The Metal Moon
By EVERETT C. SMITH and R. F. STARZL
Based upon the Fourth Prize ($10.00) winning plot of the
Interplanetary Plot Contest won by Everett C. Smith, 116 East St.,
Lawrence, Mass
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Wonder Stories
Quarterly Winter 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: The ship was now coming close to the vast curve of the
crystal city. The earthmen became aware that the part below the city
level was a dull ugly black.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: EVERETT C. SMITH]
[Illustration: R. F. STARZL]
In this story, the joint product of two imaginative minds, we get a
very unusual picture of some of the possibilities of interplanetary
exploration.
We know that as soon as interplanetary travel is possible,
expeditions from the earth will be ranging the length and breadth of
the solar system searching out the thousands of wonders that are to
be discovered.
It is quite possible that some of the explorers, whether through
accident or desire, may colonize the other planets and develop under
new and unusual conditions a new branch of the human race. It is
doubtlessly true that if each of the solar planets were to be
colonized, at the end of several hundred centuries there would be
nine races of human beings who might differ radically from each
other and in fact might not recognize each other as members of the
same human stock.
In this story we do not see nine races but we do see four of them
and Mr. Starzl has united the four in a gripping narrative of the
great spaces.
THE METAL MOON
The three men in the tiny space ship showed their apprehension as they
watched the gravity meters. Something was distinctly wrong with the
ship.
"Are you sure that there isn't some undiscovered moon of Jupiter?" asked
the youngest of them. He was only about 25, which was very young indeed
when his scientific attainments were considered, even for the human
race's stage of intellectual development in 1,000,144 A. D. His figure
was stocky, powerful, his face rather thin, bold, with piercing black
eyes. He was naked, save for short, brilliantly red trunks of metalsilk.
His name, "Sine," followed by a numerical identification code, was
tattooed indelibly in thin, sharp characters on his broad, bronze-hard
chest.
The man at the ampliscope removed his head from the eyepiece and shook
his head impatiently. His body was bronzed and spare, but the complete
absence of hair on his head made him look older than the 48 years
indicated by the code following the name on his chest, "Kass."
"I tell you, Sine, this pull is no gravity effect. No body of such mass
could be invisible, unless it were composed entirely of protons. And
even then it would yank Jupiter out of shape, making it look like a
pear, but there--"
Jupiter presented its usual appearance. The solar system's largest
planet seemed enormous at this distance of only a few million miles. It
showed its usual marked depression at the poles, but no distortion such
as might be caused by a nearby body of enormous mass.
"What do you think, Lents?" Kass turned to the third occupant of the
little space ship. Lents raised his broad placid face from the pad upon
which he had been figuring a complicated equation. He was a large man,
slow-moving, and fat. He was sensitive to that fact, so that, besides
the usual trunks, he also wore a toga-like garment. His brown eyes
blinked in folds of flesh.
"No doubt you're right, Kass," Lents rumbled in a deep voice. "I can't
see how such a body could exist without pulling all of Jupiter's moons
to itself. No, we seem to be specially honored by its attention."
They looked at one another soberly.
"The question is, can it out-pull us?" Sine remarked.
"You ought to know," Kass said. "You designed and built her."
Sine made his way forward. It was no longer necessary to use the
handholds, for the pull of the mysterious body was already so powerful
that it entirely eliminated the free floating so familiar to space
travelers. Sine looked through the grated outlook windows, past the
gracefully curved bow of the ship. At the very tip was the ether screw
of his invention, resembling the screws used for water propulsion in
ancient times, except that the pitch was extremely sharp. The tachometer
showed that the screw had slowed down to 50,000 revolutions a minute,
although the thermometer indicated that the molecular bearings were
still reasonably cool. But how long could she stand the strain? How
long, indeed, could the sturdy little atomic motor keep those blades
turning? It was designed to pull directly away at a distance of only a
million miles from the sun, and yet it was being beaten far out here in
space by an object as yet invisible.
"What a crash that'll be!" Sine murmured, watching the agony of tortured
metal.
Amidship, Kass was again studying the eyepiece of the ampliscope.
Suddenly he stiffened.
"I see it! Why, it can't be over a couple of hundred feet in diameter.
Cylindrical, I think. Head on to us now."
They crowded around him. Lents, with hasty computations, determined that
they were still about three thousand miles from the object.
