part; the
role of action upon this dim lurid stage was now mine to play.
My hands were free.
CHAPTER XVIII
_The Combat in the Green Darkness_
Another interval. A dead, dark silence. I did not dare move. Gutierrez
was here, within a few feet of me, probably. I wondered if he could
see the outlines of the black sack. Doubtless they were very vague.
But if I exposed my flesh, my face, my hands, that would at once
attract his attention.
I worked the loosened cords from my wrists; moved my stiffened hands
until, with returning blood, the strength came to them. I could not
reach my bound ankles without doubling up my knees. I did not dare
chance such a movement of the sack. But, after a moment, I got my
hands in front of me.
Then I took the gag from my mouth and, with a cautious hand, pried at
the top of the sack where it was bunched over my head. Its fastening
was loose.
Another interval. A dim muffled voice; "The Wasp is in sight,
Gutierrez!"
A movement--a sound like footsteps. Probably Gutierrez moving to the
corridor window to glance at Hanley's distant hovering flyer. I hoped
it might be that: I had to take the chance.
* * * * *
I slid the bag from my face. I feared an abrupt alarm, or Gutierrez
leaping upon me. But there was silence, and I saw his vague dark
outlines at the window oval, five feet from me.
I got my ankles loose and slid the bag off. I was unsteady on my feet,
but desperation aided me.
Gutierrez half turned as I gripped him from behind. My hand on his
mouth stifled his outcry. His black knife blade waved blindly. Then my
clenched knuckle caught his temple, and dug with the twisting Santus
blow. I was expert at it, and I found the vulnerable spot.
He crumpled in my grasp, and I slid his falling body across the narrow
corridor into the nearest cubby oval.
Almost soundless; and in the control room Jetta and De Boer were
murmuring and gazing at Hanley's ship, which hung ahead and above us
at the zero-height.
I had planned all my movements. No motion was lost. Gutierrez was
about my height and build. I stripped his black suit from him, donned
it, then tied his ankles and wrists, and gagged him against the time
when he would recover consciousness. Then I stuffed his body in the
sack and tied its top.
This black suit had a mask, rolled up and fastened to the helmet. I
loosed it, dropping it over my face. Knife in hand, I stood at the
corridor window.
* * * * *
It was all black outside. The clouds were black overhead; the highest
Lowland crags, several thousand feet beneath us, were all but blotted
out in the murky darkness. Only one thing was to be seen: a quarter of
a mile ahead, now, and a thousand feet higher than our level, the
shining, bird-like outlines of Hanley's hovering little Wasp. It stood
like a painted image of an aero, alone on a dead-black background. Red
and green signal-lights dotted it, and on its stern tip a small,
spreading searchlight bathed the wings and the body with a revealing
silver radiance.
Our forward flight had been checked, and we, too, were hovering. Hans
doubtless would remain for a time in the pilot cubby; De Boer and
Jetta were in the control room. It was only twenty feet away, but I
could barely see its oval entrance.
"Gutierrez!"
One of them was calling. My hollow empty voice echoed back as I softly
responded:
"Yes?"
"Be ready. We are arrived."
"Yes, Commander. All is well."
I continued to stand at the window. Hanley's little balloon-car was
visible now. Then he cut it away. We had moved forward in the
interval. The tiny car floated out almost above us.
My gaze searched the void of darkness outside. Did Hanley have an
invisible flyer out there? Perhaps so. But it could accomplish nothing
as yet. It would not even dare approach, for fear of collision with
us.
* * * * *
The tiny car, with a white pilot light in it, swayed with a slow
descent. The basket beneath the supporting balloon oscillated in a
wide swing, then steadied. A sudden flash showed up there--a flashing
electronic stream, from Hanley's Wasp to the basket. The shot swept
the basket interior. No one could be hidden there and survive.
It was Hanley's proof to us that he was following instructions.
"Hah! He obeys properly, Jetta!"
