Authors: Mike Jurist
The big salvage boat was butting its way through the outer veil that surrounded the inner core. It was like traveling through an iridescent fog, made dangerous by the intermittent smack of solid meteor-like particles as they collided with the ship. Fortunately, the particles were small and the hull a sturdy duraluminum. One never knew, however, when a larger mass might not come careening out of the fog and really crash.
Kerry hurried over. "What do you see, Sparks?"
"I think I see—yes, by God, I do! There's a ship anchored down there!"
"That must be Foote's outlaws!" cried Sally excitedly.
"No doubt about it," said Kerry grimly. "Can you see any signs of activity, Sparks?"
"We're too far away, sir. But there's something very curious. Maybe you'd better take a look for yourself."
Kerry took over, glued his eye to the instrument. There was the ship all right; a black oval bug motionless on the surface. But at the moment that didn't seem important. It lay on the edge of what seemed to be a dazzling, blinding circular lake. Even at this distance, and filtered though it was by the enwrapping fog, the glare was so great that it sprayed in every direction like a tremendous fountain of inexhaustible fireworks.
So intense was the fiery white blaze that Kerry was compelled to withdraw his gaze and blink the protective tears from his eyes.
"What did you see?" asked Sally.
"Something that knocks my calculations into a cocked hat. The whole planetoid isn't radiating, as I previously thought. Most of it looks like the normal thing—stone, slag, perhaps heavy metals. But there's one spot—about half a mile in diameter—that’s the center of some enormous radiant activity. It's
that
we've been getting in our instruments."
Jem ran up. "We're ready to land, Kerry."
"Everyone in space suits?"
"Yes; and helmets ready to snap into position at a moment's notice."
"Good! Now we have to be careful, Jem. We've not only got unknown radiations to worry about; but Foote's men are already down there."
The mate fingered the projectile gun at his waist. His eyes brightened. "Do we rush 'em right away?" he asked.
"No. You're to set the
Flash
down about five miles away. I saw what looked like a hollow crater. It will make a good hiding place. Swing around to it from the farther side. I'll direct you.”
The other side of the comet was bathed in a softer light; as if, thought Kerry, the radiations boiling up from the pool on the opposite side had spread in an even atmospheric layer around the tiny orb.
Jem set the ship down skilfully. He skimmed low to avoid detection from the outlaw craft, cutting his rear rockets and applying the forward jets in short bursts for braking action and with a minimum of fiery exhaust.
While every man was busy with the multiple duties necessitated by the delicacy and perfect timing required by the landing, Sally was eagerly scanning the surface beneath.
"This is very curious, Kerry," she exclaimed suddenly.
The young captain paused briefly. "What is?" he asked.
Still peering through the observation port, and without turning her head, she called out: "The surface has an artificial look. It's laid out in huge octagons, like a mosaic all fitted together. Good Heavens! And that looks like—"
What she was going to add was lost in the last-second rush of landing. The walls of a circular crater loomed ahead; the ship lifted slightly to clear them; then dipped again to settle several hundred feet down on what seemed to be an absolutely level floor.
CHAPTER 13
AS THE SHIP quivered to rest, everyone rushed to the observation port and stared out. For a moment there was sheer stunned silence; then came gasps of unbelieving astonishment.
"Why, we're in a city," exclaimed Kerry, "a great, dead city!"
"That's what I was trying to tell you," said Sally excitedly. "The surface outside is artificial. A mosaic of octagons, with octagonal towers spaced at intervals."
Jem looked scared. "Man an' boy," he said shakily, "I've been on the spaceways, from Venus to Jupiter. But I ain’t ever seen nothin' like this. Mebbe we'd better take off again.
They
mightn't like our being here."
Kerry stared.
"They?
Oh you mean the . . . uh . . . beings who built this city. I don't see anything stirring."
The mate shivered. "That's what makes it so—funny. Me, I'd be easier in mind if I'd
see
what I was up against."
"Well, we'll find out fast enough." It was strange but true. The unbelievable sight had wiped from everyone's mind the mission on which they had come; even the presence of the out-Law ship a bare five Earth miles away.
