Collected Short Fiction, page 60
The dark eyes of the Prince burned in fierce anger.
“When she was through with me she left me to die in disgrace. I barely escaped with my life. She had robbed me of my name, wealth, position. She named me the outlaw. She made me appear a traitor to those who trusted me—then laughed at me. She laughed at me and called me a fool. I was—but I won’t be again!”
“At first I was filled with anger at the whole world, at the unjust laws and the silly conventions and the cruel intolerance of men. I became the pirate of space. A pariah. Fighting against my own kind. Struggling desperately for power.”
For a few moments he was moodily silent, slapping at the flies that buzzed around his bloody wounds.
“I gained power. And I learned of the dangers from Mars. First I was glad. Glad to see the race of man swept out. Parasites men seemed. Insects. Life—what is it but a kind of decay on a mote in space? Then I got a saner view, and built the City of Space, to save a few men. Then because the few seemed to have noble qualities, I resolved to try to save the world.
“But it is too late. We have lost. And I have had enough of love, enough of women, with their soft, alluring bodies, and the sweet lying voices, and the heartless scheming.”
THE Prince fell into black silence, motionless, heedless of the flies that swarmed about him. Presently Brand contrived, despite his manacles, to fish a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, extract one, and tossed the others to Bill, who managed to light one for the Prince. The three battered men sat in dazzling sun and blistering heat, smoking and trying to forget heat and flies and torturing manacles—and the death that loomed so near.
It was early noon when Bill heard a little rustling beyond the mesquites. In a moment the Martian appeared. A grotesque and terrifying being it was. Scores of green tentacles, slender and writhing, grew from an insignificant body. Three lidless, purple eyes, staring, alien, and malevolent, watched them alertly from foot-long green stalks that rose above the body. The creature half walked on tentacles extended below it, half dragged itself along by green appendages that reached out to grasp mesquite limbs above it. One inch-thick coil carried a curious instrument of glittering crystal and white metal—it was a strange, gleaming thing, remotely like a ray pistol. And fastened about another tentacle was a little metal ring, from which an odd-looking little bar dangled.
The thing came straight for the Prince. Bill screamed a warning. The Prince saw it, twisted himself over on the ground, tried desperately to crawl away. The thing reached out a slender tentacle, many yards long. It grasped him about the neck, drew him back.
In a moment the dreadful being was crouching in a writhing green mass above the body of the manacled man. Once he screamed piteously, then there was no sound save loud, gasping breaths. His muscles knotted as he struggled in agony against the fetters and the coils of the monster.
Bill and Captain Brand lay there, unable either to escape or to give assistance. In silent horror they watched the scene. They saw that each slender green tentacle ended in a sharp-edged suction disk. They watched the disks forcing themselves against the throat of the agonized man, tearing a way through his clothing to his body. They saw constrictions move down the rubber-like green tentacles as if they were sucking, while red drops oozed out about the edge of the disks.
“Our turn next,” muttered Captain Brand.
“And after us, the world!” Bill breathed, tense with horror.
A narrow, white beam, blindingly brilliant, flashed from beyond the dull green foliage of the mesquite. It struck the crouching monster waveringly. Without a sound, it leapt, flinging itself aside from the body of the Prince. It raised its curious weapon. A tiny purple spark darted from it.
A shattering crash rang out at a little distance. There was a thin scream—a woman’s scream.
Then the white ray stabbed at the monster again, and it collapsed in a twitching heap of thin green coils, upon the still body of the Prince.
A slender girl rushed out of the brush, tossed aside a ray pistol, and flung herself upon the monster, trying to drag it from the Prince. It was Paula Trainor. Her clothing was torn. Her skin was scratched and bleeding from miles of running through the desert of rocks and cactus and thorny mesquite. She was evidently exhausted. But she flung herself with desperate energy to the rescue of the injured man.
The body of the dead thing was light enough. But the sucking disks still clung to the flesh. They pulled and tore it when she tugged at them. She struggled desperately to drag them loose, by turns sobbing and laughing hysterically.
