The Prince of Space
By Jack Williamson
Author of "The Metal Man," "The Green Girl," etc.
Illustrated by MOREY
_Even the Lick Observatory, which was built at the summit of Mount
Wilson, 5885 feet high, at tremendous expense, cannot satisfy the
astronomers. An observatory that would reach about twice that
height, such as the one built by the scientist in this story, would
be more likely to hit the mark. Certainly, the views obtained of
the Moon, and even of Mars, through our present apparently gigantic
telescopes, undoubtedly call for a higher observatory, fitted with
a more enormous telescope, which will some day be established. What
may be seen then cannot be foretold with certainty. But that's
where the imagination--with scientific visualizations--enters. Mr.
Williamson's writing is not new to our readers. At that, this story
is sure to make stronger friends for him, and add many new ones to
his ever fast-growing list of admirers._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories January 1931.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
Ten Million Eagles Reward!
"Space Flier Found Drifting with Two Hundred Dead! Notorious
Interplanetary Pirate--Prince of Space--Believed to Have Committed
Ghastly Outrage!"
Mr. William Windsor, a hard-headed, grim-visaged newspaperman of forty,
stood nonchalantly on the moving walk that swept him briskly down
Fifth Avenue. He smiled with pardonable pride as he listened to the
raucous magnetic speakers shouting out the phrases that drew excited
mobs to the robot vending machines which sold the yet-damp news strips
of printed shorthand. Bill had written the account of the outrage; he
had risked his life in a mad flight upon a hurtling sunship to get his
concise story to New York in time to beat his competitors. Discovering
the inmost details of whatever was puzzling or important or exciting in
this day of 2131, regardless of risk to life or limb, and elucidating
those details to the ten million avid readers of the great daily
newspaper, _The Herald-Sun_, was the prime passion of Bill's life.
Incidentally, the reader might be warned at this point that Bill is
not, properly speaking, a character in this narrative; he is only an
observer. The real hero is that amazing person who has chosen to call
himself "The Prince of Space." This history is drawn from Bill's diary,
which he kept conscientiously, expecting to write a book of the great
adventure.
Bill stepped off the moving sidewalk by the corner vending machine,
dropped a coin in the slot, and received a copy of the damp shorthand
strip delivered fresh from the presses by magnetic tube. He read his
story, standing in a busy street that rustled quietly with the whir
of moving walks and the barely audible drone of the thousands of
electrically driven heliocars which spun smoothly along on rubber-tired
wheels, or easily lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling
helicopters.
Heliographic advices from the Moon Patrol flier _Avenger_ state
that the sunship _Helicon_ was found today, at 16:19, Universal
Time, drifting two thousand miles off the lunar lane. The locks
were open, air had escaped, all on board were frozen and dead.
Casualties include Captain Stormburg, the crew of 71 officers and
men, and 132 passengers, of whom 41 were women. The _Helicon_ was
bound to Los Angeles from the lunarium health resorts at Tycho on
the Moon. It is stated that the bodies were barbarously torn and
mutilated, as if the most frightful excesses had been perpetrated
upon them. The cargo of the sunship had been looted. The most
serious loss is some thousands of tubes of the new radioactive
metal, vitalium, said to have been worth nearly a million eagles.
A crew was put aboard the _Helicon_ from the _Avenger_, her valves
were closed, and she will be brought under her own motor tubes to
the interplanetary base at Miami, Florida, where a more complete
official examination will be made. No attempt has been made to
identify the bodies of the dead. The passenger list is printed
below.
Military officials are inclined to place blame for the outrage upon
the notorious interplanetary outlaw, who calls himself "The Prince
of Space." On several occasions the "Prince" has robbed sunships
of cargoes of vitalium, though he has never before committed so
atrocious a deed as the murder of scores of innocent passengers.
It is stated that the engraved calling card, which the "Prince" is
said always to present to the captain of a captured sunship, was
not found on the wreck.
Further details will be given the public as soon as it is possible
to obtain them.
The rewards offered for the "Prince of Space," taken dead or alive,
have been materially increased since the outrage. The total offered
by the International Confederation, Interplanetary Transport,
Lunar Mining Corporation, Sunship Corporation, Vitalium Power
Company, and various other societies, corporations, newspapers, and
individuals, is now ten million eagles.