The voice floated back to me from the control room. Could I creep in
there, surprise De Boer now, and kill him? Doubtless. But it would
alarm Hans. I must await my chance to get them together.
"Gutierrez! Hans, get us under it! Gutierrez!"
The vague outline of De Boer came toward me in the corridor, burly
dark blob. His mask was down now. There were points of light, glowing
like faint distant stars, to mark his eyes.
"Gutierrez."
"Yes."
A small black figure followed after him. Jetta.
"Yes, De Boer." I stood over the sack. "I am ready."
De Boer's giant shape towered beside me. Now! My knife thrust now! But
Hans was coming toward us. He would take alarm before I could reach
him.
"Open the side porte, Gutierrez. Hurry, the car is here. Hans, you
should have stayed up there!"
"The drift is calculated; the car is just here."
We were all swift-moving shadows; disembodied voices.
"Get that porte open."
"Yes." I opened it.
* * * * *
We went outside on the runway. I passed close to Jetta, and just for
an instant pressed my gloved fingers on the black fabric of her
arm--and she knew.
"Now, seize it."
"Here, Hans, climb up."
"I have it. Pull it, Gutierrez!"
The car drifted at us from the black void. We caught it.
"Hold it, Gutierrez."
"Hans, clip the balloon. Up with you."
In the blurred haste, I could not get them together. I did not want to
kill one and have the other leap upon me.
We fastened the little balloon and dragged the car onto the take-off
platform. The shape of Hans leaped into the car.
"It is here! The ransom money!"
"Lift it to me. Heavy?"
"Yes."
"Gutierrez, help me. Hurry! If Hanley tries any trickery--"
Our aero was drifting downward and southward in the slight wind.
Hanley's Wasp still hovered at the zero-height.
"In, Gutierrez."
* * * * *
Hans and I hauled out the heavy casket and placed it on the wing
runway. De Boer pried up its lid. The gold was there. I could not tell
where Jetta was; I prayed she would keep away from this.
Then the shape of De Boer was missing! But in a moment he appeared,
dragging the sack.
"Lift him, Gutierrez. Hans, unclip the balloon and shove off the car!"
We were all standing at the two-foot rail of the runway. The
car-basket, floating now, was off side and level with us. My chance!
"In with him, Gutierrez."
I shoved the body, encased in its black sack, with Hans helping me.
And suddenly De Boer's knife came down at the sack! A stab. But an
instinct to save the poor wretch within swept me. I struck at De
Boer's arm and deflected the blow. The sack tumbled into the car.
I had neglected whatever chance had existed. Too late now!
"What in the hell!"
De Boer's shape seized me.
"What--"
It sent me into a sudden confusion. I flung him off. I stumbled
against the shape of Hans.
The car was almost loose; drifting away.
Without thought--a frantic impulse--I pushed Hans over the brink. He
fell into the car. It swayed into an oscillation with the impact. The
balloon sank below our wing level and was gone, with only Hans,
muffled shouts floating up.
* * * * *
And De Boer came leaping at me from behind. I whirled around. My
danger was too much for the watching Jetta. She screamed.
"Philip, look out for him!"
"Hah! The American. By damn, what is this?"
It gave De Boer pause. He gripped a wing stay-wire for a second.
Then he came with a rush.
The corridor door was open behind me. I flung myself into it--and
collided with a shape.
"Philip!"
I shoved at her frantically.
"Jetta, get back! Away from us!"
I pulled at her, half falling. De Boer's shape came through the
doorway into the corridor. And was blotted out in the green darkness
as he turned the other way, to avoid me if I struck.
A silence. The shadow of Jetta was behind me. I stood with poised
knife, listening, straining my eyes through the faint green darkness.
De Boer was here, knife in hand, fallen now into craftly, motionless
silence. He might have been close here down the corridor. Or in any
one of these nearby cubby doorways.
