"See, master!" he rumbled hoarsely. "He make signal on detector; he make noises fumbling around. Stet go get him."
Webb stared. The screen was a blank quiescence; the infinitely sensitive instruments showed no tiniest sign of disturbance. Nor, strain his ears as he might, could he hear the slightest sound. Yet obviously Stet saw and heard.
"Where do they come from?" Webb demanded quickly. He had had too many evidences of Stet's perceptivity to doubt him now.
The Titan strained, cocked quivering ears. "Outside Lock No. 1," he declared. "Where ship is."
Webb tightened his grip on the little, innocuous-seeming button, heaved with left hand at the flame gun in his belt. "All right, Stet; we're going for him."
The giant rumbled joyfully, jerked after him, stopped short with a grunt of despair. His black countenance puckered into woeful lines. "He gone now, master! He 'fraid!"
Webb believed him and was himself afraid. For if the uncanny invader had retreated, it was only because he had known what Webb was about to do, had penetrated vibration screens and walls and space to know what Webb held in his hand, and what its powers were. How could one hope to fight an entity, invisible, all-seeing, to whom screens and thoughts alike were as a sieve?
Nevertheless, he raced up the swinging catwalk, hurled himself at the beleaguered lock, sprayed his deep-ray flash through the panels. Nothing untoward was there; nothing seemed disturbed. Grimly, Webb flung back to the control board, took the last desperate chance. He ripped wide the polarization, opened the planisphere to all space. He swung powerful search rays in great arcs—the space laboratory lay in the night shadow of the Earth—and watched with slitted eyes.
Suddenly, he exhaled breath explosively. Straight between them and the Moon, a tiny, two-seater space flier swerved and tumbled in mad anxiety to avoid the betraying glare. "There it is," Webb shouted. Yet even as he cried out, doubt assailed him. The flier to which his search ray clung with a bull-dog grip was no strange, other-worldish vessel. Earth was the site of its fashioning, and its handling was clumsy, inexpert.
Nevertheless, his lean hand darted for the switch that controlled the snouting penetron guns; his voice clipped into the microphone on the universal speech band. "Stop where you are," he ordered, "or I'll blast you out of space."
The tiny flier shuddered, rolled, quivered to a fumbling motion, parallel to his own. Alert, bright-eyed, Webb lashed out further orders. "Now come closer, slowly, carefully, with your magnetic grapple out, and attach to Lock No. 1. You'll find a signal light gleaming. But remember, make no false move. It will be your last, if you do."
Inexpertly, the little ship wavered forward, along the clinging search beam, obedient to Webb's instructions. Yet he permitted himself no relaxation, no absence of precautions. There was something puzzling about the flier.
The grapples flung out; there was a slight shock, and the strange little vessel clung like a leech to the elephantine form of the planisphere.
"Watch it closely," Webb told Stet. "At the slightest suspicious move blast on the repulsor screen."
"Maybe then shoot with big guns?" the Titan suggested hopefully.
Webb shook his head. "No. It will be enough to fling it clear. I'll decide then on the next step."
Flame gun in hand, Webb swung up the walk, slid open the inner lock, trained his weapon on the outer door while the air rushed in. Then he moved forward cautiously, past his own auxiliary cruiser, sent the outer panel whirring into its recess.
"All right, now," he spoke softly into a wall microphone. "Open up and come in, hands high."
At the most, he figured, there could be three occupants of the two-seater. His gun was ready. It spurted searing flame in a wide angle. He would have the jump.
Slowly, the other panel, of dull dural, slid wide. Webb braced himself.
HE CRIED OUT sharply in surprise. The flame gun almost fell from lax fingers. Through the gleaming chamber, from the depths of the other ship, came—a girl!
Webb swore foolishly. "Who, in the name of Pluto—"
She swayed, stumbled toward him. "Thank Heaven it's you, Webb Foster!" she cried. "I thought at first it was—they!"
She was beautiful, and there was terror in her dark eyes. Her slender figure was graceful in the jaunty green garb of the Moon, and the clear, golden tan of her expressive countenance betrayed her origin.
Suspicion fled from Webb. His gun jerked back to his belt. "Take it easy," he commanded gently. "What were you doing out there in space, and who are they?"
