Collected Short Fiction, page 91
The stare was hypnotic.
Dick fought against it.
“Damn you!” he shouted. “I’ll blow you to hell!”
His voice somehow died in an uncontrollable choking gasp.
He tried convulsively to pull the trigger of the pistol.
His muscles were frozen; he could not move.
The horror that he had felt upon the landing came over him again. Bitter cold, numbing, torturing, all pierced him with icy needles. He felt again that vertiginous sensation of endless falling. Queer blue darkness seemed to come about him.
He felt the weapon drop from his nerveless hands.
Then he was lifted from the green snow. By some force he could not understand, he was wafted toward the glittering thing of frozen fire. Shining, rope-like tentacles of purple flame, intensely cold, streamed out of the violent ovals on its head. They coiled swiftly about him, drew him up to the monster.
He was held against that green, translucent, wormlike body.
Intense cold from it struck into him—bitter cold, numbing, freezing, piercing his body.
He tried in vain to struggle. His paralyzed muscles would not respond to his will. He felt that sickening sensation of plunging down through an illimitable abyss of cold, dim, blue light. And he felt oddly apart from his body—as if the amazing will of the creature had crowded out his mind, and taken its place.
His body, he knew, had somehow become a part of that alien being. Its muscles were controlled by that inconceivable intelligence, as the rope of purple fire that had bound him had been.
Then the strange, disk-like appendage on the thing’s face, between the red eyes and below them, was pressed against his body. A broad disk of green, jelly-like substance, pulsing with lights that were the life, the blood, of it.
The tentacles of red-blue fire held him in their frozen grasp. And the green, viscid disk was pressed against his breast. Cold from it struck into him, numbing, gelid, bitter.
And the disk sucked. Something streamed out of him into it. It was not blood—it was the very life of his body.
Vampirism! The thing was sucking out the very essence of life. He felt shrunken, weak, exhausted. Suddenly he was feeble and old. He had no longer the strength to struggle against the paralysis that overcame him, against the freezing grasp that held him against the revolting, worm-like body of viscid, frozen jelly.
Suddenly it quivered. He felt a shock of alarm run through it. The inconceivable mind of it seemed shocked, dismayed.
It dropped him on the green snow.
He lay there, too weak and sick to rise. The vertigo was gone, the sense of endlessly falling. The intense cold of the thing no longer stabbed him with numbing lances. He felt no longer the sickening sensation of having his vitality sucked away.
But he felt exhausted, feeble, trembling. He felt old!
With an effort he turned his head. He saw what had alarmed the thing.
Thon was coming.
Fleetly, she ran down the canyon, over the shimmering banks of green snow between the faintly gleaming dark cliffs. She was not swathed in heavy garments; she wore only the slip of soft blue silk. But her lithe body was nimbused in rosy flame. An aura of roseate radiance clothed her—as old Midos Ken had been clothed when he defied Garo Nark in his throne room on the Dark Star.
Swiftly she ran down toward him, across the ghostly, gleaming green snow. In one small hand she grasped a thin black tube, no larger than a lead pencil. She had no other weapon.
“Go back!” Dick cried. “My God, go back!”
But she did not hear him. His voice was queerly changed. Its ringing volume was gone. It was shrill and high; it cracked unexpectedly. It was the voice of an old man!
The monster hung in the air above Dick, surprise and alarm in its bearing. A long green worm, winged, with red eyes, and all semitransparent, bright and glittering, as bright as flame. Somehow it seemed not material, as we know matter—yet real enough, and cold—cold beyond conception—a thing of frozen flame.
“Go back!” Dick tried to call again, in a voice so queerly cracked and weakened that he hardly recognized it. “Go back before it gets you!”
But Thon was still running toward him, slender, lithe and graceful as a wild thing, lovely. She was like an angel, he thought disjointedly, with that nimbus of rosy radiance bathing her body.
The monster struck.
