SLAVE SHIP FROM SPACE
One midnight in August, the raids began. The
White Summer Camp for Girls was struck first and when the confusion ended ten
girls were missing and two were dead.
Hysterical witnesses claimed they saw
shapeless forms lurking at the cabin windows. Several girls mentioned flashes
of green-blue light. As stories trickled in from the surrounding countryside,
it became evident that these inhuman invaders were attacking with a purpose—
and from outer space. Why were the victims always young girls? How, despite the
constant surveillance of the State Patrol, did the invaders strike?
A team of scientists and reporters left earth
in a pioneer space ship to try and solve the mystery. Among them was the
sister of the famous Guy Palisse who had disappeared
into space ten years ago in an attempt to reach the moon. Reports indicated
that he was dead, but near White Summer Camp the body of a winged girl was
found. The last words she had gasped were in English. Was
it possible Guy had reached his destination after all?
RAY
CUMMINGS' novels in Ace editions:
THE
MAN WHO MASTERED TIME (D-173) BRIGANDS OF THE MOON (D-324) BEYOND THE VANISHING
POINT (D-331) WANDL THE INVADER (D-497) THE SHADOW GIRL (D-535) BEYOND THE
STARS (F-248) A BRAND NEW WORLD (F-313) THE EXILE OF TIME (F-343)
TAMA OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY
by
RAY CUMMINGS
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036
tama of the
light country
Copyright ©, 1965, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
An Ace Book, by arrangement with Gabrielle
Cummings Waller.
Magazine version serialized in Argosy Weekly.
To
Andrea van Waldron
Hill dearly
loved granddaughter and prodigious reader of these books.
I
SCREAMS
IN THE NIGHT
The first of
the midnight raids was made
upon a girls' school on Moose Head Lake, in Maine. It was a summer camp, with
something like eighty girls, almost all between the ages of fifteen and
twenty. The affair—which occurred during the nights of August tenth and
eleventh—was kept as secret as possible. It did not get into the newspapers,
nor did the newscasters announce it until about a week later.
But
it terrorized the immediate neighborhood at once, and little wonder. There were
ten of the girls missing when, despite the confusion and terror, the others
could be counted. Two more were dead. The principal, a Professor White, was
wounded. Two of the other men teachers were killed, and one of the matrons.
I heard of the affair about noon of August
eleventh. I was twenty-five years of age the summer when the mysterious attack
upon the White Summer Camp in Maine started a chain of events which brought a
menace to two worlds and utter chaos to one.
I am
Jack Dean, a newsgatherer for the Broadcasters' Press
Association, and occasionally I do some actual news-casting. I was in the New
York studios of the B.P.A., and had just been on the air with a routine news
account, when the aviator Jimmy Turk called me long distance from Boston.
"Take
your plane and come up," he told me. His voice was vibrant with
excitement. "Drop your work. Tell 'em it's
business, the biggest piece of news this year—if you can get a release on
it!"
Jimmy
Turk was an operative of the newly established Interstate Flying Patrol, and a
friend from my University days, though of recent years we had not seen much of
each other. A short, stocky, red-headed little daredevil, this Turk—one of the
most skillful wildest flyers in the service.
"Trouble
up at Moose Head Lake, in Maine," he went on. "Meet you at Bangor—the
Lanset Field. Well go in my Dragon, so leave your
tub-boat there. What time will you be up? Four o'clock? The devill
If you leave now you can be there by three, or earlier."
"For how long, Jimmy?
An overnight job?"
"Tell
'em you don't know. A day or two. A week. Just tell
"em it's the biggest thing ever—if you get it
for the air. It's been suppressed so far. I'm in it from the police end. Damn
it, Jack, don't make me talk. There's no time."
I flew up the coast and met him at the Lancet
Field in mid afternoon. He was wild-eyed, his fiery red hair tousled, his
entire little body shaking with excitement. It was the strain of waiting for me, I thought. With
action I knew Jimmy Turk to be cool and calculatingly deliberate.
He
hustled me into his powerful little Dragon—the smallest, swiftest thing that
flies.
"I've
been over there and back. It isn't far: half an hour or so."
We
settled down in the tiny oval cockpit. He lifted us and we sped away over the
forest reaches toward the famous lake. It was a surprisingly wild country for
this day and age—a playground for summer vacationists,
yet there were deserted lakes and unbroken stretches of primeval forest.
"Well,
Jimmy, now that we're here, what's the trouble?" I said lightly.
"Something drastic?"
"No
trouble—nothing at all except about ten young girls abducted, a few killed, and
a couple of other miscellaneous murders."
He
told me all he had learned about it, which was little enough. It was wholly
confused—a muddle of conflicting accounts, none of which dovetailed to make a
rational explanation.
The
White Summer Camp for Girls consisted of a group of log-cabin type bungalows
set on a promontory of the lake, with a larger cabin as mess-hall. A boathouse
with canoes, a dock, float and diving board were at the end of the point. There
was a small stable with saddle horses, and a taxi runway leading from the lake
to a hangar-garage which housed several small sport hydroplanes for those
pupils whose parents would allow and could afford them.
The
camp was one of the wildest portions of the lake. Unbroken forest lay about
it, with only a few houses in the neighborhood and a dirt road leading to the
nearest village three miles away.
The
place was in a turmoil when we arrived. Planes lay thick on the water about the
runway. The road was jammed with automobiles. A police cordon about the camp
managed to keep the crowd back, but within the lines there was a group of
excited officials, investigators, and curiosity-seekers who had the connections
to get inside.
The
pupils—those who had not been killed, or abducted— had fled to their homes.
Professor White lay unconscious in a Bangor hospital. What he had to tell, if
there were anything rational, as yet remained undisclosed.
The
affair was secret. It was kept off the air and out of the papers. But by word
of mouth the news had spread like flames before a wind in prairie grass. We got
through the lines. Jimmie had a conference with his superior; I wandered about
the place, talking with as many of the excited people as I could, picking up a
connected story of a sort for use, provided they let me give it out.
It
was a weird, disjointed account. As far as I could piece it together, it ran
like this:
At
about midnight the previous night the camp was aroused by the wild screaming of
some of the girls. The night was dark. This was a period of nearly full moon,
but heavy clouds had obscured it. A fresh wind off the lake pounded waves on
the shore and sang through the forest trees.
But
above the noise the screams of terror-stricken girls had sounded. There were evidently
screams from everywhere about the camp within a few minutes. But most of it was
the panic of terror.
The original alarm came from one of the
larger cabin dormitories where twelve girls and a matron were sleeping. The
doors and windows were all open; the unbroken forest depths lay only a few
paces away. Something or someone, human or otherwise, had made an attack. When
it was over— in a few moments, no doubt, and before anyone from the adjacent
buildings seemed to have reached there—ten of the girls from the cabin had
vanished. The matron lay dead just outside the doorway. One of the girls was
found dead on the floor beside her bed; the other lay across the road at the
edge of the forest.
The
two men instructors, and Professor White, were discovered on the road; they
had apparently been running toward the sound of the screams when they were
struck down.
I
had an opportunity later to see one of the bodies where where
it lay in the police station of the nearby village. All the deaths were caused
by a hole the size of a lead pencil which in some cases penetrated the heart,
and in others pierced the brain. But there was no bullet. Nor had there been
any sound of shots—every account agreed on that.
Some
wholly soundless weapon had drilled the victims. The wound looked like a bum,
as though a blast of intense heat had made a tiny round hole. Through flesh, or
the bone of the skull, it was the same.
No
one had seen any of the attackers. Hysterical pupils told of vague shadowy
forms of men along the road. Huge men, some said, but others insisted they were
small. There were other girls who claimed that they were not men at all, but
weird monsters, half like beasts in pseudo-human form. And there was talk of
dragging, shuffling footsteps in the underbrush—presumably the fantastic
monsters dragging away their screaming victims.
Most
of this was discredited by the investigators. The night was too dark and noisy
to see anything, or hear very much. But the ten girls had vanished; there were
five dead bodies—very tangible evidence! And the wounded, perhaps dying,
Professor White.
There
may have been strange footprints about the place. But if so, they were trampled
upon and obliterated long before the authorities got there. There was another
clue which appeared to be fact, since it was one of the few incidents about
which everyone agreed. The attackers used no lights, but there had been a few
soundless, blue-green flashes in the darkness—tiny beams a few feet in length,
instantaneous, like a miniature lightning bolt. Presumably these were the shots
of some unknown weapon which had killed the five victims.
Jimmy
Turk joined me. "Well, what do you make of it, Jack? Come here and meet
Dr. Grenfell."
He
led us to an excited group nearby and introduced us to a short, thickset,
middle-aged man with a massive head and a stoop to his wide shoulders which
made him look almost like a hunchback.
"Who
was that?" I demanded, when, after a moment, Dr. Grenfell was called away.
"Important
scientific fellow. Head, of the Bolton Astronomical Research Society. He's
investigating this—one of the first to get here this morning."
"What's astronomy got
to do with it?"
"I'm damned if I know,
Jack."
But we were very soon to
find outl
Such was the beginning of the mysterious
assaults. A heavy guard was placed about the White Camp that night. One or two
of the male teachers and three of the women remained. Only one pupil continued
to stay—an orphan girl who lived with the Whites both winter and summer. I met
her a few days later.
Mrs.
White was at her husband's bedside in Bangor. The professor still lay
unconscious, hovering between life and death. His lung had been pierced; he had
fallen in the road, struck his head and suffered a brain concussion. But the
doctors hoped to pull him through. What had he seen in the darkness of that
weird night? We all waited eagerly for the time when he might be able to tell.
The second night was as dark as the first.
The cordon of
police and a few State troopers were hidden about the camp and in its
buildings. But nothing happened. Jimmy's orders were to fly at about two
thousand feet back and forth over the lake. I went with him.
We flew his Dragon without lights and with
the engines fully muffled. Both of us realized that the authorities knew more
of this thing—or suspected more—than we could guess. We were told to watch for
any air vehicle rising or descending over the lake or the nearby forest; or
for any strange lights. But there seemed to be nothing.
At dawn we landed at the village, turned in
our report, and went to sleep. At about noon, Jimmy woke me.
"By the gods, Jack,
listen to thisP
Reports
were now coming in. Apparently the White Camp had been undisturbed, but from
the town thirty miles away came the news that a young girl had vanished from
her home during the night. It was an isolated farmhouse, with the girl's room
on the lower floor.
Her
parents said she had retired as usual; they had heard nothing, but in the
morning she was gone. One of her window shutters had been taken .off, the wood
around its hinges burned as though by a blow torch.
"And
there are others, Jackl This damnable, weird business
P
The
reports continued to come through. Another girl was found murdered, her heart
pierced by the same strange hole burned into her chest. She had screamed in the
night and they had found her too late, lying by her bed; a chair been
overturned with evidence of a struggle. And two sisters, sharing the same room,
told of a horrible face at their window—gray, thick-featured, flabby. They had
heard dragging, shuffling footsteps outside as the face vanished. One of them
said it was like a man paralysed and trying to walk.
During the next few days a flood of incidents
were reported from this section of the State. But except for the first two
nights there were no missing girls, and no murders. Merely strange things that
girls claimed to have seen and heard. Some seemed to have a fair basis of
rationality—however fantastic they sounded—but most of the reports were now
the product of an overactive imagination.
"The
thing is about over," said Dr. Grenfall, as he,
with Jimmy, myself and one or two others, sat examining the reports in the
dining hall of the White Camp. "There is nothing less dependable than
reports from adolescent girls. This is hysteria now."
But
there were some reports which were not the fantasies of hysteria. The aerial
patrols had observed strange light-glows down in the forest. One pilot had even
seen a shape rushing upward from the lake. He was several miles away from it
and could not reach it with his light. He described it as shaped like a vague
silver ball, mounting with tremendous velocity into the leaden clouds overhead.
This was reported by one of the air patrols, fifty of which were on duty. And
there were surface parties constantly searching the forests of the entire
State. Every effort was being made to recover the missing girls, but it was all
unavailing.
It
was about this time that I met the girl pupil who was still living at the White
Camp. Her name was Rowena Pa-lisse. Romantic circumstances
surrounded her. She was a ward of the Whites. Ten years ago her only relative,
her elder brother Guy, had invented a space rocket and attempted to reach the
Moon. The entire endeavor was acknowledged to be a suicidal voyage: he had
provided no way of returning.
I
had been fifteen then; I still remembered my boyish interest in this Guy Palisse Moonrocket. It had
successfully left the Earth, but never was heard of again. My interest now was renewed
by meeting
the sister
of the
adventurer who had so stirred my
youthful fancy.
Rowena Falisse was twenty-two years old now—a tall
girl of five feet ten or
eleven inches. She was slender,
with a regal aspect in her
bearing. Her long brown braids
hung forward over her shoulders
in the
latest fashion, and her long
skirt and short-waisted jacket made
her seem
even taller than she was. She
was handsome
rather than beautiful, a girl
of so
queenly an air that
she seemed
born to command.
But there was
a gentle,
wholly feminine softness about her
as well. I understood
that she had been devoted
to her
brother Guy. As a child
of twelve
she had
watched him with big, frightened eyes as his cumbersome
rocket carried him away from her
into the mysteries of outer
space.
I found that
look in her eyes now—a
gentle, wondering softness, a wistfulness. There was a poise
in her
manner, a calm dignity; but under
it the
wistfulness was most apparent.
I stood before
her, the afternoon when Jimmy
Turk introduced us. She was
a head
taller than the wiry little
patrol flyer. But I am several
inches over six feet She
extended her hand and smiled up
at me.
"I have seen
you the
past several days," she said.
"I wondered when someone would
introduce us."
I was
with Rowena Palisse
a good
deal during the ensuing afternoons. I made the occasions.
She was
frightened at the events that had
transpired, but there was nothing
hysterical about her. Her
mature, calm personality precluded hysteria.
I was more
amazed at it when I
realized that the investigators—there were a
number of them who remained,
including Dr. Grenfell—still felt that
another assault might be made,
and they were for
some reason using Rowena as
a possible
decoy. She made herself
prominent about the grounds, both by day and night, though always carefully,
secretly guarded.
Then
there came a night, just a week after the original assault, when the trap was
sprung. Dr. Grenfell, who was in charge here, had admitted me in the capacity
of assistant. . . perhaps because Rowena did not hide her friendly interest in
me; and because my imposing stature made me the logical choice to put up a good
fight with any conceivable opponent.
It
was a black, overcast night. There had been a great show of withdrawal of the
guards that afternoon—though after dark many of them had crept back.
Jimmy
and I, armed with automatics, crouched with Dr. Grenfell in the forest
underbrush just across the road from Rowena's lighted window. She stood at it a
moment, braiding her hair. And though there were a dozen armed men lurking
close at hand to protect her, I marveled at her poise.
Her
light went out. We waited, an hour or two at least. The heavy, leaden clouds
hung close overhead. The wind swished through the treetops; the lake waves
pounded the shore; the dark, silent buildings of the White Camp stood around
us.
It begain to rain a little. I was cold and stiff. Beside me
the bulk of Dr. Grenfell's figure was a hunched black blob. At my feet Jimmy
crouched like a coiled spring. There was a dim vista of the road, the roof
outline of the building near us, and the vague black rectangle of Rowena's open
window.
There
came at last a sound, different from those of the forest to which we had
listened for so long. An eerie, indefinable sound, quite close to us. We all
three heard it. Dr. Grenfell stirred a trifle. Jimmy tensed, ready to leap.
A rustling of the bushes.
Or was it out in the road?
I
was swept suddenly with the chilling sense that this Unknown was
supernatural—something advancing upon me, invisible, intangible!
From the
darkness of the road the
sound became clearer, turned into footsteps.
But they
were gruesomely unnatural,
shuffling footsteps, like a wounded thing dragging
itself heavily along.
A moment
or two
passed. Jimmy touched me in
warning, but I shoved off his
hand. Dr. Grenfell s flashlight
was raised.
We had arranged not to move,
or shoot,
until he turned it on.
Certainly something
tangible was out there in
the road.
I thought I could distinguish a slowly moving, formless
shape. Or perhaps two shapes, mingled
in the
darkness.
Abruptly there,
was another
noise, a swishing, flapping sound—not on the
road, but over it. A
giant bird, perhaps, or a monster, flying. I saw
something white, fluttering out there.
Dr. Grenfell
flashed on the light Figures
appeared in the road some twenty
feet from us—figures so fantastic
that the sight of them barely
registered on my bewildered brain. One was a gigantic
man-shape; another, similar but smaller.
And a great fluttering white thing
behind and above them.
Jimmy leaped,
with me after him. My
shot and Grenfell's stabbed the darkness
together. The forest rang with
the other guards rushing and firing.
From the road came an
answering "shot"—a tiny
stab of bluegreen
light. It sizzled close past me, withering the shrubbery.
The gigantic
figure in the road made a slow but desperate
bound into the underbrush. The smaller figure fell with
our shots.
The white
thing was hit; it came fluttering
down and lay quivering, flapping in the dirt of
the road.
No one
thought, those first moments, of
pursuing the escaping figure. With
swaying flashlights we gathered in
the road. A man lay there,
dead from our bullets—a squat,
thickset fellow clad in rude
garments of animal skins. His
flat-featured face was heavy with
pouchy gray skin
and goggling,
staring dead eyes.
Near him, the wounded white thing lay
struggling in death agony—a girl, her blue-white draperies stained crimson with
her blood. She was a small, strangely frail-looking girl, with huge
blue-feathered wings nearly as long as her body. They flapped, and then were
still. She lay sprawled on the road like a great dead bird.
We
bent over her. She was still alive. For a moment she tried to speak, and it
seemed that the words were English! I thought that she gasped, . . warn you . .
." but we could distinguish nothing else intelligible. She died seconds
later.
n
FROM
ANOTHER PLANET
That was the last of the incidents at the White Camp. But such an affair could
not be kept secret. The world rang with it.
For
a time, however, it seemed destined to be shrouded in mystery. Professor White
died without recovering consciousness; the body of the man we had shot, and
the strange winged girl with him, remained as the only tangible evidence. The
giant figure which had made off into the forest was not caught. Nor were any of
the missing girls who had been kidnapped, recovered.
There
was a weapon found in the road the night when we gathered over the two bodies.
It was evidently the projector of the bluegreen
bolts, a small, globular affair, with a mesh of wires across its face, a firing
mechanism, and what seemed an odd form of storage battery in its handle. What
current it may have used could not be discovered. The thing was empty of charge
when found; apparently its last available shot had been the blue-green stab
which sizzled past me.
The
two bodies were examined by many learned men before they were interred.
Obviously the winged girl was nothing of Earth. Nor could the man be
identified with any race on this planet. Yet the two were clearly not of the
same race.
One
extremely curious circumstance was brought out by this investigation. The man's
body was short and abnormally thick-set—ape-like, but with a flabby, pallid,
hairless skin. A
man of such build would normally weigh about
one hundred and seventy pounds. I was present at the investigation. Gazing at
the body, I was convinced it would weight at least
that much. Yet on the scales it weighed a hundred and twenty-two. I felt the
body .... small-boned ... a light skeleton. And the flesh was
putty-like, with what seemed to be microscopio air-cells
in it.
The
girl was an extraordinarily beautiful little creature, with great
blue-feathered wings arching out from the shoulder blades. But her face,
composed now in death, was humanly beautiful, with a delicate, ethereal beauty.
She
seemed certainly no more than sixteen years old. Her clear white skin in life
might have been flushed rose-pink. She had long, pale golden hair, blue eyes,
and a strangely frail-looking body, yet rounded almost to matured girlhood.
She
was four feet seven inches tall. Such a girl of our world, might have weighed a
hundred pounds. This one, with allowance for the weight of the wings, weighed
only sixty-five pounds.
Queer,
inexplicable facts! And I could not forget that this dying winged girl had
tried to speak to us in English. This, to me, seemed most inexplicable of all.
By the end of August the world was beginning
to talk less of the affair. Then, on August thirtieth, Dr. Grenfell made public
his theory, and explanation—and warning. It was more startling than anything
that had gone before.
I
give here, not the original paper which was couched in the technical and
detailed phraseology of science, but the transcription made for the general
public which Dr. Grenfell gave me to put on the air:
"The affair at White Camp occured on the night of
of August tenth. On the
previous night, upon one of the
star-filled photo-diagram
plates made in routine work of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, a curious dot appeared which had no logical reason to be there. With a
subsequent, longer exposure made a few minutes later, that dot became a tiny hairline streak of light, proving that it was in motion.