Orders crackled. "Clamp helmets tight; make sure space suits are sealed. Check your communication units. Have weapons ready for swift use; but under no circumstances ray or shoot anything unless I give the word. Sparks; you stay on board and keep watch. Jem, you stay on also with Sally. If anything happens to the rest of us, take off immediately, and raise Ganymede as fast as you can."
Two vehement protests cut Kerry short in midflight. "I'll do nothing of the sort, Mr. Kerry Dale!" cried Sally, cheeks aflame. With an irrevocable gesture she snapped her helmet shut. Through the communication unit came the rest: "I'm going along."
Jem said: "So you think I'm scairt? Well, you're right. I am, by God! But I'm goin' with ye jest the same." And
he
snapped his helmet into position.
"Mutiny!" groaned Kerry. "All right, you win now; but remember, after this is over, you both go to the brig on bread and water." He swung on one of the crew. "Bill, this is an order. You stay on board with Sparks." He shifted his glare to another of the men. "And you too, Alf! The two of you and Sparks ought to be able to maneuver the ship. If we run into trouble, help us if you can. Bill knows how to handle the space cannon. But don't shoot unless I signal. If you find we're sunk, though, again I say, get to Ganymede and the Space Patrol. This thing is bigger than any of our lives." He turned a last time to Sally. "And that means you too. Last chance; won't you stay on board?"
Through the glassite visor her eyes danced. "The answer, my dear Kerry, is again
no
!"
He made a helpless gesture. "Very well, then. Adjust your gravity disks to Moon gravity. This world is tiny, but its mass is about the same. Open the space lock and make sure it's fast behind us. Sparks, keep in constant communication with us. Bill, stay at the cannon. Alf, watch the interior radiation counter. If it begins to act up, all of you get into your suits. I don't know how penetrating these rays are, or how deadly."
As the ungainly figures marched into the space lock, Sparks %aid with unwonted solemnity: "God keep you all, sir." "Amen!"
The air rushed into the lock as they entered. The port closed behind and opened in front.
"That's strange!" muttered Kerry.
"What is?" asked Sally.
"The air isn't stirring. It ought to be whooshing out into the vacuum. I wonder!"
He fumbled in the flap of his rubberoid suit, took out a slim transparent pencil. He unscrewed one end; watched it eagerly. Half the transparency clouded swiftly; then, more slowly, turned to a deep vermilion.
"Oxygen!" he shouted unbelievingly. Feverishly he unscrewed the other end. With withheld breaths the others crowded around, watching the second slim chamber of the analyzer. The seconds passed; then one minute and still another. Nothing happened.
Kerry shook his head even more unbelievingly. "No sign of any poisonous elements. This is incredible. How could an atmosphere stick on a little world like this?"
Sally jumped the little distance to the ground, fell heavily. Kerry jumped in alarm after her, and fell with bruising force. "What the—!"
The girl's muffled voice came to him. "We're too heavy," she cried. "Our gravity disks!"
As in an ancient slow-motion picture she fumbled at the controls. Kerry did likewise. There was an almost insupportable weight on his arms. The next minute both got up off the ground, stared at each other.
"This is getting more and more fantastic," said Kerry in an awed voice. "The gravity is of the order of the Earth's. The air is s like that of the Earth."
"That's splendid!" laughed Sally. And, before Kerry could lunge forward to stop her, she had pushed her helmet clear and her warm, breathing countenance and bright, tousled hair were exposed to the elements of this strange new world.
"Sally!" cried Kerry desperately. "The radiations! We don't know—they may be deadly!"
She laughed again and shook her head to get stray locks from her eyes. She breathed deeply. "Nonsense! It's wonderful! Like the freshest mountain ozone. And warm, too!"
"Oh, well," thought Kerry with a sickening sensation. "If she is going to die; then I might as well, too."
With a gesture born of despair, he removed his helmet, inhaled hard.
It
was
air; keen yet soft, tingling with a heady, vinous quality. The atmosphere danced with myriads of little sparkles; overhead, across the smoothly slanting walls of the crater, he could see bright waves of radiations flowing in endless current. They came, without doubt, from the gushing fountain some miles away.