"No chance to pull away from it, if we pull straight," and his heavy
voice was full of energy as his sleepiness vanished with the need for
action. "Set her over, Sine, about 40 degrees. Try for a circular orbit
around it--if we can get up enough speed centrifugal force will save
us!"
Sine did as he was told, and the ship heeled over so that it presented
its side to the sinister object, which was still invisible to the
unassisted eye. While Kass watched it through the ampliscope, his
companions stared through the thick ports at the velvet, gem-studded
firmament. They could feel the attraction growing with terrifying speed.
"It's turning with us," Kass announced, "and getting closer. If we can
swing around it, it will be a very sharp ellipse indeed!"
"Try and see if you can get a few more revs out of the screw," Lents
suggested, and Sine crept forward, his powerful muscles straining
against the pull. He lifted the leaden weight of his arm to the lever.
He _must_ get a little more power out of the motor, or they would crash
to their deaths in a few minutes! A fine ending for their daring dash to
Jupiter--the first space flight since the great comet swarm of 800,768
A. D.
Sine pulled back hard on the lever, and the motor gamely responded,
moaned and shuddered under the tremendous overload. The tachometer
needle quivered, began to climb, 52,000, 55,000, 56,000----
The ship gave a lurch--there was a dull grinding, a hollow, metallic
groan. The men picked themselves up from the floor--realizing at once
the fatal significance of the lack of effort required. Their movement
carried them off the floor--made them grasp handholds. Floating free!
That meant falling free!
Sine glanced at the tachometer. The dead needle stood at zero. Through
the forward window he could see one of the four screw blades, black,
motionless.
Lents, obeying the habits of a lifetime, elbow hooked in a handhold, was
figuring the time required for them to strike. He looked up with a
puzzled frown.
"We should have struck about right now! Check on that body's position,
will you, Kass?"
* * * * *
The bald-headed scientist pulled himself to the ampliscope. But it was
possible to see the object through the ports now, quite plainly. It was
black, cylindrical, glinting dully in the sun's light. The space ship
was tumbling end over end, lazily, bringing the thing into view first at
one port--then another.
"No acceleration!" Kass reported, amazement mingling with hope. "Same
speed--we may still hit--but no evidence of gravity. We're falling
toward it on momentum alone!"
Lents' brown eyes twinkled with perplexity in their pits of fat.
"The force, whatever it is, doesn't seem like anything in nature. But if
we're traveling on momentum alone we can pull away with our emergency
rockets--though I hate to waste the fuel."
Sine leaped to the rocket controls. "Grab handholds!" he snapped over
his shoulder. The men rolled into the padded niches provided for that
purpose. Sine's niche was so placed that it would not be necessary to
lift a hand against the tremendous pressure of rocket acceleration. A
lateral swing of the lever along its quadrant operated the rockets.
"Oof!" came a smothered exclamation from Lents as the ship seemed to
pause, to leap forward in space again. The star-studded heavens as seen
through the ports were hidden by a curtain of flame, electric blue and
as stiff seeming as a steel bar--the trail of the forward rockets.
For some minutes there was no sound save the subdued thunder of the hull
as it trembled under the tug of the rockets. Then a light flashed redly
and a gong sounded. The signal that meant, "fuel half gone." Sine shut
off the power, crawled out stiffly. His first glance out of a port
showed that they were still falling toward the mysterious cylindrical
space wanderer.
Kass wiped the sweat from his bald head.
"No use wasting any more effort," he said hoarsely. "That thing is a
space ship, and there are men in it. The force they have been using on
us is some kind of gravity beam--probably it's also their means of space
propulsion. They mean to capture us, no doubt----"
"And they've reversed the beam!" Lents puffed as he turned away from the
ampliscope, pulling his sweat-soaked toga away from his fat body with
thumb and forefinger. "We're decelerating fast, but we can't feel it
because the force acts on every particle of our bodies exactly the same
as on the ship----"
"Proving," added Sine, looking out of the port curiously, "that it's a
true gravity beam!"
The utter stillness of their ship gave the illusion that she was
motionless, and that the sinister stranger was drifting toward them.
"It _is_ a ship!" Lents rumbled. "Look at her ports. But they're
shuttered."
"Not a bad idea," Sine agreed. "Protection against pin-point meteorites,
anyway." They saw now that the cylinder was slightly rounded at each
end, and the end presented to them had at its nose a circular
projection, not unlike a very large button, that glowed with a lavender
light, which they guessed to be the source of the gravity beam.