From one of the violet ovals on its head a long writhing rope of frozen purple fire streamed out. It straightened toward Thon. It separated from the body of the monster. Arrow-like, it sped through the air toward the girl.
Dick groaned, tried to rise, fell back into the luminous snow.
It struck her. But it recoiled from the rosy mantle about her body. It fell back into the snow, a writhing snake of cold red-blue light, writhing like a wounded thing.
Then Thon raised the little black tube.
A narrow jet of blackness leapt from it. A straight, fine black line stabbed from it toward the monster. It did not look like a black ray—it seemed a solid bar of utter blackness.
It struck the glittering monster.
And the weird thing recoiled. It seemed hurt—and frightened. It darted backward from its position over Dick. And the writhing rope of cold purple flame that had fallen beside Thon was suddenly drawn back to it, and streamed up into a violet oval.
THE being of frozen fire retreated. It darted away, over the shimmering plain of green snow, driving fast and low. Before Thon had reached Dick’s side, it was gone from sight, in the direction of the cones of blue fire below the horizon.
“Why did you come?” Dick cried as the girl dropped to her knees beside him—cried in that strange, querulous new voice of his. “It might have taken you.”
Thon gasped as she looked into his face. And he read horror in her wide blue eyes—dazed, uncomprehending horror, and heart-breaking pain.
Just a moment of that recoiling horror, and then she broke into tears, and lifted him against her breast. She lifted him into the roseate nimbus that mantled her. Fiercely she pressed his body against hers. She kissed him. And her tears rained upon his face.
“Oh, Dick!” she sobbed. “Oh, my Dick! Why did I let you watch alone? Why did I?”
“What’s the matter?” he demanded in the thin, shrill voice that sounded so hideously strange. “What has happened to me?”
He wondered that she was able to lift him so easily.
But Thon did not tell him—evidently she could not. She merely held his body to her, and sobbed out her grief.
In a few minutes Don Galeen appeared. He came running down the dark canyon from the flier, over the gleaming green snow. His mighty, bronzed body Was clad only in his soft leathern garment, with the blue shell ornaments. Like Thon, he, too, was wrapped in an aura of soft, roseate radiance.
He came as fast as he could run.
Eagerly, fearfully, Dick watched his face. He saw horror and unbelief come over it, at sight of himself. The gigantic adventurer gasped, seemed to whiten a little. Then, with deep pity on his rugged face, he bent down and lifted Dick up like a child.
Without a word, he started back over the snow toward the Ahrora, carrying Dick in his mighty arms. Thon, silent and white-faced, walked along beside him.
They reached the flier. Don carried Dick inside, and down the corridor to his stateroom. He laid him gently on his bunk.
For a few minutes longer Dick was conscious. He knew that they were busy about him, that they made a hypodermic injection into his arm, that they made him drain a glass of some effervescing liquid, which had a sharp, sweetish taste. And presently he slept.
He was alone when he woke.
He felt oddly tired, exhausted, weak. With some effort he threw back the light cover over his body, raised an arm. He stared in horror at the withered, gnarled hand that came up before him.
His hand should have been strong, smooth-skinned, ruddy with fresh blood, and tanned a little. But it was a yellowed claw, shrunken, bony, covered with bloodless skin, wrinkled and dry.
He cried out with amazement and horror. And the voice was not full and rich. It was shrill, broken, querulous with age.
Abruptly he sat up and looked into the mirror on the wall of the little stateroom. He shuddered in disbelieving horror at what he saw; almost he screamed.
He looked at the features of an old man.
His body was shrunken, bent. The skin that covered his bony frame was loose, dry, creased with a thousand wrinkles, yellow with age. His face was shriveled, seamed, nose and chin projecting. His eyes were deep-sunken, dull, feeble. His hair was turned white as snow.
He looked as old as Midos Ken.
The others had heard his cry. They came into the room, silent, pitying. Thon came quickly to him and put her arm around his bent shoulders.
“What’s happened to me?” Dick demanded in his shrill, unfamiliar voice.
