Collected Short Fiction, page 92
The ships were lifted.
They were swung free of the shimmering banks of green snow, carried swiftly in the direction of the flying rows of monsters.
Streamers of violet luminescence swirled back from their tails, as their crews fought to jerk them free of the net of living purple rope that held them. But the K-ray generators, powerful as they were, were no match for the weird power of the vampire things. The ships were helpless in the writhing coils of frozen purple flame that held them.
In five minutes, ships and monsters alike had vanished.
Garo Nark had been captured by the alien entities of cold fire. His ships had been carried off, in the direction of the cones of blue light beyond the horizon.
The Ahrora remained apparently undiscovered.
Midos Ken, Thon, and Don Galeen continued their experimental work. Dick rapidly convalesced, until he resembled a hale old man of about seventy years.
Seven more days went by. Nothing had been seen of Garo Nark, or of the vampire things that had captured him. The experiments were finished.
“We know as much of this planet as observation from this one point will teach us,” Midos Ken said. “And we have devised means of protection against the hostile forces we have found. We are ready, now, to try to find the catalyst.”
Once more they gathered in the little bridge-room. Thon inclined the bright control lever, pressed the white cylinder of the accelerator button. The bank of shining green snow dropped away beneath them. The Ahrora darted upward, past the luminous walls of the canyon, into the green gloom of the starless sky.
Again the girl moved the little lever. The flier ceased to rise.
Straight northward they flashed, low and fast. The luminous desert of snow raced backward beneath them, a flat and desolate plain, shimmering with weird green radiance. Above them arched the sunless sky, almost black, faintly flushed with the green light from the snow.
Their speed, Dick knew, was well above a thousand miles an hour. At this rate they should reach the mountains beyond the desert in a very few minutes.
Each of them wore, fastened to the arm, a tiny, humming mechanism which charged the body with electromagnetic energy, producing about it the roseate luminosity of the electronic screen. Both of them were bathed in a clinging mist of rosy light. It was their armor against the vampire-things, as well as against the bitter cold of the outer air. And each carried, thrust in a pocket of his slight garment, one of the slender tubes which projected the ether-exhausting force, so as to make a thin, stabbing bar of blackness.
“A few hours—perhaps only a few minutes—and we shall have won or lost,” Midos Ken said, sitting thoughtful by the wall.
Don Galeen was bent over a little device on a stand, watching spinning needles.
Dick had nothing to do but to watch.
He looked at Thon, intent over the control lever. Such a girl! So gloriously beautiful. So vital. So young.
He loved her!
A few days ago he had been as full of the buoyant force of life as she was, brimming with life and energy. And he had let foolish doubts and fears hold him back, keep him silent. And now he was old. He flexed a twisted arm. He felt its muscles—stringy, flabby. He cursed under his breath.
Then he saw Don Galeen raise his eyes for a glance at Thon. Bright eyes. Flashing with courage, with the fire of youth. And filled with admiration for Thon, with devoted affection.
“I hope they are happy!” Dick murmured to himself. “I’m too old to think of love.”
He felt a tear in his eye, and brushed it angrily away.
In a few moments rugged mountain peaks came into view above the edge of the ghostly, shining desert of snow. Dark and grim, but outlined with faint fire of green, they rose against the green gloom of the sky.
Above them, beyond them, were cones of blue light. Vast conical heaps of cold blue radiance, motionless and dim. Scores of them, scattered across a rough mountain plateau—scattered irregularly, yet somehow suggesting the buildings of a human city. They were cones of frozen blue flame, faintly resembling the conical wigwams of an Indian village.
“Look!” Dick cried suddenly. “They are coming!”
Bright cold points of light were darting through the sides of the vast blue cones, flying rapidly toward them. By scores, by hundreds, the vampire-monsters were rising to meet them.