She came closer to him. The terror seemed to slide out of her eyes. "I was on my way to Earth. I took off from the Balto Dome. About ten degrees out, a swarm of ships suddenly materialized. They were dead-black, strange, like nothing in the solar system. They tried to surround me. I—I remembered the queer rumors that are going about, and I turned and fled. They followed me. I was sure I was lost, when suddenly your search beam caught me—and they disappeared as suddenly as they had come. I am very grateful to you, Webb Foster."
Webb surveyed her keenly. She was enough to send any man's pulses pounding heavily. Her dark lashes flickered. She was, he decided coldly, lying. She was pretending terror, and she was watching him from under those maddening lashes to see how he swallowed her story. The tale of the black ships was a clumsy concoction. She barely knew the rudiments of handling a space flier; certainly she could never have given the slip to those against whom she was fighting. Furthermore, she was millions of miles out of her course, if her story were true.
Suspicion flared again. Was she perhaps the bait, attractive enough in air conscience, for the hidden entities who struck with impunity? What connection was there between her and the attempted invasion of only minutes before?
Nevertheless, he betrayed no outward sign of his unease. The game was obviously deeper than he thought. He would pretend to believe her story. "You're safe enough now," he said gently, "uh—"
"Loris Rham," she answered promptly. The name came very pat. It was not her own, he decided.
"Suppose," he suggested, "I escort you back to the Moon. Your parents will—"
Her eyes widened. There was real pain in them. "I—I have no parents," she whispered. Then terror flooded her eyes—false terror. "Oh-h, I'd be afraid. Those horrible ships must be waiting out there. We'd never have a chance."
Webb grinned tightly to himself. She was playing a game. She had made her point—to get inside his space laboratory, and she intended to remain. Why?
"Very well," he answered dryly. "I'll have Stet, my man, make you comfortable." The jetty Titan lumbered forward, grinning horribly from ear to ear.
He was famous throughout the system, but few had ever seen him face to face. The girl took a short, backward step, stiffened, smiled brightly. "I'd love it," she said.
Webb, watching like a hawk, approved silently. She was no coward, as she had pretended. Stet, faithful, loyal, was not exactly a vision of beauty when first encountered.
But Stet was looking elsewhere. His eyes glittered on the built-in visor screen. "Master!" he rumbled. "Another ship—coming fast."
The girl whirled with a little exclamation of dismay. Webb pivoted like a cat. Had he misjudged her? Had there been truth—
The search beam picked out a blood-red flier. It slipped through space at a hundred miles a second, overhauling the ponderous planisphere as if it were motionless in the void. It was Martian speed craft, the fastest things in the system. There were only a few of them.
Stet moved with incredible lightness to the nearest penetron gun. The yawning orifice swung on noiseless gimbals, trained dead center on the approaching vessel.
"Wait!" Webb called out sharply. The girl was dismayed, without doubt; but it was surprise rather than fear that clouded her eyes. And she had spoken of black ships, many of them—not a solitary red Martian flier.
THEN his communication signal buzzed. He set it, waited warily. A voice leaped across the void—the voic
e of Ku-mer!
Webb Foster tightened his grip on himself. Was he dreaming? Ku-mer had vanished, the prey of the invisible invaders. Yet there was no doubt about his voice, and Webb now recognized the ship. The Martian scientist had taken off from Earth in that very flier.
"Webb Foster! Webb Foster!" Ku-mer's voice was hurried, anxious, quite unlike his usual bland repression.
"Speaking!"
"Good! I am in time then! You are in terrible danger, Webb Foster. I was afraid it had already struck. Make way for contact."
"Grapple on Space Lock No. 2," Webb heard himself say mechanically. There was much to be explained. He pressed appropriate buttons, flung out of the chamber, hurried along the swaying side platform to the other lock. Stet was with him. But only as the slides opened, and Ku-mer, second only to Webb Foster among the scientists of the planets, tottered in, weak and gasping, did the Earthman remember. The girl who called herself Loris Rham had disappeared while his attention was fastened on Ku-mer's ship!
Ku-mer was ocher-red, like all Martians. Among that race of scientists, inheritors of an ancient civilization, he was by universal consent the greatest. His hairless head bulged with profound thought and his eyes were wearied with the philosophic weariness of the Martians. Alongside Stet, even before Webb, he was puny, weak of limb. The Martians were not a strong race physically.
