The Pirate Planet

by Charles W Diffin

  THE PIRATE PLANET

  By Charles W. Diffin

  1931

  A strange light blinks on Venus, and over old Earth hovers a mysterious visitant--dread harbinger of interplanetary war

  CHAPTER I

  Lieutenant McGuire threw open his coat with its winged insignia of the air force and leaned back in his chair to read more comfortably the newspaper article.

  He glanced at Captain Blake across the table. The captain was deep in a game of solitaire, but he looked up at McGuire's audible chuckle.

  "Gay old girl!" said Lieutenant McGuire and smoothed the paper across his knees. "She's getting flirtatious."

  The captain swore softly as he gathered up his cards. "Not interested," he announced; "too hot to-night. Keep her away."

  "Oh, she's far enough away," McGuire responded; "about seventy million miles. Don't get excited."

  "What are you talking about?" The captain shuffled his cards irritably.

  "Venus. She's winking at us, the old reprobate. One of these star-gazers up on Mount Lawson saw the flashes a week or so ago. If you'll cut out your solitaire and listen, I'll read you something to improve your mind." He ignored the other's disrespectful remark and held the paper closer to see the paragraphs.

  "Is Venus Signalling?" inquired the caption which Lieutenant McGuire read. "Professor Sykes of Mt. Lawson Observatory Reports Flashes.

  "The planet Venus, now a brilliant spectacle in the evening sky, is behaving strangely according to a report from the local observatory on Mount Lawson. This sister star, most like Earth of all the planets, is now at its eastern elongation, showing like a half-moon in the big telescopes on Mt. Lawson. Shrouded in impenetrable clouds, its surface has never been seen, but something is happening there. Professor Sykes reports seeing a distinct flash of light upon the terminator, or margin of light. It lasted for several seconds and was not repeated.

  "No explanation of the phenomenon is offered by scientists, as conditions on the planet's surface are unknown. Is there life there? Are the people of Venus trying to communicate? One guess is as good as another. But it is interesting to recall that our scientists recently proposed to send a similar signal from Earth to Mars by firing a tremendous flare of magnesium.

  "Venus is now approaching the earth; she comes the nearest of all planets. Have the Venusians penetrated their cloak of cloud masses with a visible light? The planet will be watched with increased interest as it swings toward us in space, in hope of there being a repetition of the unexplained flash."

  * * * * *

  "There," said Lieutenant McGuire,"--doesn't that elevate your mind? Take it off this infernally hot night? Carry you out through the cool reaches of interplanetary space? If there is anything else you want to know, just ask me."

  "Yes," Captain Blake agree, "there is. I want to know how the game came out back in New York--and you don't know that. Let's go over and ask the radio man. He probably has the dope."

  "Good idea," said McGuire; "maybe he has picked up a message from Venus; we'll make a date." He looked vainly for the brilliant star as they walked out into the night. There were clouds of fog from the nearby Pacific drifting high overhead. Here and there stars showed momentarily, then were blotted from sight.

  The operator in the radio room handed the captain a paper with the day's scores from the eastern games. But Lieutenant McGuire, despite his ready amusement at the idea, found his thoughts clinging to the words he had read. "Was the planet communicating?" he pictured the great globe--another Earth--slipping silently through space, coming nearer and nearer.

  Did they have radio? he wondered. Would they send recognizable signals--words--or some mathematical sequence to prove their reality? He turned to the radio operator on duty.

  "Have you picked up anything peculiar," he asked, and laughed inwardly at himself for the asking. "Any new dots and dashes? The scientists say that Venus is calling. You'll have to be learning a new code."

  The man glanced at him strangely and looked quickly away.

  "No, sir," he said. And added after a pause: "No new dots and dashes."

  "Don't take that stuff too seriously, Mac," the captain remonstrated. "The day of miracles is past; we don't want to commit you to the psychopathic ward. Now here is something real: the Giants won, and I had ten dollars on them. How shall we celebrate?"

  * * * * *

  The radio man was listening intently as they started to leave. His voice was hesitating as he stopped them; he seemed reluctant to put his thoughts into words.

  "Just a minute, sir," he said to Captain Blake.

  "Well?" the captain asked. And again the man waited before he replied. Then--

  "Lieutenant McGuire asked me," he began, "if I had heard any strange dots and dashes. I have not; but ... well, the fact is, sir, that I have been getting some mighty queer sounds for the past few nights. They've got me guessing.

  "If you wouldn't mind waiting. Captain; they're about due now--" He listened again to some signal inaudible to the others, then hooked up two extra head-sets for the officers.

  "It's on now," he said. "If you don't mind--"

  McGuire grinned at the captain as they took up the ear-phones. "Power of suggestion," he whispered, but the smile was erased from his lips as he listened. For in his ear was sounding a weird and wailing note.

  No dots or dashes, as the operator had said, but the signal was strong. It rose and fell and wavered into shrill tremolos, a ghostly, unearthly sound, and it kept on and on in a shrill despairing wail. Abruptly it stopped.

  The captain would have removed the receiver from his ear, but the operator stopped him. "Listen," he said, "to the answer."

