Collected Short Fiction, page 75
The white needle, for all its length, seemed hardly thicker than a man’s finger. It was mounted at the top of a curiously complex and delicate-looking device that spread broadly out between the three towers, below the center of the huge purple ring.
Dan looked at it and decided his plan had at least a chance of success—though he had no hope that it would not be fatal to him.
Quickly and silently he ran to the base of the mighty silver towers nearest him and began to climb the side toward the ravine, where the maze of girders would hide him, at least partially, from any watchers back on the plateau. The starlight and the faint weird radiance of the purple ring above sufficed to guide him.
The cross-braces on the girder he had chosen were spaced closely enough to serve as the rungs of a ladder. Dan climbed easily, pausing twice for breath, and to look down at the dark plateau. The vast, humming machines loomed up strangely in the pale purple light that fell from the gleaming ring.
Once he looked across toward the other side of the island. The surface there was more level. He glimpsed tiny moving lights, and huge stationary masses, apparently as large as ocean liners. He had an impression of a vast amount of mechanical activity, proceeding in the darkness very rapidly, and in silent and orderly fashion.
“The expeditionary force of the Master Intelligence of Mars,” he thought, “preparing to set out against humanity! And what I can do is the only chance to stop it!”
HE climbed again with renewed energy. A few yards more brought him to the colossal metal ring. Resting upon the three towers, it was a circular band of shining metal a foot thick and as wide as a road. The intense purple glow extended several feet from its surface.
Dan touched it tentatively. He felt a tingling electric shock. And he thought he could feel a radiation coming from it, giving him a curious sensation of cold. As he reached his hands up and grasped the upper edge of the great ring, he felt what seemed a physical current of cold.
Controlling his tendency to shiver, he climbed upon the last brace, and, lifting his weight with his hands, threw himself face down upon the flat upper surface of the vast ring. He lay bathed in cold purple fire. He tingled with the chill of it. A frozen current seemed to penetrate his body. Involuntarily he trembled, lost his grip and dangled precariously from the rim.
Only a frantic scrambling restored his hold. Then, fighting the sensation of freezing cold that came from the mist of purple flame, he drew himself forward and got to his feet upon the broad surface of the metal ring. On both sides it curved away like a circular track. Red-violet fire shimmered about it, bathing him to the waist in a chilling torrent.
Through coruscating frozen flame he waded to the inner rim of the colossal ring. Below him hung the needle, a mere straight line of white fire, a hundred feet in length. Eye-dazzling radiance scintillated along it, waxing and waning with a curious throbbing rhythm. The needle vibrated a little, but it pointed directly at the red point of Mars, now almost directly overhead.
Repressing a shudder, Dan looked down at the complex and delicate apparatus upon which the slender needle was mounted. It was a light frame of white metal bars, with spidery coils and huge glowing tubes and flimsy spinning disks mounted in it. The gleaming needle was mounted much like a telescope at the top of the device, fully fifty feet below him.
“Looks flimsy enough,” Dan muttered. “I’ll go through it like a sixteen-inch shell! Who would have thought I’d end this way!”
HE stepped back for a moment, and stood on the polished metal, hidden to the waist in cold purple flame. Lest it impede his movements, he tore the sheet from him and threw it aside. He let his eyes sweep for a last time over the familiar constellations blazing so splendidly in the black sky above. He had a pang of heartache, as if the stars were old friends. His glance roved fondly over the dark, indistinct masses of the island, and across the black plain of the sea.
“Well, no good in waiting,” he muttered again. “Sorry I can’t see Helen. Hope she gets off all right.”
He backed to the outer rim and drew a deep breath, like one about to dive. Then, with set face, he sprinted forward. As he did so a blinding flash of green light flickered up before him. He ducked his head and leapt from the inner edge of the vast glowing ring.
For long seconds, it seemed, he was plunging down through space, feet first. Air rushed screaming about his ears. But his mind was quite calm, and registered an astonishingly large series of impressions.