They were torn between the excitement of discovery and a very natural
apprehension. In the dim past, more than 200,000 years ago, there had
been a regular commerce between Earth and the Jovian colonies. But the
comet swarm, coming out of the mysterious depths of space, had released
to the solar system such swarms of meteorites as to make interplanetary
travel in the spatial belt between Mars and Jupiter utterly suicidal. It
required the passing of two thousand centuries to thin them out
sufficiently to permit the voyage of exploration in which these three
men were engaged.
What would these children of Earth look like after 200,000 years of
Jovian evolution? Would they be friendly?
They must, at any rate, be curious people. The great cylinder was
passing over them, and they had a better conception of its size. It was
at least twice as big as the 200-foot diameter Kass had estimated, and
fully 1500 feet long. A section of its hull slid open, and the
scientists felt the tug of mysterious forces on their own little vessel.
They drifted up into the opening, knew that the hatch had closed by the
shutting out of the solar glare. But there was no lack of light. They
could see the welded plates of the hull by an intense saffron light that
came from oval plates set in the wall. More of the gravity buttons were
ranged around the room. It appeared that they were regularly used in
handling freight. Now, as the little captive ship was tugged here and
there, the prisoners could see flashes of that penetrating lavender
light that seemed somehow solid.
"Get ready, men!" Sine said, breaking off his absorbed contemplation of
their surroundings. "Strap on your belts, and be sure your disintegrator
tubes are in their clips."
Lents was already lifting his toga and snapping his weapon belt around
his ample waist. A mere strip of flexible metal with pockets for the
atobombs and a clip for the delicate little tube--it might easily be
taken for a mere ornamental article of apparel.
"Hope they're friendly," Kass remarked, patting the buckle shut over his
flat diaphragm, "but if they aren't we can give 'em a thing or two to
think about."
The quartz ports, kept free from frost on the inside by a curtain of hot
dry air blown over them through a slit, suddenly misted over on the
outside, became opaque with a milky glaze of frost. This told the
prisoners that their captors were "bleeding" air into the hold, which
did double duty as an airlock. They heard vague clanging of metal on
metal, transmitted to them through the hull of their ship. Then a sharp
blade scraped away the ice from one of the ports, and a face peered in.
They looked at one another for a few moments, these cousins of the human
race, separated by 200,000 years of time and impassable meteor-strewn
wastes of space. The man at the port turned and beckoned to others, who
also surveyed the prisoners.
Then the first one, evidently the chief of this massive space vessel,
motioned to the prisoners, to open their manports.
"Keep together now!" Sine admonished his companions. "If they act
unfriendly we'll let them have the ray. Then you two slip back into your
own ship while I grab this vacuum suit out of the lock. With that on I
can carve a way out, and disable them, too."
"It would be a shame!" Kass said as he whirled the handwheel of the
inner manport, "but----"
The valve opened, and a few minutes later the three Earthmen stepped out
to confront the Jovians.
There were half a dozen of them, standing firmly, by virtue of the
artificial gravity, somehow produced. They were not far different from
Earthmen, except that they were shorter, being barely five feet tall.
Their tremendous muscles told of the race's adaptation to the superior
gravity of Jupiter. Their feet, encased in slippers of some burnished
material, were unusually large.
They were dressed in an armor of overlapping scales that covered every
part of their bodies, even their fingers. But their heads, instead of
being armored, were protected by a thin, transparent membrane that
followed the shape of their features closely. The Earthmen recognized
the protective covering used before the comet swarm as a defense against
the then used heat ray. So the Jovians had developed no new weapon! Sine
thought comfortably of his little disintegrator tube. He could make
those armored men vanish like puffs of smoke.
But they made no hostile move, and Sine had leisure to notice their
faces. If their bodies were too heavily muscled for grace, their heads
atoned for that defect. These were truly Jovian, god-like, combining
intense virility, dominance, courage. But there was also about them an
expression of intolerance, of ruthlessness, of selfishness. Here were
men, it could be seen, who would not be too scrupulous in attaining
their ends. But men, too, who could be charming companions.
Their leader, the man who had first looked into the port, now detached
himself from the group and came forward, his hand outstretched in the
old Earth gesture of friendliness. His appearance had all the
characteristics of his companions, but in a more striking degree. He was
taller than they, more than five feet, and his broad shoulders had the
confident bearing of accustomed command. He spoke, in a pleasant,
vibrant baritone:
"Welcome, men of Earth. Sorry for our little misunderstanding."
Sine gripped his hand, returned the muscular grip.