"Where, in the name of Pluto, Ku-mer," Webb demanded, "have you been?"
The Martian tottered, would have fallen had not Stet reached out a trunk-like arm, held him upright.
"I've been," he moaned, "to the ends of the system. I've been beyond Pluto, beyond the zone of comets, to a black globe known as Gar-Mando. Invisible creatures captured me on my way home to Mars, dragged my ship through the void with a speed beyond that of light. I beheld the dull black orb; I shrieked at the sight of what I saw writhing and heaving on its fearful surface; I lashed out in utter despair with all the fury of my rocket blasts. Something snapped; I wrenched free. I fled weary days back to the system, with every ounce of power cramming the jets, to give warning."
"It is too late," said Webb. "Already they have struck, again and again. You were not the only one, Ku-mer, to be seized; though you were the only one to return."
The Martian cried out, gripped the Earthman's hand. "No one else can hope to combat this horror which is invading our peaceful planets, but you—Webb Foster—you and this great space laboratory of yours. I know you have weapons, inventions, which you have guarded from disclosure. You alone can save the planets from utter, dire destruction. I tell you I saw them—have sensed dimly the mighty science of these denizens of outer space."
"You flatter me unduly." Webb smiled wryly.
"I do not," retorted the Martian. "The Conclave of Scientists has acclaimed you the greatest of us all."
Webb searched the ocher face for signs, found nothing but tremulous anxiety. "How about your own work?" he asked.
Ku-mer grimaced. "I work merely with the processes of thought with the physiology of the brain—stupid, useless research in the presence of this horror. But you— It is fortunate you were not already taken."
"They tried," Webb assured him dryly, "twice. The second time was only half an hour ago."
The Martian's wizened face twisted in alarm. "Then there is no time to be lost," he urged. "We must not wait for anything. We must strike before they are able to strike again."
WEBB STARED at him with veiled eyes. But his thoughts were active. "Yes," he muttered absently. "It is time."
The great Titan scowled, bent his huge black head, grunted something in his master's ear. Webb did not seem to hear. His eyes were fixed quizzically on an inconspicuous, shiny disk in the palm of his hand. In its gleaming depths was mirrored a scene. The central cell of the planisphere. The girl Loris Rham was moving swiftly but stealthily about its narrow confines, peering in slide cavities, poking in all possible corners, riffling feverishly among the sheets on which Webb had been jotting his world-embracing equations. How could she know that Webb Foster saw every move she made in the miniature visor screen he held in the palm of his hand?
He decided it was time to call a halt to her searchings. There were many things in that particular cell it was not good for snoopers to discover. He went rapidly down the catwalk, Stet at his heels, Ku-mer, puzzled, in the rear. The Martian had not seen their surreptitious glances at the little disk.
Webb Foster thrust open the panel suddenly. "I hope," he said suavely, "you have not had the misfortune to discover what you are searching for."
The girl whirled with a startled cry. The sheets dropped from her slender fingers. Her hand went to her throat. A tiny pulse throbbed with maddening beat in the warm hollow of her smooth, golden-tanned skin.
"Oh-h!" she said faintly. "I don't know what you mean. I—I was just a trifle ill; my nerves—I thought I'd come here and lie down a while."
Ku-mer bowed formally. "This is indeed an unexpected pleasure," he murmured, "to find Susan Blake here. I know your father very well; his is an exceptional mind."
Webb stared. Susan Blake! The daughter of Jim Blake, the Moon engineer who had vanished with the rest. He had known, of course, that Loris Rham was a glib pseudonym, but he had not known who she really was. Webb Foster had been a good deal of a hermit, absorbed in his scientific adventurings; otherwise he would have recognized Susan Blake. She was the toast of the planets.
He rolled the two names speculatively on his tongue. "Loris Rham! Susan Blake! Very pretty names," he murmured.
The girl flushed, then lifted her head proudly. "Yes, I am Susan Blake. I used another name until I found out— I mean, I came to you for help, Webb Foster. My father has been taken. I am all alone. I wanted you to find him."