He saw the delicate, gleaming machine rushing up to meet him, the shimmering white needle swung on its top.
He took in the silent, dark plateau, with the masses of the great machines rising like ominous shadows here and there, and the mechanical monsters leaping busily about it, almost invisible in the dim, ghostly radiance that fell from the purple ring.
He saw a vivid flame of green reach up past him from somewhere below. He knew, without emotion or alarm, that he had been discovered, and that it was too late for his discoverers to stop him.
He found time, even, for a fleeting thought of death. His mind framed the question, “What will I be in a moment from now?”
Then he had struck the great white needle, and was crashing into the delicate apparatus below it. Waves of pain beat upon his mind like flashes of blinding light. But his last mental image, as he passed into oblivion, was a picture of Helen’s face. Oddly, it was not her face as he had seen it, but a reproduction of the old newspaper half-tone, curiously retouched with life and color.
THERE is little more to tell. It was some weeks later when Dan came back out of a world of delirium and dreams, to find himself lying on his back in a tent, very much bandaged. He was alone at the moment, and at first could not recall that tremendous last day of his conscious life.
Then he heard a thrillingly familiar feminine voice calling “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” He tried to move, a dull pain throbbed in his breast, and a groan escaped him. In a moment Helen appeared; the gray kitten was forgotten. She looked very anxious and solicitous—and also, Dan thought, very beautiful.
“No, no!” she cried. “You are going to be all right! Dad made me learn a little elementary medicine before we came here, and I know. But you mustn’t speak! Not for days yet! I’ll have to guess what you want. And you can wink when I guess the right thing.
“Gee, but I’m glad you’ve come to! You’ll be as well as ever, pretty soon. The kitten was lots of comfort. Still—”
Dan attempted to move. She leaned over him, shifted his weight and smoothed the sheet with strong, capable hands. “You want to know about what happened to the machine monsters?”
He winked.
“Well, you remember when they found us, and shot the green ray at us. They left you there—I thought you were dead—and carried me up here on the hill. Perhaps they wanted me for a laboratory subject to test the green ray on, or something of the kind. Anyhow, they carried me into a big shed filled with strange machines.
“They kept me there until that night. Then, all of a sudden, they all stopped! They froze! They were dead!
“The tentacles of the one that was holding me were set about me. But I worked free, and got out of the shed. It took all night. And when I came out, just at sunrise, I saw that the purple fire was gone from the great ring. The needle was knocked down, and the apparatus smashed.
“I found you there in the wreckage. You made a human bullet of yourself to smash it! The greatest thing a man ever did!”
THOUGH normally rather modest, Dan felt a glow of pride at the honest admiration ringing in her clear voice, and shining from her warm brown eyes.
“So I gathered up what was left of you,” she went on, “and tried to put you back together again. A good many bones were broken, and you had more cuts and bruises than I could mention; but the apparatus had broken the force of the fall, and you were still alive. You are remarkably well put together, I should say; and unusually lucky, as well!
“And, well, the machines and apparatus are scattered about all over the island. Every one of them stopped the instant you smashed the connection with the directing intelligence on Mars. There’ll be quite a stir in the scientific world, I imagine, in about three weeks, when the yacht comes and carries us back with a lot of plans and specimens. We must send about a thousand engineers back here to study what we leave behind us.
“And do you want anything else?” She bent over and watched his bandaged face. Looking up into her bright eyes, thrilling to the cool, comforting pressure of her hand on his forehead, Dan reflected. Then he winked.
“Something you want me to do?”
He winked.
“When? Right now?”
No response.
“After the yacht comes?”
He winked.
“What is it?” She looked him in the eye, blushed a little, and laughed. “You mean—”
Dan winked.
Twelve Hours to Live
JACK WILLIAMSON is a master of stories that grip and thrill one. His rich descriptions, his portrayal of the atmosphere of strange places, his tense situations, all recall the work of the master, Edgar Allen Poe.
