Collected Short Fiction, page 242
“He is doomed by the horrors that dwell in the comet. Can’t you feel the evil power of them seeping into the very ship, lad? Can’t you feel the icy-breath of them on your neck? Can’t you hear them, cowering invisible in the corners?
“Ah, ’tis a thing of mortal evil come from space to destroy the system, lad. The age of man is ended! And we are the lucky ones who are the first to die, and who die while we are drunk. Drink with me, lad! Wine is a strength and an armor. Few ills can touch a man drunk with wine.”
And he tipped up the bottle again.
Bob Star returned to the bridge.
Before the hurtling ship, the comet expanded.
The sharp-edged, greenish oval of it looked the size of an egg, and the size of a man’s hand. It spread across the black of space. It swallowed the stars. It became a sea of terrible green, overflowing the heavens.
THEY examined it with every instrument the ship possessed.
Baffled, the tall commander of the legion at last shook his dark head.
“I can’t make anything of it,” he said. “That green surface is a perfect geometric ellipsoid. It is absolutely featureless. At this distance, we should be able to see anything as small as a house or a ship or a tree. And there is nothing.”
“But the raiders,” said Bob Star, “were invisible.”
Jay Kalam nodded.
“They were. And perhaps they dwell upon that surface, invisible.”
He stroked the dark angle of his jaw, reflectively.
“But I don’t think so. It’s more likely, I think, that the green is a kind of armor—not material, perhaps, but a wall of fixed energy—the hull, let us say, of a ship. What are we to find within?”
Bob Star bit his lip, without speaking.
And still the comet spread. Its green tide overwhelmed the stars, until its fearful enigma covered half the sky before them. And still the edges of it appeared knife-sharp. Still its pallid, weirdly gleaming surface was unmarked, impenetrable.
Jay Kalam turned wearily from a telescope, muttering: “Nothing, nothing.”
Bob Star was stiff, quivering. His chest felt cramped. His breath was slow and irregular. Sweat came out, unnoticed, on his palms. He started unreasonably at the ringing of an alarm gong. A breathless, involuntary cry of fear escaped his dry lips. Apprehensively, he sprang to the instruments.
Anxiety edged even Jay Kalam’s calm, grave tone, as he asked: “What is it, Bob?”
“We have encountered a powerful repulsive field,” his husky voice reported, “emanating from the surface of the comet.”
Swiftly he took readings from the dials, integrated the results upon a calculator.
“Already,” he said, “it is absorbing our momentum faster than the geodynes.”
He spoke into Giles Habibula’s telephone. And the generators, which had been checking the terrific momentum acquired along the billions of miles from Neptune, ceased to hum.
In the silence, he read the dials again.
“The repulsion is mounting,” he announced. “I’m afraid we’ll never reach the surface——”
He spoke again to the power room. The geodynes replied, pushing forward, now. At quarter speed——At half——At full power——
Bob Star turned, at last, to Jay Kalam, shaking his head in bewildered defeat.
“Our forward momentum is gone,” he whispered. “We are being driven back, against the full thrust of the geodynes.”
“Then,” Jay Kalam said slowly, “the green is an armor—a wall of repulsive force——”
“And we can’t pass it. At this rate, the repulsion must increase to infinity at the green surface. That means that an infinite velocity would be required, to burst through——”
His voice was cut off by a shrill scream of utter terror.
They both started, turning.
“It’s the maniac,” Bob Star whispered. “Mark Lardo.”
A thin articulation, bubbling with fear, it came again: “They’re trying to eat me!” There was a gasping, shuddering shriek. “Don’t let them eat me!” Bob Star turned slowly back to his instruments. The madman had been screaming, at intervals, ever since his capture—though never with such ungoverned abandon of horror as this.
“Is there nothing,” he asked, “that we can do for him——”
Jay Kalam’s hand grew tense on his arm.
“Bob——” he whispered.
Bob Star attempted to speak, and the icy talons of fear sank into his throat.
“Something,” he faintly heard Jay Kalam’s low voice, tremulous with suppressed consternation, “something is with us, on the ship!”