"Observations
made at the Lowell Observatory that night established that the dot was
something extremely small and quite close to the Earth—only a few thousand
miles beyond the upper reaches of our atmosphere.
"The
Mount Wyndam Observatory, near Summit, New Jersey,
made similar observations during the early evening of August tenth. But the dot
was moving fast, and soon disappeared to the northward. And the sky became
overcast as the evening advanced, preventing further observation.
"The
inescapable conclusion of both observatories is that this was some form of
interplanetary vehicle hovering above our Earth. Spectrographs showed it to be
shining with reflected sunlight. How far away it was, how great its velocity,
or its size, could not be determined.
"Other
strange facts came to light during that memorable week of August tenth, a
shooting star of abnormal aspect was reported by many eyewitnesses in Maine.
It fell very slowly from a point near the zenith toward the northern horizon.
The "star" was pale white.
"A
meteor, which generally is a mere
fragment of star-dust burning with the heat of friction as it hits our
atmosphere, blazes with a streak of fire for an instant; and then, consuming
itself, bums out and vanishes. But this was different. It seemed to float down,
glowing with a silvery light. A few moments, and then it
disappeared from view.
"The observatory at Flagstaff saw
nothing of this.
But
at Mount Wyndam they saw it The thing seemed a
silvery metallic ball. It glowed with friction-heat and with sunlight. But when
it descended into the night-shadow of Earth, it was seen no more. The time was 8:55 p. m.
"This,
we believe, was a smaller vehicle descending from the larger one hovering out
there in Space. As a tender comes from a liner lying outside the shoals, this
silver ball came down with its occupants and landed somewhere in the forests or
upon one of the lakes in Maine.
"And there were other facts: This small
vehicle— though there may have been several of them—was observed subsequent to
August tenth, upon at least two occasions by pilots of our patrol flyers. The
sky, day and night, in Maine and vicinity, was during that week almost
constantly obscured by heavy clouds. At a hundred thousand feet such vehicles
would be safe from discovery.
"One
of our climbing planes, with Navy pilot Ranldn, present
holder of the altitude record, on the night of August twelfth, and again during
the day, ascended over Quogg, Maine to a height of
sixty-two thousand feet— but discovered nothing. As a matter of fact an
interplanetary vehicle—this silver ball, for instance—could easily attain a
velocity enabling it to follow the night-shadow around the world.
"We
are therefore forced to the conclusion that the attacks upon the White Camp and
elsewhere in Maine were made by beings of human form and intelligence from another
planet But which one? To our knowledge, whether or not any of the other planets
of the solar system are Inhabited has been problematical. Yet—here is proof I
"We
believe that these beings came from the planet Mercury, and have now returned
there. Many astronomical and astro-physical
phenomena recently observed lead to that conclusion. And so do the biological
facts concerning the two bodies. Much of this is of too technical a nature to
include here. I need only explain that Mercury revolves about the Sun once in
eighty-eight of our days. That is the length of its year. On August tenth it
and the Earth were near inferior conjunction—in other words, at their closest
points to each other.
"The
marauders came then, and now they have gone back, for Mercury, moving faster in
its orbit than does the Earth, is rapidly drawing away from us.
"But
why did they come? Certainly it was not with friendly intentions. Nor yet with
the boldness of an invasion—an attempted conquest. They were prowlers in the
night, using every effort to maintain secrecy, abducting our women—our young
girls. Again, that is an inescapable fact: they made no move, did nothing save
for the purpose of abduction.
"A
dozen young girls have vanished. The prowlers have gone back into
interplanetary space to Mercury or wherever they are native. The menace is over
. . . but is HP
"We
killed one of these men, and his companion, a fantastic young girl with wings.
She was a beautiful girl, no more than a child—in racial appearance no more
like him than he was like an Earthman. And, dying, the few words she spoke were
English! That is indeed beyond all possible understanding of our logical
science. Even the wildest conjecture cannot explain it.
"But
we may imagine that the girl was not friendly to her companion and his fellows.
She was captive, perhaps. With her dying breath she gasped something about
warning us. Of what? Presumably the abduction of our women. And our
imagination asks: Can there be so few women on Mercury that its men must come
to Earth to steal ours?
"Is
the menace over? When the winged girl and the man were shot by our guards the
night of August seventeenth at the White Camp, a gigantic figure escaped into
the forest. It seems impossible—with our aerial patrol and our multiplicity of
watchers in the neighborhood—that one of the vehicles could have taken him
away. We believe he is still on Earth. Every effort is being made to find him,
but so far without success.
"Will
the maurauders come back to rescue him, or to pursue
their mysterious purpose? Can we believe that if the men of Mercury desire our
women, the abductions are not to be planned upon a larger scale? Was this not
a mere tentative foray to learn of conditions here?
"We
believe just that! And when will the real attack be made? Mercury is speeding
away from us now. Thousands, millions of miles are being added to the distance
between it and the Earth. In eighty-eight days from last August 10th, Mercury will have completed one revolution about the Sun. But during
that time the Earth will have moved along a distance requiring twenty-eight
days more for Mercury to overtake us.
"Therefore, during the first week of
next December, Mercury and the Earth will again be approaching inferior
conjunction; again they will be at their closest point to each other. At that
time we may expect another attack. Undoubtedly it will be of far greater proportions, menacing
the safety of our women everywhere in the world!"
Ill
THE
ASCENT OF THE FLYING CUBE
This was put into the press and on the air on August thirty-first. I need not
enlarge upon the public sensation it caused, which was mainly a combination of
consternation, hysteria and ridicule. Then, within three days came a new
sensation, more far-reaching, more astounding in what ultimately it was to
disclose.
But
at first it was merely an astronomical report—technical, and hence undramatic. It caused almost no public comment
On
the nights of September first second and third, several observatories in
different parts of the world saw what seemed to be a tiny cylinder just outside
the Earth's atmosphere. Observational conditions were favorable. The
cylinder—if it were that—appeared to be circling the Earth like a satellite.
But with each revolution it approached closer. By September third it began to
skim the thin outer atmospheric stratum, and glowed faintly with friction-heat.
It
was very small—too small for an interplanetary vehicle. Indeed, except for the
extremely favorable conditions prevailing, it would not have been seen at all.
The scientists concluded, after many observations, that it had approached the
Earth at a tangent propelled only by the inertia of its own velocity. If it had
once had power, that power must have been exhausted. The attraction of the Earth
had caught and held it, the combination of forces resulting in its becoming a
tiny Earth satellite.
But the centrifugal force of its velocity was
lessening. Already the friction of our atmosphere was slowing it down. The
Earth was drawing it closer. In a few more revolutions, coming down into the
denser air strata, the friction-heat would consume it.
Both Jimmy Turk and I were in close
connection with Dr. Grenfell and his associates. I had learned now for a fact
what formerly had been only hearsay. For ten years, financed by the millionaire
J. G. Bolton, the Bolton Society for Astronomical Research had been working to
develop a practical means of conquering gravity. The problem was said to be
solved.
I learned now that in the southern New Jersey
workshops of the Bolton Metal Industries, an interplanetary vehicle was ready
for trial. Had this weird affair in Maine not transpired, the Bolton spaceship
might not have made its test flight until the following spring. The intention had
been to try a voyage in the direction of the Moon, possibly to land there, and
hunt for evidence of what had become of Guy Palisse
and his Moonrocket of ten years ago.
The
Bolton vehicle had now been rushed to completion. On the morning of September
fourth, Jimmy excitedly arrived with the news.
"I've
persuaded Grenfell to let us in on this, Jackl We're
going, both of us!"
"Going? Where?"
"In
the Bolton spaceship. They've got it ready! Well, ready enough, anyway, for a
short test flight. They're going to try and get this cylinder that's circling
the Earth. It has to be done at once—in a few more revolutions the thing will
burn up."
We
flew Jimmy's Dragon down to the Bolton plant that same day, where in the center
of the huge cluster of buildings stood the laboratories and workshop for the
building of the spaceship. And among the busy and tensely excited scientists
and mechanics, we found the pale, calm Rowena Falisse.
Strangely
reticent girl, this Rowena Palissel I told her so.
"Am I?" she mocked.
"I
thought I knew you," I said. "We talked for a good many hours and
many different times at the White Camp. You never mentioned this
spaceship."
"It was a secret, Jack."
"You're going on it?"
"Yes."
"You
must have known Dr. Grenfell for years. Somebody told me—"
"Yes. I have." She was amused.
"All girls don't necessarily tell everything in their minds to every
chance young man they meet."
I frowned, and at once she turned serious.
"When
I was twelve years old, my brother . . . left me. I think, ever since then,
I've been interested in astronomy— passionately so."
"Oh!"
A
girl passionately interested in astronomy was something new to me. This was,
indeed, a girl who in the midst of busy scientists did not seem out of place.
She
added, "I studied under poor Professor White. He was teacher and father to
me. And I've had some practical experience—I was one of the dockers of the last transit of Mercury. You see, even when
I was a child, Dr. Grenfell promised me that someday he would take me to the
Moon."
Her
voice was slow, calm, but strangely intense. "I think I've been living for
that—someday to get to the Moon .... My
brother—"
Jimmy dashed up. "Come on. They say we
can look over the ship."
We followed Rowena, who seemed as much at
home here as any of these goggled, gray-robed laboratory workers. We threaded
through a crowd in the inner yard and entered a square, flat building with a
bulging dome-roof which housed the vehicle. It stood on a concrete platform,
raised a few feet above the floor. It was an impressive, awe-inspiring thing:
the first, the only one of its kind in the world. For a moment Rowena did not
speak, but stood watching us as Jimmy and I silently gazed at it.
In
outward dimensions it was an exact cube, each of its faces fifty feet square—a
great sugar lump, girded with fantastic trappings. The upper face—the roof, so
to speak— bulged convex with a dome-peak, as though up on the sugar-lump a
little conical hat were set.
A
low doorway with a thick bull's-eye pane was at the bottom of one face. There
were round bull's-eye windows in tiers which indicated three stories in the
interior. And girdling it near its middle, some twenty feet up, was a sort of
outside balcony, or deck. Parallel with the base, this deck encircled all four
sides. It was about ten feet wide, and eight feet high, entirely enclosed with
metallic plates in which large circular windows were set like a row of
portholes in an airplane cabin. The entire outer shell was of a dull-white
aluminum color. The lights in the room glistened on it with a silver sheen.
"Well!"
said Jimmy. He was speechless with awe. I turned and met Rowena's gaze. Her
face was placid, calm, but her big blue eyes glowed with a fierce emotion more
intense because it was suppressed.
"It is going to take me to the Moon,
Jack—someday soon."
The Cube stood vibrationless.
Yet somehow it seemed trembling to be away—held here on Earth but eager to be
gone. Like the restless spirit of man, which had created it, it was ready to
dare everything for the adventure and conquest of the Unknown.
We
entered the single lower doorway. I saw the door was some two feet thick, with
mechanical fastenings upon its inner side like on the door to a bank vault. A
few mechanics worked within, while the shop outside rang with the hum of the
last details for the trial trip which was to be made the following night.
No
one paid attention to us as we foDewed Rowena about
the interior. I saw none of the mechanisms of the ship upon this visit, save in
the cursory glance at the engine rooms and the banks of controls. Some time later, upon a far different flight than any one
of us could now anticipate, Dr. Grenfell explained to me the fundamental
operating principles and many of the working details.
Jimmy
was not interested now—nor ever, for that matter. This Flying Cube was leaving
tomorrow night to try and capture a little cylinder which was circling the
Earth. And he was to be aboard: that was enough for him. His thoughts flew
ahead, eager only to capture the cylinder. Twenty times he had asked me what I
thought the cylinder actually was.
The
interior of the Cube was divided into three stories. The lower was merely a
single, low-ceilinged metal room with several small rooms partitioned off on
two sides—cubbyholes which were an electric galley, storerooms for food and
miscellaneous supplies, and a lower control room.
The
main room looked somewhat like the small lounge of a dirigible. In the center
of its grid-floor was a large oval bull's-eye pane—a window gazing downward.
There were small rugs, and rattan chairs and tables. A phonograph, books set in
metal shelves, and tables with chess, checkers and cards all added a feeling of
comfort and relaxation.
To
one side a narrow metal ladder, like a steep stairway, led upward. The second
story had a single transverse corridor cutting it in half. It was fifty feet
long; at each of its ends a door opened to the outer balcony-deck.
On each side of the corridor were four small
doorways, giving access to as many rooms. Four of them were sleeping cabins, with
windows and doors opening to the deck. The other four were instrument and
machine rooms which held electric pumps for charging pressure tanks by which
the pneumatic valves shifted the gravity plates, ventilators, chemical air-renewers, the heating and cooling system, interior
air-pressure and interior gravity controls, and the lighting system—all small,
compact mechanisms, and astounding tributes to man's inventive skill.
We ascended the ladder from the dimly lighted
corridor. The top story held a circular central room surrounded by small
cubbyholes which were additional instrument and control rooms. A tiny circular
staircase led upward into the interior of the dome-peak—a small observatory
with an ultramodern though not very large electrotelescope.
"Well,"
said Jimmy again, "there's plenty to it. Compact, isn't it? Let's see the
outer deck—we haven't been there yet."
We
descended to the middle story and went out one of the corridor end-doors. The
deck interior was somewhat less than ten feet wide and eight feet high.
Entirely enclosed, it was like a narrow corridor.
Doors
and windows at intervals opened into the second-tier rooms, and bull's-eye
panes were set in a row along the outer wall. There were similar panes both in
ceiling and floor, and the ceiling held a row of hooded light bulbs. There were
small lounge chairs out here. The deck was fifty feet long on each side; two
hundred feet in all, it girdled the Cube, as the deck of a surface ship girdles
its superstructure.
One of these fifty-foot stretches differed
from the other three: D-face, Rowena called this section. An exit-porte was here—a low, six-foot square room bolted outside
the deck. It was an airlock, in which the air pressure could be changed by
pneumatic pumps and exhausts.
"For landing on the
Moon," said Rowena.
Along
the deck here she showed us somewhat similar, though more complicated portes in which guns might be mounted and fired out into a
different air-pressure, or even into the vacuum of Space.
We wandered about the Flying Cube for fully
an hour that late afternoon, tremendously interested. Yet with what intensified
emotion I would have made that inspection if I could have seen into the future!
The weird, stirring events in which I was destined to participate within the
narrow confines of those enclosing walls! On that narrow deck, at those
pressure-portes and airlock!
At 10 p.m. on the evening of September fifth
the Bolton Flying Cube left the Earth in its attempt to intercept the cylinder.
The
orbit of this mysterious projectile—if projectile it was —had been calculated.
It would approach from the west, passing over the middle of North America, and
reaching the longitude of the Atlantic seaboard at about midnight.
Its
altitude was now estimated to be about two hundred and fifty miles above the
Earth's surface.
There
were nine of us on board: Dr. Grenfell, with five assistants, and Jimmy, Rowena
and myself. We three had no part in the details of this departure. There was
nothing we could do. We stood together, in the dimness of one of the deck
lengths, at a bull's-eye window. We were silent—words seemed inadequate. The
Cube had been resounding with the tramp of mechanics, but they had all left it
now.
Jimmy glanced at his watch. "Nine
fifty-five—we ought to be on our way soon."
Rowena stood beside me. I felt the pressure
of her hand on my arm, but she did not speak. The portes
were all closed now, save the lower door. Then the ship came alive with the hum
of the air-circulating system, the pressure equalizers, the throb of the little
pumps on the pressure-tanks of the plate-shifters, the hissing of the exhaust
valves, and the low whine of the current in the magnetic gravity plates.
Through
the deck window we could see the lighted interior of the workshop. The
dome-roof was rolled back. The deep purple sky with blazing star-gems stretched
overhead, waiting to receive us.
I heard Jimmy mutter, "Why the dickens
don't we get goingr
The hum in the Cube's interior grew louder.
The hissing of the shifting valves sounded. There was a slight quiver—a
vibration of the deck floor under my feet. I clutched suddenly at the heavy
fastenings of the window. It was nothing, however; in a moment even the tiny
vibration was gone.
But
outside the window there was movement. The room dropped away. I caught a
glimpse of the white, emotion-swept faces of the men out there, gazing up at us
as we lifted.
Then
there was the open roof of the building, the grounds about it, and the high
wall. A crowd of people had gathered outside the wall, for the news of our test
ascension, however closely held, had spread to draw a thousand spectators.
Then
there were trees and starlit landscape. For a few moments, I had the feeling
that I was on the deck of a rapidly lifting airship. But only a few moments,
for the landscape shrank amazingly—concave at first, with the horizon a great
upstanding rim, like the upper edge of a circular bowL
with us near the bottom.
There were clusters of tiny lights to mark
the villages far down, and moving lights along the roads—a passing airplane
occasionally, but now far beneath us. Off to the west, I saw the line of seacoast,
starlight on the sea.
How
long we stood there I do not know. I can't recall that any of us spoke—even
Jimmy was stricken into an awed silence. Slowly I became conscious that I was
intolerably, suffocatingly hot.
The
landscape was a landscape no longer, but a surface— the surface of the Earth.
Cloudbanks were visible, but we were high above them, up in the starlight.
I
saw with a suden thrill that the surface was convex—a
great, upward bulging, curved surface beneath me, with shrunken, map-like
contours of land and water, mottled with cloud areas.
The Earth! But I was no
longer part of itl
IV
THE
MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER
A step sounded behind us. It was one of Grenfell's asisstants, "Come up. Dr. Grenfell thought you'd like
to know that the cylinder is visible."
We ascended to the upper tier. Dr. Grenfell
was alone in the observatory dome. Baker rejoined one of his fellows in the
nearby control room. The other men were dispersed at their posts about the
Cube.
I realized again how intolerably hot it was
from the friction-heat of our rapid upward passage through the atmosphere.
Dr. Grenfell sat hunched over the telescope. He was coatless and colorless. His
roDed-up sleeves exposed his thick, muscular
forearms, mottled with dark hair wet now with sweat.
There
was barely room for us all in the dome-chamber. Through the circular overhead
pane the star-field blazed in an almost dead-black sky. There was a new glory
to the stars—amazingly steady and brilliant.
"Hot,
isn't it?" Grenfell greeted us. "Have the cooling system on full, so
it should be better presently. We've stopped ascending. The atmosphere is very
rare here—little friction now."
His
gaze fell on the quiet, intent Rowena. "Child, didn't I tell you this cube would be successful? Didn't I?"
He
was triumphant. The test ascent was a success. The Cube was controllable—the
secret of this form of interplana
tery flight had been conquered! Strange, but in
all my awe at this new experience, never once had I thought of that.
Jimmy was only concerned
with the oncoming cylinder.
"Where is it, Doctor?
I don't see it," he said.
Through
the small telescope it was visible off to the west where the Pacific slopes of
the Rocky Mountains showed, with the snow on their higher peaks still
brightened by the fading sunlight.
The cylinder was a faint luminous dot. We
hung poised and the dot grew, took form. Suddenly I realized that it was quite
close to us; perhaps we were moving along with it. I do not know. But it seemed
to be approaching at a leisurely rate. At first I could not guess its size, or
its distance—the one factor dependent on the other, and nothing with which to
compare either of them. A glowing, silver-white, bullet-shaped projectile, it
sailed majestically along, heated luminous, with a faint trail of light-fire
like a fan-tail behind it-gases from its heated metal burning faintly in this
rarefied air.
We
could soon see it plainly without the telescope. Gren-fell
spoke into a telephone mouthpiece.
"Baker?
Raise us slightly. Can you see it? Close now. Swing D-face westward, if you
can. A little—not much!"
Through
the silent, vibrationless interior of the Cube,
Baker's signal-gongs were ringing. And we could hear the hiss of the
plane-shifter valves.
The
electronic rocket streams were cut off now. The gravity plates were shifted,
and our turning was aided by the streams of etheric
pressure-vibration darting from each comer of the Cube like streams from a pin
wheel. As we swung, the vault of the heavens moved around in a slow twist—then
steadied.
Grenfell's voice was hurried, tense.
"Dean, you and Turk go down to the deck, on D-face. Stand by the exit-porte. I can only spare Gibbons for down there. You can
help him with the manual locks. I don't dare trust the automatics. Well have
the thing aboard in a few minutes—if we're lucky. Ro-wena,
child you stay with me."
The cylinder seemed no more than half a mile
away now, and it was much closer when, a minute or so later, we gazed at it
again from the deck bull's-eye window.
The
man Gibbons stood by a series of hand-levers that operated the pressure doors
of the lockchamber. Its inner deck-door was closing
as we arrived.
