Collected Short Fiction, page 250
With a grave, maddening deliberation, Jay Kalam nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “The Cometeers can be destroyed. That’s what she has been trying to tell us.”
SUDDEN HOPE shook Bob Star like a wind.
“Destroyed?” he whispered, faintly. “Stephen Orco can be killed?” Urgently he demanded, “How?”
The commander slowly shook his head.
“Kay doesn’t know. She knows only that a means exists—and that it is the most closely guarded secret of the Cometeers.
“She says the Cometeers are ordinarily immortal, as Stephen Orco told us,” Jay Kalam added. “But their rulers possess some instrumentality for their destruction. It is necessary for purposes of discipline, and to eliminate undesirables from among them.
“Kay has no idea what that agency is; it is guarded even from the mass of the aythrin. But she does know where the secret is kept!”
Bob Star fixed in a breathless tension.
“Where?”
“It is guarded at the center of this planet. You remember Kay’s drawing?
“Well, this planet is a world truly dead—cold to the center. It is honeycombed with cavernous hollows; we might have suspected that from its low mean density. The chief stronghold of the Cometeers, where they guard this precious agency, is in the hollow center of the planet.
“She has been trying to guide us to it.”
Bob Star stood silent for a little time, frowning reflectively.
“I’ve been trying——” he began, and broke off suddenly, biting his lip.
“The information is very useful to us,” he said with a bitter irony, “when we are prisoners, unarmed and condemned! When the thing we must have to kill Stephen Orco is in the middle of an armored planet, beneath fifteen thousand miles of rock, and guarded with all the strange science of the Cometeers!”
Looking at him, Kay Nymidee spoke again insistently, in her soft, liquid voice.
“Kay still wants to know,” Jay Kalam said, “if you speak any Spanish.”
Bob Star shook his head.
“But I’m going to learn,” he said eagerly. “Tell her that. If——”
His voice stilled to ruthless apprehension.
XXV.
BOB STAR was never satisfied with his part in the rebellion of the prisoners. True, the plan of action—if anything so vague, so wild, so desperately hopeless could be called a plan—was his. And it was he, at last, who led the rush from the hold.
But those few mad seconds never contented him.
Hector Valdin had gone with him through the weary apathy of the prison hold. He had introduced Bob Star to his fellow miners, his old neighbors, simply as John Star’s son. And Bob Star had talked to them, had roused them into hope with the wand of splendid words.
As new men, they rose to follow the glorious banner of those names.
And Bob Star had come at last to Giles Habibula, demanding: “Giles, can you open the door?”
The old man started. The yellow, seamed moon of his face went ashen. The small, fishy eyes grew round with bewildered protest.
“Why, lad?” he rasped hoarsely, trembling. “In the name of precious life, why should I open the door?”
“Can you?” Bob insisted.
“Ah, ’tis the melancholy fate of genius ever to be in question.” He shook his head, dolefully. “Yes, lad, I can open the door. I watched the working of the lock as they let us in, and I’ve been looking at the thing for precious hours, until I can see every part within the case.
Jay Kalam, with whom Bob Star had discussed the piece of reckless audacity he called a plan, said soberly: “Do it, Giles.”
The old man shuddered, wheezing: “Ah, no! Not beneath the fearful, glittering eye of that mortal globe——”
“We’ll try to distract it,” Bob Star told him.
And he made a little sign to the gaunt, gray-faced miner, Hector Valdin, who sprang toward Kay Nymidee, leering, grasping for her. She screamed, ran stumbling toward Bob Star. Shouting, Bob Star leaped at his haggard ally. Others rushed to circle them. A noisy riot swept up and down the ramp.
Meanwhile, Giles Habibula crept trembling to the massive lock at the top of the ramp. But his thick fingers didn’t tremble when they touched the great red case. A singular quick deftness came into them, an amazing sensitivity.
He reached through the bars.
Shouting, Jay Kalam was pushing his way toward the center of the milling throng. And gigantic Hal Samdu was fighting now, with such grim and silent earnestness as if he forgot it was make-believe.