"It took us a little while to know what you were. And I may add that I'm
pleasantly surprised that we can still understand each other."
The Jovian shrugged his shoulder:
"Canned speech. No chance for a language to evolve when it's
mechanically recorded. But come up to my cabin. It's chilly here, and
your manner of dress----"
"_That_ has changed!" Sine smiled. "Lents and Kass, will you go ahead?"
CHAPTER II
The Pleasure Bubble
After the first suspicions had worn off, the Earthmen felt that they had
been singularly fortunate. To be captured by these intelligent beings
had been about the most convenient thing that could happen to them. They
might have found the human race entirely wiped out on the gloomy planet.
Or they might have been struck by one of the still inconveniently
numerous meteorites which would mean, at the very least, being marooned.
Had they possessed the ability to look into the future they would not
have rested quite so complacently in the hammocks assigned to them in
the great patrol ship.
The big Jovian, they learned, was chief of the ship. He told them his
name was Musters, and introduced his officers. They were an intelligent,
efficient lot. From them the Earthmen learned something of the social
organization of the human race as it survived on Jupiter.
"The race followed its natural evolution," intelligent and handsome
young Lieutenant Reko explained to Sine as they leaned against a railing
and gazed out of an unshuttered port at the somber splendors of Jupiter
as it gradually swelled and covered the firmament.
"Like mated to like, and so the superior individuals became more
superior, and the inferior ones more inferior. This resulted eventually
in two races. Naturally we took steps to properly segregate the inferior
race. Our efficiency experts have found ways to put them to work--to
make them quite useful in fact. Of course we could not trust them with
our weapons, our ships, our really important central power plants----"
What were these inferior--these so-called _Mugs_--what were they like?
Reko arched aristocratic eyebrows. Why, they were often quite human in
their appearance--though occupational diseases, and so forth----. Sine
gained the impression that they were kept out of the way in order not to
disturb the esthetic comfort of the superior race.
"There was a time when we had trouble with them," Lieutenant Reko said.
"There were trouble makers among them. They attacked the homes of the
First race, seized power control stations. Not fifty years ago there was
an insurrection. But the Mugs lost. Thousands upon thousands of them
were driven into the swamps and caves on the edge of the Tenebrian Sea.
They were never seen again, although we searched for them with our heat
rays. Perished, no doubt."
None were left now, Reko said, except those actually and fully occupied
at certain labors for which they were found efficient. They were allowed
to reproduce in sufficient numbers to fill the requirements--no more.
"What a rotten fate!" Sine exclaimed.
"They are quite a terrible people," Reko pointed out, closing a
distasteful subject.
A few sleep periods later Musters called his terrestrial guests to his
cabin.
"I have a pleasant surprise for you," he told them in his musical
baritone. "Our planetary conference would wish for me to give you a most
pleasant impression of Jupiter, so that interplanetary relations may be
resumed under the best possible conditions. For that reason I am going
to land you on a satellite that I'll wager will be a revelation to you.
It is the goal and object of every one of our people. But it is costly
and only a small portion of our population can be accommodated at a
time. You may judge the kind of place it is by the name the public has
given it: 'The Pleasure Bubble.' Come to the astrogator's cabin now;
I'll show it to you."
They followed Musters to a compartment in the rounded bow of the great
ship, stared out of a quartz port between opened shutters.
They saw Jupiter, immense, formidable, a mass of turbulent vapors, a
depressingly drab scene. Suddenly Lents exclaimed, incredulous;
"Look! A satellite! There is no satellite this close to Jupiter! It's
mathematically impossible!"
Musters laughed jovially. "It's there, isn't it? That's Jupiter's tenth
satellite--The Bubble. It is less than 100,000 miles from the vapor
envelope and has to travel so fast that its period is less than 8 hours.
It was built by the First Race and set on its orbit so that our people
would have a place where they could enjoy the sun, which is never seen
from Jupiter's surface."
"It _is_ a bubble!" Kass remarked, after an absorbed study of the
satellite. It was racing just beneath them, at a dizzy speed, like a
bubble blown before the wind. The ship followed the satellite, drawing
closer, so that it grew in size and beauty.
* * * * *
Lents was mentally calculating the rupturing pressure exerted by the
atmospheric pressure inside the crystalline ball. He stopped aghast at
the thought of the tremendous strain.