“If you can help us get loose, we might help,” Bill suggested.
The girl raised a piteous face. “Oh, Mr. Bill—Captain Brand! Is he dead?”
“I think not, Miss Paula. The thing had just jumped on him. Buck up!”
“See the little bar—it looks like a sliver of aluminum—fastened to the metal ring about that coil?” Brand said. “It might be the key for these chains. End of it seems to be shaped about right. Suppose you try it?”
In nervous haste, the girl tore the little bar from its ring. With Brand’s aid, she was able to unlock his fetters. The Captain lost no time in freeing Bill and removing the manacles from the unconscious Prince.
The thin, rubber-like tentacles could not be torn loose. Brand cut them with his knife. He found them tough and fibrous. Red blood flowed from them when they were severed.
Bill carried the injured man down to the shade of the cottonwoods, brought water to him in a hat from the muddy little stream below. In a few minutes he was conscious, though weak from loss of blood.
Captain Brand, after satisfying himself that Paula had killed the Martian, and that it was the only one that had survived in the wreckage of the blue globes and the metal dome, set off to cross the mountain and bring back the sunship.
When the Red Rover came into view late that evening, a beautiful slender bar of silver against the pyrotechnic gold and scarlet splendor of the desert sunset, the Prince of Space was hobbling about, supported on Bill’s arm, examining the wreckage of the Martian fliers.
Paula was hovering eagerly about him, anxious to aid him. Bill noticed the pain and despair that clouded her brown eyes. She had been holding the Prince’s head in her arms when he regained consciousness. Her lips had been very close to his, and bright tears were brimming in her golden eyes.
Bill had seen the Prince push her away, then thank her gruffly when he had found what she had done.
“Paula, you have done a great thing for the world,” Bill had heard him say.
“It wasn’t the world at all! It was for you!” the girl had cried, tearfully.
She had turned away, to hide her tears. And the Prince had said nothing more.
The Red Rover landed beside the wreckage of the Martian fliers. After a few hours spent in examining and photographing the wrecks, in taking specimens of the white alloy of which they were built, and of other substances used in the construction, they all went back on the sunship, taking the dead Martian and other objects for further study. Brand took off for the upper atmosphere.
“Captain Brand,” the Prince said as they stood in the bridge room, “since the death of poor Captain Smith this morning, I believe you are the most skillful sunship officer in my organization. Hereafter you are in command of the Red Rover, with Harris and Vincent as your officers.
“We have a huge task before us. The victory we have won is but the first hand in the game that decides the fate of Earth.”
CHAPTER V
The Triton’s Treasure
“I MUST have at least two tons of vitalium,” the Prince of Space told Bill, when the newspaperman came to the bridge of the Red Rover after twenty hours in the bunk. The Prince was pale and weak from loss of blood, but seemed to suffer no other ill effects from his encounter with the Martian.
“Two tons of vitalium!” Bill exclaimed. “A small demand! I doubt if there is that much on the market, if you had all the Confederation’s treasury to buy it with.”
“I must have it, and at once! I am going to fit out the Red Rover for a voyage to Mars. It will take that much vitalium for the batteries.”
“We are going to Mars!”
“The only hope for humanity is for us to strike first and to strike hard!”
“If the world knew of the danger, we could get help.”
“That’s where you come in. I told you that I should need publicity. It is your business to tell the public about things. I want you to tell humanity about the danger from Mars. Make it convincing and make it strong! Say anything you like so long as you leave the Prince of Space out of it. I have the body of the Martian that attacked me preserved in alcohol. You have that and the wreckage in the desert to substantiate your story. I will land you at Trainor’s Tower in New York tonight. You will have twenty-four hours to convince the world, and raise two tons of vitalium. It has to be done!”
“A big order,” Bill said doubtfully. “But I’ll do my best.”