Dick raised his telescope lens. In it he could see them clearly, long worms of cold green flame, with motionless wings of flashing diamond light, and frozen, evil eyes of ruby. There were strange ovals of violet on the sides of the heads—behind the green, viscid sucking disks.
Some of them seemed to have dark protuberances—humps—upon their backs. But these he could not see clearly enough to distinguish what they were.
Frozen arrows of red-blue fire sped from those weird ranks, toward the Ahrora.
In a moment the air about the little flier was filled with twisting fiery streamers—writhing ropes of chill purple fire. They coiled about the little vessel, wrapped it in a living net of flame.
Their headlong speed over the desert of shining snow was suddenly checked. The luminous ropes had stopped them. Thon moved the useless lever, holding the white accelerator button at the bottom of its socket.
The Ahrora trembled a little. But the full power of her K-ray generators could not break her loose. The things of cold fire were dragging them down to the snow.
“The electronic armor!” Midos Ken cried. “Quick, Don Galeen!”
Don Galeen was still stooping over the little device on the stand, watching the vibrating needles. Now he adjusted a little dial, moved a lever.
A nimbus of rosy flame spread suddenly over the little flier, over the surface of every object within it. It was a mist of roseate radiance such as mantled each of the adventurers.
The writhing streamers of cold purple fire were hurled back from the ship. They fell away below it, twisting, contorted, evidently injured.
The Ahrora leapt forward again. The vampire-things—the winged worms of cold bright flame—darted back, made way for her. Again Dick noticed the dark objects upon their backs. But still he could not distinguish them clearly.
They flashed toward the faintly shining mountains, leaving the groups of blue cones of light on the rugged plateau behind them.
In a few moments they reached the edge of the waste of shining snow, where the black foothills rose. It was still a score of miles to the plateau of the cones, which was a full mile above the level of the desert.
But the cones were of amazing size. Dick guessed that they must be thousands of feet thick at the base, and a mile in height. There were scores of them, irregularly scattered over the green, gleaming plateau.
It was a city of colossal cones of frozen blue light!—an alien city of an alien world, inhabited by inconceivable vampires—spawn of an alien universe!
And the four were rushing toward it on a daring raid, to win the greatest treasure that man has ever sought—the secret of immortal youth!
“We’ve won!” Dick was shouting, when they had passed through the weird ranks of the monsters, and were darting over the edge of the desert of snow. “They can’t do a thing against the electronic—”
He stopped with a gasp.
Abruptly, the Ahrora was falling!
They had hurtled through a straight wall of silver haze, hardly visible. Beyond it, the power of the generators quickly slackened. The little flier plunged downward, in a long spinning flight. Thon struggled in vain with the control lever.
“THEY are broadcasting some disturbance that interferes with the K-ray!” Midos Ken cried. “It stops the generators as my ether-exhausting bombs do, but doesn’t interfere with the vision!”
Still they spun downward, toward the foot of the long, rugged slope that led upward toward the plateau of the cones. The K-ray generators were still functioning, though very weakly. Thon was able to check the fall only enough to keep the impact from being fatal.
The Ahrora struck heavily on a rugged slope of dark boulders that shone with faint green luminosity. She rolled over twice, but came to rest lying almost in a normal position.
Thanks to her indestructible neutronium hull, the flier was not injured. And the K-ray device which protected the passengers by transmitting all shocks and pressures equally to all particles of matter in the ship, had still functioned sufficiently to save the four from any serious injuries, though they had been flung roughly against the floor.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Dick muttered, as he got to his feet, rubbing a bruise on his head. “And some fall it was, this time!”
The others were uninjured. In a moment, Thon’s cool fingers were tenderly caressing his bruised head.
“Poor dear!” she cried. “I hope you aren’t hurt. You were so strong, before—”
She choked, and stopped, with tears glistening in her glorious blue eyes.
“Watch!” Don Galeen’s deep voice rang out warningly. “They are coming.”
“They can do nothing, I think,” Midos Ken said. “Our electronic screen is still intact. They cannot break it.”