The pane was of massive glassite,
transparent. Through it the interior of the little lockroom,
projecting out from the deck, was visible. The outer door-slide was closed.
Gibbons shifted a lever.
"Hold that, will your"
I
held it, and he bent and opened a valve-cock. The outer door of the lock slid
open—an aperture six feet wide and five feet high opening into the empty realms
of Space. The air in the lockchamber, which had been
under a pressure of one atmosphere like the rest of the Cube's interior, went
out with a rush. The hiss and surge of it were audible with the first widening
slit of the outer door.
No
wonder care was needed in the handling of these controls, being operated in
Space for the first time! If we had let this inner slide open, all the air in
the Cube would have rushed out in a tornado blast—and we along with it! There
was a heavy iron wrench which had been lying neglected on the floor of the
lock. It went out like a windblown feather when the outer slide opened.
The
glowing cylinder slowly approached. I judged it now to be no more than two or
three feet long. It came point toward us. It was a silent, dramatic meeting—our
poised Cube and this wandering projectile, coming together in the starlight with the blazing
firmament above and the Earth spread like a gigantic convex relief-map beneath
us.
I
knew that Dr. Grenfell was trying to hold us so that the cylinder might fall
into the open outer door-slide of the lock-chamber. It needed several trials.
The men were comparatively inexperienced as yet in handling the Cube.
We missed it completely at the first trial.
It seemed to waver with the attraction of our greater mass. We circled it
several times. The disturbance we caused made it rotate end over end upon an
axis of its own creation. And with forward velocity destroyed, it began sinking
toward the Earth.
Then
at last we moved at it diagonally from above—a true aim this time. It settled
through the yawning open porte and fell upon the metal
floor of the lockchamber, to lie there with a fading
glow as instantly it began to cool.
Gibbons
slung the outer slide closed. Dr. Grenfell triumphantly joined us on the deck,
Rowena with him, and soon the other men arrived. The controls of the Cube were
set-locked. We were sinking very slowly back to Earth, so slowly that it would
take hours to reach the lower atmospheric strata.
"No
hurry," said Grenfell. "Don't let the pressure in yet-let it cool
slowly."
It
lay on the floor of the lock, apparendy undamaged,
though its metallic outer shell was fused, pitted and scarred by the
friction-heat. It was a small affair, not much over two feet long.
"Now, Gibbons—easy at
first. Don't be rash."
Opened
pressure valves began admitting the Cube's air pressure into the near vacuum of
the lock's interior. They hissed and sizzled, and after a moment Gibbons turned
them full. The cylinder stirred, rolled and bumped against the lockwall.
In
five minutes the inner door-slide was opened. A last rush of wind pressure
sucked at me as I stood nearby.
Gibbons and Jimmy bent and entered the lock,
gingerly carrying the prize.
"Not heavy," said Jimmy.
"Thirty or forty pounds."
Our
gravity equalizers in the inner shell-floor of the Cube's base were set to give
us a gravity pull normal to that of Earth.
The
cylinder had an Earth-weight of some forty pounds.
Jimmy and Gibbons laid it
on the deck.
"Hollow," said Jimmy. He tapped it
with his knuckles.
But
Grenfell stopped him with a sharp command. "Don't do that! Want to blow us
up?"
I
had not thought of that! This could so easily be a bomb— a strange, deadly
missile aimed at the Earth!
Jimmy
leaped back as though the thing had stung him. Unreasonably, ludicrously, I
took a step away and drew Ro-wena with me—as if that
could help us.
"Don't touch it!"
cautioned Grenfell. "Ranee, look it over."
Ranee, I learned later, was head of the so-called
bomb squad of New York, and an expert in dealing with "infernal
devices." He bent over the cylinder. Under the light of his flash he ran
careful, practiced fingers along its pitted sides. Suddenly he straightened.
"Grenfell,
look here. Something written—etched in the metal."
There were scrawled, handwritten words,
burned away in places—almost illegible, but not quite. Three words: FROM GUY
PALISSE As Grenfell uttered them, there came a cry behind me. "From
Guy-"
Rowena stood trembling, her face white as
chalk, with the
blood
draining from it.
"Guy! Oh ... if he's alive! If only .. . alive—"
I thought she would fall.
My arm went about her, but she
pushed me away.
Tm ... not so silly, Jack." She mustered a smile. "From Guyl Why, then, he must be alive. He must be alive!"
We carried the cylinder down to the lounge of
the Cube's lower tier and gathered over it. Ranee
showed us its series of small vents through which some chemical charge giving etheric wave-pressure had propelled it by a rocket
principle through Space.
"Open itl"
Jimmy urged impatiently. "Can't you open it?"
Then Ranee located
the lever, embedded in the burned metal, by which presumably some hidden slide
would move. But the lever was fused solid; the cracks of the slide were barely
discernible along the scarred metal surface.
When at last we got it open we found that the
interior was a series of compartments holding the operating mechanism. But
there was one packed with a thick layer of what seemed a strange kind of paper,
a hundred or more sheets covered with handwriting burned into them with a faint
tracery of black hairlines.
Dr.
Grenfell seized them, carried them to a light, and riffled through them.
"From
Guyl He is alive!
It wasn't the Moon he reached, but Mercury. He's alive!"
Fully
half the sheets contained astronomical data, technical notes and diagrams. The
rest contained a message from Guy Palisse. A message
and a warning to us of Earth!
We
sat there in the lounge of the Cube, listening breathlessly while Dr. Grenfell
read the pages. And as I hstened, I forgot the dim
interior of the Bolton Flying Cube, hanging in Space high above the Earth's
surface; forgot Rowena sitting white-faced and tense beside me, with her hand
gripping my forearm. My thoughts conjured the naked, rainswept
copper hills of a strange planet.
THE
WARNING FROM MERCURY
I am Guy Palisse (the message began). Ten years ago—I suppose
it must be that long—I left the Earth in what was popularly called a
Moon-rocket. Any scientific institution will know of me. Whoever finds this
message, I beg you to turn it over at once to some recognized scientific
society.
Particularly
I want this to be delivered to the Bolton Society for Astronomical Research,
in New York City of the United States of America. Dr. Norton Grenfell will
remember me. And I want my dear sister to be notified that I am alive. Her name
is Rowena Palisse. I left her in care of Professor
and Mrs. White. They can be located in New York. Or, during the summer months,
at the White Summer Camp for Girls, near Quogg,
Maine.
I am
preparing this quickly, unexpectedly. At first I thought I would use my
cylinder to send an appeal for help, because we have been in trouble here. But
just as I was ready to start writing this message, I learned strange and
terrible things which far outweigh our own personal trouble.
The
Earth is menaced. Earth's women—particularly the young girls—are in deadly
danger. Here on Mercury the young girls of the Light Country, whom I am vainly
trying to aid, have unwittingly been the cause of the menace threatening the
girls of Earth. And we learned it a few hours ago.
So
my message is a warning! I pray it may reach you in time.
I fear that I cannot leave
Mercury, though I may perhaps
make the effort. My rocket Is demolished. A
week ago I would
have said that there was no interplanetary vehicle on Mercury. I know now that
there is one. But I have no access to it
I want to give you a picture of what is here—what has happened to me.
These two worlds—the Earth and Mercury—so many million miles apart, are now
strangely linked with crossing, interwoven destinies. When you understand
conditions and events here, the menace threatening you will be clearer and you
will know better how to deal with it.
I have no time to write in terms you would wholly
comprehend. So I must leave much to your imagination.
Ten
years I have been here. Until the recent crisis— the whirl of events which I
will try now to sketch for you—I had taken my place among the people of the
Hill City, capitol of what is called the Light Country. They thought I was a
god, miraculously appearing from the heavens. But the scientists, the learned
men, the government soon accepted me for what I am.
As
you know, my age was eighteen when I left the Earth. I am about twenty-eight
now. Time seems different here. I have lost count of Earth days, months and
years. There are no days and nights in the Light Country. It is in a zone of
half-light—always the same brightness, except for the weather.
There
is generally a pall of gray cloud masses overhead. But occasionally there are
the black storms, and then we have an inky night such as there
sometimes is on Earth. Fearsome things, these black storms. They last for two
or three Earth days—sometimes longer. I shall have much to say of one of them—it
has played so large a part in the events which have brought us now into these
dire straits.
My life for the first years was quiet in the
Hill Country. I worked for the government, as does everyone. The men of learning were
much interested in what I had to say of our world. I taught them English. They
learned it readily, with their curiously retentive minds, capable of learning
far more quickly than is normal to us of Earth.
I
told them all I could of our civilization, our science, our weapons of war. And
finally I was installed in the government laboratories. They were very
primitive at first, but I helped make them less so. My rocket was smashed. I have worked to
reconstruct it, and to devise other methods of gravity nullification. And I
planned and built a projectile-cylinder by which I might communicate with
Earth.
Slow, patient work for about ten years. The
laboratories were established in subterranean rooms beneath the palace of the
ruler of the Light Country.
I
must be brief. There seems so much to tell youl I can
give you so inadequate a picture. Around the Hill City is a barren waste of
metallic coppery hills, jagged spires, canyons like gashes filed by some Titan
metalworker in mountains of metal. Bleak landscape! For miles there is no blade
of vegetation; no soil, save a metallic dust, worn by the rain and wind. Fools
of water from the rain he glistening in all the hollows. A fantastic landscape.
It looks like nothing of Earth or the Moon.
This
is the Light Country, the best region of Mercury. It is not quite so
forbidding. There are oases—valleys where rock which was not metal has been
worn into a soil. In them, with the abundant rainfall and the heavy humid heat,
there is always luxuriant tropical vegetation, great spindly shafts of trees,
flimsy and porous, and air vines with giant spreading leaves and vivid, exotic
flowers.
In
such a valley the capital, the Hill City, was built. It occupies the bottom and
the inner sides of a huge bowl-like depression in the great metal plateau
surrounding it. The level floor is perhaps five miles across.
The
level streets, tree-lined, are really roads rather than streets. There is no
congestion of houses. Fertile fields he around the homes, each tilled by its
controller. The low houses are built of the prevalent copper. There are
gardens, trees, and always a profusion of brilliant flowers.
The
outskirts of the City lie upon the surrounding inner slopes of the bowl.
Boulevards, like concentric rings, circle the fifteen-mile area. And there are
other streets running like spokes of a wheel from the valley floor up to the
thousand-foot height of the upper circular rim. An artificial reservoir-lake
is beside the palace, in the center of the valley floor.
Such
is the Hill City. Its people, inhabitants of this Light Country zone, are
generally smaller than Earth people. The men average perhaps five feet. They
are heavy-set, squat fellows, with wide shoulders and thick chests, but of
lesser strength than an Earthman, so that, though the gravity here is something
less than half that of the Earth, they move about much as you do.
But
it is not so with me here. On Earth I weight about a hundred and forty pounds.
That is seventy pounds, more or less, here on Mercury. I can run with twelvefoot strides and leap some thirty or forty feet. The Mercutian men were afraid of me at first, but they are used
to it now.
I shall never forget my first meeting with
Tama. Like all Mercutian women she is winged with
those sleek feathered wings which are the cause now of our disaster.
I am
not one to try to explain the purpose of an all-wise Creator in thus endowing
the females of this world. I think perhaps there is a logical justice to it.
The male is created to
pursue, to capture, and enslave the female. At least, it was so on Earth
throughout the early history of mankind.
But
the women here are by nature given the means to be free. They are slight of
body, small of stature-I suppose an average height at maturity would be four
feet six inches, with a Mercutian weight of forty
pounds or less. Winged from the shoulder with a ten-foot spread, they fly like
an albatross.
They
are free by nature. But man could not let it rest like that. At marriage, to
insure submission to the will of her husband, the wings are clipped so that she
may no longer fly—a cruel mutilation, an intolerable humiliation.
But
for generations the virgins at marriage were forced to it, in surrender to
man's conceit, the masculine desire for physical superiority and dominance. The
virgins submitted, but always with a smoldering resentment and rebellion. I
sensed that even when I first came here.
The
resentment was always expressed. But I saw, with the passing years, how it was
growing constandy stronger— a smoldering hate against
this man-made law. A few of the young men, perhaps, were always in sympathy
with the virgins, but not one had ever dared publicly proclaim that he wanted
to take for a mate a woman with wings undipped. I
suppose it was partly personal pride, the fear of ridicule from other men—and
partly because the laws of the country made such a union illegal, its parties
moral outlaws, and its children illegitimate, to be put to death unless the
mother's wings were clipped.
The
rebelliousness of the virgins intensified for generations. Then, just about a
year ago, a leader arose to fire them into deeds—a young virgin, inspired with
the desire to right this wrong.
A
Joan of Arc? A warrior? Yes, I have already seen her as that. And destined to
be a martyr? I pray God it may not be so.
This leader is Tama. I met her first a year
ago, when she was twenty years old. I think I loved her from the beginning,
though we have never spoken of love. From the moment I met her, she was
obviously one who fought against the possibility of love, because to her it
represented mutilation.
There
were always men who wanted her in marriage. Roc was one of them, a young Mercutian newly risen to power in the Hill City Government;
a sort of captain of the army, and chief of police—it is all one here.
Roc hated me from the first—and the hate was
mutual— but I taught him English, and for years answered all his avid questions
concerning our Earth.
I wish that I had not. And I wish that I had
inquired more closely into Roc's personal history. He never spoke of his
family, but there were tales concerning him. I understood vaguely that some
fifteen years ago—five years before I reached here—Roc's father had lived in
the Hill City. They said he was a gigantic fellow named Croat; a clever man,
versed in science, but an unscrupulous scoundrel.
Roc
was only a boy at the time Croat tried to seize the Light Country Government.
Roc's father raised an army which consisted of criminals, adventurers, and
slaves of the barbarous Cold Country that rims the dark side of the planet.
Croat
was finally defeated and sent into exile. It was said that he was still living
in the Cold Country, a leader among those benighted savages, and surrounded by
the criminals who had been banished from the Light Country.
The
boy Roc remained in the Hill City, and in these passing years rose to a
position of trust in the Hill City Government. He never spoke of his father.
How could we know that they were secretly meeting? Slowly, carefully, they were
planning this thing which has now burst upon us; but no one ever guessed that
the crafty Roc was always merely a tool of the unseen, almost forgotten rebel,
Croat.
I taught Tama English—and taught it to Toh, her twin brother, so that now they spoke it fluendy. I told them about our Earth. And I recall how Tama
smiled very strangely at me.
"It
seems to me, Guy, that the women of your world have had a history and a
struggle not so very different from ours."
I
come now to the night just a short time ago when Tama told me her purpose; and
with her brother Toh I became embroiled in the
tumultuous events that now force me to send this warning to you of Earth.
VI
THE
FIRST MURDER
I was sitting alone in my bedroom in the Hill City, the
capitol of the Light Country (went on Guy Palisse's
message), one evening after the last meal of that day-cycle, when Tama's
brother Toh came to see me. My room, with workshop
adjoining it, lay buried in a dark, gloomy labyrinth of passages beneath the
ruler's palace. The half-mile long artificial lake was near
by. Water draining off the hillsides of the circular vaDey
walls came down the vertical streets in open conduits and into the lake for the
city's water supply. It drained from the lake in a wide, swift-flowing flume
which penetrated the hill in a tunnel and spilled the surplus water outside the
city.
The
flume ran just above my subterranean room. I could always hear the vague murmur
of the flowing water, especially after the rain of a black storm, surging with
a lashing roar.
A
storm seemed impending this evening. The normal daylight was gone. Heavy
clouds were gathered close overhead, slowly circling in a lofty wind, the
forewarning of a black storm. With ending of the cycle, darkness fell upon the
city, as dark as I remember it on an overcast, stormy night of Earth. But there
was no surface wind—only a heavy, steaming oppressive stillness, and a lurid
green sheen in the air. A sinister portent of evil came with these Mercutian storms; and sometimes it was justified.
The storms whirled at times from the Fire
Country, with a fetid, fiery, blasting breath. Or again, from
the Cold Country of eternal blackness, with a sullen roar and a congealing
cold.
With
the darkness, the emergency lamps of the city winked on. A weirdness settled
upon everything. The streets lay black with shadow, greencast
with the gathering murk.
But in my underground room none of this was
apparent. I was sitting in the little chair that I had built in Earth-fashion
when Toh knocked on my door-slide, and I told him to
enter. He stood before me; the light from my animal-fat lamp nickered with its
yellow glow upon him.
He
was a slender little fellow, this Mercutian youth of
twenty-one—of pure Light Country blood, not squat and thick-set like the Mercutian men who so often have Cold Country native blood
in their heritage. He was fairly tall for one of this world, straight and
boyish. His thick black hair grew to the base of his neck. A ribbon of red was
about his forehead. With his high-bridged nose, his face was not unlike that
of a North American Indian youth. But there the resemblance ended. His
short-sleeved jacket flared at the waist, and his wide trousers were knee-length,
with a gaudy sash and dangling tasseled cord.
And in the sash I saw a
knife sticking up.
"Toh, you have no right to wear that. Especially in the
darkness of a coming storm. What if one of Roc's men should seize you?"
"No
one will . . . seize me." He was panting, out of breath. He gazed
furtively around my little room. "No one saw me come. The storm, it upsets
the city, I came by your lower passage under the palace. The guard there was
gone." He tried to smile. It was a strange smile indeed. "Or maybe in
the darkness he did not see me."
"Why do you
come?"
"Tama wants you," he said.
"Wants
me?"
"Yes.
Now. Come with me ... to her. Will
you?" "Where?"
He gestured. "Out of the city. But near.
We can most easily get there—in what you call half an hour."
"But-"
"I cannot answer questions." There
was a hurried tenseness about him, and a pleading. "Guy—Tama asks you to
come."
"All
right," I agreed. "Toh, how is the
storm?" "Just the same. Not upon us yet." "Maybe it won't
break. I hope it won't." "Do you?" he responded vaguely. "I
don't know about that."
He
was waiting impatiently for me to put on my shoes, resilient-soled buskins
suitable for running over the jagged metallic rocks. For the rest, I wore only
short trousers and a white, sleeveless shirt. In the heat of Mercury this
costume was all I ever needed.
Toh
gestured at the white shirt. "Have you no dark one? They can see you
maybe, in that"
I
changed it.
He
said evenly, "Have you a weapon?" "You know I haven't. None are
available outside the sealed government rooms."
"We
could not get in there?" "Of course not"
"Well,
then—" his voice trailed away.
I
was ready. Bareheaded, like himself, I tied a band about my forehead to keep
the hair from my eyes. I recalled suddenly that twelve years before, in a very
similar costume I had run my college races back in the old days on Earth. That
sent a pang through me. I was no more than a prisoner here on this strange
world. In all its affairs, there was for me only Tama.
"All right, Toh."
But he insisted. "Take a knife—like
this." He waved his thin, keen edged blade. "You have one?"
"Yes. But Toh-"
"Please. Tama asked
that you hurry."
I
got my knife and we started out through the hundred-foot vaulted corridor,
sloping upward. The murmur of the flume-water near by
was audible as we crept forward. The guard was not at the gate and we slipped
through the small opening; its bars stood wide open.
We
were outside now, just beyond the palace garden wall. The reservoir lake showed
its dim expanse of water, unrippled in the
breathless darkness. Behind us loomed the government building. It should have
been almost dark at this hour, but it was not. Many of its window-slits were
lighted.
Toh pulled at me. "Come."
But some instinct made me
linger.
The
trees arched overhead, great spreading, spindly branches of the lush, porous
vegetation of Mercury which grows with miraculous speed wherever there is soil
and water. Through the tree branches I could see the luminous green haze of the
sky. And nearby, spreading around us, was the circular city—mere dots of light
now, winking like eyes in the murky, abnormal darkness of the coming storm.
Suddenly
I saw, not fifteen feet from us, a dark form lying on the ground. I jerked from
Toh's grip and with a single bound pounced upon it.
It
was the guard. He lay on his back, his heavy-jowled
face a contorted mask, his eyes staring. And on his chest, his thin leather shirt
was ripped with a hole. There was a dark stain of blood.
Toh gripped me again. "Yes, I killed him I He tried to stop me from
getting to youl Roc ordered you kept a prisoner—until
this is over!"
"This-what?" I
shook him. "Murder! Good God, Toh!"
He was
shaking from fear or excitement. "Guy, now that you see him, help me carry
him. He's too heavy for me."
He
added, almost with a stark whisper: "Guy, the first murder! I did it! This
is for Tama. All this—for Tama and the virgins."