"Ten million eagles!" Bill exclaimed. "That would mean a private
heliocar, and a long, long vacation in the South Seas!"
He snorted, folded up the little sheet and thrust it into his green
silk tunic, as he sprang nimbly upon the moving sidewalk.
"What chance have I to see the Prince of Space?"
About him, the slender spires of widely spaced buildings rose two
hundred stories into a blue sky free from dust or smoke. The white
sun glinted upon thousands of darting heliocars, driven by silent
electricity. He threw back his head, gazed longingly up at an
amazing structure that rose beside him--at a building that was the
architectural wonder of the twenty-second century.
* * * * *
Begun in 2125, Trainor's Tower had been finished hardly a year. A
slender white finger of aluminum and steel alloy, it rose twelve
thousand feet above the canyons of the metropolis. Architects had
laughed, six years ago, when Dr. Trainor, who had been an obscure
western college professor, had returned from a vacation trip to the
moon and announced his plans for a tower high enough to carry an
astronomical observatory giving mountain conditions. A building five
times as high as any in existence! It was folly, they said. And certain
skeptics inquired how an impecunious professor would get funds to put
it up. The world had been mildly astonished when the work began. It was
astounded when it was known that the slender tower had safely reached
its full height of nearly two and a half miles. A beautiful thing it
was, in its slim strength--girder-work of glistening white metal near
the ground, and but a slender white cylinder for the upper thousands of
feet of its amazing height.
The world developed a hungry curiosity about the persons who had the
privilege of ascending in a swift elevator to the queer, many-storied
cylindrical building atop the astounding tower. Bill had spent many
hours in the little waiting room before the locked door of the elevator
shaft--bribes to the guard had been a heavy drain upon a generous
expense account. But not even bribery had won him into the sacred
elevator.
He had given his paper something, however, of the persons who passed
sometimes through the waiting room. There was Dr. Trainor, of course,
a mild, bald man, with kindly blue eyes and a slow, patient smile.
And Paula, his vivaciously beautiful daughter, a slim, small girl,
with amazingly expressive eyes. She had been with her father on the
voyage to the moon. Scores of others had passed through; they ranged
from janitors and caretakers to some of the world's most distinguished
astronomers and solar engineers--but they were uniformly reticent about
what went on in Trainor's Tower.
And there was Mr. Cain--"The mysterious Mr. Cain," as Bill had termed
him. He had seen him twice, a slender man, tall and wiry, lean of face,
with dark, quizzical eyes. The reporter had been able to learn nothing
about him--and what Bill could not unearth was a very deep secret.
It seemed that sometimes Cain was about Trainor's Tower and that
more often he was not. It was rumored that he had advanced funds for
building it and for carrying on the astronomical research for which it
was evidently intended.
Impelled by habit, Bill sprang off the moving walk as he glided past
Trainor's Tower. He was standing, watching the impassive guard, when
a man came past into the street. The man was Mr. Cain, with a slight
smile upon the thin, dark face that was handsome in a stern, masculine
sort of way. Bill started, pricked up his ears, so to speak, and
resolved not to let this mysterious young man out of sight until he
knew something about him.
To Bill's vast astonishment, Mr. Cain advanced toward him, with a
quick, decisive step, and a speculative gleam lurking humorously in his
dark eyes. He spoke without preamble.
"I believe you are Mr. William Windsor, a leading representative of the
_Herald-Sun_."
"True. And you are Mr. Cain--the mysterious Mr. Cain!"
The tall young man smiled pleasantly.
"Yes. In fact, I think the 'mysterious' is due to you. But Mr.
Windsor----"
"Just call me Bill."
"----I believe that you are desirous of admission to the Tower."
"I've done my best to get in."
"I am going to offer you the facts you want about it, provided you will
publish them only with my permission."
"Thanks!" Bill agreed. "You can trust me."
"I have a reason. Trainor's Tower was built for a purpose. That purpose
is going to require some publicity very shortly. You are better able to
supply that publicity than any other man in the world."
"I can do it--provided----"
"I am sure that our cause is one that will enlist your enthusiastic
support. You will be asked to do nothing dishonorable."
Mr. Cain took a thin white card from his pocket, scrawled rapidly upon
it, and handed it to Bill, who read the words, "Admit bearer. Cain."