Then Giles Habibula came lumbering down the ramp, gasping for Bob Star. His face was yellow-green, glistening with beads of sweat. Even his nose seemed paler purple. He was breathless, panting.
“Lad!” he wheezed. “Lad, the door is unlocked! You may go through, if you are such a mortal fool——”
And Bob Star led the cheering mob up the ramp. As he reached the massive red grating, his clear voice called a ringing command. Magically, then, it was a mob no longer, but a terrible and desperate army.
HAL SAMDU and Hector Valdin helped him fling aside the unlocked grating. He led the rush upon the white sphere beyond, to pit bare human flesh, against its metal might.
It was a mad thing; Jay Kalam had made him see that. These thousands behind him were weaponless, already once beaten. There was a formidable guard: the argent spheres; the green, bounding cones from whose pointed heads spurted the orange ray; the red giants with their golden weapons.
And if one of the Cometeers should be aboard, with its dread power of inducing paralysis and unconsciousness, the thing was sheer folly.
But Bob Star led his crush of silent, empty-handed men against the metal sphere. They lifted it, and surged with it toward the red wall of the corridor. It was hooting a raucous alarm; the white tentacles were fighting. They seized the bodies of men, to beat men down with living flails.
Others took the places of the fallen. Bob Star bad made death itself a victory to the men behind him. It was a mad battle—but his magic words had tapped the terrible power of madness.
And a supernal thing strode among the prisoners as they marched from the hold, something greater than any of them, than all of them. It was that intangible, ineffable power that touched a few beasts in the wilderness of early Earth and created the unity that is mankind and the glory of a far-flung system.
That power was greater than the words that had waked it. It banished all fear, all consideration of self; for it made self the insignificant instrument of an overwhelming entity.
It was that something, transfiguring human flesh, that smashed the hooting sphere against the red metal wall again and again, until the faceted eyes were shattered and its surface was crushed in, until the deadly tentacles were still and the hooting ceased—and then rent it into parts, for weapons.
It was the same power that led the ragged horde down the corridor, to meet the fantastic terror of the alarmed guard: Another argent sphere, hooting hoarse commands; three of the tall green cones, bouncing upon distended bases, booming their threats, flashing orange-red rays from their narrow, pointed heads; and a full score of the red-armored, three-legged giants, with strange colors flashing from the stalked organs where their heads should have been, their slender tentacular limbs clutching golden weapons.
It was hopeless, Bob Star saw. It was useless, utter folly.
But the supernal power sweeping him would not be stopped. And he led the way to meet that alien band, shouting, flourishing one of the tentacles of the metal globe which had stiffened into a silver spear. A great eager voice rolled up behind him. And he knew that these transfigured men would fight, even to death.
That, for Bob Star, was the end of the battle.
He had flung his argent spear at one of the green, bounding cones. He saw it strike the oily, glistening skin, and sink deep. He plunged forward, to grasp it and strike again. But he saw the green neck flex, so that the narrow head pointed at him, saw the beginning of an orange flash.
Then a red and merciless spear of pain drove through the old, ragged scar on his forehead, and probed the depths of his tortured brain. Red agony exploded through his skull and faded slowly into darkness. Faintly, as his sick consciousness went out like a dying flame, he heard the thundering, triumphant shout: “Take the ship!”
XXVI.
BOB STAR woke once more from the same singular dream.
Again his body was the shining, weightless body of one of the Cometeers. And again he was pursuing the shining, supernal form of Stephen Orco, who fled with a woman—his mother, sometimes, and sometimes Kay Nymidee.
He had some unpictured weapon, and he sought with it to destroy Stephen Orco, to save the woman from unthinkable vampirism. And once more he was being crushed down by a great hammer of scarlet pain, and again the ancient fear was yelling: “You can’t!
You can’t kill him!”
Awake, he still felt disturbingly weightless. He was floating in the air, he discovered, rather than lying down. And the lack of weight gave him an unpleasant giddiness.
Before he could see, his hand came up to his forehead. Upon the old scar was a little swollen patch, inflamed and painful to the touch—where the stunning organic ray had struck. The old pain still throbbed under, it, keener, more intense, like a needle of flame stabbing intermittently through his brain.