But he had already become aware, through what sense he did not know, of a dread, malific presence. He had heard nothing, certainly. His eyes saw nothing. Nor had anything touched his body. Yet he knew, without the slightest doubt, that some fearful, supernal entity had come among them.
A hoarse, unwilling outcry burst from his lips.
“Look! The green——”
A greenish mist was suddenly obscuring the instruments before him; a green haze filled the little room. His body tingled to a sudden, stiffening chill. All his sensations were curiously blanketed, dull.
Very faintly, Jay Kalam’s voice came to him: “Is this the same agency that overcame you at the prison, Bob?”
His body had become a clumsy, unresponding machine. He realized that it was falling. Consciousness was fading before universal darkness.
Dully, from a vast distance, he heard the thin screams of mad Mark Lardo: “I don’t want to die! Don’t let it——”
XIV.
BOB STAR picked himself up, painfully, from the floor of the tiny bridge. His limbs were strangely stiff, unresponsive. A faint, unpleasant tingling sensation still came from all his body. His vision, for a moment, was misty. A dull, persistent ringing faded slowly from his ears, and he perceived abruptly that the keen humming of the geodynes had ceased.
A dreadful silence ruled the ship. Even the screams of Mark Lardo had stopped.
Beside him, on the floor, Jay Kalam groaned faintly. Bob Star bent, dizzily, to examine him. His body was utterly limp, as if lifeless. The skin was flushed, from dilation of the capillary vessels. Heart and breath were very slow, irregular. The skin felt cold with sweat.
He groaned and stirred again. Life tensed the dead-limp arms. He was recovering.
Bob Star turned to the instruments. The geodesic indicators showed axial deflection zero, field potential zero. The ship was still hurtling away from the comet, to the now unopposed repulsion.
Jay Kalam opened his eyes, checking another groan.
“Our visitor—it is gone?”
“I think so.” Bob Star was helping him to rise. “But the geodynes are dead. We’re flying before that repulsion, helpless.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.” Bob Star tried to keep the echo of stark dread out of his voice. “I didn’t see anything, except the green——”
“That might be a penetrating radiation,” Jay Kalam suggested, “that short-circuits the neurone fibers, sufficiently at least to prevent any conscious mental action. How long were we unconscious?”
Bob Star looked at a chronometer. “About ten minutes.”
“I wonder why it came aboard?” His voice was anxious. “Please go aft, Bob, and see what happened to the others.”
A muttering groan led Bob Star into the gun turret. Hal Samdu was just dragging himself up behind the great proton needle, stiffly flexing his mighty arms.
“Aye, Bob,” he rumbled. “What came upon us?”
“I don’t know, Hal. Tell me, what did you see—or feel?”
The giant shook his rugged head.
“I saw nothing,” he said. “A monstrous shadow crept into the ship. Then the green mist was in my eyes, and I couldn’t see. And this stiffness seized my body and I couldn’t move. That is all I know.”
Bob Star was descending toward the power rooms, when a faint, whimpering sound led him curiously to the brig. He looked through the barred door, at Mark Lardo. And abrupt horror spilled out his strength.
GASPING, weak, trembling, he clung to the bars. His distended eyes stared through, at the thing on the floor of the cell.
Mark Lardo had been big—a shaggy, powerful human brute. But the shrunken thing in the cell seemed hardly larger than a child. The skin of it was uncannily white, and its limbs were oddly, hideously shriveled. It lay inert on the floor, making feeble little movements, whimpering.
“Mark!” cried Bob Star, his hoarse voice thick and clotted with horror. “Mark! Can you hear me?”
The thing moved a little, feebly. The shrunken head rolled back, and Bob Star staggered away from the bars. For its flesh was drawn, wrinkled, until it looked like the head of a tiny mummy. Its skin was white, with a loathsome, dreadful whiteness. Hair and beard were gone.
But the supreme horror resided in its eyes. They were sunk deep into the monkeylike skull, and queerly glazed. Bob Star thought they must be blind. Smoky, yellow shadows swirled through them. They were the eyes of nothing human.