Dick swung open one of the observation ports. He saw that the little flier lay on a rocky mountain slope. Huge boulders, glistening with dim green radiance, loomed here and there about them. Above them was a jutting outcrop of stratified rock. There was an occasional patch of snow, shimmering with greenish phosphorescence.
But there was no grass, or shrub, or tree. Our familiar kinds of life did not exist upon the Green Star. Its only living things were the weird entities of frozen fire—unless, as Dick had imagined, and Midos Ken had hinted, the core of the planet itself were alive!
Above them was the black bowl of the sky, faintly flushed with the deepest green.
In that gloomy void, bright specks of light were visible. The vampires, wheeling above, some of them dropped, became visible as winged worms of frozen emerald light. Writhing serpent-shapes of cold, purple fire sent from them, darted cautiously toward the helpless flier. Things of red-blue light fell in the snow, slithered snake-like about them.
But still the roseate radiance covered the fallen ship and the four within it. The ropes of fire could not penetrate that electronic armor. Those that touched it darted back, as if injured.
For an hour, perhaps, the monsters wheeled above them. Then they vanished, flying northward, in the direction of the astounding city of cones.
“They have gone,” Dick reported. “For a while, at least.”
“And it’s time, too, for us to leave,” Midos Ken said.
“Where?” Dick demanded, his aged voice eager with sudden hope. “You mean we can still go on?”
“Of course. I had not counted on being able to enter the cones of light with the Ahrora, in any event. I had hoped to get closer, of course, before we landed. But we are ready to go on afoot. I had imagined that they might be able to stop our generators—but I did not know their ray would be effective at so great a distance.”
Half an hour later they opened the massive door of the flier and stepped out upon the desolate mountain side. Since the rosy electronic screens that nimbused them held in the heat, they had no need for heavy garments; they wore only the light, sleeveless slips. Each of them was armed with one of the little tubes that projected the bar of blackness. Dick carried his atomic pistol—the weapon with which he had blown one of the monsters to fragments, only to see it reassemble itself. Thon and Midos Ken carried other weapons and instruments. Upon Don Galeen’s broad shoulders, in addition to his weapons, he carried enough synthetic food to ration them for several days.
The Ahrora was locked. The electronic screen was still in effect to protect it from the Things of Frozen Flame. Midos Ken had scientific traps set about it to protect it from Garo Nark, in case that worthy should still be able to molest it—though since they had seen Nark’s fliers captured and carried away by the vampire-beings, the latter precaution seemed superfluous.
In single file, they started up the long, rugged mountain slope, among colossal fields of boulders that gleamed with pale green light, over shimmering banks of snow. Don Galeen, mighty adventurer of many planets, broke the trail, tramping effortlessly along in the lead. Dick brought up the rear, feeling faintly envious of the rugged giant ahead. A few days ago he himself had been such a man; now he was a shrunken shell. But—and his heart leapt at the thought—if they won, his youth would be restored.
In a few minutes the little red cylinder of the Ahrora was out of sight—lost in the waste of dark, faintly gleaming boulders behind them.
For weary hours they climbed—struggling up perpendicular cliffs, picking a way across vast flat fields of broken, volcanic lavas—blade rock that dimly fluoresced with green. They were leaping yawning cracks that seemed to reach down in endless green abysses, and tramping across wide fields of snow, shining and green, that masked unexpected pitfalls.
When possible, they kept to canyons and ravines, for the sake of cover. Twice they saw one of the vampire-things, wheeling high, as if to watch the Ahrora.
Each time they crouched in the shadow of a convenient cliff or boulder, and waited until the strange scout had returned beyond the line of peaks that rose before them.
When they first stopped to rest, they had covered half of the score of miles from the flier to the top of the range. They were exhausted by the hours of effort—all except Don Galeen, who seemed never to tire—but it seemed to Dick, when he looked about, that the slightly luminous peaks outlined against the black sky ahead were as far away as ever, and that it was a mere stone’s throw behind them to the edge of the shimmering, barren expanse of the desert of green snow.