I slid forward along the wall. The corridor was solid black down its
length: the green radiance seemed brighter at the control room behind
me. Had De Boer gone into this solid blackness, to lure me?
* * * * *
I stopped my advance. Stood again, trying to see or hear something.
And then I saw him! Two small glowing points of light. Distant stars.
His eyes! Five feet ahead of me? Or ten? Or twenty?
A rustle. A sound.
His dark form materialized as he came--a huge, black blob overwhelming
me, his arm and knife blade striking.
I dropped to the floor-grid, and his blade went over me. And as I
dropped, I struck with an upward thrust. My knife met solidity; sank
into flesh.
I twisted past him on the floor as he fell. My knife was gone: buried
in him.
Words were audible; choking gasps. I could see his form rising,
staggering. The open porte was near him; he swayed through it.
Did he know he was mortally wounded? I think so. He swayed on the wing
runway, and I slid to the door and stood watching. And was aware of
the shadow of Jetta creeping to join me.
"Is he--?"
"Quiet, Jetta."
He stood under the wing, swaying, gripping a stay. Then his voice
sounded, and it seemed like a laugh.
"The craven American--wins." He moved a step. "Not to see--me die--"
He toppled at the rail. "Good-by, Jetta."
A great huddled shadow. A blob, toppling, falling....
Far down there now the crags and peaks of the Lowland depths were
visible. The darkness swallowed his whirling body. We could not hear
the impact.
CHAPTER XIX
_Episode of the Lowlands_
There is but little remaining for me to record. I could not operate
the mechanism of invisibility of De Boer's X-flyer. But its pilot
controls were simple. With Jetta at my side, trembling now that our
gruesome task was over, we groped our way through the green darkness
and mounted to the pilot cubby. And within ten minutes I had lowered
the ship into the depths, found a landing place upon the dark rocks,
and brought us down.
Hanley's Wasp had landed: we saw its lights half a mile from us. And
then the lights of another ship--an X-flyer convoying Hanley--slowly
materializing nearby.
And then reunion. Jetta and I left De Boer's invisible vessel and
clambered over the rocks. And presently Hanley, staring at our
grotesque black forms, came rushing forward and greeted us.
We were an hour locating De Boer's flyer, for all that Jetta and I had
just left it and thought we could find our way back. But we stumbled
onto it at last. Hanley felt his way aboard and brought it to
visibility. It has since been returned to the Anti-War Department,
with the compliments of Hanley's Office.
The ransom money was restored to its proper source. Spawn's treasure
of radiumized quicksilver we shipped back to Nareda, where it was
checked and divided, and Jetta's share legally awarded to her.
De Boer was dead when Hanley found him that night on the rocks. Jetta
and I did not go to look at him....
The balloon basket landed safely. Hanley and his men were down there
in time to seize it. Hans was caught; and Gutierrez, within the sack,
was found to be uninjured. They are incarcerated now in Nareda. They
were willing to tell the location of the bandit stronghold. A raid
there the following day resulted in the capture of most of De Boer's
men.
All this is now public news. You have heard it, of course. Yet in my
narrative, setting down the events as I lived them, I have tried to
give more vivid details than the bare facts as they were blared
through the public audiphones.
An episode of the strange, romantic, fantastic Lowlands. A very
unimportant series of incidents mingled with the news of a busy
world--just a few minutes of the newscasters' time to tell how a band
of depth smugglers was caught.
But it was a very important episode to me. It changed, for me, a
clanking, thrumming machine-made world into a shining fairyland of
dreams come true. It gave me little Jetta.
(_The End_)
Vagabonds of Space
A COMPLETE NOVELETTE
_By Harl Vincent_
[Illustration: _Carr went mad with fury. There it was, looming close
in his vision._]
[Sidenote: From the depths of the Sargasso Sea of Space came the
thought-warning, "Turn back!" But Carr and his Martian friend found it
was too late!]