Sick to the very heart, Bob Star covered his eyes. He stumbled away.
Even though a raving maniac, the Mark Lardo of ten minutes ago had been a man—burly, massive, powerful. His great, wild voice had been ringing through the ship. This wasted, animate horror was no man. It had less than half the bulk of Mark Lardo, and little indeed of the savage, animal life.
Bob Star reeled along the deck, shaking his head, seeking to dislodge a clinging terror from his mind. He stumbled down the steps into the power rooms, and stood swaying at the bottom.
“Giles,” he called out, hoarsely, “have you any wine?”
The fat, short bulk of Giles Habibula was leaning disconsolately against the shining mass of one of the geodyne generators. His gross arms were flung about it. His massive shoulders were trembling. Bob Star could hear the dry, broken sound of his sobs.
He didn’t hear, and Bob Star called again: “Giles, I want a drink.”
The old man heard, and pushed himself away from the generator. He came steadily across the room, all trace of his drunkenness gone. His fishy eyes were weeping frankly, unashamed. Tears were streaming down his purple nose.
“Ah, lad,” he lamented bitterly, “you find me at a mortal evil moment. You find me crying, as if a precious friend had died!”
Bob Star came a little toward him, trying to shut out his memory of the whimpering, lifeless horror in the brig. He grasped at any diversion.
“What’s the matter, Giles?”
“ ’Tis the blessed geodynes, lad. Here’s a drink.”
He took a full bottle from a case against the wall. Bob Star gulped down half of it, without stopping for breath. Still sobbing, Giles Habibula finished the remainder. He wiped a forlorn yellow face with the back of his hand.
“Lad,” he said tearfully, “I was a generator man in the legion for nearly twenty years. But never did I have such a set of geodynes as these, so powerful, so sweetly tuned. They answered my touch as if they had been alive, lad. They sang me a song. They loved old Giles, lad—as no woman ever did! They talked to him. They understood—more than a human being ever did.
“And the geodynes are dead, lad—dead! They’ve been murdered, mutilated. Every coil has been broken in a thousand places. In every tube, the filaments and grids have been destroyed. The very plates are warped, so that they could never be tuned again.”
“But they look all right, Giles,” said Bob Star.
“Ah, so, lad,” returned the sorrowful old man. “Their shining beauty is left. But the life is gone out of them. They are but lovely corpses. I sat here, helpless in the paralysis of the green mist, and saw them murdered.”
“Saw them?” echoed Bob Star, excitedly. “What did you see, Giles?”
“Ah, lad,” he said, “ ’twas an evil vision. Its memory is a monster, preying on my poor old mind. ’Tis a fearful thing, better drowned in wine than kept alive with the nourishment of talk. Let’s drink again, lad, and speak of it no more!”
HE brought another bottle out of the case by the wall. Bob Star caught it out of his hand, and pulled him toward a little bench in the end of the room.
“Sit down, Giles,” he said, his voice quick and ringing with eagerness. “Tell me what you saw—everything! Now—before you forget. It may help us, Giles.” His tone went hard with urgency. “It may aid us, in the end, to kill Stephen Orco!”
“Mortal me, lad!” the old man protested.
His small red eyes filmed for a moment, with naked, uncomprehending horror. His gross bulk shuddered, and he reached convulsively for the bottle.
“Let me drink, lad. For life’s sake, give old Giles a taste of blessed oblivion! For the thing he saw must be forgotten, lad, or poor old Giles Habibula will never again be sane.”
Bob Star held the bottle away.
“Just tell me, Giles,” he begged. “Tell me everything you saw. Then you may drink. But we must know what it is we’re fighting, Giles.”
“ ’Twould be a crime, lad, to shock your young mind with the mortal terror of it. Give me the wine.”
Bob Star bent over him, earnestly. “You must tell me,” he insisted, “for the sake of my mother. She’s in terrible danger, Giles. Stephen Orco is hunting her, to murder her. What you saw may help us save her. Don’t you want to help her?”
The old man sighed noisily, and relaxed on the bench.