At the end of this story will be found the announcement of a prize contest, based upon the story. But aside from the interest of the contest, we have here a short but thrilling incident of the interplanetary spaces. This short work contains in itself all of the danger, the bravery, the cruelty that might be expected when man extends his range of activities to the distant planets.
There is no doubt but that the spores that Mr. Williamson pictures could be the natural growth of another world, such as the hot steamy Venus; and that such spores could be a means of protecting the vegetation of the planet from the intruding hand of an invader such as man.
WEARILY, Captain David Grant paced the bridge, pausing at intervals to peer out with heavy-lidded eyes at the star-studded blackness of interplanetary space, beyond the small round observation ports.
For three days the Queen of Night, Grant’s rocket liner, had been pursued by the implacable vandal of the interstellar void, the Black Hawk.
For three days Captain Grant had kept his great space-liner, with her rich cargo of uranium salts from the mines on the outer satellite of Neptune and her hundreds of passengers, ahead of the questing disintegrator rays of the Black Hawk only by burning his full battery of reaction-motors at their maximum power.
And the fuel was almost gone—word had just come from the rocket rooms that the last chest of the radioactive protonite had been opened. In a few minutes the great liner would be at the questionable mercy of the Black Hawk.
Slowly the vibrant humming of the motors, which had filled the great ship with a vital under-current of sound, died away.
The black pointer which indicated reaction-pressure crept back across its dial toward zero.
The Queen of Night was no longer accelerating her speed.
Watching keenly with tired eyes, Grant saw a vague pink glow come into being in the jet, star-sprinkled sky behind. “Done for!”
he groaned.
The glow, he knew, was a fluorescent, electronic discharge in the radioactive gases jetting from the rockets of a racing ship. The Black Hawk was swiftly overtaking them!
“Man the rays!
The Captain spoke the order into the black mouthpiece below the television screen. He tried in vain to keep hopelessness from his voice. For what chance had the two feeble ray tubes of the Queen of Night, against the powerful armament of the Black Hawk?
His mate’s square face appeared on the screen.
“Man the rays it is, sir,” came his voice.
Captain Grant turned quickly away, for he heard a light footstep and a snatch of gay song from beyond the bridge-room’s entrance.
The avol metal door swung open suddenly, and a gay, laughing sprite danced through.
“Nell! Nell! Darling—” the captain cried and his voice suddenly choked.
The radiant being ran across to him; in a moment his face was buried in a fragrant mass of gleaming red-gold hair.
It was Captain Grant’s lovely bride, whom he had married just before the beginning of the voyage. He had not told her of the vandal pursuing them—it had seemed to him a crime to blast her joyous happiness with helpless anxiety.
“What’s the matter, Dave dear?” came her voice, half smothered in his embrace. “You seem worried lately—and you’ve been busy in here for three days and nights. You must sleep!”
“Look!” the Captain said, and pointed out through a port.
A thin sword of green stabbed across the blackness of the sky, darting like a wicked blade toward the liner.
“Oh, it’s lovely! she cried. “What is it, a comet?”
His face grew white, his jaws set, lambent flame glowed in his blue eyes. His arms tightened fiercely about her.
“Nell, darling!” he cried.
He looked away, swallowed. In a moment he went on.
“I haven’t told you, but the Black Hawk is after us. For three days we have been running for our lives. And it begins to look as if we had lost the race. You know what it means—the Black Hawk! I didn’t tell you; I didn’t want you to worry.”
Brown eyes looked up at him, wide with alarm.
“The Black Hawk! The pirate?” she cried. “But don’t worry, Dave—I know you can fight him off!”
Captain Grant’s eyes suddenly glistened, and he had to swallow again. He drew her close, kissed her shining mass of hair, her sweet face.
“Yes, we’ll fight,” he said fiercely. “We’ll fight. And now you must go back below, dear. The bridge is too exposed, too dangerous.”
“No, no!” she cried. “I’d rather stay with you.”