A
surprising, mature force came to him. "Guy, my friend, is it with me you
want to act? With me and Tama? Or with Roc? He had you prisoner in there
tonight."
He
broke off, and we both stood listening. The city was in a turmoil; we could
hear the distant murmur of voices in the streets; and nearer to us, voices at
the palace doorways, in the garden—coming this way!
I cast my lot then.
"You mean, throw him in the flume, Toh?" "Yes."
I
lifted the body in my arms. The twenty-foot wide flume passed near us. I
lowered my grisly burden gently into it to avoid a splash. There was blood on
my shirt as I straightened.
"Gone, Toh."
The floating shape
disappeared in the darkness.
There
were voices at the garden wall, but we had not been seen. And then the first
surge of the black storm broke upon the city. A sigh of hot wind stirred the
fronds over us into a rustle. It rippled the mirror-like surface of the lake.
We
felt a hot, sulphurous breath. Overhead the
green-black sky was shot with luminous red streaks and puffs of red like tiny
silent bombs bursting. And then, a moment later, came the dull staccato sounds
of the thunder.
TAMA OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY "It's on us, Toh."
We
ran around the lake shore, circling its farther end, and plunged into one of
the city streets.
VII
REVOLT
OF THE WINGED VIRGINS
It was a run of some two miles across the level of the city to where the street
began the ascent of the inner slope of the valley-side. The street was like a
wide road, with verdure over it, sometimes interlocking overhead; low stone
houses were set back in gardens or small cultivated patches of field.
The
emergency street lights were not adequate. It was dark everywhere—dark and
confused. People were in the street, or gathered before their dwellings,
apprehensive of the coming storm. But I saw that it was more than that— an
excitement at something transpiring.
No
one seemed to notice us as we dashed along. I had to measure my pace for Toh. With my giant leaps, I could at once have outdistanced
him.
A
city cart passed us, drawn by a gruesome, insect-like brue, a giant jointed thing. I heard a girl crying within the cart.
There were many girls flying about. Like
huge, aimless, frightened birds, they flapped overhead. We passed a house with
one of Roc's official carts standing before it. His yellow-jacketed guards were
lined at the wall—gray-skinned, heavy, dull-featured men from the Cold Country.
The brue in the cart harness stretched its jointed length at ease along the
ground and lifted its head with an uncanny pseudo-human movement, as though
listening.
And
from the house came the screams of a girl. "Toh!
What is happening?"
But
Tama's brother urged me to the other side of the street. We passed the house
unnoticed by the guards. But I think that the brue was aware of me. Its head turned, with bristling, waving antennae.
Toh panted, 'Taster, Guy. I can—go faster."
We
climbed the hill, past the last of the houses. I carried Toh
in my arms for a little way so that he might recover his breath. We reached the
top of the cliff with its naked metal crags. The valley of the city lay
stretched beneath us. Lights were moving everywhere. A party of flying girls
went over us, their great wings waving as they breasted the wind, their
draperies flowing behind them.
The
naked, rolling waste of the uplands lay before us, the lurid sky hanging close
overhead. The wind was increasing. Soon the rain would come.
"Which
way, Toh?"
"Not
far now."
We
attained a nearby eminence, half a mile or so from the city rim—a level space
of jagged, broken crags. The city was hidden from here. Boulders lay strewn
about and rifts yawned like black gashes in a wild confusion of metal rock. The
smooth places gleamed like burnished copper in the brief red hghtning-flares of the storm. It was an inferno of glare
and crackling thunder-puffs.
We
crouched in the hollow of an arching rock-spire. Then Tama came. She had been
waiting nearby, and came soaring from overhead, a dark blob against the red
sky.
Toh gripped me. "There she isl"
Her
body hung breast down. Her ten-foot spread of wings tilted, swayed as she
circled, balanced and then began descending. She fluttered down, her feet
dropping, her wings, flapping backward as she righted herself to land on tiptoe
before us.
"Guy—you
camel I was afraid that Toh would not get in to
you."
It was brighter up here than down in the
city. The red sky painted Tama's deep-red feathered wings a lurid crimson.
They were folded now as she stood before us, arching from her shoulderblades, with their tips just clearing the ground
behind her.
She
wore the usual silky gray-blue trousers, bound at her ankles. Her bare feet
were encased in sandals, with gold cord crossing her instep and fastened to the
lower trouser hem. A silken gray-blue scarf wound about her waist, crossing in
front, passing up over her breast and shoulders, crossing again between the
wings behind and descending to the waist.
Her
hair was a glossy black. It covered her ears; and its two long thick plaits
were laced tightly with silken cords. They came forward over each other; each
was fastened to her body in two places—at the waist, and again where the plait ended, at the outside of her trouser leg, just at the
knee.
I noticed that from her
belt a knife handle protruded. I
seized her outstretched hands.
"Tama, what is going
on tonight? This turmoil—"
Several inches shorter than
Toh, she stood like a child
before
me. But there was nothing of the child in her swift,
vehement
words. Nor in the flash of her dark eyes, the set
of her jaw.
"Guy,
I must question you—quickly. Please, will* you answer?"
I
held her hands and stood gazing down at her upturned face. The red sheen of the
storm deepened its flush.
"Yes," I said.
Tou
know not—you know nothing of the events of the two day-cycles past. Today . . .
yesterday . . . Roc has held you a prisioner."
"That I did not know, Tama. I did not realize—"
"No,"
she retorted cynically, "because you had work—no need to go out. But yesterday
I sent Toh to try and get you. They would not let him
in. And the things that are transpiring in the city—"
A
vision of Roc rose before me: his hawk-like gray face; his long black hair,
shot with white for all his youth, streaming over his ears; his leer as he
assigned the work that I was to do, and told me to proceed with the completion
of my rocket-cylinder.
Tama
demanded abruptly, "Guy, can you get control of any weapons? We girls know
nothing of such things. But you, in your work—"
There
are no weapons used in the Light Country of the sort which on Earth would be
called modem. Explosives are unknown. There are knives, feathered arrows flung
with a sling, and several devices for longer range, mostly of the catapult
principle—crude, mechanical things.
But
I understood that the government had small electronic weapons, and defensive
electro-armament There is an electro-magnetic current known to the Light
Country scientists. I suppose it is something akin to what is
called electricity on Earth. But I had never seen the weapons developed from
it.
"They are all sealed in the storehouse,
Tama, under the palace. They keep an arsenal there in case of an attack of
savages from the Fire Country, or a revolt of the Cold Country slaves."
The last phrase affected
her strangely. "Revolt—of slaves.
Ah,
yes!" There was a murmured, tense bitterness in her words. Then she added,
"Could you get in there?"
"No, I don't believe
so."
"Have you ever been in
the arsenal?"
"Let me see—yes, once,
years ago."
She
thought a moment. The rain was starting now, in big, splattering drops. The
wind was steadily increasing, and growing hotter: the storm was whirling down
on us from the Fire Country.
Tama
drew me closer under the overhanging rock. Toh
crouched with us.
He
said abruptly, "There was once a long-range ray. My father told me of
it."
Again
a vision of Roc rose jeeringly at me. It was Roc who originally had told me of
this high-powered ray, a lost and almost forgotten weapon. Centuries ago, the
Light Country civilization had reached a higher peak than now. There had been
many wars with the neighboring savages of the hotter and colder regions. With
these declining, and the population of Mercury steadily decreasing, the Light
Country began turning primitive. The ray was lost now in the Him pages
of history. It was almost a legend handed down from generation to generation.
Tama said, "What sort
of a ray?"
I
answered, "An electronic ray-projector. The ray-current itself is known.
I think the government has small hand projectors. The lost mechanism was for
long range and very high-powered—a death-ray."
Roc
had smiled very strangely at me when he described what the ray must have been.
Toh put in again: "They are trying to
discover that lost ray, in the government workshops."
"Yes," I agreed.
"But it is not ready
now?" Tama asked.
"I think not."
Then we cannot get it—nor can it be used
against us. You cannot get any other weapons, Guy?"
"No.
Tama, all these questions—you must tell me—" I gripped her. "Tama, this turmoil
tonight—?"
"I
will tell you what is the meaning of this turmoil, as you call it."
I listened, amazed at her vehement,
passionate words. For months past, the virgins of the Hill City had been refusing
marriage. There had been isolated instance of rebellion—I knew that, of
course. But what I did not know was that two days ago, news had spread about
the city of a law which Roc was proposing to the Government Council. That law
had been passed this morning. And tonight it was to have gone into effect
tonight.
"Forcing
us into marriage, Guy! No longer now can we keep our wings until we take a
husband."
They
were clipping the wings of every girl in the city over sixteen years of age.
"So
we will have no reason to refuse marriage, since we are mutilated anyway."
I
thought of Roc's official cart as I had seen it before that house. And the girl
screaming inside.
The
city was in chaos. The girls had had two days warning. There had been plans,
preparations. The thing that they had been contemplating for months under
Tama's leadership was now forced upon them.
There
was to be a flight—an exodus of marriageable young girls from the Hill City.
There are five other large cities in the Light Country. The girls in them would
soon come also. All day the word had been circulating. This black storm aided
them in escaping. A preliminary rendezvous had been determined—a hundred miles
or so off in the metallic barren desert toward the central Fire Country.
Even now the girls were flying there, singly
and m groups, slipping from their homes—seeking out friends, to tell them
also—winging away from the Hill City into the lurid, storm-filled gloom.
"And
we have built little platforms," Tama was saying, "with handles, so
that the girls can fly with them. We're taking the victims—the few we can
gather who have already been mutilated this night. Guy, when you see the poor
things! Their wings, once so beautiful, with the feathers clipped and
plucked—the muscles cut, the blood streaming-"
Toh said suddenly: "I killed a man
tonight."
She
seemed not to hear him. I had leaped to my feet, pulling her with me. She stood
now, clinging to me. And she was trembling.
"We—I
want you, Guy. I want you with us. I will take you on one of the platforms. We
will hide—off in the desert. We are going permanently, Guy. Two thousand of
us. And there will be others come to join us. We've got to do it! There is
nothing left now. Well find soil, some little hidden valley where we can build
shelters and grow food. There is nothing else left for us to do!"
She
silenced my questions with her tumult of words: "Will you come? We need
you—we are not such fools that we do not realize a man can fight for existence
in the desert better than girls. There is Toh, and a
few other young men are coming. We want a little band of men to help us— to
lead us."
She
ended with a wild appeal. "You of the great Earth who know so much—and yet
you know so little of how the virgins of Mercury feel about their wings! Guy,
will you come?"
vni
THE
FLYING PLATFORMS
When she paused, I said abruptly, "Yes, 111 come."
I
stood watching her as she walked to the brink of the jagged eminence. She faced
the rolling naked landscape, a dark blur in the murk of the storm. It was
raining heavily now—hot rain that slanted down on the wind in great sheets.
The
turgid green of the sky caught the raindrops and turned them all to emeralds,
and to rubies when the lightning flashed in puffs like crimson bombs. One
seemed to explode directly over us. The report was deafening, the crimson glare
blinding.
Tama stood with upraised arms and her
crimson-feathered wings outstretched. In the lightning her figure showed
clearly.
A
signal. And in a moment it was answered. From some other rocky point nearby two
blobs rose into the air. They came soaring and swooping—two rectangular
platforms with girls flying beside them, carrying them. They came with a rush,
swept by the wind, then turned and steadied over our heads.
I
gazed up, and a distant lightning flare illumined them clearly. One was a small
platform, possibly twelve feet by six. Three long, flexible poles were fastened
crosswise under its bottom and bound with vine-strands. The poles, some
eighteen feet long, thus extended out each side about six feet.
At each of these handles a girl was flying—six
to the smaller platform three on each side. I saw that the other platform was
similar, save that it was several times larger, with sixteen girls bearing it
They
turned into the wind and with a great flapping of wings settled down on the
rocks near us. The smaller platform was empty. Upon the larger, perhaps a
dozen girls were lying. I went over and gazed at them, standing silent while
Tama told them that I had joined the flight. They lay huddled, clinging to the
low railing that outlined the platform
A
lump rose in my throat at the sight of their strained white faces. Some of them
shifted their positions, trying to hide from me the white bandages,
bloodstained, with which their mutilated wings were bound. The platform
carrying them was presently back in the air. We watched it as it fled off into the face of the storm, away from the city
toward the wilds of the Fire Country. A moment passed; then the lurid murk
swallowed it.
"Come, Guy. I will
ride with you and Toh."
Toh took his place on the platform; he gestured
to me. My mind was confused, whirling with all Tama had told me—the shock of
this catastrophe.
Then
the confusion fell from me. I stopped, stood a moment in thought. And questions
rushed at me.
I
faced Tama. "Did that platform start for your distant meeting place?"
"Yes! Yes, Guy."
"And
now you want to take Toh and me there?"
"Yes. All is ready." "But is itr
I
knew vaguely the locality the girls had selected. "There is no valley with
soil there, Tama."
"No. But I had to
select a place all the girls knew. We have often met there in little groups—to try and plan what we might
do."
"And
because you have been there before," I said, "Roc probably knows the
place. Hell follow. Did you think of thatr
She had not. But it was too late now to
change plans. Every moment girls were leaving the city.
"On foot, Roc cannot get there in less
than two day-cycles," Toh said. "More, in
this storm. The canyons will be river torrents."
It
was true enough. The ferocity of the storm, here on the exposed height where we
stood, was only too apparent. The wind tore at us and we were drenched by
sheets of rain.
"Come," I said. "No more of
this." I realized that the wind was tearing at our shouted words. I took
my place on the platform. "Tell your girls to circle over the city,
Tama."
She stared at me.
"But, Guy—"
"III
explain as we go. And I must know more about your plans. It will be death—out
there in the desert—without every possible safeguard."
She
gave the order and we rose into the wind. The light platform swayed and bucked
as the girls struggled with it. For a time I thought they would lose control.
They had had little practice. The wind caught us, bore us away in spite of
their struggling wings. Then they pulled more evenly, turned us, held us
soaring. They turned again; and more steadily this time, we swept upon -the
heels of the wind, out over the circular valley.
The lights of the storm-lashed city gleamed a
thousand feet beneath us. Down all the inclined streets the water was pouring.
The little lake by the palace showed its surface lashed by the wind.
I crouched by Tama. "Tell me, quickly, what preparations for food and
equipment you have made."
They were surprisingly complete. It was
obvious that there was no way by which we could now improve them.
We
crossed over the city, and turned back while she told me.
"Our
plan, Guy, is to gather at this meeting place. And when we are all there and
the storm is past, we can find a suitable valley with soil."
There
were girls rising occasionally from the city. One passed near us. I said
abruptly, "Tama, call her."
She obeyed at once. And for all my ten years
on Mercury, the action gave me a start She stood up on our tiny, tilting
platform, and I had the sudden absurd fear that she would fall—a thousand feet
down into the city under us!
"Tama, you—"
I
choked it back, as she spread her wings and leaped into the void to follow the
other girl. She called to her, and the two came winging back to us.
The
other girl was hardly sixteen. She gazed at me and smiled when Tama told her
that I would help them.
"Tama," I asked, "how many
young men are coming?"
"Twenty
. . . thirty, perhaps. The platform bearing them should be gone by now."
It
occurred to me that Roc, if he had learned of this, could so easily place a spy
among those men.
"You think you can
trust them?"
"Yes. We thought of that. They have all
been in sympathy with us for months." "Are there any others?"
"Other young men?"
"Yes.
Who would have come—but have not heard of this?" "Many others,"
she said. "You know who they are?"
"Oh, yes.
I have
been testing them—talking to them,
with caution, for a long time
back."
"Then tell this
girl who they are. She
is under
sixteen, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Then Roc's
men will
not bother
her. This new law does
not touch her."
The girl listened
eagerly while Tama translated. She was to stay in
the city
for a
day or
two, and find other girls
of her age who would spread
the word.
"Tell her to
gather all the young men
she can
trust," I said to Tama. Have
you any
other platforms down there?"
"Yes. Lina knows where they
are hidden."
The girl nodded.
There would be other girls
in a
day or
two who would be
wanting to leave. And there
were fifty or more waiting now
to gather
the victims
of Roc's
first execution of the new
law, and bring them on
platforms.
The girl
left us and dropped back
into the city.
Tama asked
me, "Now,
Guy, shall we start? I
do not
want to tire our girls, flying
here in this wind and
rain, with the long flight before
them."
"Presently, Tama.
Circle around a moment more."
I had been
studying the situation beneath us.
One does
not give up his
known world without a struggle.
My rocket-cylinder
was down
there, in my workshop under
the palace.
It was practically ready for operation.
The small
cylinder with its mechanisms was ready.
I could,
I felt
sure, even unaided and alone in
the desert,
find means to load its
firing chambers, and launch
it. I
had been
living for ten years in
the hope of communicating
with Earth.
And now it
came to me clearly that
even more important than my own
desire to send a message
to Earth
was the
fact that it might be the
best thing to do for
these girls. I saw myself now as their logical
leader. The responsibility for their safety would rest with me. And we were
burning our bridges. This rebellion, this flight was an irrevocable step. The
government, dominated by Roc, would never compromise.
We
might be followed by the Light Country army, found, assailed. Or if not that,
then there could be starvation in the desert, or death from savages or the
strange fearsome animals that lurked in the Fire Country.
As
though with prophetic vision I could see us embattled. And I knew that every
one of these virgins would choose death before she returned beaten and yielded
her wings to the mutilating knife—before she married and bore children, perhaps
to suffer the same.
I
said abruptly, Tama, I'm going down to get my cylinder. We may have to send a
message to Earth."
I
told her why. There was no argument. Both she and Toh
could see it.
"I
killed a man tonight," said Toh, and turned his
white face to his sister as he explained how he had killed the guard to get me
out. "We are in this—there is no returning."
I
had been pondering how I could best land and get to my room unseen. I knew that
Roc would stop me, seize me if he could. The opened gateway and the vanished
guard had perhaps by now been discovered, along with my own escape.
We were now almost directly over the flat
roof of the palace. The easiest way to get to my rooms was from the lake-then
over the wall, into the garden and through the corridor gate—the way Toh and I had come out. But I saw, as a flare illumined the
scene, that there were figures below—not at the gateway, but so near it that
Tama could not land the platform unobserved anywhere in that vicinity. And the
trees would make a ground landing very difficult and precarious in this wind,
almost anywhere on the city level.
But
the flat roof of the palace seemed empty. It would take only a moment to touch
the roof. Once I left the platform, it could at once dart
away. Even if it were
seen from below, it could not
be assailed
quickly. Probably no one would
realize that I had
left it, and, from the
roof, I would take my chances
on getting
down through the palace unseen.
"Then we
will wait for you on
the roof,
Guy?"
"No! You would
be seen.
It would
cause comment, and they would come
up after
you."
I thought I
had a
quick way of getting out
of the
city. I told her where to
meet me with the platform,
in a
secluded place some distance
away.
She gazed
at me
sharply when I described the
place.
"Oh, I can
get there,"
I smiled.
"You forget, I am more
agile than the Mercutian men. The whole thing
will take no more than half
an hour—if
I have
luck."
We were
dropping toward the roof. Its
flat top was a little
lake of water with
the rain
pouring on it and gathering
there. The men outside the palace
saw us
as we
came down—there was no doubt of
that. The red puffs in
the sky
were almost continuous now. The glare
showed us clearly; and I
saw the
men staring up at
us.
Half a dozen
of the
official carts were coming up
to the
main doorway of the
building, the brues drawing them
through the water on
the roadway.
Girls were being taken from the carts and shoved
roughly into the palace. One
went fighting, her cries
floating up to us through
the surge
of storm.
We landed
on the
rain-soaked roof with a splash.
"I am
going with you," Toh said suddenly.
"No. I can
manage it better alone. If
I meet
anyone, he may not necessarily know that Roc had
me imprisioned. Hurry now, and get
this platform away. Ill be there,
Tama, in half an hour."
The platform
lifted. One of the girls
had already
shown signs of tiring. Tama took
her place.
I crouched in
the water
by the
roof palisade, watching the platform sweep away. From the
ground the rooftop was visible.
I didn't
think anyone had seen me
land.
I waited a
few moments.
Then I went to the
hooded trap, opened it, and descended
the ladder
into the palace.
rx
MADMAN'S GAMBLE
The
uppeh story was dim and silent, but sounds
came floating up the central
spiral, and I heard the
dragging tread of the Mercutians downstairs. I stood at the
head of the spiral. No one was on it—no
one in
sight. It seemed as good
a time
as any. I got
down to the main floor,
and unexpectedly
ran into a man.
"Ah, it
is you,
Palisse. They
are rebellious,
these idiot girls. Listen to them."