“Ah, yes, lad.” The yellow mask of his face warmed. “For long, long years, poor old Giles Habibula was among the loyal guard of Aladoree. And he would face that mortal horror again, lad, for your blessed mother. Ah, if any act of his could save her precious life——”
“Then tell me——”
The fish eyes were staring sorrowfully at the silent geodynes.
“Ah, well, I’ll tell you the little I can. The thing I saw was strange enough—too strange for reason to accept, lad. But the mortal horror that froze my poor old bones came from what I felt, and not from the frightful thing that moved before my dim old eyes.
“Ah, ’tis mad and hideous as a nightmare, lad. And it may be but a vision, for all I know. For it came when that dreadful paralysis was upon me. It may be unreal, lad, as the girl you saw in—
Quickly, Bob Star protested: “But she wasn’t——”
“Anyhow,” the old man wheezed, “this was more than a shadow on the wall. It was real enough to wreck my blessed generators.”
He blew his nose.
“Exactly,” asked Bob Star, “what did you see?”
“The ache of coming harm has been gnawing at my poor old bones ever since we left Neptune,” began Giles Habibula. “Even wine couldn’t kill it. And, suddenly, a little while ago, I knew that fearful evil had crept into the ship. I heard Mark Lardo howling like a tortured beast. And then the green mist dimmed my eyes, and the paralysis seized me.
“Poor old Giles couldn’t move his hand, not even to lift a blessed drop of wine.
“Ah, so, lad! I was sitting here on the floor, with my back against the wall. The bottle was on the floor between my legs. But the green haze was growing thicker in the room, and I couldn’t get the bottle to my lips.
“The blessed generators still were singing strong and eager. But I couldn’t have stirred to tend them—not for life’s sweet sake.
“And then the thing came into the power room. I could hardly turn my poor old eyes to see, it, for that mortal paralysis. It came partly down the companion, and partly through the wall, lad. And the metal cases of the geodynes were no barrier to it.
“It walked across, toward the generators——”
Anxiously, Bob Star’s voice cut in: “What was it like, Giles? Was it like a man?”
“Me lad! ’Twas like no man!” The thin old voice was keen-edged with dread. “ ’Twas like nothing that old Giles ever set his eyes upon. ’Tis better to forget the look of it, lad. For it was a thing that no man can look upon, and hope to keep his blessed reason.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Mortal me!” He shook the wrinkled yellow sphere of his head, and swallowed for a huskiness in his throat.
“Go on. Try——”
“ ’Twas a thing of moving fire.” His small eyes rolled upward. “Ten feet tall it stood. The head of it was a point of cold-violet fire. It was bright and small as a star, and wrapped in a little cloud of violet mist.
“The foot of it was another star of red-hot light, at the core of a little moon of red haze. And between the violet star and the red one was a swirling pillar of light. Its color was silvery green. It was larger in the middle, like a spindle. And it kept whirling; it was never still.
“And a broad green ring, two feet across, was floating around the middle of the spindle. It was like a ring carved out of emerald. It was the only solid-looking part of the thing—and it wasn’t too solid to pass through the wall.
“AH, LAD, that’s the way it looked, as well as old Giles can tell you. But the horror wasn’t in the look of it. The horror came from what I felt. It seeped into my poor old body, like the fearful cold of space. The thing was a magnet of living light, lad. And its magnetism was pure horror.
“And all the mortal time, that paralysis held me. Old Giles sat there on the floor, lad. He couldn’t have moved a blessed finger, not to save his poor old life.”
“Just what did the thing do, Giles?” Bob Star demanded, tense-voiced. “Tell me everything you can.”
“Ah, it did enough to my precious geodynes, life knows,” he moaned. “It came down here into the power rooms, partly through the door and partly through the wall.
“It was alive, lad. It was never still. The silver-green mist was swirling. The red star and the violet star beat like hearts of light, in the little moons. Only the green ring shone with a steady glow.
“It came across the floor, lad, to the precious generators. And the green-white mist swirled out—it reached into them, through the metal of their shells. The geodynes made a fearful, hurt sound, lad. It was their cry of death.