"Present that at the elevator, at eight tonight. Ask to be taken to Dr.
Trainor."
Mr. Cain walked rapidly away, with his lithe, springy step, leaving
Bill standing, looking at the card, rather astounded.
At eight that night, a surprised guard let Bill into the waiting room.
The elevator attendant looked at the card.
"Yes. Dr. Trainor is up in the observatory."
The car shot up, carrying Bill on the longest vertical trip on earth.
It was minutes before the lights on the many floors of the cylindrical
building atop the tower were flashing past them. The elevator stopped.
The door swung open, and Bill stepped out beneath the crystal dome of
an astronomical observatory.
He was on the very top of Trainor's Tower.
The hot stars shone, hard and clear, through a metal-ribbed dome of
polished vitrolite. Through the lower panels of the transparent wall,
Bill could see the city spread below him--a mosaic of fine points of
light, scattered with the colored winking eyes of electric signs; it
was so far below that it seemed a city in miniature.
Slanting through the crystal dome was the huge black barrel of a
telescope, with ponderous equatorial mounting. Electric motors whirred
silently in its mechanism, and little lights winked about it. A man was
seated at the eyepiece--he was Dr. Trainor, Bill saw--he was dwarfed by
the huge size of the instrument.
There was no other person in the room, no other instrument of
importance. The massive bulk of the telescope dominated it.
Trainor rose and came to meet Bill. A friendly smile spread over his
placid face. Blue eyes twinkled with mild kindliness. The subdued light
in the room glistened on the bald dome of his head.
"Mr. Windsor, of the _Herald-Sun_, I suppose?" Bill nodded, and
produced a notebook. "I am very glad you came. I have something
interesting to show you. Something on the planet Mars."
"What----"
"No. No questions, please. They can wait until you see Mr. Cain again."
Reluctantly, Bill closed his notebook. Trainor seated himself at the
telescope, and Bill waited while he peered into the tube, and pressed
buttons and moved bright levers. Motors whirred, and the great barrel
swung about.
"Now look," Trainor commanded.
Bill took the seat, and peered into the eyepiece. He saw a little
circle of a curious luminous blue-blackness, with a smaller disk of
light hanging in it, slightly swaying. The disk was an ocherous red,
with darker splotches and brilliantly white polar markings.
"That is Mars--as the ordinary astronomer sees it," Trainor said. "Now
I will change eyepieces, and you will see it as no man has ever seen it
except through this telescope."
Rapidly he adjusted the great instrument, and Bill looked again.
The red disk had expanded enormously, with great increase of detail.
It had become a huge red globe, with low mountains and irregularities
of surface plainly visible. The prismatic polar caps stood out with
glaring whiteness. Dark, green-gray patches, splotched burned orange
deserts, and thin, green-black lines--the controversial "canals" of
Mars--ran straight across the planet, from white caps toward the darker
equatorial zone, intersecting at little round greenish dots.
"Look carefully," Trainor said. "What do you see in the edge of the
upper right quadrant, near the center of the disk and just above the
equator?"
Bill peered, saw a tiny round dot of blue--it was very small, but
sharply edged, perfectly round, bright against the dull red of the
planet.
"I see a little blue spot."
"I'm afraid you see the death-sentence of humanity!"
* * * * *
Ordinarily Bill might have snorted--newspapermen are apt to become
exceedingly skeptical. But there was something in the gravity of
Trainor's words, and in the strangeness of what he had seen through the
giant telescope in the tower observatory, that made him pause.
"There's been a lot of fiction," Bill finally remarked, "in the last
couple of hundred years. Wells' old book, 'The War of the Worlds,' for
example. General theory seems to be that the Martians are drying up and
want to steal water. But I never really----"
"I don't know what the motive may be," Trainor said. "But we know that
Mars has intelligent life--the canals are proof of that. And we have
excellent reason to believe that that life knows of us, and intends us
no good. You remember the Envers Expedition?"
"Yes. In 2099. Envers was a fool who thought that if a sunship could go
to the moon, it might go to Mars just as well. He must have been struck
by meteorites."