“That thing was a vampire!” Thon whispered. “It drew the life out of you. It left you old!”
“We are searching for the catalyst of life, you know,” said old Midos Ken. “Age is a chemical process—and there is a chemical which keeps us young. It is that chemical that we want to make—it is the very essence of life. The body grows old as it is depleted, as the ductless glands secrete no more.
“And the vampire sucked that chemical from your body. It sucked away your youth, your life. It made you old!”
“Will I be this way always?” Dick cried. “It there no hope—”
“You will get stronger, of course,” Midos Ken told him. “But you will never be young again—unless—”
“Unless?” Dick repeated breathlessly.
“Unless we succeed in finding the catalyst of life. Then we can make in the laboratory the precious vital fluid that was sucked from you. We can make you and all men young again, for so long as they want to live!”
“And can we find the catalyst?”
“We will have to fight the beings of this planet—the race of the one that attacked you. We will have to invade the cones of blue flame that are their cities.
“And we shall have to fight Garo Nark.”
“His ships have come to this planet?”
“They have. They have found us. Two of them have landed in the canyon below us. They came several hours ago, while you were still sleeping. Garo Nark talked to us over the television. He offered to join forces with us, in return for immortal life for himself and his favorites—and for Thon.
“We refused, of course. And he is waiting. Waiting, I suppose, for us to win the catalyst, so that he can step in and rob us of the spoil!”
CHAPTER XI
The Cones of Blue
STEADILY Dick grew stronger, as his body manufactured the vital fluid of which the inconceivable vampire—the Thing of Frozen Flame—had robbed it. On the second day, he was able to walk unaided up the corridor to the bridge. A week later, he was feeling well—though he sadly missed the buoyant vitality of youth of which he had been cheated. He was an old man, short of breath, stiff of back, easily fatigued. But, Midos Ken told him, he was as strong as he would ever be—unless they won the catalyst of life from the weird race of vampires that guarded it.
On the day that he went to the bridge, Thon pointed out to him the fliers of Garo Nark which were lying near them in the green-black gloom of the narrow canyon.
Strange-looking things they were, covered with the light-absorbing substance which made them invisible in the darkness of space. It reflected no light at all—the ships could not actually be seen. They seemed merely black shadows, holes in space, against the green luminosity of the snow and the canyon walls—mere blobs of nothingness, vague-edged shadows of darkness.
They were stationed close together, and down the canyon from the Ahrora. They lay just above the covert between the boulders, from which Dick had watched, and where the weird entity of cold fire had found him to suck away his vital force of youth.
Vague, half-invisible, somehow almost painful to the eyes that watched them, those waiting ships were strange things, ominous. Dick stared at them a long while.
Don Galeen was busy over some little device set against the wall—a device that had little quivering needles which he watched intently. Thon was busy with an involved computation, a queer writing instrument in her slender fingers flying over a smooth white sheet. Midos Ken was sitting silent and motionless, his blind eyes shaded—but his finely trained mind, Dick knew, was directing whatever was in progress.
“How are the experiments coming?” Dick inquired of Thon when she looked up from her calculation.
“We are studying this planet,” she told him, “the strange radioactivity that causes the green luminiscence of the rocks and the snow, and the various phenomena of the intelligent life of the planet that our instruments can detect.
“There is a link between the radioactivity and the life of the monsters that inhabit the planet. Under those emanations, and in the intense cold of this atmosphere, Chemical combinations are stable that could never exist in our world. The conditions here are as necessary for the alien being we have found as they are hostile to us.
“We are discovering the forces that might be used against us, and planning our defense.
“Already we have accomplished something. You remember that rose-colored haze of light that was about me when I came—came to help you.” She shuddered at the recollection of the vampire-monster. “It is a screen of stable free electrons, an electronic armor that shuts out the strange radioactivity that causes the green phosphorescence—it is opaque to the short waves of that radioactivity, and to the long waves of heat, while it lets light through. You can see through it. But it is warmer than any insulated suit. And it shuts out those sinister emanations!