Gently, he pushed her through the door.
Brushing the moisture from his eyes, he sprang back to the television screen, and began to give orders for the coming combat.
The humming song of the motors ceased. The indicator needle swung back to zero. The fuel was exhausted. The liner, drifting helpless, was completely at the mercy of the pursuing pirate.
And the pinkish glow in the sky behind grew more distinct, with the black outline of the pirate vessel in its center.
AGAIN and again, searching fingers of green flame reached out of that black ship. Green lances searching for the liner, to disintegrate the atoms of her armor into brown atomic dust, to cut away her walls so that the vital air would rush out, leaving passengers and crew asphyxiated in a frozen vacuum.
“Hold our fire,” Grant ordered. “That’s the only chance—wait until they are in easy range.”
Minutes throbbed by.
The Black Hawk hurtled on toward the liner, until the sinister curves of its ebon hull were plainly visible.
Three times the green tongues of the pirate’s disintegrating rays swept across the helpless ship. But the hull was not broken; the pirate sought to plunder rather than to destroy.
Captain Grant nervously paced the bridge. Each time the blasting green fire of the enemy rays had fallen upon them, he had turned uncertainly toward the television screen, with the order to fire trembling on his lips.
And each time he had checked himself.
“Wait, wait!” he had muttered again and again. “Not yet!”
At last the trim ebon length of the pirate vessel was close beside the liner, airfoils folded to her smooth hull, little jets of rosy flame hissing occasionally from her rockets to hold her in position.
“Do you surrender?” the query flicked from the heliograph of the enemy—a swinging mirror reflecting the light of the distant sun.
“Fire!” Captain Grant shouted toward his television screen, by way of answer.
The lone bow turret of the Queen of Night swung suddenly about. Twin narrow tongues of bright fire flashed from it like lances of emerald. The black hull of the pirate shone green where they struck.
A dreadful reply came from the Black Hawk.
Myriad arrowed rays leapt from her black length, sparkling jets of green radiance. They converged upon the silver-armored turret from which stabbed the two defensive beams.
Brown powder swirled away from the turret—neutronic dust, matter annihilated as such, when its electrons had been hurled into their central protons by the ray.
The turret glowed green, crumpled, vanished.
A swirl of brown dust clouded the blackness of space.
Captain Grant groaned, and clutched the edge of an instrument panel until his knuckles shone white.
“Do you surrender?” the heliograph flashed again.
The captain made no move to reply. But he was without resource. He could neither fight nor run. He could merely pace up and down the bridge like a caged animal, as he watched the tiny auxiliary rockets putting off from the pirate, and darting Across toward the liner, under cover of the threatening rays.
He was helpless as they fastened themselves upon the liner with magnetic clamps, and began cutting openings through her hull. He could only have the ship’s meager supply of hand arms served out, and the crew stationed to repel the invaders.
The fighting was bloody but hopeless. Half an hour later the Queen of Night was in the hands of the individual who gave the same grim name, the Black Hawk, to himself and his ship alike.
Nell had come back to the bridge. She and the captain had barred the door. They were in each others’ arms when it was broken down.
To Captain Grant’s surprise, he and his bride were treated with elaborate, though mocking, courtesy. They were conducted to one of the auxiliary rockets attached to the doomed liner, and transported across to the black ship.
When the little vessel had slipped through the airlocks of the larger one, and they stepped from it, the Black Hawk himself greeted them.
A tall man, suavely polite, immaculately attired. His hair was long, lustrous, silken, brilliantly black.
Even his eyes, cold and mocking, were black as jet.
He bowed deliberately to Nell, and siezed Captain Grant’s hand with effusive mocking cordiality.
“Congratulations, Captain,” he cried in a voice that was low, cold, and toneless. “Your defense was excellent, considering the disadvantages under which you struggled. Your flight, with the clever twists to evade me! Your cleverness in withholding your fire to the last moment! You have given me the most diverting hours I have had in months. I am deeply in your debt.”