"There is no reason why Envers might not have reached Mars in 2100,"
said Trainor. "The heliographic dispatches continued until he was well
over half way. There was no trouble then. We have very good reason to
think that he landed, that his return was prevented by intelligent
beings on Mars. We know that they are using what they learned from his
captured sunship to launch an interplanetary expedition of their own!"
"And that blue spot has something to do with it?"
"We think so. But I have authority to tell you nothing more. As the
situation advances, we will have need for newspaper publicity. We
want you to take charge of that. Mr. Cain, of course, is in supreme
charge. You will remember your word to await his permission to publish
anything."
Trainor turned again to the telescope.
With a little clatter, the elevator stopped again at the entrance door
of the observatory. A slender girl ran from it across to the man at the
telescope.
"My daughter Paula, Mr. Windsor," said Trainor.
Paula Trainor was an exquisite being. Her large eyes glowed with a
peculiar shade of changing brown. Black hair was shingled close to
her shapely head. Her face was small, elfinly beautiful, the skin
almost transparent. But it was the eyes that were remarkable. In
their lustrous depths sparkled mingled essence of childish innocence,
intuitive, age-old wisdom, and quick intelligence--intellect that was
not coldly reasonable, but effervescent, flashing to instinctively
correct conclusions. It was an oddly baffling face, revealing only the
mood of the moment. One could not look at it and say that its owner was
good or bad, indulgent or stern, gentle or hard. It could be, if she
willed, the perfect mirror of the moment's thought--but the deep stream
of her character flowed unrevealed behind it.
Bill looked at her keenly, noted all that, engraved the girl in the
notebook of his memory. But in her he saw only an interesting feature
story.
"Dad's been telling you about the threatened invasion from Mars, eh?"
she inquired in a low, husky voice, liquid and delicious. "The most
thrilling thing, isn't it? Aren't we lucky to know about it, and to be
in the fight against it!--instead of going on like all the rest of the
world, not dreaming there is danger?"
Bill agreed with her.
"Think of it! We may even go to Mars, to fight 'em on their own ground!"
"Remember, Paula," Trainor cautioned. "Don't tell Mr. Windsor too much."
"All right, Dad."
Again the little clatter of the elevator. Mr. Cain had come into the
observatory, a tall, slender young man, with a quizzical smile, and
eyes dark and almost as enigmatic as Paula's.
Bill, watching the vivacious girl, saw her smile at Cain. He saw her
quick flush, her unconscious tremor. He guessed that she had some deep
feeling for the man. But he seemed unaware of it. He merely nodded to
the girl, glanced at Dr. Trainor, and spoke briskly to Bill.
"Excuse me, Mr. Win--er, Bill, but I wish to see Dr. Trainor alone. We
will communicate with you when it seems necessary. In the meanwhile,
I trust you to forget what you have seen here tonight, and what the
Doctor has told you. Good evening."
Bill, of necessity, stepped upon the elevator. Five minutes later he
left Trainor's Tower. Glancing up from the vividly bright, bustling
street, with its moving ways and darting heliocars, he instinctively
expected to see the starry heavens that had been in view from the
observatory.
But a heavy cloud, like a canopy of yellow silk in the light that shone
upon it from the city, hung a mile above. The upper thousands of feet
of the slender tower were out of sight above the clouds.
After breakfast next morning Bill bought a shorthand news strip from a
robot purveyor. In amazement and some consternation he read:
PRINCE OF SPACE RAIDS TRAINOR'S TOWER
Last night, hidden by the clouds that hung above the city, the
daring interplanetary outlaw, the self-styled Prince of Space,
suspected of the _Helicon_ outrage, raided Trainor's Tower. Dr.
Trainor, his daughter Paula, and a certain Mr. Cain are thought
to have been abducted, since they are reported to be missing this
morning.
It is thought that the raiding ship drew herself against the Tower,
and used her repulsion rays to cut through the walls. Openings
sufficiently large to admit the body of a man were found this
morning in the metal outer wall, it is said.
There can be no doubt that the raider was the "Prince of Space"
since a card engraved with that title was left upon a table. This
is the first time the pirate has been known to make a raid on the
surface of the earth--or so near it as the top of Trainor's Tower.
Considerable alarm is being felt as a result of this and the
_Helicon_ outrage of yesterday. Stimulated by the reward of ten
million eagles, energetic efforts will be made on the part of the
Moon Patrol to run down this notorious character.