“And the monster could not touch me through it. It is protective against its strange substance as against the radioactive vibrations that make that substance possible.”
“And the things you drove it back with—the black ray—” Dick asked. “What was that?”
“It was not really a ray. A development of Dad’s ether-exhausting bombs. It drives the ether out of a long, thin, cylindrical section of space. And the exhaustion of the ether, cutting off these emanations, seems harmful to the monsters.”
Suddenly a mellow, chiming bell-note rang from the side of the little bridge-room—the signal that someone was calling on the television.
“Nark again, I suppose,” Thon said. “No harm to hear what he has to say, anyhow.
She moved a little lever. A television screen lighted on the wall. The heavy, evil features of Garo Nark appeared upon it, visible against a background that evidently was the wall of a flier’s control room. There was a cruel mouth, a huge, jutting nose, and deep, malignant, black eyes.
His mighty shoulders were in sight, with his garment of crimson silk fastened over one of them. And Pelug, the scrawny man with green, snake-like eyes and scraggy yellow beard, was standing behind his master, looking over his shoulder.
“Enough of this foolish waiting!” Garo Nark began, in a heavy, brutal tone. “What can you do alone? A blind old fool! A girl! An ignorant adventurer! An ape from the past! You are insane to fight me and the perils of this planet at once—”
The thick voice stopped suddenly as he saw Dick. And then he burst into harsh, jeering laughter.
“And look at the ape!” he shouted coarsely. “The ape from the past! Did his hair turn white with the horrors of space? Or does he just begin to remember that he was born two million years ago?”
He laughed brutally again.
“Thon Ahrora, my pretty one,” he began, leeringly, “I have a place ready for you in my palace. Come to me. Let me help your father win the secret of life. And we’ll be happy forever, darling!”
And at Thon’s white-faced wrath he burst again into roaring, bestial laughter.
With a swift motion of her hand, the girl threw over a lever that darkened the screen.
Dick looked out through a port at the two black ships that lay, shadowy and unreal, below them in the canyon.
In a moment the pale violet finger of an El-ray beam flickered from one of them. It struck the faintly luminous face of the cliff behind the Ahrora. A huge cloud of steam puffed from it, to fall in a white flurry of snow.
More El-rays stabbed out, seeking the little flier. And among the pale, flickering violet fingers of them were broad beams of mellow golden radiance.
“A NEW ray!” Thon cried. “Dad, they are attacking with a golden ray!”
“One of the ether-exhausting bombs, daughter!” the old scientist cried. “It will plunge us into darkness, and stop the experimenting. But we can afford to take no risk—”
“My God,” Dick broke in. “Look at that!”
He pointed down the canyon. Above the black, indistinct blurs that were the half-invisible fliers, the green-black sky was visible, a little scrap of the shimmering, ghostly green expanse of snow could be seen.
Scores of little points of bright light were visible in the dusky green gloom of the sky, above that bit of desert horizon. They moved with amazing speed. They were driving down toward the fliers of Garo Nark.
“They are like the thing that attacked me!” Dick cried. “Dozens of them. Coming back!”
In a few moments they were clearly visible. Shining green worms, with slender, iridescent wings, and huge eyes, red and malevolent, glittering things, with the brightness and transparent unreality of flame. And they were cold—so cold that they seemed to chill the eyes that watched them—they were things of frozen flame.
On they flashed, scores of them, toward the fliers of Garo Nark.
Suddenly the direction of the violet and golden rays was changed. No longer were they played upon the Ahrora. They flashed across to meet the horde of swiftly flying monsters.
Despite the rays, the vampire-things came on. They seemed unharmed. And they struck back.
Slender arrows of frozen purple flame flew from them, and struck the half-invisible ships. They writhed over the fliers, coiled about them. In a few moments the ships were dark shadows covered with a bright net-work of the shining purple ropes.