He spoke
bis native language.
He gestured to
a nearby
room-arch. "Listen, Palisse. Roc puts the
new order
into effect at once."
"Yes," I said.
I had
pushed past him. Evidently in
the dimness
of this
foyer he had not noticed
that I was drenched with rain, nor had he
seen that I was coming
from the rooftop. He went
past me and disappeared.
From a nearby
room came the sounds of
gruff men's voices, the terrified murmur
of girls,
a low
moan—then a scream.
I did not
linger. From the direction of
the main
doorway another party was
bringing in a group of
girls. I moved away toward tie incline leading downward,
and reached
the underground
level. There seemed no one
down here—just a dim candlestick in a bracket bowl.
I reached the
inner door-slide of my apartment.
It stood
ajar, but I could
not remember
leaving it so. Roc had
been keeping me a prisoner, but
he had
not let
me know
it. Instead
of sealing
this inner door upon me,
he had
doubtless
put a guard nearby, to turn me back if I
tried to leave my rooms.
But
the guard was not here now. I hastened into my rooms. The doorway opened
directly into my bedroom, which seemed undisturbed. It was not so long since Toh and I had left it My single light was still burning.
The door-slide to the lower corridor-exit was closed. I remembered distinctly
that Toh and I had closed it after us.
In the silence, as I stood an instant upon
entering, I could hear the sound of the flume-water outside, vicious now, an
angry torrent swollen by the rain of the storm. I went into my workshop. My
benches, shelves of chemicals—all my familiar apparatus were in order.
I
gathered the loading chambers of the rocket-cylinder, fuses, the little coils
of rotary magnetizers, and parchment sheets and etching pencils with which I
could write a message. I could put them all into the cylinder's hollow
interior, to keep them dry against the storm. Lastly, I collected the chemicals
needed to complete the apparatus.
I
piled all the articles on my center bench. But when I turned to the box where I
kept the cylinder itself, I found the cylinder missing!
It
turned me cold. I stared into the little box, in the shadows of the room
comer. It was empty. But I had left the cylinder there. I searched quickly.
It
seemed that I heard a sound from my bedroom. I had entered with my knife in
hand. The knife now lay on the center bench. I seized it and rushed into the
bedroom. But in my frantic haste I stepped too briskly. The lesser gravity of
Mercury was not enough to hold me down, and my head struck the eight-foot top
of the connecting arch. It knocked me dizzy, but I regained my feet, and reeled
into the bedroom.
The cylinder lay on my bed. And behind the
head-curtain Roc rose up to confront me.
"So you came back, Palisse.
What a luck for me! I need you."
I was still dizzy from the blow on my head. I
stood wavering, and saw that he was backing away from me, saw his grinning,
leering face with the point of hair coming low on his forehead to give him a
queer, Satanic look. His pointed ears came out from the locks of his hair as he
listened.
"Where
have you been, Palisse? In the rain?—well, that is
evident."
His
voice was unduly loud, trying to attract attention to us. He was backing behind
my bed, and fumbling at his belt where I saw that he carried a small
arrow-sling.
My
head cleared. If I turned to close the door he would be on me. I said nothing.
I was moving sideways to avoid the table. Suddenly I leaped and caught him at
the bedpost, before he had got out his weapon. He twisted, seizing the hand
that held my knife.
Together
we swayed out into the room. The table went over and the light with it. For a
moment we fought in the darkness, both silent, panting and grim. I was far
stronger than he. And there is a curious fragile quality to the Mercu-tians. But his fingers clung desperately to my knife
hand, and his other arm was around my neck.
We
struck a chair and fell, still locked together. Suddenly he let go of my wrist
and his groping hand found the smashed table lamp. He flung it into my face;
the hot fat burned me. My swaying knife went wild.
The
voices outside seemed nearer. I staggered to my feet, lifting Roc up, and with
all my strength heaved his body away. It broke his hold. He crashed against the
overturned table and lay still. There was a little glow of light straggling in
from the passageway, and in it I could see Roc lying in the wreckage of the
smashed table.
I did not stop to investigate. The congealing
fat of the lamp smeared my burned face, and was in my eyes. I wiped it away,
then caught up the cylinder from the bed—a two-foot, cylindrical metal
contrivance.
I
hastened into my workshop, stuffing the apparatus from the center bench into
the cylinder and closing it. In a moment I was out through the lower corridor
doorway.
I went up the ascending passage almost at a
run, the cylinder under one arm, and my knife in the other hand. There would be
pursuit, I knew. I could already hear the voices back in my bedroom. Doubtless
I had not killed Roc; perhaps he was only shamming as he fell.
The
outer gate was ajar and I went through it into the open air. The storm was
raging as before, with its red torrent of rain coming down. The trees bent
their porous branches like reed in a wind.
I
had hoped to be able to make off into the city without raising a cry after me,
but the alarm was already given. A puff of lightning showed my surroundings
clearly: the garden wall curving behind me, the stretch of lake wall with the
waves dashing over it, and the other side of the triangle, hemmed in by the
metal flume. Its ten-foot depth was depressed into the ground, the sides
rising only a foot or two. It passed quite near me and I caught a glimpse of
its turgid whirling current.
An
arrow sang past me as, for an instant, I stood undecided. At the gate out of
which I had come, men appeared. They stood shouting. I could see that the way
along the lake was blocked by other men, who had heard the shouts, and now came
running at me.
I
was suddenly aware of a sound close behind me, a strange sloshing. I turned. A brue was slithering forward through the water and mud of the path. In the
lurid half-light its eyes gleamed balefully—a gruesome thing, ten feet long.
Its upraised head, as it advanced, was nearly the height of my own; its
feelers—muscular arms the length of the body, with the strength to crush
me—waved over its head.
The watchful insect was partly between me and
the flume. There was an instant when I was confused. A brue could leap suddenly, swift as a coiled snake. I turned the other way,
back toward the wall Arrows came at me, but a gust caught them and flung them
away. The men by the wall scattered as they thought I was about to rush them.
The turmoil was rising around me. There were
shouts from everywhere. Figures were approaching, it seemed, from every
direction. I was caught, hemmed in. I saw a boulder lying under a tree and
seized it, raising it aloft. It was a tremendous chunk, but it seemed light to
my strength here on this little world. I had shoved my knife back in my belt,
but it was awkward to have to cling to the cylinder.
The brue did not leap, but with lowered head came slithering toward me. I heaved
the rock with one hand. It caught the giant insect full in its gruesome,
pseudo-human face, mashing it. The thing let out a shrill, horrible scream and lay quivering.
The
men behind me seized this opportunity to advance. A thrown knife winged past my
shoulder, tearing my shirt. I went with a twenty-foot
leap over the writhing, crushed insect, and reached the flume. Clinging to the
cylinder, I plunged into the boiling, tumbling current and was swept away.
The water was hot, with a heavy mist of vapor
rising from it. I sank, with my plunge, but desperately held to the cylinder.
In a moment I came up like a cork.
But for all my buoyancy, it was difficult to keep my head above the surface. A
chaos of spray and boiling, lashing water swept viciously down the incline of
the flume. I could see dimly the smooth metallic sides rushing past me. Red
puffs in the sky overhead illumined the sweep of passing tree branches.
I
tried to swim, but could not. Momentarily I was under the surface, then up
again, tumbling end over end, rolling-beaten against the rushing side of the
flume when it turned a curve. The hermetically-sealed cylinder, with the air inside
it, floated high. It jerked and pulled to escape from me. Once it got away, but
I lunged and caught it again.
It
was two miles across the city to where the flume plunged into the cliff tunnel.
It seemed unending, yet I must have made it with incredible speed. Houses went
by—dim shapes with lights in them, racing backward, momentarily visible over
the flume edge. There was a great sweeping curve where the swollen torrent
surged and slopped over the edge and I was very nearly flung over.
But
presently I was able to keep my body from turning and found that I could swim a
little. Then I tried holding the cylinder before me like a buoy and kicking it
forward. I got along better after that. But the relief was short. The widening
mouth of the tunnel entrance yawned out of the darkness ahead and swallowed
me.
In
the solid blackness I lost all track of direction. I could not see the sides of
the flume. There was nothing but the inky chaos of sounds, a roaring
reverberation now, and the beat of the waves against me. There was a dull thud
as I struck the flume-side and was hurled back into the center of the current.
An
interval passed of tumbling black chaos; then abruptly I saw the red lightning
in the sky again. The cliff-wall opening swept backward and I was through the
tunnel and in the open stormy night, outside the city valley.
The flume abruptly ended. I was spilled out
in a great cascade of water.
The cylinder
was torn
from me. Rocks struck me. I
felt myself rolling, tumbling on
a rocky surface.
X
BESIEGED IN THE
METAL DESERT
For
an instant my senses must
have faded. When they cleared, I was lying away
from the water, save for
the rain
that beat upon me.
And Tama
and her
brother were standing over me.
The cylinder
was unharmed.
They had found it lying on
the nearby
rocks. "You got it!"
Toh exulted.
I was
bruised and battered, half choked
with water, but not injured. The
platform was here. We mounted
it, Tama,
Toh and
I crouching
together with the precious cylinder
held between us.
The girls lifted
us; we
struggled up into the night,
circled the outside of the city
valley, and headed out into
the metal
desert, toward the Fire
Country. The storm seemed now
to burst into the height of
its fury.
The whirling
rotary clouds were at times close
over us—green and red vapor
masses, hurling rain and
wind heavy with sulphur.
The clouds sometimes
rifted into gigantic vertical funnels
through which the clear
daylight of the sky was
visible. It brightened the scene, and
the bleak,
desolate landscape beneath us was
at those
moments clearly shown as great
rippled sheets of metallic plateau,
drenched with water—shining coppery,
then cast with green—or blinding
red when
the lightning puffed—or again, a wild,
broken area with spires and crags and boulders strewn
as though
some frenzied Titan had flung them.
And
we swept over tiny valleys where soil had collected and trees and verdure had
sprung up. The trees bent low in the wind; the rain-sheet blurred our vision of
them as we struggled past.
It
seemed unending. It would have been called a hundred miles on Earth. If the
storm had not abated a trifle we could never have gone on. Tama relieved the
girls to the hmit of her strength—but Toh and I had to crouch there, helpless.
Then the deep pit of the cauldron valley,
with jagged, upstanding buttes and spires towering over it, lay beneath us. We
knew there would be caves down there to give us shelter. A great shaft of
green-red light came down from a rift in the tumbling clouds. It fell like a
cathedral shaft and disclosed the mile-wide pit floor. The close-encircling
walls offered a measure of protection from the wind. Girls were down there,
flapping about Platforms lay discarded. Figures of girls and a few men were
dragging supplies and equipment into the nearest caves.
The meeting-place at last!
The
light from the clouds held only a moment—then it was gone and there was
darkness in the little valley under us. We descended into it. There were at
least five hundred girls here now. At intervals more straggled in.
The valley
floor was naked metal rock, thickly studded with boulders. There was not a
blade of vegetation; as I had anticipated, this was indeed no place where a
permanent camp could be made.
But
there were caves to give us shelter. In the dark confusion I located a dozen
or so of the Hill Country young men and we got all the equipment sheltered
underground. Meager supplies!—a few knives for weapons, agricultural implements,
food-bulbs and seeds, a little clothing and personal effects.
With my
strength and activity, abnormal on
this small world, I raised the
equipment in great armfuls and
staggered into the caves.
As order
gradually came out of the
confusion, Tama and I began to
feel that the situation was
not quite
as drastic
as it had seemed at first.
When the storm was over
we could
fly to find soil, and build
houses there. We had carpenters'
tools of a sort,
and the
wood on Mercury is very
porous, easy to work. In the
lush soil, vegetation grows rapidly.
In a dozen day-cycles, with favorable
weather, some of the food
would be ready for
harvesting. We had enough food
with us now, with luck, to
last that long.
The caves, most
of them,
communicated. It was presently an eerie scene inside, with
animal-fat lamps spluttering flickering yellow fight, and our
blue-green bulbs—small battery affairs
of the
electro-current which a few of the girls had been able
to secure—casting
weird shadows on the walls.
For hours, while
the storm
raged, the girls struggled in.
Fresendy we
had about
a thousand—although there
was no
really accurate means of
counting them. Some were from
the City of the Water, the
second largest settlement of the
Light Country.
"The word
has spread
there," said Tama.
We were in
the cave
which I had rigged for
myself. Already I had started
preparing my chemicals for the
charging of the cylinder.
Tama added, "Every
virgin in the Light Country
will join us in time. Except
those ... unable to fly."
Some of the
mutilated girls with us now
were in pitiable condition. The exposure
of the
storm, the chill of the
wind, the rain-soaked platforms upon which
for so
many hours they had lain inactive,
had made
them ill and fever was
attacking them.
We prepared
meals of a sort, and
while the others slept I
tried to arrange some
form of organization by which
with concerted, planned effort
the necessary
work of existing might be performed.
That night-cycle
passed and the next day
began. Day and night were alike
in the
darkness of the black storm.
The rain
fell in an almost
continuous downpour. The wind surged
and sang around the naked pinnacles
that towered over the valley.
Puffs of lightning came
at intervals.
Within our caves it was
only a distant turmoil, but outside
it was
an inferno
of raging,
angry nature.
I posted the
young men as guards at
the cave-mouths,
where they could see
across the cauldron. It was
about a mile in diameter, a
pit depressed
a hundred
feet or so below the level
of the
surrounding plateau upland. The rim
was broken with gullies and ravines
and studded
with pinnacles like great pointed church
spires. The caves we had
chosen were all close together at
the bottom
of one
wall.
As one stood
at the
cave-mouths, all was a green
lurid murk outside. The wind came
only in fitful, crazy gusts
down here at the cauldron bottom.
The opposite
valley wall could be seen only
dimly, its rim outlined against
the turgid
sky. Then a hghtning
puff would momentarily redden eveiything with its glare.
I had my
chemical reactions well underway. We
expected every hour that
the storm
would abate. I was preparing
to write this narrative, an appeal
to Earth.
Dr. Grenfell
once said to me that within
ten years
he and
his associates
would conquer the secret of space-navigation.
I hoped
that might by now have been
accomplished.
Two day-cycles passed. Again the storm
lulled, but it still hung threateningly. We had just
had an
evening meal in our cave, when
one of
the young
guards came rushing in. He
knew a little English but he
forgot it now. He called
excitedly to Tama.
She sprang
to her
feet. There was a flutter
around the dim cave, for a
dozen or more of the
girls were here with us.
Tama whirled on me.
Before I could stop
them, several of the girls
ran, half-flying, out of the
cave. I rushed out, calling
after them. The rain had ceased.
The valley
floor held black pools of
water between the boulders. The sky
overhead was brighter, with slow, funnel clouds with green
shafts piercing them.
On the upper
rim I
saw the
skulking figures of Roc's pursuing
band. Our girls came fluttering
from the caves to gaze
up at them.
"Inside!" I called. "Tama,
get them
inside!"
It was too
late! A group of them
had run
into an open space. From above,
a long-winged
arrow came sailing down. Tama shouted. But the arrow
caught one of the scattering
girls. She fell on
the rocks
with the arrow sticking up
from her back.
From then, it
was open
warfare. All that day men
were appearing in greater
numbers on the rim-top. They
did not
dare come down, apparently,
but were
content to camp there in the
upper crags and harry us.
We did
not know
if Roc
was with them or
not—nor how many men there
were.
They tried to
open communication with us. I
was in
favor of it, but the infuriated
girls refused. A last platform
had arrived from the Hill City,
with a few young men
and nearly
twenty mutilated girls on
it. Roc's
men flung
a rain
of arrows
and stones
at it
as it
came down. Two of the
girls were lolled.
But down below
we were
more wary now and kept
cautiously within the caves whenever
the sky
was bright.
The storm still clung. Then there
came a period when the
sky was black as night again.
We added
to our
guards; it seemed likely that Roc
would take advantage of the
blackness and come down.
The thought of
that gave me an idea.
If Roc
were up there with these men,
why couldn't
I prowl
out and
seize him? I told this to
Tama and Toh.
"If we could
capture him, hold him as
hostage—threaten his life—" Tama said.
"We could make
him disperse
his band,"
I finished.
I desperately
wanted them to be gone;
they would hamper me, perhaps could even stop me
from launching the cylinder. And
when we were ready
to fly
from here, some of the
girls undoubtedly would be killed
by their
arrows. There were many of the
girls Aow who wanted to fly
out in
force and try to drive Roc's
men away,
but I
was obdurate
against it. These young girls, flying,
armed with knives, to enter
into deadly combat! It was unthinkable.
But Tama and
I might
prowl quiedy out into this blackness
and bring
Roc back
with us.
Toh wanted
to go,
but I
would not let him. Tama
could fly; and I, an Earthman,
had unusual
strength and agility.
We started
out with
a knife
and a
small electro-torch in each of our
belts. We picked our way
slowly to the floor of
the valley. It was
like the blackest of nights
on Earth,
save for that queer green-yellow sheen on the clouds.
The wind
swirled overhead, but there
was no
rain.
Tama walked beside
me, her
wings occasionally flapping slowly.
"We must keep
together," I whispered.
"When we get near the top,
I'll wait, while you fly
around."
"But keep out
over the valley. If they
fire at you, fly back
down."
We arranged
fight flashes by which we
could call each other if it
became necessary. We passed the
line of caves, splashing in the
pools of water which lay
on the
valley bottom. Then we
began to climb. No lights
were showing on the rim overhead;
it seemed
that Roc's men were back
from the brink, in cave openings,
perhaps.
Climbing was
not difficult
for me.
With my weight less than half
what it was on Earth,
and my
strength of muscle the same, I
could leap up this ascent
with ease.
And to Tama
it was
nothing. She flew from one
crag, upward to the next,
and waited
for me
to arrive.
There was a
place where we had to
cross a transverse ravine. It
was too
broad for me to leap
with safety—sixty feet, perhaps.
Tama whispered,
"Hold me, Guy."
I put an
arm about
her thighs;
and as
I crouched
under her wings, we leaped together.
She could
almost sustain me. We fluttered over
the ravine
and landed
scrambling but unhurt on its
opposite lower brink.
She was laughing
softly. "We get along very
well .... Look there!"
Her tone changed
abruptly. We crouched among the
rocks gazing up to where the
valley rim showed black against
the stormy sky.
A dark shadow
sailed slowly across the little
valley, a thousand feet up. As
it became
clearer we could see it
was oblong, with tiny lights upon
it. Its
small headlight ray was searching the plateau as though
seeking a landing place. Then it passed over the
rim and
vanished.
That was the
first I had heard of
a flying
vehicle existing on Mercury. We could
see now,
behind the rim-top, the answering signal-beams of Roc's men.
It took us
an hour
to locate
the vehicle
and get
near it. But at last, without
raising an alarm, we reached
its vicinity.
It had come down on the
plateau perhaps a mile from
the cauldron-valley, concealed from
the caves
by an
upstanding line of buttes.
The figures
of Roc's
men on
the upper
plateau unwittingly guided us. Their
small hand fights showed as they
picked their way along the
broken rocky upland toward the spot
where the vehicle had landed.
Tama and I
made a wide detour, ten
miles to one side at
least. Scrambling, running, flying,
we made
good speed.
Was this vehicle
from the Hill City bringing
Roc, perhaps, to join his
men and
plan what they were to
do with
the insurgent virgins? The
scientists of the Hill City
had never really admitted me into
their secret activities. Flying vehicles had once been used
on Mercury;
had this
one been
reconstructed from the lost
secrets of history?
We reached it
at last,
a great
metal bird lying on the
rocks. We crouched on
the top
of a
butte, overlooking it. There were fights
on its
deck and in its portes. And hand lights showed a crowd of
Roc's men swarming around it
outside.
As I gazed,
I received
another shock. This was more
than a mere flying vehicle: it
was a
space-shipl
Its convex
panes, the dome like a transparent
bell over its deck, bore
evidence to that. It was a
ship from another planet. From
Earth?
My heart leaped.
But the
hope was at once dispelled.
Men appeared, working under
the bell
of the
forward deck. It was brighter under
there; we were not far
away, gazing almost directly down upon
them, for the ship lay
close against the wall of rock.
They were Mercutians, not
Earth-men.
Then we saw
Roc approaching.
A chance
beam from the ship struck him
and clung.
He stopped
and waved
his arms.
From the deck of
the ship,
where a porte
in the
dome had been rolled back, a
gigantic figure answered his greeting.
We had
relinquished hope of capturing Roc
now. With all these men, and
In the
glow of light, it would
have been too desperate an attempt.