CHAPTER I
_The Nomad_
Gathered around a long table in a luxuriously furnished director's
room, a group of men listened in astonishment to the rapid and
forceful speech of one of their number.
"I tell you I'm through, gentlemen," averred the speaker. "I'm fed up
with the job, that's all. Since 2317 you've had me sitting at the helm
of International Airways and I've worked my fool head off for you.
Now--get someone else!"
"Made plenty of money yourself, didn't you, Carr?" asked one of the
directors, a corpulent man with a self-satisfied countenance.
"Sure I did. That's not the point. I've done all the work. There's not
another executive in the outfit whose job is more than a title, and
you know it. I want a change and a rest. Going to take it, too. So, go
ahead with your election of officers and leave me out."
"Your stock?" Courtney Davis, chairman of the board, sensed that Carr
Parker meant what he said.
"I'll hold it. The rest of you can vote it as you choose: divide the
proxies pro rata, based on your individual holdings. But I reserve the
right to dump it all on the market at the first sign of shady
dealings. That suit you?"
The recalcitrant young President of International Airways had risen
from the table. The chairman attempted to restrain him.
"Come on now, Carr, let's reason this out. Perhaps if you just took a
leave of absence--"
"Call it anything you want. I'm done right now."
Carr Parker stalked from the room, leaving eleven perspiring
capitalists to argue over his action.
* * * * *
He rushed to the corridor and nervously pressed the call button of the
elevators. A minute later he emerged upon the roof of the Airways
building, one of the tallest of New York's mid-town sky-scrapers. The
air here, fifteen hundred feet above the hot street, was cool and
fresh. He walked across the great flat surface of the landing stage to
inspect a tiny helicopter which had just settled to a landing. Angered
as he was, he still could not resist the attraction these trim little
craft had always held for him. The feeling was in his blood.
His interest, however, was short lived and he strolled to the
observation aisle along the edge of the landing stage. He stared
moodily into the heavens where thousands of aircraft of all
descriptions sped hither and yon. A huge liner of the Martian route
was dropping from the skies and drifting toward her cradle on Long
Island. He looked out over the city to the north: fifty miles of it he
knew stretched along the east shore of the Hudson. Greatest of the
cities of the world, it housed a fifth of the population of the United
States of North America; a third of the wealth.
Cities! The entire world lived in them! Civilization was too highly
developed nowadays. Adventure was a thing of the past. Of course there
were the other planets, Mars and Venus, but they were as bad. At least
he had found them so on his every business trip. He wished he had
lived a couple of centuries ago, when the first space-ships ventured
forth from the earth. Those were days of excitement and daring
enterprise. Then a man could find ways of getting away from
things--next to nature--out into the forests; hunting; fishing. But
the forests were gone, the streams enslaved by the power monopolies.
There were only the cities--and barren plains. Everything in life was
made by man, artificial.
* * * * *
Something drew his eyes upward and he spotted an unusual object in the
heavens, a mere speck as yet but drawing swiftly in from the upper air
lanes. But this ship, small though it appeared, stood out from amongst
its fellows for some reason. Carr rubbed his eyes to clear his vision.
Was it? Yes--it was--surrounded by a luminous haze. Notwithstanding
the brilliance of the afternoon sun, this haze was clearly visible. A
silver shimmering that was not like anything he had seen on Earth. The
ship swung in toward the city and was losing altitude rapidly. Its
silvery aura deserted it and the vessel was revealed as a sleek,
tapered cylinder with no wings, rudders or helicopter screws. Like the
giant liners of the Interplanetary Service it displayed no visible
means of support or propulsion. This was no ordinary vessel.
Carr watched in extreme interest as it circled the city in a huge
spiral, settling lower at each turn. It seemed that the pilot was
searching for a definite landing stage. Then suddenly it swooped with
a rush. Straight for the stage of the Airways building! The strange
aura reappeared and the little vessel halted in mid-air, poised a
moment, then dropped gracefully and lightly as a feather to the level
surface not a hundred feet from where he stood. He hurried to the spot
to examine the strange craft.