DON Galeen picked out a wide cave beneath a jutting rock, in which they stopped. They ate heartily of the synthetic food he carried, and drank water obtained by melting snow over a little atomic stove—aside from its fluorescence, the green snow was no different from any other frozen water. Then they slept, Dick, Thon, and Don Galeen taking turns in standing guard at the mouth of the cavern.
Rested and refreshed, the next “day” they went on with renewed vigor. Hours of toil led them across the last snow-covered lava bed. They climbed the last boulder-strewn slope, and stood upon the summit of the range.
A few hundred feet below them, and a mile away, was the city of cones. City of the Things of Frozen Flame!
It is hard to imagine it.
The weird city stood upon a rugged plateau, pitted and cracked—evidently covered with lava hurled from a dead volcano. Black rock, rough and broken, was seamed with a thousand fissures. It gleamed with soft, green luminescence. Here and there upon it were patches of shining snow.
Scattered across it for a distance of many miles were the cones. Cones of intense, cold blue light, of frozen, solid light! They looked substantial as cones of azure crystal, as cones of sapphire!
They were colossal.
Two thousand feet through they were at the base—and more. And they were over five thousand feet in height—a mile. They were huger than any buildings ever erected on earth.
Hundreds of the vampire-things stood upon the vast, volcanic plateau—some of them tens of miles away.
They were scattered irregularly. The surface of the ground had not been smoothed among them. There were no paved streets. The twisted flows of lava were rugged as they had always been. The cones of blue seemed to have been dropped on unbroken wilderness. The Things of Frozen Flame were not confined to the surface of their planet as men are.
The four flung themselves flat when they reached the summit of the range, and watched.
Scores, hundreds, of the vampire-things they saw. Winged green worms, with glistening iridescent wings, and evil scarlet eyes. Alien things with the queer unreality of frozen fire.
They glided out of the smooth sides of the cones of cobalt light. They flashed across from cone to cone. They vanished upward in the air, or off toward the horizon. They detached writhing things of frozen purple light from their bodies, and sent them flashing off on unguessable errands.
It is almost beyond imagination, that city of an alien race upon an alien star. Its weird beings were intelligent—in their dreadful way. Considered from absolute standards, their advancement may have been equal to that of man. They were so different from humanity, from anything that ever lived on the earth, that they are almost beyond conception.
They had no machines—but what need had they for machines when they could dart through space as swiftly as an airplane, or separate matter from their bodies which assumed any shape they desired?
They had no industry—at least, no industry as we know it. They had no need to make machines, or to find fuel to feed them. Evidently they did not toil as men do to feed themselves. It was only later that the four found out how they fed themselves—now the act of incredible vampirism upon Dick was the only clue.
For an hour the four lay there, watching.
Then Thon produced a little red needle swung in a crystal case—the detector of the emanations from the catalyst of life. She balanced in on her palm. The tiny scarlet needle wavered—then pointed straight at the base of a blue cone that stood before them, on a little knoll that rose slightly from the surface of the plateau, not two miles away.
“The substance we seek is in that cone!” she said. “In sight—at last!”
“We are ready to go down and play our hand,” said Midos Ken, “to win or lose!”
They rose from their places of concealment, left the summit of the range, and advanced briskly down the easy slope to the level of the lava plateau.
Dick’s heart was beating high, almost in his mouth. They were in plain sight now, there was no use to try to conceal their advance any longer. It all depended upon the science of Midos Ken, and the skill of lovely Thon Ahrora, and the courage and strength of Don Galeen—pitted against the alien forces of this world!
The treasure was near. The wonderful substance that held the secret of life! Immortal youth of all humanity! Restoration of his own lost vitality! So near, yet guarded so strangely and so well!