We watched
Roc approach
the ship, dispersing his men while
he climbed
aboard and met the giant figure
on the
deck. We could see them
greet each other; then they turned
and went
into the ship's interior.
A moment later
a light
in a
lower porte of the hull flashed
on. It seemed to suggest that
Roc and
this giant were in the
cabin.
"Tama, if
we could
get down
there—hear what they're saying!"
It seemed
barely possible. The cabin porte faced the butte wall, which was perhaps twenty
feet away. The porte-hole was low
in the
hull, only a few feet
above the rocks on which
the ship rested. There
seemed to be none of
Roc's men down there; they were
all on
the other
side.
We approached the brink. It was
about a hundred-foot drop from where
we stood.
"Can you
lower us, Tama?"
"Yes. Hold
tight, Guy."
I put my
arms around her and we
stepped off the brink. My head
was at
her waist,
my arms
about her thighs, my body dangling
lower than hers to be
out of
the way
of her
wings. She struggled, flapping with all her
strength to check our fall.
If we were
not seen!
It was
fairly dark, but there was
a reflected glow from the ship.
There was a
wind moaning around this naked
rock-butte. The wall slid
up past
us; the
ship seemed to be coining
up. Then we dropped into the
twenty-foot wide space.
My feet struck
the ground.
The impact
was not
too severe.
We fell in a
heap, but were unhurt. The
porte stood open,
quite near us, and
we could
hear voices. We found a
place where we could see, and
ignored the fact that we
were in a glow of light.
Within the small
metal-walled cabin, Roc sat with
the giant Mercutian. There was no
one else
in the
room. They were conferring earnesdy—the giant
man talking,
and Roc
doing most of the
listening.
He was
a man
of about
fifty, this stranger. I could
see him
plainly as he sat
sprawling his great lazy length
on a
padded bench. A man almost seven
feet tall, I judged him—heavy-set,
but not
with the thick, barrel-chested look of the Cold
Country natives.
He was
a Light
Country man, by his aspect,
but head
and shoulders taller than
the tallest
Mercutian I had
ever seen. He was garbed in
an animal
skin belted about his waist;
his limbs and torso
were naked and hairless, with
great muscles that glided beneath his
skin as he gestured.
A long black
mane of hair covered his
head and ears. It was white
at the
temples, and came in a
peak over his forehead, with that same Satanic
aspect characteristic of Roc But Roc
generally wore a grinning, crafty
smirk. This older man's face had
an expression
of rugged,
intellecual
strength, with its beak-like
nose, eyes sunk deep under
black bushy brows, and massive, square
jaw.
It was Roc's
father, the exiled Croat. They
were talking in the Light Country
tongue. I could understand some of it-enough so
that in a moment I
was tense
with amazement. And Tama clung to
me as
she listened.
How long we
crouched there I do not
know. Abrupdy I heard a ring/ An
arrow flashed past us I
We started
in a
realization of where we were;
the porte glow was on us,
had disclosed us I A group
of Roc's
men were
coming around the forward end of
the ship.
Another arrow sang past.
I leaped the
other way. It was fifty
or sixty
feet to the stem of the
ship. Tama fluttered above me.
I recall
that I shouted, "Tama,
fly oflT
I ran
the ship's
length in gigantic leaps. From
under the stern another group of
men appeared,
directly in my path. I landed
among them. They tried to
scatter; I made an effort
to check my leap
and take
another to clear them. A
stone hit me on the shoulder
and an
arrow sank into my leg;
I stooped and plucked it out.
Four or five men rushed
at me,
fell upon me, and
I went
down.
But they
could not hold me. I
plunged my knife into one
of them and lost
it as
he fell.
I stood
struggling, kicking, flinging them off. But
there were a dozen or
more of them here now. They
came back at me like
terriers. Their shouts raised the alarm
and more
men arrived
at a
run. On the ship's stern over
us, Cold
Country men were peering down
in amazed curiosity at
our swaying
forms.
I was the
center of a struggling group. Then from over
us, Tama came like
a fighting
eagle into battle. She swooped
once and her knife
ripped a man's throat. She
went past, came swooping back again.
I tore myself
loose, crouched and sprang. My
thirty-foot leap carried me
over them all.
"Guy!"
Tama swooped at
me with
a rush
of beating
wings, and seized me. A rain
of stones
clattered about us. A torch-beam
fell upon us and
held us in its disclosing
circle of fight.
I cast
Tama off. "Fly away—before you are hit!"
I ran on.
But she
came with another swoop, and
caught me as I rose in
one of
my giant
bounds. She struggled and flapped, until the ship and
its turmoil
had dwindled
into distance behind us, and my
weight pulled us down again
on the cauldron rim.
XI
THE PLOT AGAINST
EARTH'S WOMEN
We
are still here in our
caves at the bottom of
the valley
(continued the warning message
from Guy Palisse). Tama
and I got back safely, and
there seemed no pursuit. Roc's
men were quiet up
on the
rim. And after a time
we saw
the spaceship depart.
During these
last three cycles I have
been absorbed in this narrative, and in preparing my
cylinder for launching. My chemicals are
about ready and now I
am finishing
these pages.
We did not
know that this message was
to be
a warning
until we stood at
the window
of Croat's
spaceship and heard him talking to
Roc.
Even then, at
first I was too amazed
to grasp
the full
import of what they were
saying. I am not overly
skilled in the Mercutian
language, but now Tama and
I have
had time
to compare what we heard. Some
of it
we have
had to
infer. Croat was explaining to Roc
bis future plans.
But we
came in the middle of it,
after Croat had been talking
for some
minutes.
Yet we learned
much, and I set it
here as a warning. Croat
is now leader of the barbarous
Cold Country government. He must have
stolen the formulas of the
Light Country scientific devices of
former ages; for he has
developed the lost death-ray projector, and the small heat-rays
which at twenty paces can bum
a hole
through a man.
Roc, for all
these years, was in occasional
communication with his father,
spying upon the Light Country
government. We think it
was Roc
who secured
the records.
And Croat
built the interplanetary flying ship in the
Cold Country.
I must explain
that the women of the
Cold Country, through long generations forced to toil under
every adverse circumstance of
living, have long since lost
any semblance
of beauty. Heavy, pallid
creatures, barely able to fly,
they are, besides, few in number.
There is now in the
Cold Country scarcely one woman
to ten
men. The savage race is
dying out.
No doubt it
was Croat's
idea at first to develop
lethal weapons and attack the
Light Country, to capture and
enslave the flying virgins. Roc's part
was steadily
to agitate
more stringent laws regarding
the clipping
of the
virgins' wings. He and Croat did
not anticipate
what immediately happened—the
widespread, open revolt of the
virgins.
Meanwhile I—an Earthman—had
come with tales of a
greater world, a world
with women, beautiful, who cannot
fly. Curse my innocent
readiness to tell Roc all
I could
of Earth!
And so I
warn you! We got no
details, as we listened there
at that cabin porte. But we learned
enough. Roc mentioned that he was
leaving the Hill Country permanently.
That is good. Without him, the
government will be more conciliatory
toward the insurgent girls.
Indeed, it has been decided
that they return and try to
make peace. We feel that
the government
will now realize how drastic
was that
last law. And there are thousands
of men—fathers,
brothers and potential husbands of
the girls—who
now will
see things
in a
different fight.
The danger is
not here
but on
Earth. Croat's ship is leaving
for Earth;
it may
be gone
by the
time I can get this
cylinder launched.
How little
Tama and the virgins realized
that their revolt would spread to
menace the women of another
world! But it has.
Oh, my
accursedly loose tongue! I had
told Roc of my sister,
and of
Professor White, with his girls'
camp in Maine. I had made
maps of the Earth countries
for the
Hill City government.
Roc had
access to them. Croat has
them now! From the way he
talked, he will land in
Maine. You can imagine how
I feel—to have unwittingly
been an aid to this
menace! Croat even mentioned my sister
Rowena, there in the spaceship.
With diabolical cynicism he
told Roc how amusing it
would be if Rowena Palisse chanced to
be among
the captive
Earth-women whose beauty he would
soon be able to display
to his men of the Cold
Country. Just a few Earthwomen this first trial trip, he
said; then at each inferior
conjunction he would make other raids.
My sister Rowena!
I pray
you guard
her—if only this message reaches
you in
time!
What Tama and
I will
do when
the virgins
return to the Hill City, I
do not
know. One of our girls—a
blue-winged child barely sixteen—heard
this story from Tama; and
she disappeared yesterday. We have been wondering
if she
flew to Croat's ship, possibly to
hide in it and go
with it to Earth-to warn
you, Tama says, knowing that
it would
be just
like the girl's unselfish courage.
The storm is
really abating now. Roc's men
seem to have left this vicinity. We think the spaceship has
gone.
I must stop,
and get
the cylinder
launched. If only it reaches youl
xn
NIGHT-PROWLING GIANT
Dr.
Grenfeul's voice died away. And I—Jack Dean, a
news-broadcaster who had never dreamed of such news as this— slowly became
aware of my surroundings: the lounge of the Flying Cube; Dr. Grenfell at his
table, with the pages of Guy Palisse's message before
him and the Space-traveling cylinder at his feet; the other men, all sitting
tense; Jimmy Turk wide-eyed, breathless.
The
spell broke. But still I saw those naked, rainswept
copper hills—the Mercutian spaceship, the giant Croat
telling his son how he was about to raid the Earth.
How
well this message explained what had already happened to us on Earth! Croat
had come, as Guy Palisse warned. Croat's spaceship
had come faster than the cylinder. He had made his raid, captured the desired
number of girls, and his ship had gone back to Mercury. Croat had been left on
Earth, perhaps; but in less than four months his ship would come again.
I
became aware of a hand on my arm. I heard a sob. Ro-wena
was sitting, staring ahead with tear-filled eyes. I put my arm around her, and
she yielded like a child, clinging to me.
"Well,"
gasped Jimmy. "That explains it—by George, it does. Everything. He even
mentions the winged girl we shot at camp. Poor little thing—come to warn us and
we killed her! At the next conjunction that ship will come again. Palisse says it plainly. A raid in greater force!"
The men
were all excitedly talking at
once. Through the bull's-eye pane in
the floor,
the Earth's
surface showed under us—a spread of
mountains through a rift in
the clouds:
we were over the western United
States.
"Get back to
the controls,"
Dr. Grenfell
ordered. "Good grief, we might have
dropped and smashed on those
peaks for all we knew what
we were
doing!"
We checked
our descent
and swept
eastward. It was one o'clock the morning of September
sixth.
Dr. Grenfell was
glancing through the other pages
which Palisse
had sent.
"He evidently hoped we would
have a spaceship ready. These contain
astronomical data concerning Mercury—facts
unknown to us of Earth—its
size, density, the inclination
of its
axis, orbital rotation period, axial
rotation— the scientists of Hill City
seem fully as advanced as
ourselves for all the primitive, decadent civilization Palisse pictures. These notes will be of
great interest—"
"To heck with
that!" Jimmy muttered. "Dr. Grenfell
when is the next conjunction with Mercury and the
Earth—the time when they're
closest together again?"
"The first week
of December.
That's three months from now."
"Doctor, that's when
the Mercutians will come back! You
said so—you warned of
that in your public statement."
"I did, Jimmy."
Grenfell's gaze was still on
the pages
of notes. He added slowly, "He
has given
us full
landing instructions: how best to
approach Mercury, the location of
the Hill City. There's
a sketch
map here
of that
whole section of the Light
Country, and details of the
location of the valley where he
wrote the message and dispatched
the cylinder."
"Dr. Grenfell, we're
going, aren't we?" I burst
out. "If we can get there
before the Mercutians
are ready
to start
for Earth again—"
I felt Rowena's body grow tense. She sat
erect, staring at Dr. Grenfell with tear-filled eyes, but still she did not
speak.
Dr.
Grenfell smiled grimly, and as his gaze met mine I saw that his dark eyes were
smoldering.
"Oh,
yes, we're going! Do you suppose, with the Cube successful, as undoubtedly it
is, I would be content to make a futile trip to the Moon? We will take what
weapons we can and attempt to join Palisse on
Mercury. He evidently didn't come on Croat's ship or we would have heard from
him."
"When are we going?" Jimmy
demanded. "How soon?"
"At
once! I won't wait for the next conjunction. It will be twice as long a voyage
now—but what of it? We must go there at once!"
It was just before dawn of September
sixteenth when the Bolton Flying Cube left Earth for its voyage to Mercury.
There is so much which of necessity belongs in my narrative, that I pass over
these ten days of preparation with only a summary.
It
was soon decided that a considerable number of men aboard the Cube would be a
hindrance rather than a help. The multiplicity of supplies and equipment
needed, and the haste of this departure, made Dr. Grenfell desire as much
simplicity as possible.
There
were nine of us—the same nine who had been upon the trial ascent after the
cylinder. I was not present when they tried to tell Rowena it would be better
for her not to go. What she said I never knew, but she came back to me,
white-faced and grim—and it had been decided she was going!
Nor
was she a handicap. Accustomed to working among busy scientists, she was
completely at home in this atmosphere. And those tears of thankfulness which
had overcome her when she
learned after all these years
that her brother was not dead—never
again did she show such
weakness.
The ten days
of preparation
were busy ones. Equipment had been prepared for a
voyage to the Moon. The
apparatus for landing and maintaining life on the airless,
waterless Moon had been set up,
and most
of it
was unsuitable
for Mercury.
A multiplicity of details indeed—things necessary to the vehicle's operation for so long
a flight:
food, water, personal effects.
I saw,
when I was given the
task of checking these items over, Dr. Grenfell's wisdom in holding down
our personnel
to nine.
There were
weapons, and a great variety
of scientific
instruments, including the most modern
wireless receivers and transmitters
with which we hoped communication
with the Earth might be established.
A series of
exasperating delays seemed to afflict
us, with
Mercury daily adding tremendous
distance to our voyage. But at last we were
ready.
Everywhere in the
world during those ten days
the public
eye was upon us.
There was no way of
keeping the affair secret. The message
from Guy Falisse
was given
out in
brief summary; the public
knew that in December the
Mercutians probably would
come again, and that we
were going to try and stop
them.
We meant to
capture Croat's spaceship, kill Croat,
smash his ship, and thus end
the menace—a
simple enough plan. Yet such is
the public
mind that there arose a
clamor of debate by self-styled
experts who in reality knew
nothing; astrologers and every manner
of public-hungry
charlatan who read the stars, gazed
in crystals,
or dealt
the mystic
card and solemnly foretold what was
going to happen. And there
were reporters with facile
tongues who thought it clever
to sharpen their wit at our
expense.
Two startling
incidents occurred on Earth during
those ten days. The first was
the experience
of the
Reverend Arthur T. Hoskins, of Westville,
Maine—a town about twenty miles
from the White camp.
This report
was never
made public. I give it
substantially as Dr. Hoskins
told it to the authorities
the following
day. He was not a hysterical
man, this middle-aged rector—nor a publicity seeker but a
man of
matured, logical intellect. We could do
no less
than believe exactiy
what he said.
On the
evening of September eleventh, at
about eight o'clock, he was sitting
alone in his study on
the ground
floor of the rectory. He was
an ardent
lover of music. He sat
before his radio, listening to a
Mozart minuet, which was a
favorite of his. There was no
one but
him in
the house:
his wife
was attending a meeting of one
of the
ladies' church societies.
It was a
cool night, but the rector,
fond of fresh air, had
his ground floor window
wide open. The strains of
the minuet
floated out the window, and
the rector
was carried
back into dreams of his boyhood.
Then abrupdy the music was split by
the peremptory
oscillating wave of the Boston
News-casting Studios. He did not
tune them out. Instead, he
listened, with the minuet fading,
to an
account of the Bolton Flying Cube which shortly was
to make
an attempt
to reach
the planet Mercury.
The rector was
presently aware of a figure
standing in the dimness of his
garden outside the study window—a
very tall man, apparently listening to
the words
on the
radio.
The intruder saw
that he was discovered, made a movement as
though about to go away,
seemed to think better of
it, and came slowly
forward. He presendy
stood head and shoulders in the
window. The rector's study light
fell on him.
He was a
man of
giant stature, bareheaded, with black
hair graying at the
temples. It was oddly cut,
this hair— close-cropped to the man's
round skull, but gouged, as
though the fellow had
inexpertly cut it himself. His
face was hairless, massive-featured,
with a beak of a
nose, wide, thin lips and a
heavy jaw. His dark eyes
were deep set under heavy black brows.
A rough-looking fellow, the rector thought.
Yet his
was, in a way, an intellectual
face. But of what nationality?
The rector
was even
more puzzled when the man
spoke.
The rector
said, "What do you want,
my friend?"
"I was
listening to that instrument you have." The heavy,
thick voice spoke good
English with an indefinable accent. He spoke carefully, as though it was
an effort
to get
it right.
And the man repeated:
"—that instrument, there, which was talking
to you."
The rector
had shut
it off.
He made
a move
to turn
it on
again, but the stranger
checked him. "I have heard
enough."
The man's gaze
was on
the table
where the rector's usual ten o'clock
meal had been placed by
his wife—a
little stack of biscuits and a
glass of milk.
"Food—give me—will
you?"
It seemed, to
the surprised
Dr. Hoskins,
that his visitor was about to
climb in the window. And
the rector
felt a thrill of fear. There
was something
uncanny about this fellow—something unnatural. He wore a
somewhat dilapidated suit which was far
too small
for him.
And his
soiled linen shirt, open at the
throat, strained across his great
chest muscles, causing a
rip in
the fabric.
He did not
climb in the window, but
he leaned
far forward.
"Give me that."
It was a
command, but spoken as though
the man
were hardly aware of his tone.
The rector
steadied his voice. "You are
hungry, my man?"
"Yes. Very."
He wolfed
down the biscuits which the
rector handed him.
The glass of
milk he eyed calculatingly, then smelled it tentatively.
Dr. Hoskins,
realized with a vague shudder,
that this man never had seen
milk before.
At about
this point a certain knowledge
swept upon the rector. It had
been growing on him with
a shuddering
fear, but now it swept him
with conviction: this man, not
much under seven feet tall, was
not of
this Earthl
Dr. Hoskins
was no
coward, but he had had
no experience
in deeds
of violence.
He was
unarmed. His first instinct was to escape from his
study. Then it came to
him that
he should make some effort to
capture this fellow—apprehend him,
or at
least set the authorities upon him. There was
a telephone across the room. But
the rector,
transfixed by the shock of his
realization, did not dare move.
The stranger drained
his glass
of milk,
tossed it to the floor, and appeared surprised when
the fragile
glass was shattered. Looking up, he
met the
rector's horrified gaze. He began what
seemed words of thanks for
the milk.
But they
died on his hps.
He stepped
back suddenly from the window.
"You—think that
you know
me?"
Dr. Hoskins found
himself looking into the muzzle
of a
leveled weapon—a strangely-fashioned weapon, small and globular, with a mesh of
wires across its face. The
man's huge gray arm, with his
grotesquely short coatsleeve
hanging halfway to his elbow,
was extended.
He held
the weapon
with steady fingers. His voice
was quiet
but now
it /Contained a grim menace.
"I want you
to help
me. I
came for that. Do not
move-make no noisel"
The rector
sat frozen.
"Is that your
flying car in the little
house outside? I am not going to
hurt you. Answer me. Is
it?"
The rector
moistened bis dry hps. "Yes."
"You able
to fly
it?"
"Yes."
It was
a small
sport plane, given to Dr.
Hosldns by the
members of his parish.
"Then come
out. I want you to
show me how to fly
it. Come out, I say!"
Dr. Hosldns was somewhat
rotund. And with his fright,
he climbed over the
sill with difficulty. The stranger
gripped him by the arm, helping
him; and, outside, he stood
gazing down at him with a
faint smile. He was indeed
a gigantic
man, head and shoulders
above the rector. He cut
a grotesque
figure, the cuffs of his
trousers hanging far up his
legs. But he stood erect, commanding—and
amused at his captive's fear.
"Stop shaking. I
will not hurt you. li you shake like
that you cannot fly your little
car. You will kill us
both. Do not do that!"
Still Dr. Hosldns could not speak. The
giant pushed him down the garden
path. Its shrubbery secluded it
from the road and no one
saw them.
They reached the little wooden
hangar.
The rector found
his voice
at last.
"What do you want me
to do?"
"Take us up.
Can I
trust you not to wreck
us? Or
must I kill you—and go away
disappointed?"
Dr. Hosldns steadied himself.
He gazed
up at
his captor's
heavy gray face, and
he managed
a smile.