The outlaws! Their mission!
But before he could think the thing through, he saw Jem and the others wrestling with their helmets. He stopped them with a stern command.
"Keep them on!" he ordered. "This air feels fine; but we still don't know what the end results will be. Just because Miss Kenton is reckless—"
The sparkles in the air glowed like fireflies in her hair. "I told you I was a guinea pig!" she laughed. "But look at all this. It's amazing! What do you make of it, Kerry?"
A city lay stretched before them; bathed in the darting light. The level floor was inlaid with metallic-shining octagons. Curious angular designs were deep-incised upon them. Great structures, all octagonal, and made of the same strange metal, reared in ordered configurations across the vast depression. As the waves of radiations beat upon them they glittered with an iridescence of many hues. There were no openings, no windows in their towering sides.
Slowly, cautiously, the exploratory party moved to the nearest one. The walls betrayed no sign of entrance.
Kerry said with a little catch in his voice: "Living beings built these; beings with a high order of intelligence and a profound knowledge of geometric forms and of engineering. But who they are—or were—where they came from, what they look like, I don't know."
Jem's helmeted head showed ashen. His lips worked. "And I don't
want
ta know," he mumbled. "I've met up with Venusian natives. But they're more like animals. These fellows, though—" He trailed off significantly.
"Must have vanished uncounted millions of years ago," Kerry assured him. "This little world came from some other universe. What broke it loose and sent it hurtling across the unfathomable reaches of space very likely we will never know. Perhaps it had something to do with that unending eruption of energy outside. If that was so, then the inhabitants probably abandoned their home and took off to some neighboring planet in their universe. It's been deserted, dead, for God knows what infinity of time."
"What a pity!" said Sally regretfully. "I would have loved to—"
She uttered an exclamation. She had been leaning against flue metallic wall of the tower. Something seemed to give, and slue disappeared with a scream.
Kerry darted forward frantically. The others rushed after him.
An oblong opening showed, black, forbidding. Kerry peered in. "Sally!" he shouted in terror. "Where are you?"
A faint, tremulous voice wafted up. "D-down here. I—I—
must have tumbled down some sort of ramp. It—it's terribly dark."
Kerry snapped on his helmet; otherwise he couldn't work the search-beam on top. But Jem's beam was already probing with long white light the black interior. At the tip of the ray they could see Sally struggling to her feet in a long tunnel.
They ran swiftly down the smooth ramp. Kerry caught the girl in his arms. "Are you hurt?"
"N-no. Just shocked a bit. I thought it was the end of me when I started to fall."
The past fear made him unduly stern. "All right. No more of this nonsense. Snap on your helmet, and obey orders from now on."
She stared at him; then, with surprising meekness, said tremulously, "Very well, Mr. Dale."
"Good!" Had he not been absorbed just then in what the search-beams showed, he might very well have been suspicious of Sally's sudden yielding. But gaping astonishment drove out any other thought. The tunnel opened suddenly in a vast interior, stretching up to the very height of the tower.
The walls glittered in the beams with a myriad hues—reds, greens, purples, blues, yellows, and colors never before seen by any of the beholders. Fantastic designs were worked out in tessellated segments—strange angular shapes that looked for all the world like some of the paintings of the Abstract School of the twentieth century, a few samples of which still lingered in Earth's museums.
Then Sally was pointing and crying out: "Look at what's all around us." Five search-beams went simultaneously level; picked out gigantic slabs of somber metal. There were dozens of them in the great interior; their sides unornamented and smooth. But on their flat top surfaces there seemed to be something.
Sally darted forward; flashed her beam down upon the nearest surface. She gave a little cry; shrank back.
Kerry was immediately at her side; his gloved fingers grimly clutching at his projectile-gun. Then he too cried out. Lying full length upon the bare surface was a being! A being who might have stemmed from Earth had it not been for his—or was it her—dimensions.
Delicately featured, slender-shaped, complete in every human detail, with gold-red hair lying in seemly folds down to the narrow shoulders, cheeks smooth and faintly tinged with pinkish flush, eyes closed as if in sleep—and only some three feet in length!