The city was a bright carpet of twinkling lights when the Red Rover darted down out of a black sky, hovering for a moment over Trainor’s Tower. When it flashed away, Bill was standing alone on top of the loftiest building on earth, in his pocket a sheaf of manuscript on which he had been at work for many hours, beside him a bulky package that contained the preserved body of the weird monster from Mars.
He opened the trapdoor—which was conveniently unlocked—took up the package, and clambered down a ladder into the observatory. An intent man was busy at the great telescope—which pointed toward the red planet Mars. The man looked understandingly at Bill, and nodded toward the elevator.
In half an hour Bill was exhibiting his package and his manuscript to the night editor of the Herald-Sun.
“The greatest news in the century!” he cried. “The Earth attacked by Mars! It was a Martian ship that took the Helicon. I have one of the dead creatures from Mars in this box.”
The astounded editor formed a quick opinion that his star reporter had met with some terrifying experience that had unsettled his brain. He listened skeptically while Bill related a true enough account of the cruise of the Moon Patrol ships, and of the battle with the blue globe. Bill omitted any mention of the City of Space and its enigmatic ruler; but let it be assumed that the Fury had rammed the globe and that it had fallen in the desert. He ended with a wholly fictitious account of how a mysterious scientist had picked him up in a sunship, had told him of the invaders from Mars, and had sent him to collect two tons of vitalium to equip his ship for a raid on Mars. Bill had spent many hours in planning his story; he was sure that it sounded as plausible as the amazing reality of the Prince of Space and his wonderful city.
The skeptical editor was finally convinced, as much by his faith in Bill’s probity as by the body of the green monster, the scraps of a strange white metal, and the photographs, which he presented as material evidence. The editor radioed to have a plane sent from El Paso, Texas, to investigate the wrecks. When it was reported that they were just as Bill had said, the Herald-Sun issued an extra, which carried Bill’s full account, with photographs of the dead monster, and scientific accounts of the other evidence. There was an appeal for two tons of vitalium, to enable the unknown scientist to save the world by making a raid on Mars.
The story created an enormous sensation all over the world. A good many people believed it. The Herald-Sun actually received half a million eagles in subscriptions to buy the vitalium—a sum sufficient to purchase about eleven ounces of that precious metal.
Most of the world laughed. It was charged that Bill was insane. It was charged that the Herald-Sun was attempting to expand its circulation by a baseless canard. Worse, it was charged that Bill, perhaps in complicity with the management of the great newspaper, was making the discovery of a new sort of creature in some far corner of the world the basis for a gigantic fraud, to secure that vast amount of vitalium.
Examination proved that the wrecks in the desert had been demolished by explosion instead of by falling. A court injunction was filed against the Herald-Sun to prevent collection of the subscriptions, and Bill might have been arrested, if he had not wisely retired to Trainor’s Tower.
Finally, it was charged that the pirate, the Prince of Space, was at the bottom of it—possibly the charge was suggested by the fact that the chief object of the Prince’s raids had always been vitalium. A rival paper asserted that the pirate must have captured Bill and sent him back to Earth with this fraud.
Public excitement became so great that the reward for the capture of Prince of Space, dead or alive, was raised from ten to fifteen million eagles.
Twenty-four hours later after he had been landed on Trainor’s Tower, Bill was waiting there again, with bright stars above him, and the carpet of fire that was New York spread in great squares beneath him. The slim silver ship came gliding down, and hung just beside the vitrolite dome while eager hands helped him through the air-lock. Beyond, he found the Prince waiting, with a question in his eyes.
“No luck,” Bill grunted hopelessly. “Nobody believed it. And the town was getting too hot for me. Lucky I had a getaway.”
The Prince smiled bitterly as the newspaperman told of his attempt to enlist the aid of humanity.
“About what I expected,” he said. “Men will act like men. It might be better, in the history of the cosmos, to let the Martians have this old world. They might make something better of it. But I am going to give humanity a chance—if I can. Perhaps man will develop into something better, in a million years.”