"You will be safe with me,"
he said.
"Where—where do you
want to go?"
But that the
man did
not answer.
They were presendy
in the little barrel-winged Dinsler and away
into the starlight. The rector sat
at the
sticks, the stranger jammed beside
him. There was barely room for
them both in the tiny
pit.
Beneath them
lay the
Maine forests; the starry vault
was overhead. Dr. Hoskrns, occupied
with the controls, found his
nerves steadying. He demanded
again, "Where do you want
to go? It was unnecessary to threaten me. It
is not
my custom
to refuse
a service
to my
fellow man."
"Just around here."
The gray
arm gestured
north toward the valley of the
St. Lawrence
with the distant mountains behind it. "Just around and
back. I want to learn
how to
sail your little car."
For about an
hour the astounded rector explained
how the
Dinsler was
operated—the engine controls, and then
the flying
itself. His captor showed remarkable
intelligence, almost as though he were
familiar with engines, and this
one was
strange to him only
in detail.
"Let me
try," he commanded at last.
Dr. Hoskin's heart was
in his
mouth as he yielded his
place at the sticks. But presendy his captor had caught
the knack
of it
"This is not
difficult," the giant
stated. "We will go back
now."
"You are
going to land us?"
"Land you. It is
the little
car I
want"
The rector
was momentarily
emboldened. "To go—where?"
"Back home." His companion turned and
in his
sunken dark eyes the rector saw
a gleam of
irony. "I am trying to
get—back home."
He said no
more. He turned the Dinsler in an arc southward.
A plane
passed overhead, a Greenland freightship heading
north from New York.
The stranger chuckled.
"No one notices us? That
is good."
He gazed down at
the lights
of a
little town set in the
dark stretches of forest
"Those orange lights are the
flying field?"
"Yes."
"I can read
the number:
M-4870. The 'M'-is that for
Maine?"
"Yes."
"The number would
tell us the town?" "Yes."
"And you have
maps here?"
The rector produced
his field
maps and explained them.
"Yes—I understand. I, too, have maps."
He touched
his clothes. "I have studied—been taught. And the landing
fields of the other States are
lettered and numbered like this?"
"Yes. Look here,
my man,
what are you—"
"I shall not
use the
public fields. The attendents would be curious.
... Is
that your settlement?"
They were back
within sight of thé rector's village.
"Yes," he said. "Please
take us down." He was
trying to decide what he could
do when
they landed. The giant seemed
to read
his thoughts.
"Not there. We
will have to find a
more secluded place." He
landed them, with what seemed
intuitive skill, in an empty field
near a neighboring town. "Climb out."
The rector got
out of
the cockpit
and stood
on the
ground. The field, with no houses
near it, was dim in
the starlight.
The rector saw that
once more the strange weapon
was leveled at him.
"You stand still
until I have gone!" Again a gleam of
irony shone in the giant's dark
eyes. "I ought to kill
you. I suppose I shall be
sorry I did not. You
will tell the officials all
about me. That is your plan,
is it
not?"
"Why, I-"
"Well, you may,
if you
like! What harm to me?
Tell them what you want." He leaned out of
the pit.
The engine
was purring, and his low voice
seemed to purr with it.
"You are what
they call a man of
God, are you not?"
It suddenly struck
the rector
that this amused, unhuman
giant was planning
to kill
him and
then fly off. He stood
stricken, clinging to the
side of the cockpit.
"Take your
hands off that! Are you
a man
of God?"
"Yes. I-"
"Then you
will not dare speak other
than the truth. I have some
questions: I want the truth.
Will you give it?" "Yes," gasped the
rector.
"There is
a girl—a
young woman. Her name is
Falisse, Ro-wena Palisse. Have you
ever heard of her?" "Yes."
"Do you
know where she is now?"
"They say, in southern
New Jersey."
"The same settlement
where they keep the Bolton
Flying Cube?"
"I think
so—"
"In that town,
where does she stay? Has
the building
a number?"
"I don't—don't
know. I have no idea—"
"Then that is
all I
can get
from you. I think I
will not let you talk about
me."
The terrified rector
felt his senses fading. The
dim outlines
of the
field whirled about him. He
realized clearly his deadly danger and
the realization
was too
much for him. His pounding heart flung the blood
into his head; then it
receded. He felt himself fainting, falling,
stricken by bis
own rush
of terror.
And to this
undoubtedly he owed his life.
Simultaneously with his fall,
he dimly
saw a
flash, heard a hiss, and
felt a burning stab in his
shoulder.
Then the field
went into black silence as
his senses
left him.
They found the
unfortunate Dr. Hoskins lying in
the field
the following morning, his
shoulder pierced by a hole
burned into it. His aircar, with
the mysterious
man, had vanished.
Undoubtedly, as
the rector
fell, the assailant believed he
had killed him. He had left
him lying
there for dead—and flown away in the Dinsler.
That was
the first
of the
incidents, That this mysterious man was Croat the Mercutian, we could not
doubt. We recalled the giant figure
who had
escaped that night at the
White Summer Camp when
we shot
the Mercutian man and the winged girl.
The forests
had been
constantly searched for that giant
Mercutian, but
without success. The message from
Guy Pa-lisse, picturing
Croat so vividly, caused the
search to be renewed with
additional vigor. When it continued
to be
unsuccessful, there were
many—Dr. Grenfell among them— who believed
that Croat had got back
to his
Space-flyer.
The flyer, it
was thought,
had never
descended into the Earth's atmosphere. The small silver ball
which had brought the Mercutians down from
their hovering ship and took
them up again with
their captives, must have rescued
Croat
But now,
after these many days, it
was proven
that Croat was still on Earth,
still in the vicinity of
the original
raids. We could picture how he
must have been living—hiding in the depths of the
forest by day, prowling at
night to steal what food he
could, and stealing clothes—trying to make himself less conspicuous,
so that
if seen
he could
pass momentarily for a man
of Earth.
There had been reports from
various farmhouses of midnight
disturbances. The authorities had discredited
them as the products of
public hysteria: but they were discredited
no longer.
And Croat had
been listening at windows, perhaps
for the newscasters' voices on radio—hearing
about the Bolton Flying Cube, trying
to locate
Rowena Palisse.
He had been
unable to travel far on
foot. But now he had
Dr. Hoskins' litde flyer, and
had disappeared
in it.
The assault
on the
rector was made on the
evening of
September eleventh. AU the day of the twelfth, by
every means that was known, the
Dinsler was searched
for. And Rowena, in a hotel
of that
south Jersey town, was kept
heavily guarded.
Then, at dawn
of the
thirteenth, came news of the
Dinsler. It
was sighted,
passing slowly over a village
near Philadelphia, heading southwest at
a considerable
altitude. Pursuit planes were sent
up immediately
after it, but not to
hit it, for the orders were
to take
Croat alive if possible.
The little Dinsler sailed serenely on. The
police pilots overtook it, to find
its controls
lashed and its cockpit empty.
Pilotless, it had been
launched and was riding the
skies until its fuel ran out.
That was the
thirteenth. Three days later, the
Bolton Flying Cube, carrying Dr.
Grenfell, Jimmy Turk, myself, Rowena
and five
assistants, left the Earth upon
our voyage
to Mercury.
XIII
IN THE AIRLOCK
"There's
the sun, Rowena.
It's dayl"
Dayl Already
the world
had lost
its meaning.
Day and
night were mere terms
of our
rotating Earth. Here in space
the Sun blazed in
its field
of black;
the stars
gleamed un-twinkling; the quarter Moon
hung white, like a broken,
curved limb against the
dead-black infiriity of emptiness. Time seemed eternal
here.
Rowena stood beside
me on
the Flying
Cube's deck. Together we gazed
at the
firmament. We were only a
few hours into the voyage, and
the Earth
still hung beneath us, a great
spreading expanse which filled the
lower heavens.
We had long
since passed through the atmosphere,
ascending an edge of the
Earth's conical shadow; now we
plunged from it and
the Sun
blazed with a strangely flaming
glory.
Rowena pointed to
the Earth.
"It's dwindling. Our little Earth—how small it looks now,
Jack!" Her hand touched my
arm. I seemed to feel a
difference in that touch, as
though her fingers were lingering, caressing.
"Rowena—"
Within me there
sprang a sudden rush of
emotion. I think, perhaps, that from
the first
moment I saw her I
felt instinctively that in
all the
world, this was the woman
for me—this girl, so queenly, aloof,
but with
gentle, wistful eyes.
Perhaps it
was the
starry firmament around us; the
tiny Cube seemingly hung here motionless
with great, soundless, blazing
worlds strewn about the black
heavens. And our Earth so small—dwindling
every moment that we watched
it. It was as though all
this were drawing Rowena and
me together, making us realize our
littleness, futility, unimportance.
And because
we were
so unimportant
to all
the universe,
it made
us that
much more important to each
other.
"Rowena!"
I must
have stood there stupidly repeating
her name.
The length of deck was empty
save for us two. Through
the portes,
mingled moonlight, sunlight, starlight and
earthlight came slanting in
soft silver shafts.
"Jack-"
She swayed toward
me and
then was in my arms,
her arms up about my neck,
her hps returning my kisses, with
all her calm, regal
poise swept away.
There was a
moment when we floated off
upon the torrent of a
new-found love, clinging together, alone
in the
universe.
Then I heard
a step,
and a
voice—Jimmy's voice: "Oh, I say— beg
your pardon—I'm- gone!"
"Oh!" Rowena cast
me off.
But Jimmy
had made
good his words, whirling like a
rabbit and vanishing into the
upper corridor doorway.
We both
laughed.
"Oh," said
Rowena. "How dreadful!"
"Dreadful? Rowena,
dear—"
I touched
her, but she moved away.
"Dreadful," I said, "that
Jimmy should have seen us?"
"No, of
course not."
"That you
should—love me?"
"No-"
"Well, you
do, don't
you?"
"Jack—" Her smile
was gone.
She faced
me with
a quiet,
level gaze. "Do you
think so, Jack?"
Her eyes
were shining, and in them
I could
not miss
the light of her love for
me. Then
the spell
broke; she laughed again.
"Dreadful, Jack,
that I should yield to
a thing
like that— now, with this voyage
ahead of us—with Guy, out
there on Mercury."
We were
presently talking of more sensible
things. Dr. Grenfell had calculated that this voyage was
to be
a matter
of some three weeks.
Mercury would be on the
other side of the Sun before
we reached
it. We
would pass Venus in five
or six days; the Moon we
were already passing.
And we talked
of Croat.
It seemed
obvious that he was the mysterious
stranger who had assaulted the
Maine rector.
"Still on Earth,"
I said.
"His ship came, sent down
its silver ball like a tender,
while the ship itself hovered
out here. Just about here, probably."
That had been
on August
tenth. It was now September
sixteenth. Croat's ship had
hovered out here while the
ball went down into the Earth's
atmosphere and stayed a week—
the week of the
raids. Then the ball had
come up, with the Earthgirls captive, but
without Croat Mercury was drawing
daily further away. The
Mercutians, afraid
to go
back for their leader, had undoubtedly
taken their ship back to
Mercury.
"But we
will reach Mercury before that
Rowena, and stop them, I said.
"If we can get that
vehicle and smash it down
on Earth they'll capture
Croat in time, of course,
and this
threat will be removed."
We had no
specific plans of what could
be done
when we reached Mercury. Rowena said
suddenly, "I'm wondering if
Guy and Tama
were on the Mercutian ship when
it waited
out here."
"But if
they had been—"
"That winged
girl who was shot at
the White
Camp did what she intended and
stowed away on the ship.
In his
message, Guy hinted that
he and
Tama were going to try
it."
This was
the old
Rowena again, discussing these affairs
with calm logic.
"But if
they did hide on the
ship, Jack, it's evident that
they were not able
to get
into the silver ball and
descend. Either they were
still in hiding, or Croat
had found
and captured them, keeping them up
here in the ship, while
he went down—"
It was
all theory,
of course.
An hour went
by. The
Earth shrank amazingly with our
upward flight. And as
the Cube
turned and swung toward the Sim,
using all of its giant
gravitational force to pull us,
the firmament shifted. The
Earth seemed to come up
even with us—a monstrous ball hanging
level with the deck windows.
The sunlight
struck it full: a great
reddish ball, shrinking and turning silver.
Again a step
sounded behind us. A cautious
step—Jimmy again.
"I say, all
right for me to show
up now?"
"All right, Jimmy," Rowena laughed. He came toward
us along
the deck.
"You going
to stand
there forever? We've had breakfast
downstairs. I told them
you two
were busy." "Jimmy!" Rowena
protested.
"Why not? You
were, weren't you? Anyway, the
Doc says
for you to come
down now—at once. That's an
order. You're to have your breakfast
and then
go to
sleep."
We followed
him obediently
to the
second floor corridor, down the ladder-steps
and into
the lounge.
"You're sleepy," Jimmy added. "If you
don't know it, that's your hard luck. We've all
been up all night. The
Doc has
turned in, and Ranee is in command."
At four p.m. Earth
time it was Grenfell's plan for us to
start the regular routine
of watches
which would be held throughout the voyage. It was
now nine
a.m.
Rowena and I
had a
light meal. She went to
her cabin,
which was off the
second-floor cross corridor. Diagonally from her, on the corridor's
opposite side, was the cubbyhole
Jimmy and I were
to occupy.
At Rowena's
doorway we left her.
"Sleep well,
Jack."
Jimmy whirled
on her
like a little bantam, gazing
up at
her with a frown. "And how
about me?" "You too,
Jimmy!" Thanks."
He was grinning
as we
entered our room. "Nice girl, that. Crazy about you.
WelL I don't
blame her. You two giants
look as though you
were born for each other."
We lay in
our bunks.
Earthlight streamed in the bull's-eye
window, until Jimmy drew
down the shade.
I think that
in a
few moments
Jimmy was asleep. But for a time sleep would not come to
me. The
interior of the Cube was silent
except for the faint hum
of the
current in the gravity plates. There
was no
vibration, an utter lack of
the sense of movement, though now
we were
plunging toward the Sun at a
velocity which in comparison to the planets was
still slow, but inconceivably
rapid compared to any vehicle
traveling upon Earth or
in the
air.
I drifted
off into
an uneasy
slumber.
This must
have been at about ten
a.m. Dr. Grenfell was asleep in his
cubby np in
the third
tier. In the room next
to Jimmy and me, Baker and
Gibbons were sleeping.
It left
Ranee and two
other men—Jones and Allen—in command
of the
Cube. Ranee was in the little
dome-observatory, at the telescope,
working out a chart of
our course.
For all
his skill with explosives
and his
experience with the New York bomb
squad, he was versed in
higher mathematics, and Dr. Grenfell depended
upon him for much of
the routine
navigational work.
I have
no idea
what awakened me, but suddenly
I found
myself fully aroused, with
the startled
feeling that something was vitally wrong.
Jimmy was peacefully snoring in
the bunk
over me. The Cube
interior was silent as always.
Our slide-door
to the
corridor was closed, as Jimmy
had left
it. My
watch said three p.m. I had slept
five hours.
The ominous feeling
passed after a moment. I sat up
in the bunk, thinking about it,
and concluded
that it must have have been caused
by the
strangeness of my surroundings when I had so suddenly
awakened.
I tried to
doze again: Dr. Grenfell did
not want
us to
assemble again until four p.m. But
I was
restless. Jimmy's snores annoyed me. I
went to the porte-window and
raised the shade a trifle. Our
window faced the Earth. How
amazingly it had dwindled! It
hung level with us—a full,
round, sunlit ball, filling no more
""ha" a tenth of the
visual hemisphere of the firmament
The tracery
of its
continents and oceans was plain.
And beside the
Earth, to make the third
apex of the triangle with
our cube,
the Moon
hung cold and bleak—starkly black and white with shadows
and sunlight
I turned from
the window,
and decided
I would
go down
to the lounge to wait for
the four
o'clock conference. Perhaps Rowena would
be there.
As I passed her
cabin door, I found it
flung wide. She had closed it, I recalled, when
she retired.
And in
the corridor,
just outside her threshold,
lay one
of her
slippers. I stumbled over it, picked
it up—and
found my heart unreasonably pounding. She had
been wearing these slippers when
Jimmy and I had left her
at this
door five hours ago.
As I straightened
with the slipper, I glanced
into her cabin. It was empty.
Its drawn
shade was bright with the
glare of sunlight. The bed had
been occupied; a chair beside
it was
overturned.
All this
was utterly
unlike Rowena. I hurried down
to the
lounge. No one was
there. The shades were drawn
to bar
the glare of the
Sun, but on the other
side they were up and
the earthlight and moonlight
streamed in full. The room
was bright. And it suddenly seemed
horribly empty and horribly silent.
I called,
"Hello there! Any
one around?"
From one of
the adjoining
machine rooms, Jones appeared, a big, florid fellow in
white shirt and linen trousers.
His inevitable huge black
cigar was in his mouth.
"Hello, Dean.
Sleep well?"
My sudden
fear dissipated. "Yes. Where is
everybody?"
"Asleep, I fancy.
Allen went up to the
dome a while ago to stay
with Ranee. I'm on duty
here—but there's nothing much to do.
It was
the deuce
keeping our pressure equal, but we've got it right
now. Your breathing comfortable?"
"Quite." I had flung
myself into one of the
wicker lounge seats. But immediately I was up again.
"Have you seen Miss Palisse?"
"No. She's
in her
cabin, isn't she?"
"No, she
isn't. The door was wide
open when I passed."
"Well, she didn't
come down here—went up to
the dome
with Ranee, probably."
But she
was not
in the
dome. Ranee and Allen were there,
and they had not
seen her. Dr. Grenfell was
still asleep in his cubby off
the third-floor
chartroom.
Fear was plucking
at me.
But Ranee said with a smile,
"Try the deck, Dean.
She's probably Earth-gazing. Shell be
glad to have you
join her.'*
I hurried down,
and again
went the length of the
second-floor corridor. This time, I
peered into each of the
rooms as I passed. Jimmy was
still snoring noisily, Baker and
Gibbons were asleep in the adjacent
cabin, and all the other
rooms were empty.
I went out
to the
deck and searched all four
sides almost at a run. No
one was
there.
Panic was upon
me now.
Back within the Cube I
called frantically:
"Rowenal Rowena,
where are you?"
It aroused them
all. "Rowena, where are you?
Rowena, answer mel"
Jimmy came
rushing out. "Jack, what in
the devil—"
"I can't find Rowenal"
I tried
to calm
myself. She was somewhere here,
of course.
Baker and Gibbons
came tumbling from their room.
"What's the trouble?"
From the third
tier Dr. Grenfell was calling,
"Deanl
Dean, what is it?"
And from
the lounge
downstairs, Jones shouted up a
similar question.
We were all
in a
moment wildly searching—shouting
back and forth to each other,
and calling:
"Rowenal Where
are you?
Where are you?"
The Cube echoed
with our voices and the
tramp of our feet.
But Rowena
had vanished.
Stark horror
seized us as we gathered
in the
lounge. Rowena
had vanished. But there was only a moment of that baffled horror; and then a new alarm.
Jimmy's voice bellowed from
the second tier:
"Jack! Jackl Here she is!"
His
words, "Here she is!" should have been reassuring. But bis terrified tone combined with them was infinitely
frightening.
I
leaped up the laddersteps, with the others after me.
We met Jimmy. He was wild-eyed and breathless, waving his automatic.
"Jack, my God,
she—Jack, he has—Come here!"
I
went after him at a run, out the corridor to the deck, around one of its angles
to D-face. Five minutes ago, as I ran this length, I had unheedingly passed the
closed slide-door of the airlock room.
Jimmy
dashed there now, and halted, with upraised weapon.
"Jimmy—look!"
In
the little airlock, projecting out from the deck, Rowena was crouching. And
beside her was the huge figure of a man. His arm was around her, holding her
half caressingly, half in menace. His other arm hugged his upraised knees: in
his hand, a strange globular weapon pointed at Rowena's breast.
It was Croat!
XIV
HUMAN PROJECTILES
"Steady,
Jack! He's got her!"
We
could hear his voice through the door-slide, calmly ironic:
"Well,
and so you found me!" said Croat. "It took you a fair long time to find me—did it not? Sit quiet, Rowena!"
We
stood stricken with upraised, futilely gesturing weapons. We held each other
back, fearful that one of us would make an ill-advised move to startle or anger
Croat into killing Rowena. He could so easily do it by the merest pressure of
his finger against the cylinder in his hand.
Gibbons stammered,
"The air—I left it at five pounds."