"That crystalline material stands the strain easily," Musters assured
them. "It will resist anything but a direct hit by a very large
meteorite. As you can see now, the sphere, which is about a mile in
diameter, is bi-sected by a plane surface, on which the city is built.
In that little area you will see reproduced the choicest conditions of
Earth." He turned earnest, hungry eyes on them:
"You don't know how lucky you people of Earth are!"
The ship was now coming quite close to the vast curve of the crystal,
and they could see glimpses of beautiful structures in fairylike
colorings, of small lakes like exquisite gems, of brilliant bursts of
light that they conjectured served as substitutes for the sun while it
was occulted by the enormous bulk of the planet.
Steadily the ship swept downward, to the level of the city, and the
Earthmen became aware that the entire sphere was not transparent
crystal. The part below the city level was a dull, ugly black.
"That's where the machinery is," Musters answered their questions,
somewhat shortly, it seemed. "Hydrogen integrators there--to generate
the power. Leakage of injurious rays down there--couldn't expect the
First race to work there."
"Who _does_ run the machinery?" Sine asked curiously.
"The labor Mugs, of course!" And Musters changed the subject.
The chief left them to their own devices as he superintended the lining
up of the big ship's airlocks with the lock gasket of The Bubble. This
effected, he bid his guests courteous farewell, assuring them that their
ship would be conveyed to the Jovian capital city of Rubio, where they
would be given every facility for repairing their damaged motor.
Sine was awakened by the talking of Kass and Lents as they sat at their
breakfast in their unimaginably luxurious apartment. They were near the
top of one of the fairylike towers they had glimpsed, and through the
crystalline roof they could see the blackness of star-studded space. Far
above was the glint of slanting sunlight on the outer covering of the
sphere. This was the fourth morning on The Bubble, and the Earthmen were
beginning to become vaguely restless. Their hosts had entertained them
royally, but--
"I didn't see anything funny about the way they shoved that labor Mug
out of the airlock," Lents was saying. "The poor devil! Stole a little
of the juice they call ambrosia. The way that elegant over-civilized
crowd laughed!"
"They lined up and watched the body floating alongside," Kass added
somberly. "And that Mug was as human as you or I."
Their words recalled the scene vividly to Sine's mind. The broad, green
field between two crescent lakes. The beetling-browed wretch, with eyes
full of fear that darted from side to side, led to the center of the
field by two splendidly armed warriors, there to be left alone in an
agony of uncertainty.
He saw again the half-hundred clean-limbed athletes, sons of rich Jovian
families. They were lined upon each side of the field. At the signal
they dashed in. The frightened labor Mug tried to escape. As one team
closed in he doubled, ran directly toward the others, saw his mistake
too late. There was a brief savage scrimmage, and the unfortunate victim
was stretched unconscious on the sward, while the victors and the
vanquished in this curious game joined arms and made for the baths where
exquisite nymphs peered coquettishly from behind delicately proportioned
columns. Sine reaped uncomprehending and resentful stares when he
declined to join them.
"Too rich for my blood," Sine told his companions at breakfast as they
discussed their experiences. "Hope they take us to Rubio soon. We've
done our job, and as for me, I'm not cut out for high Society."
After they had completed their breakfast a girl came hesitatingly into
their chamber. Sine stared at her curiously. She had none of the
enameled beauty of the women he had seen until then, but in her young
face was a subdued comeliness that was attractive after the assertive
pulchritude that was universal among the young women of the First Race.
Unlike the shrewd display of their chiseled perfection, this girl's
slender, rounded body was wrapped in a thin, gray garment that concealed
as it draped. It was caught by a cord around her waist. Her feet,
smaller and more fragile than the sturdy Jovian standard, were encased
in neutral buskins. She stood submissively, waiting for them to speak.
"What does that girl want?" Kass murmured aside. "My stars, she can't be
a labor Mug!"
"Come here, girl!" Lents rumbled kindly. "What can we do for you?"
The girl came forward hesitatingly. Her voice was soft, lacking the
brassy assurance of other Jovian women;
"I was sent here, masters, to guide you through hell."
Immediately after this startling statement her face turned a brilliant
red, then a deathly white. She half turned as if to flee, but, as if
realizing the uselessness of flight, she faced them again, defiantly;
"I don't care what happens to me!" she declared desperately. "I've told
the truth at least once. Jovians call this place The Pleasure Bubble,
but they don't have to live in the black half. Now tell them what I have
said."