"Mado!" he exclaimed in surprise as a husky, bronzed Martian squeezed
through the quickly opened manhole and clambered heavily to the
platform. Mado of Canax--an old friend!
"Devils of Terra!" gasped the Martian, his knees giving way, "--your
murderous gravity! Here, help me. I've forgotten the energizing
switch."
* * * * *
Carr laughed as he fumbled with a mechanism that was strapped to the
Martian's back. Mado, who tipped the scales at over two hundred pounds
on his own planet, weighed nearly six hundred here. His legs simply
couldn't carry the load!
"There you are, old man." Parker had located the switch and a musical
purr came from the black box between the Martian's broad shoulders.
"Now stand up and tell me what you're doing here. And what's the idea
of the private ship? Come all the way from home in it?"
His friend struggled to his feet with an effort, for the field
emanating from the black box required a few seconds to reach the
intensity necessary to counteract two-thirds of the earth's gravity.
"Thanks Carr," he grinned. "Yes, I came all the way in that bus.
Alone, too--and she's mine! What do you think of her?"
"A peach, from what I can see. But how come? Not using a private
space-flier on your business trips, are you?"
"Not on your life! I've retired. Going to play around for a few years.
That's why I bought the Nomad."
"Retired! Why Mado, I just did the same thing."
"Great stuff! They've worked you to death. What are you figuring on
doing with yourself?"
Carr shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "Usual thing, I suppose.
Travel aimlessly, and bore myself into old age. Nothing else to do. No
kick out of life these days at all, Mado, even in chasing around from
planet to planet. They're all the same."
* * * * *
The Martian looked keenly at his friend. "Oh, is that so?" he said.
"No kick, eh? Well, let me tell you, Carr Parker, you come with me and
we'll find something you'll get a kick out of. Ever seen the Sargasso
Sea of the solar system? Ever been on one of the asteroids? Ever seen
the other side of the Moon--Uranus--Neptune--Planet 9, the farthest
out from the sun?"
"No-o." Carr's eyes brightened somewhat.
"Then you haven't seen anything or been anywhere. Trouble with you is
you've been in the rut too long. Thinking there's nothing left in the
universe but the commonplace. Right, too, if you stick to the regular
routes of travel. But the _Nomad's_ different. I'm just a rover when
I'm at her controls, a vagabond in space--free as the ether that
surrounds her air-tight hull. And, take it from me, there's something
to see and do out there in space. Off the usual lanes, perhaps, but
it's there."
"You've been out--how long?" Carr hesitated.
"Eighty Martian days. Seen plenty too." He waved his arm in a gesture
that seemed to take in the entire universe.
"Why come here, with so much to be seen out there?"
"Came to visit you, old stick-in-the-mud," grinned Mado, "and to try
and persuade you to join me. I find you footloose already. You're
itching for adventure; excitement. Will you come?"
Carr listened spellbound. "Right now?" he asked.
"This very minute. Come on."
"My bag," objected Carr, "it must be packed. I'll need funds too."
"Bag! What for? Plenty of duds on the _Nomad_--for any old climate.
And money--don't make me laugh! Vagabonds need money?" He backed
toward the open manhole of the _Nomad_, still grinning.
Carr hesitated, resisting the impulse to take Mado at his word. He
looked around. The landing stage had been deserted, but people now
were approaching. People not to be tolerated at the moment. He saw
Courtney Davis, grim and determined. There'd be more arguments,
useless but aggravating. Well, why not go? He'd decided to break away.
What better chance? Suddenly he dived for the manhole of Mado's
vessel; wriggled his way to the padded interior of the air-lock. He
heard the clang of the circular cover. Mado was clamping it to its
gasketed seat.
"Let's go!" he shouted.