The frail Martian made clucking sounds of sympathy. "Tsk—Tsk! Those devils caught Jim Blake? Too bad! He had a keen mind—a very superior brain."
The girl caught her throat again. Pain widened her eyes, "Had? Oh Lord, no! He is still alive!" Frantically, she clutched at Webb; imploringly her lashes quivered up at him. "Say you will help me find him. Please!"
Something stirred in Webb Foster's blood, something from which he had thought himself utterly immune. But his brain was a cold, intellectual instrument, standing a little apart, surveying him with sardonic amusement. It was the old, old game—as old as Earth itself, as ancient as primordial slime! Very well; let her think that she had fooled him. Was Jim Blake, by any chance, concerned in this business? He had heard tales of Blake! He was hard, ruthless, as most of the Moon colonists were.
Aloud he said, "We are going to find him now, Susan Blake." But there was a queer grimness in his tone that made her start, and caused the blood to ebb from her cheeks. He grinned sardonically. She understood what he meant.
Chapter 3
LIFE in the space laboratory became a tangled web of suspicion, fear and electric danger. Webb, following Ku-mer's careful instructions, sent the great orb hurtling from its path around Earth and Moon, catapulted it like a shining comet over the spaceways toward the outer limits of the system. The void was curiously empty. The great rocket ships, the lumbering cargo liners, were cowering in the planetary ports, afraid to risk the terrors of the invisible invaders.
Only the police cruisers darted like summer midges in vain search, poking angry noses among the asteroids, within the waste places of the huger planets. They stared curiously at the rushing might of the space laboratory. It seemed a tremendous portent, a planetoid trailing mile-long blasts of blazing gases. They signaled for it to stop; they even sent warning shells in its wake. For the Planetary Council had faithfully obeyed Webb Foster's request; it had permitted no word of his mission to leak out.
But the shells fell short of the planisphere's tremendous velocity, or, meeting it at an angle, exploded harmlessly against the repulsor screen. Pursuit soon fell behind, and hard-bitten patrol captains swore and burned the ether waves to ground bases querying Webb Foster's loyalty to the system.
They did not know of Ku-mer's presence within the hurtling portent; they certainly did not dream that Susan Blake was on board. Only Ansel Pardee, director of the Moon, had any inkling of Susan's mission, and, hearing of the planisphere's sudden flight to outer space, his brow darkened and his heart turned to ashes.
Within the space laboratory, Webb Foster turned a puzzled frown on Ku-mer. "About how far out is this black planet called Gar-Mando?"
"Six billion miles."
Webb looked at him queerly. "Our top speed," he remarked, "is five hundred miles a second. At that rate it will take us one hundred and forty days. How," he asked, "did you escape your invisible captors and return within three days?"
Ku-mer's face was bland, inscrutable. He had recovered his former poise, his Martian impenetrability. "I learned much during the period of my captivity. You forget, Webb Foster, that my particular field is the study of thought. Through constant practice I have enabled myself to attune my mind to the thought vibrations of others—even of alien entities. I learned something of their mighty science—especially of the secret of their locomotion. If you will forgive my short absence, I shall take the necessary measures—"
HE BOWED, glided from the living cells. Webb watched him thoughtfully as his frail, weak body mounted the swinging catwalk, disappeared into the lock where his little flier reposed securely. In fifteen minutes he was back. "Look at your speed indicators," he said softly.
Webb started. The wire-thin pencils of light were sweeping forward, arcing over to unbelievable slants. Already they were rushing through space at a velocity of two thousand miles a second, and acceleration was building up steadily.
"At twenty-five thousand miles per second," said Ku-mer, "we shall reach the black planet within three days."
"You mean—" exploded Webb.
"Within half an hour we shall achieve that speed."
He was as good as his word. Webb Foster stared with knitted brows into the electro-mosaics. It was incredible. The universe was a rushing wind streaming past the fury of their flight. Qys, in his fastness on Callisto, swore unpronounceable oaths and sent tight-band code messages to his fellow members of the council. He was certain now that Webb Foster had betrayed them. Ansel Pardee, on the Moon, heard the warning and groaned. Susan Blake was being carried farther and farther away. He had not received the slightest inkling from her since she had started on her mission. Had Foster discovered her true identity—what her purpose was?
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