"We will not tell anyone what you said, child," Lents rumbled
comfortingly. "But tell us. You don't look like the Mugs we've seen so
far--nor like the poor fellow we saw put through the airlock. They
seemed--a different race. But you--why--on Earth we could hardly tell
you from any other kid of your age."
A flash of spirit illuminated the girl's tragic, immature face.
"They call us a different race!" she exclaimed. "True--but not an
inferior race! They are the inferior race, though the stronger. They
depend on our knowledge, our labor, to live! My father told me so!"
* * * * *
Kass, who had been studying her silently, asked, "Your father?"
"Yes. The technic in charge of the machinery below. He was ordered to
escort you around. But his scars from the rays make it hard for him to
breathe today. He is in his bunk. So he sent me in his place."
Sine wondered if life under such unnatural and destructive conditions
would some day reduce this graceful girl to a horrible parody of
humanity. He asked;
"Do you work below?"
Her clear gray eyes fell on him.
"No. I was selected by the Committee to work in the Baths when I am
sixteen. I am fifteen now."
"Holy twisted nebulae!" Sine swore under his breath. "The kid doesn't
know what her work in the Baths is going to be! So the Committee
selected her for the Baths!" He felt suddenly a violent dislike for the
very rich Jovians, a feeling of fraternity with the Mugs.
"We will be very glad to have you guide us," he said formally. "What is
your name?"
"Proserpina. My father said it is fitting for one who lives where we
do."
Strange anachronism! That name from the mythology of Earth's youth. Like
that goddess of the underworld from misty antiquity, she led them down,
down, until it seemed they must be near the bottom of the black
hemisphere. It was a world of dim distances, of shadows, of pipes and
girders, or grisly abysses from which came mysterious sounds; of locked
chambers in which ghastly fires flared.
Now and then they met the inhabitants of the place; misshapen Robolds
going about unknown tasks. They stumbled suddenly out of unnoticed
passages, carrying burdens, grotesque, apelike, weary. Most of them were
hideously deformed.
Several times, when their journey led them into a certain part of the
hemisphere where they felt strange tingling of their nerves, the girl
led them away.
"We must not go there," she told them. "The integrators are there. There
my father received the scars of his chest that keep him from breathing.
Most of those who are blind worked there."
The Earthmen had already heard hints of the atomic integrators from
which the Jovians obtained endless power. They had no desire to get too
near those searing by-products of power.
"Do you mean to say," Lents asked, puffing a little from their
exertions, "that people down here live here all their lives?"
"I will show you our home," Proserpina said simply.
They came to it presently. A niche, a metal-laced nook, deep in the
hull. Gigantic girders formed one side of it. On the other side enormous
air conduits. It was clean, bare, not as depressing as they had
expected. It was more like a gallery, long and narrow, sparsely
furnished.
Something rolled out of a bunk at the farther end. Something like a
great spider. A man, stooped over, his once powerful body doubled, so
that his knuckles almost dragged on the floor-plates. He came toward
them, fierce gray eyes looking out at them under bushy brows. So
formidable that Sine's muscles tensed.
"Are these the visitors, Proserpina?" His voice was husky, as though his
constricted chest with difficulty performed its function. He looked at
them intensely.
"They tell me you are from Earth. Are you with us or against us?"
"Father, be careful!" She put her hand over his mouth, to be shaken off
impatiently. But the girl's warning had taken effect. The man--it was
impossible to tell if he were old or young--looked at them broodingly.
"My mother died here," Proserpina said. "And I am afraid he will. His
mind is not as clear--"
Lents, distressed to the bottom of his generous soul, helped the victim
of the Jovian pleasure moon back to his bunk. "This girl," he muttered
to Kass, "can't we get her out of here?"
He had not meant for her to hear, but her quick ears caught his words,
and a ray of hope illuminated her features. She was standing beside
Sine, and her thin fingers gripped his hard bronzed arm;
"Oh, could you take me away? I will be your slave!"
Sine gently disengaged her fingers. He was strangely embarrassed.
"I'd like to. But I'm a bachelor man. No place for you, you know."
She did not persist. No doubt she realized that she could not leave that
gaunt parody of a man who was her father.
When they bid farewell to Proserpina they were steeped in profound
depression. Alone in their room, they talked over what they had seen,
but they could think of no way to save Proserpina from her fate. They
were still discussing their visit when the manager of this satellite of
delights called on them and informed them that Governor Nikkia of
Jupiter awaited them in the capital city, Rubio. A space ferry was even
then clamped to the locks to take them to the mother planet.