“Then there is still a chance—without the vitalium?” Bill asked eagerly.
“Not without vitalium. We have to go to Mars. We must have the metal to fit our flier for the trip. But I have needed vitalium before; when I could not buy it. I took it.”
“You mean—piracy!” Bill gasped.
“Am I not the Prince of Space—‘notorious interplanetary outlaw’ as you have termed me in your paper? And is not the good of the many more than the good of the few? May I not take a few pounds of metal from a rich corporation, to save the earth for humanity?”
“I told you to count me in,” said Bill. “The idea was just a little revolutionary.”
“We haven’t wasted any time while you were in New York. I have means of keeping posted on the shipments of vitalium from the moon. We have found that the sunship Triton leaves the moon in about twenty hours, with three months production of the vitalium mines in the Kepler crater. It should be well over two tons.”
THIRTY hours later the Red Rover was drifting at rest in the lunar lane, with ray tubes dead and no light showing. Men at her telescopes scanned the heavens moonward for sight of the white repulsion rays of the Triton and her convoy.
Bill was with Captain Brand in the bridge-room. Eager light flashed in Brand’s eyes as he peered through the telescopes, watched his instruments, and spoke brisk orders into the tube.
“How does it feel to be a pirate?” Bill asked, “after so many years spent hunting them down?”
Captain Brand grinned. “You know,” he said, “I’ve wanted to be a buccaneer ever since I was about four years old. I couldn’t, of course, so I took the next best thing, and hunted them. I’m not exactly grieving my heart out Over what has happened. But I feel sorry for my old pals of the Moon Patrol. Somebody is going to get hurt!”
“And it may be we,” said Bill. “The Triton will be convoyed by several war-fliers, and she can fight with her own rays. It looks to me like a hard nut to crack.”
“I used to dream about how I would take a ship if I were the Prince of Space,” said Captain Brand. “I’ve just been talking our course of action over with him. We’ve agreed on a plan.”
In an hour the Prince and Dr. Trainor entered the bridge. Paula appeared in a few moments. Her face was drawn and pale; unhappiness cast a shadow in her brown eyes. Eagerly, she asked the Prince how he was feeling.
“Oh, about as well as ever, thanks,” the lean young man replied in a careless voice. His dark, enigmatic eyes fell upon her face. He must have noticed her pallor and evident unhappiness. He met her eyes for a moment, then took a quick step toward her. Bill saw a great tenderness almost breaking past the bitter cynicism in those dark eyes. Then the Prince checked himself, spoke shortly:
“We are preparing for action, Paula. Perhaps you should go back to your stateroom until it is over.”
The girl turned silently and moved out of the room. Bill thought she would have tottered and fallen if there had been enough gravity or acceleration to make one fall.
In a few minutes a little group of flickering lights appeared among the stars ahead, just beside the huge, crater-scarred, golden disk of the moon.
“The Triton and her convoy!” shouted the men at the telescopes.
“All men to their stations, and clear the ship for action!” Captain Brand gave the order.
“Two Moon Patrol sunships are ahead, cruising fifty miles apart,” came the word from the telescope. “A hundred miles behind them is the Triton, with two more Patrol fliers twenty-five miles behind her and fifty miles apart.”
Brand spoke to the Prince, who nodded. And Brand gave the order.
“Show no lights. Work the ship around with the gyroscopes until our rear battery of tubes will cover the right Patrol ship of the leading pair, and our bow tubes the other.”
The whir of the electric motors came from below. The fliers swung about, hanging still in the path of the approaching Triton.
“All ready, sir,” came a voice from the tube.
A few anxious minutes went by. Then the Red Rover, dark and silent, was hanging squarely between the two forward Patrol ships, about twenty-five miles from each of them.
“Fire constantly with all tubes, fore and aft, until the enemy appears to be disabled,” Brand gave the order. The Prince spoke to him, and he added, “Inflict no unnecessary damage.”