He found, when he could see, that he was in a very curious place—no longer upon the disk ship. It was a shaft, or pit, perhaps fifty feet square and a hundred deep. Its walls, apparently, were of the same perdurable material as armored the planet, jewel-smooth, lustrous violet-blue.
He was simply floating, drifting, in it, away from any wall.
Gingerly touching the painful swelling upon his forehead, he twisted his head to peer about, awkwardly, and so discovered his old companions.
Ludicrously sprawled in the air, Giles Habibula was clinging to the bottom of the pit, where a circle of slender rods of red metal projected from the polished indigo wall. His deft, sensitive fingers were sliding the rods in and out, twisting them; the yellow globe of his head was cocked as if to listen.
Jay Kalam and Kay Nymidee were near him, equally weightless, busy with some unfamiliar instrument. From a rectangular case of red metal they were taking wires and coils and odd-looking parts of scarlet metal, and little round, black cells.
It took Bob Star a moment to locate Hal Samdu. Battered somewhat, covered with bloodstained bandages, the giant was at the opening of the square pit. He was clinging to the edge, peering out as if on guard. One great hand clutched a long rod of yellow metal—a weapon, Bob Star knew, that must have been taken from one of the lean, red-armored beings.
Beyond him, beyond the square mouth of the pit, yawned a dark, cavernous abysm. Far distant in it he could glimpse rugged walls of dark rock; and, equally distant, he saw part of a machine fantastically huge, faintly illuminated with a ghastly crimson light.
A curious sickness came upon Bob Star as he tried to move, as if every tissue of his body clamored for the certainty and the orientation of weight. He yearned for something to cling to, and floundered about in the air until his foot kicked the wall.
The action had surprising results. It sent him hurtling, head foremost, across the fifty feet to the opposite wall. Dismayed, he flung out his arms to fend for his head. The undue force of the gesture sent him spinning back across the pit.
GILES HABIBULA reached away from the circle of rods, to catch Bob’s ankle.
“Better cling to this bit of rail, lad,” he advised, “or you’ll be smashing out your wits. We’re almost at the center of the mortal planet, and nearly free of gravity. One step could carry you a mile——”
“At the center of the planet?” Bob Star repeated, bewildered. “Tell me, Giles—what happened? How did we get here? How long have I been unconscious?”
The old man had returned to his business of twisting and sliding the scarlet rods, resting sensitive finger tips delicately here and there, as if to study faint vibrations.
“Ah, lad,” he wheezed, abstractedly, “you’ve been out for a mortal time. The ray from that fearful creature struck your old wound; I feared it had killed you.”
“The ship?” Bob Star asked, eagerly. “Did we take the ship?”
“Ah, so, we took the ship.”
He spun a series of rods, listening, and went on: “Thanks to the mad courage you had put into the prisoners, lad—they overwhelmed our guards like a wild sea. And thanks, too, to the unrewarded genius of a poor old soldier in the legion. Thanks, also, to the miner, Hector Valdin; he led them after you fell, lad—until he died.”
The thin, absent voice had faded, and Bob Star asked: “You say we’re at the center of the planet? Then how did we get here? And what became of the ship?”
“We were already in the cavernous space outside when we took the ship,” said Giles Habibula. “The core of the planet is a hive of the mortal aythrin! They had brought us here to feed their evil lives.”
He shuddered, but, oddly, his thick fingers, on the rods, didn’t pause or tremble.
“When the ship was ours,” his slow voice went on, “Jay and the lass took command. They disembarked us here an hour ago. Our comrades went on in the ship to seek some refuge in the caverns. Ever since, I’ve been toiling with this lock.
“Ah,” he muttered, “ ’tis mortal difficult! The number of possible combinations—it would make your head spin, lad! To open it by trial and error would take from now until the sun grows cold. Ah, me! the aythrin are mortal clever——”
“But the lass bade me open it, lad. She says the secret place of the aythrin is beyond, where they guard the precious power that we must have to kill Stephen Orco.”