"It
is quite comfortable now," came Croat's slow voice. And I realized that
the door-slide was slightly ajar. "This girl—Rowena Palisse,
is she not? By your gods, a woman worthy of mastering Mercury. They will say,
'Croat's mate chosen from all the Universe could be no better suited to him.' I
had no idea!"
We
stood dumb with horror, listening to him. Past his great thick shoulder,
Rowena's white face peered at us.
His
arm tightened around her. "Do not be foolish, Rowena, or, as I told you, I
will have to kill you. And that would be a pity. Sit still, while I tell them
what they must do."
Dr.
Grenfell stood at the pane. He was unarmed; he had shoved us behind him with a
warning command. He put his hands up on the pane of the door and face close to
it
"You are
Croat, the Mercutianr"
Croat shifted so
as to
face the door more comfortably.
I saw now that he had
both of Rowena's hands pinned
by the
tightness of his encircling
arm. "Yes, I am Croat,
the Mer-cutian. You seem to
know me. That is strange."
His gray
face gazed insolendy at Grenfell, though he
was obviously
puzzled. "My fame must
have spread quickly to Earth.
How did you—"
Grenfell had obviously
recovered from his first shock
of horror. He stood calmly, his
shoulders hunched, every muscle tense.
"That's not important.
We know
you. I am in command
here.«You cannot escape."
"Escape? For a
commander you are stupid! And
you make
stall another error—you are
not in
command. You were, but now you
are not.
I command
here."
I heard Dr.
Grenfell answering, but it hardly
registered in my mind. It seemed
that Rowena was trying to
attract my attention. I caught her
glance, and the vague gesture
of her head to indicate something
behind her. And Jimmy was
plucking at me, whispering,
"When I first saw him
he was
starting to robe them
in those
Moon-landing suits." Then he stopped. "Look, he's got the
Moon-suits behind him."
I saw then
what Rowena was indicating: the pressure suits and helmets
for disembarking
upon an airless world. We
had brought them in case of
unforeseen necessity. My mind flashed back to what Croat
must have done: stolen the
rector's flyer to carry him
from Maine to southern Jersey,
then hidden himself on the Cube,
having boarded it during the
confusion loading for our
departure.
We found later
that he had stowed away
in the
small lower room where raw bulk
foodstuffs were stored—those which
obviously we would not need
during the first part of
the journey. Then, while
we slept,
he had
captured Ro-wena and forced her to
tell him of the Moon
equipment.
He had secured
two of
the helmeted
suits—elastic, rub-berite affairs, double-shelled,
with an interior air-pressure circulating system made
to withstand
the explosive
pressure of fifteen pounds to the
square inch, and great goggled
helmets like an old-fashioned sea-diver. Croat had been
about to use them when Jimmy
came upon him.
"But use
them for what? And why
had he
tarried?
Croat was now
arguing calmly with Grenfell. He
said, "I am a different race
from you. Perhaps you think
I would
not dare kill this girl and
meet my own death almost
at once?
Perhaps an Earthman would
be afraid
to make
good his threat. But that, I
promise you, is exactly what
I shall
do. If
you cross me—attempt to stop me—I promise
it."
And we
did not
dare take the chance. Grenfell
stood there alert, with Gibbons beside
him. The door-slide was ajar.
In a
matter of five seconds
Gibbons could have widened that
slit, fired, and kill Croat. But
in those
five seconds the watchful Mercutian
would have bored Rowena with
the deadly
blast from his little cylinder.
Rowena suddenly
moved, twisting violently to test
him. If she could distract his
attention even for a moment-It
alarmed Grenfell. He warned her
sharply: "Don't do that, childl"
Croat had not
turned. His arm again tightened
to hold
her. And Rowena called:
"He sent an
ether-signal for his ship. A
flare—didn't you see it? His ship
is coming!"
"We have been
waiting for it," said Croat;
and he
added sharply: "Close that door!"
His weapon came
up, swung
at us,
and back
at Rowena.
His gray face, the
darting fire of his dark
eyes, seemed suddenly inhuman. This was a man of a different world. He would plunge heedlessly into murder and suicide.
Gibbons snapped the
deck-slide closed.
Baker
exclaimed, "GrenfelL his ship is in sight! It
was down by the Moon!"
The Mercutian ship coming! Then it had not gone back to
Mercury, but had been waiting out here, perhaps for a signal from Croat. And I
saw Croat now menacing Rowena, making her draw on the Moon-suit.
I plucked at Jimmy.
"Come! We've got to get other suits!"
No one noticed us as we dashed away along the
deck. Grenfell was murmuring to his companions—trying to plan
something—watching, trying to dare make an opportunity to open the slide and
leap in upon Croat.
We were gone only a minute or two. I came
back alone, robed in a pressure suit, while Jimmy still searched for another
for himself.
I passed Baker.
"Where are you
going?" he asked.
He stopped short, turned and followed me
back. I carried the helmet in my hand. Baker was stammering:
"You got one, Dean? I
thought— He's taking her outside!"
The group at the slide stood transfixed with
horrified confusion. Within the lock now were two grotesque figures, their
round goggled helmets in place, humps on the shoulders where the
pressure-batteries were assembled—bloated figures, with the air-pressure in the
suits already operating. I saw that the rubberite of
Croat's garment was stretched by his great height. He bent at the outer
door-slide. Rowena was struggling now, but he held her, and turned with his
weapon to menace the men on the deck.
Grenfell
opened the inner slide and closed it quickly in a panic. The men were all
shouting different orders at once. If Croat were to open the outer slide simultaneously
with
the opening of
the inner
one, all the air in
the ship
would go out in a blast—death
to everyone
on board!
I came with
a wild
rush. A sudden madness was
on me.
I calculated nothing—chanced everything.
Grenfell and the others scattered before
me. They
were all shouting but I
did not hear them.
I jammed
on the
helmet, locked it, started up the
mechanisms. My suit began bloating;
the pressure made my head roar.
Then it cleared. Through the
visor-pane I could see
the deck,
and the
door-slide to the lock.
I rushed at
the manuals.
Baker was ahead of me.
He swung the lever and pushed
me through
the opening
slide. I stumbled into the lock.
The slide
closed instantly after me.
And in the
next moment Croat opened the
outer door. The lock-air went out
with a rush—a torrent of
pressure escaping into the outside
vacuum.
Like projectiles, we three in the
lock were hurled into the
black void of Space!
XV
THE COMBAT IN SPACE
I recall
that my first emotion was
one of utter amazement There was no sense of movement. I was motionless, while
things moved around me—all very slowly, almost lazily. In the midst of them I
seemed poised, unmoving.
There
were the distant motionless stars—blazing points of white light in the dead
black velvet of the void; there was the great ball of Earth, the Moon, the
flame-enveloped Sun-all visually motionless. I had gone head first through the
airlock door. Now I hung level, with no axial rotation.
But
there was some movement. The helmeted figures of Ro-wena
and Croat lay near me, perhaps twenty feet away. They were clinging together
and rotating slowly end over end. Croat had lost his weapon. It floated fifty
feet behind us. We were falling toward
the Earth with a steady acceleration of velocity which soon would be meteoric
swiftness. But none of it was apparent in the vastness of Space.
The
Cube was over me. In all the glittering scene, the Cube now was endowed with
the most obvious motion, a hundred feet or so above me, and slowly sailing
past. It was turning on a vertical axis; from its comers faint etheric blue rocket-streams were visible.
Then
far to one side, off by the Moon, I saw another object—the Mercutian
spaceship—a great white bird-like shape. I twisted my head to see through the
lower lens of the helmet visor. It magnified the image, showing Croat's vessel
speeding upward at us; its rocket-streams
were behind it, fan-shaped like the tail of a comet.
How
long I hung there I cannot guess. Time, like movement and like all these
astronomical bodies of which I now was one, seemed hanging poised. And I think
my mind, too, functioned differently, in a detached, faraway haze of thought
I
recall that I was helpless to move, save that I could lack and flounder.
Celestial forces were upon me now, inexorable beyond all puny human influence.
It
penetrated to my consciousness that the Mercutian
ship was only a few miles away, and that Grenfell was manipulating the Cube
around me—and around Croat and Rowena. I saw the yawning, opened airlock door.
Grenfell was trying to get us back in it
If
only I could reach Croat I would try to strangle him with my grip, rip and tear
at his bloated garment with the knife which I had in my belt—and rescue Rowena.
The
bulk of the passing Cube pulled at me. I began rotating; the heavens turned
over.
The
Cube momentarily moved away to take a new position. I suddenly realized I was
drawing nearer Croat °r else he and Rowena were drifting slowly toward me. The
gravitational attraction of our bulk was pulling us together, but it seemed,
at first desperately slow movement
The
heavens again stopped rotating. 1 found the Mercutian
ship directly under me. I gazed numbly down at it. A mile away? Ten miles?
Distance could not be calculated here. But through the visor's magnifying lens
I saw it clearly, and across this airless void I saw details with microscopic,
un-distorted clarity.
But
my brain hardly encompassed what I was seeing. There was a commotion on the Mercutian ship's upper deck, under its bell-like dome.
There were figures there, fighting! Hot flashes of blue-green were visible. Men
were fighting.
And I thought
I saw
a winged
girL and other
girls—Earth-girls?
It was
a vague
impression. Now there was a
rush of figures into a round
object standing on the deck—a
man's figure, fighting, holding
back other men as the
girls crowded behind him.
Tumultuous, silent
events were happening swiftly down
on the ship's deck. There was
one great
blue-green flash. I know now that
it must
have ripped the ship's dome.
The air rushed out with a
great explosion and the dome
lifted apart The bodies of men
were blasted out—dead instantly as they struck the airless,
frigid void of Space.
The Mercurian ship was
wrecked, and slowly turned over.
But its mass held
most of the mangled bodies
rotating in narrow orbits around it.
Gruesome satellites! A broken fitter
of wreckage, it began
slowly falling toward the far-distant
Earth.
And with the
explosion, I saw the round
object catapulted out from the deck.
A small
silver metal ball, with tiny
door and a row of windows,
it hurled
free; and instead of falling,
it seemed to rise.
I was suddenly
aware that Croat and Rowena
were within reach of me!
My outflung hand stretched out to
him and
I touched a metal plate of
his sleeve
with my metal fabric glove. It gave us audiphone contact I heard his
breathing, his muttered oath.
And then,
as he
realized he could hear me,
his words:
"And you
think you can save her?
You—cannot!"
We locked together.
He had
seen the wreck of his
ship, knew it was the end
for him.
His wild
laugh sounded in my ear-grids with an eerie jangle.
"Death! A fitting
death for Croat and his
Earthwoman— twin stars,
falling!"
And I heard
Rowena's voice as I touched
her. "Jack! Get away! Let me
push at you! Don't let
him hold
you!"
His great arms
seized me. Our bloated suits
pressed together—weightless adversaries
scrambling in a weightless void! He caught the wrist
that held my knife and
twisted it But despite his giant
size, I found that 1
was the
stronger. The knife was above him.
I forced
it slowly
down against all his efforts to
stop me.
He gave a
last wild laugh and tried
to rip
at Rowena's
garmet. Then
my blade
punctured his suit. With the
outrush of its air, I felt
it go
flat against me, felt his
grip tighten convulsively—and
his last
human scream, with all the
irony gone out of it, jangled
at my
ears.
His grip loosened.
I kicked
him free.
Like a log shoved violently into water, his body
floated away.
As I clung
to Rowena
I became
aware of the Cube over
us, the yawning lock-opening
coming with true aim this
time to swallow us.
We struck the
lock interior, fell in a
heap on its metal floor
and the outer slide
closed upon us.
XVI
FALLING STARS
My
senses very nearly
faded; the air in my
helmet was fouled, but in a
moment I had the mechanism
cleared again. Rowena held me; her
voice rang in my ear-grids:
"Jack! Jack,
dear—what's the matter?"
I gasped,
"I'm all right—the oxygen—was clogged."
We were sitting
on the
floor of the lock. The
pressure was coming in; I felt
it against
me. Across
the lock,
at the
inner side, I could see the
anxious faces of Dr. Grenfell,
Jimmy and the others peering in
at us.
The pressure came
steadily and we yielded our
garment-pressure to balance
it. Presently
they were equal. I saw
Grenfell signal. The inner slide
opened and Jimmy led the
rush of men, pouncing upon us,
lifting off our helmets.
"You're not hurt,
Jack?" Jimmy's arms held me
"Thank God for that! And Rowena—you
all right,
Rowena? Let me help you up."
His face
was white
and drawn.
"We were so helpless, standing inside, watching you
out there."
They carried us
to the
decks and took off our
suits. But there was no time
for further
talk. Outside the deck windows—out
there in the starry vault—portentious events
were sweeping slowly on.
The wreck of
Croat's ship was far beneath
us, with
the Earth under it. Croat's body
was still
near at hand—but it was falling.
Grenfell had the negative current
in the
gravity plates of the
Cube-base, creating a repulsion there;
and
Croat's body bad
come within its influence. His twisted shape, gruesome with
the sagging
helmet and the deflated suit hanging in wrinkled folds,
was moving
swiftly away from us. The Earth's
attraction had caught it.
And the silver
ball was mounting; it was
quite near us now. The sunlight
gleamed on half its sphere
with a brilliant white glare; the
earthlight painted its opposite side
with a mellow silver glow. It
was holding
a vertical
axis upon which it slowly turned,
so that
its tiny
windows went in procession before us. Its power-streams were around it like
a faint
green-blue aura.
Was this ball
coming to attack us? I
thought. I was still far from
my usual
self—confused, with my
head roaring and my muscles trembling.
Rowena seemed similarly dazed. We
stood together on the
deck, clinging to each other
and to
the bull's-eye window fastenings
as we
gazed out into the immensity of Space.
Around us the
deck was in turmoil. They
were rolling one of the guns
to the
firing porte. Then Dr. Grenfell's
voice sounded from the nearby deck
speaker. He was calling from
the dome-room of the
Cube.
"It's all right!
Baker, swing D-face toward them!
It's all right— that's Guy Palisse and, I suppose, Tama!"
Guy and Tama!
Rowena held me close. Have
I said
that only after Guy's message did
she yield
to the
weakness of tears? Not so—for there
were tears in her eyes
now.
"Jack! He
says—it's Guy!"
Again, Grenfell's voice: "I can see
them at the windows. It's Guy, and a winged
girl, and Earthgirls."
There was a
rush of feet on the
deck, but Rowena and I
were in no condition
to join
the activity.
We could
barely stand and cling to each
other. I felt that now
the reaction
was making everything seem so swift—our minds
could hardly grasp it. Yet it
must have taken half an
hour at least.
The silver ball
came level and poised. We
saw faces
at its windows. Rowena recognized her brother. I held
her then or she would have
fallen.
Another interval. Jimmy
came beside me, volubly triumphant.
But I
hardly heard him.
Then Dr. Grenfell
manipulated the Cube until D-face
with its open lock-entrance moved slowly
toward the hovering ball, which was
poised with its porte fronting us.
The openings
met, with gravity holding the
ball as though it were
glued to us.
Another interval.
I murmured, "Rowena,
they're here. In a moment
or two—
your brother, safel"
"Yes, Jack, everything's
blurred—we—what's the matter
with us?"
"Just—blurred. I feel it
too. The pressure change—being outside there. We're
all right..."
A rush of
feet. Excited voices. I saw
Tama—strange, frail little girl—flowing
garments—sleek-feathered wings.
And the Earthgirls, the kidnapped girls
from the White Camp—frightened
and pale,
some of them sobbing with
the joy of their rescue.
And then I
saw Guy.
He wore
a torn
white shirt and trousers, a band
of red
cloth about his forehead. And
with him was a slim, boyish
youth like a little American
Indian chieftain.
Guy turned: "Toh, stay with Tama
a moment.
Is that
my sister over there? Why, Rowena!
You—you're not the little girl I remember!"
Rowena cast me
off, and stood wavering with
opened arms to receive him.
I recall
how Guy
explained that he and Tama
and her
brother had hidden upon
Croat's ship, as in his
message he had
hinted they might try to do. They had been discovered, caught, and held while
Croat and some of bis men descended to the Earth,
using the silver ball as a sort of tender.
The
silver ball had returned, with the girl captives, but without Croat The ship
had waited, hoping, expecting perhaps that Croat would signal. Twice, when
heavy clouds were over Maine, it had descended.
Then,
with the confusion of the Mercutian ship at Croat's etheric flare-signal from our Cube, Guy seized his chance
to break loose. I had seen the fight on ship's deck.
Eight
of the Earthgirls were saved. I heard Jimmy ask what
had become of the others. Guy avoided the question and no one asked it again.
There
was still one last scene out there in the black vault of the heavens. The body
of Croat, and the wrecked ship with tiny dots of Mercutians'
bodies revolving as satellites around it, were falling toward the Earth. We
followed them down.
Again
there was that slow, measured astronomical movement—a tiny instant of time
amid the stars. But to us watching humans it was literally hours.
The
Earth slowly grew larger, spreading beneath us— silver, turning yellow-red,
then red like a map faintly tinted. And then with other colors coming to it:
bluish oceans, gray-green continents, white-tipped mountain peaks, banks of obscuring
gray haze and solid cloud areas.
The
torn ship and the little dot which was the body of Croat fell steadily.
The
Earth grew to a great sinning surface spread half across the lower firmament.
The
wrecked, falling ship was first to enter the atmosphere. It turned faintly
luminous with friction-heat. Above it a tail of burning gases streamed out It
was falling like a plummet within an hour—down into the denser
air strata—blazing
into a great fiery ball of
burning gas until it was
consumed.
Then Croat's body
became a luminous point of
light, a dot of fire, a
little falling star.
It puffed
into sudden brilliance at the
end, as though the spirit of the man might
be making
a last
ironic gesture; then it faded and
vanished into nothingness, with only
the unseen ashes like scattered Stardust
sifting down.
The events
I have
narrated are public property. I
have tried merely to give what
the newscasters
have called "an actual eyewitness description.*'
There are some
who have
struggled for fame, and when
they got it, found
it anything
but pleasant
to possess.
Take mine now: in the quiet
that followed the extraordinary events of last
year, it is not exactly
fame, but it certainly is
notoriety.
I do not
find it pleasant, nor does
Rowena, nor do any of
the rest of us.
The world
is relieved
that Croat's ship is destroyed,
Croat himself dead, and the
next inferior conjunction of Mercury
and the
Earth passed safely.
The affair is
over. But now people want
to know
where Rowena and Guy Palisse are; and
where is Jack Dean living?
And why
does not Guy Palisse or Jack
Dean go on the lecture platform or into the
motion pictures, or join a
circus with that winged girl named
Tama who came from Mercury?
They could make lots
of money:
why don't
they do it?
We answer: that
is no
one's business. Rowena and I
are living in as much seclusion
as we
can find.
Tama and Guy are near us.
Jimmy Turk is still in
the patrol
service.
Guy is beside
me now
as I
finish these pages. He likes
the tone of these last paragraphs.
But Rowena,
who came
in a
moment ago, did not.
"Aren't you a little aggressive?" she said. "After alL everyone who reads your
narrative isn't necessarily insulting you.
I believe you should
change it."
"Not at
all," said Guy.
Rowena kissed
me and
went outside.
"Ill think
about it," I called after
her. "Maybe 111 change it"
But I haven't.
It is night
now. We are in a
lonely spot where there are
forests, and a lake.
No, it
is not Maine.
Tama is outside,
flying up into the starlight.
She likes
it here on Earth, though flying
is much
more difficult for her here than
on Mercury.
But she
is worried
about her comrades of the Light
Country. The Hill City government
took them back, promised them new
laws. But Tama is suspicious
of those quickly given promises. She
and Guy
are returning
to Mercury as soon as Or.
Grenfell will take them.
Tama keeps very
secluded in the daytime here,
but at
night she flies out.
We never
grow tried of watching her. Guy called
me to
the window
a little
while ago. She went past with
fluttering wings and flowing draperies
and waved
her white arm at
Guy as
she wheeled
and soared
out over
the starlit lake.
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tama ofthe light country
Are
all the artificial satellites circling the Earth ours? How can we be sure that
these little metal globes, these observational devices with their top-secret
interiors, were all made on Earth? Perhaps there is one up there that was not?
When
such a space satellite was located, it caused a furore.
But that was nothing to what happened when it was accompanied by a mysterious
rash of kidnappings — young girls were being taken away, carried off to some
strange destiny in outer space! •
TAMA
OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY is the startling novel of the conflict with Mercury — the
smallest world of the solar system—which harbored an unsuspected secret.