“I see,” said Bob Star. He bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Giles, if my talk has bothered you——”
“Not so, lad,” protested the old man. “Talk but oils the working of my precious genius.”
His thick body bent; he groaned painfully.
“Ah, lad,” he complained, “this lock is a mortal trial. Never was such a riddle built into cold metal, lad. And never was old Giles so unfit to draw out the answer. For old Giles Habibula is ill, lad—fearfully ill. The stark hand of death is close upon him!”
But his fingers didn’t cease their labor.
Jay Kalam and Kay Nymidee were still busy over the intricate thing in the red metal case.
“What’s that?” Bob Star inquired.
“ ’Tis some blessed contraption Jay tore out of the control room of the ship before we came off. From the wonderment on his face, I doubt that he knows himself what it is.”
“Kay——”
BOB STAR had begun another question, when sudden, unendurable sickness seized him.
Here, near the planet’s center, he had no weight. Directions had no meaning. His surroundings had begun to spin, dizzily. At one moment the indigo shaft was horizontal. The next, it was an inverted pit, and he was clinging precariously to the roof of a vertiginous abyss.
Giles Habibula, beside him, was doubled up again, his moon face greenish, sweat-beaded.
“Ah, Jay,” his thin voice called, “I’m sick. ’Tis the illness the doctors warned me of. The wine upon the asteroid—ah, it was wondrous wine! And the food——”
His voice became a whine of agony.
“Farewell, comrades!” he gasped hoarsely. “Old Giles must leave you, now——”
“Not yet, Giles,” interrupted Jay Kalam, urgently. “We all feel indisposed from being without weight. It is the same as the space sickness they used to have on the old rocket fliers, before the invention of the gravity cell. It is a disturbance of the semicircular canals; it affects the blood stream, internal organs, and brain.
“Some people are almost immune, as I am. Others never become adjusted to it. But you must open the lock, Giles, in spite of it! All we have done is useless unless we get through this door.”
“I can’t do it, Jay,” moaned the old man. He was sweating, panting. “I’m too mortal ill! The torture of a dying body destroys my concentration. For life’s sake, Jay——”
“You must, Giles. The only thing in the universe that can destroy Stephen Orco is beyond—somewhere beyond, where the aythrin guard it.”
Giles Habibula sighed, and bent again to his task.
“Ah,” he sobbed, “ ’tis a bitter lot——”
Kay Nymidee was still busy over the red metal case. Now Bob Star heard her utter a little cry of satisfaction. She held up a black, opalescent prism, and swiftly explained something to Jay Kalam. He nodded gravely, and rapidly they began to reassemble the mysterious device.
A dull, coughing explosion drew Bob Star’s eyes toward the square mouth of the pit. He saw a puff of yellowish smoke issuing from the long tube of yellow metal in the hand of Hal Samdu.
Beyond, he saw a white globe approaching. It was sailing through the air, black belt spinning, black, faceted eyes glittering, white tentacles sprawling. In the midst of his consternation, Bob Star wondered briefly if it were all machine, or if it contained a living brain.
He heard its abrupt, hoarse hoot of alarm, close on the explosion.
Hal Samdu was furiously busy for a moment with the mechanism of the golden weapon. Then he hurled it spinning toward the silver globe, and came plunging down the shaft, to sprawl against the bottom of it, beside Bob Star.
“Aye, Jay,” his deep voice rumbled apprehensively. “We are discovered! A horde of the monsters approached. I destroyed one—but the golden gun would not work again——”
His voice stilled to a terrific vibration that throbbed down the shaft. It was the clang of a huge gong, deep as the note of a hammered planet.
AND SUDDENLY, beyond the silver sphere, an alien horde was following into the pit: huge green cones, and red, grotesque giants in golden harness. Another globe brought up the rear.
They were swimming through the air.
Bob Star shivered to the uproar: the raucous howling of the spheres; the deep, incessant drumming of the cones; and, above, the all-pervading thunder of the gong, like the sobbing in unison of all the bells ever cast, a soul-chilling alarm.