  * * * * *

  There was silence, broken only by an occasional hiss and crackle of some far distant mountain storm. Then, faint as a whisper, came an answering, whistling breath.

  It, too, trembled and quavered. It went up--up--to the limit of hearing; then slid down the scale to catch and tremble and again ascend in endless unvarying ups and downs of sound. It was another unbroken, unceasing, but always changing vibration.

  "What in thunder is that?" Captain Blake demanded.

  "Communication of some sort, I should say," McGuire said slowly, and he caught the operator's eyes upon him in silent agreement.

  "No letters," Blake objected; "no breaks; just that screech." He listened again. "Darned if it doesn't almost seem to say something," he admitted.

  "When did you first hear this?" he demanded of the radio man.

  "Night before last, sir. I did not report it. It seemed too--too--"

  "Quite so," said Captain Blake in understanding, "but it is some form of broadcasting on a variable wave; though how a thing like that can make sense--"

  "They talk back and forth," said the operator; "all night, most. Notice the loud one and the faint one; two stations sending and answering."

  Captain Blake waved him to silence. "Wait--wait!" he ordered. "It's growing louder!"

  * * * * *

  In the ears of the listening men the noise dropped to a loud grumble; rose to a piercing shriek; wavered and leaped rapidly from note to note. It was increasing; rushing upon them with unbearable sound. The sense of something approaching, driving toward them swiftly, was strong upon Lieutenant McGuire. He tore the head-phones from his ears and rushed to the door. The captain was beside him. Whoever--whatever--was sending that mysterious signal was coming near--but was that nearness a matter of miles or of thousands of miles?

  They stared at the stormy night sky above. A moon was glowing faintly behind scudding clouds, and the gray-black of flying shadows formed an opening as they watched, a wind-blown opening like a doorway to the infinity beyond, where, blocking out the stars, was a something
that brought a breath-catching shout from the watching men.

  Some five thousand feet up in the night was a gleaming ship. There were rows of portholes that shone twinkling against the black sky--portholes in multiple rows on the side. The craft was inconceivably huge. Formless and dim of outline in the darkness, its vast bulk was unmistakable.

  And as they watched with staring, incredulous eyes, it seemed to take alarm as if it sensed the parting of its concealing cloud blanket. It shot with dizzy speed and the roar of a mighty meteor straight up into the night. The gleam of its twinkling lights merged to a distant star that dwindled, shrank and vanished in the heights.

  The men were wordless and open-mouthed. They stared at each other in disbelief of what their eyes had registered.

  "A liner!" gasped Captain Blake. "A--a--liner! Mac, there is no such thing."

  * * * * *

  McGuire pointed where the real cause of their visitor's departure appeared. A plane with engine wide open came tearing down through the clouds. It swung in a great spiral down over the field and dropped a white flare as it straightened away; then returned for the landing. It taxied at reckless speed toward the hangars and stopped a short distance from the men. The pilot threw himself out of the cockpit and raced drunkenly toward them.

  "Did you see it?" he shouted, his voice a cracked scream. "Did you see it?"

  "We saw it," said Captain Blake; "yes, we saw it. Big as--" He sought vainly for a proper comparison, then repeated his former words: "Big as an ocean liner!"

  The pilot nodded; he was breathing heavily.

  "Any markings?" asked his superior. "Anything to identify it?"

  "Yes, there were markings, but I don't know what they mean. There was a circle painted on her bow and marks like clouds around it, but I didn't have time to see much. I came out of a cloud, and there the thing was. I was flying at five thousand, and they hung there dead ahead. I couldn't believe it; it was monstrous; tremendous. Then they sighted me, I guess, and they up-ended that ship in mid-air and shot straight up till they were out of sight."

  It was the captain's turn to nod mutely.

  "There's your miracle," said Lieutenant McGuire softly.

  "Miracle is right," agreed Captain Blake; "nothing less! But it is no miracle of ours, and I am betting it doesn't mean any good to us. Some other country has got the jump on us."

  To the pilot he ordered: "Say nothing of this--not a word--get that? Let me have a written report: full details, but concise as possible."

  He went back to the radio room, and the operator there received the same instructions.

  "What are you going to do?" the lieutenant questioned.

  Captain Blake was reaching for a head-set. "Listen in," he said briefly; "try to link up that impossible ship with those messages, then report at once to the colonel and whoever he calls in. I'll want you along, Mac, to swear I am sober."

  * * * * *

  He had a head-set adjusted, and McGuire took up the other. Again the room was still, and again from the far reaches of space the dark night sent to them its quavering call.

  The weird shrillness cried less loudly now, and the men listened in strained silence to the go and come of that variable shriek. Musical at times as it leaped from one clear note to another, again it would merge into discordant blendings of half-tones that sent shivers of nervous reaction up the listeners' spines.

  "Listen," said McGuire abruptly. "Check me on this. There are two of them, one loud and one faint--right?"

  "Right," said Captain Blake.

  "Now notice the time intervals--there! The faint one stops, and the big boy cuts in immediately. No waiting; he answers quickly. He does it every time."

  "Well?" the captain asked.

  "Listen when he stops and see how long before the faint one answers. Call the loud one the ship and the faint one the station.... There! The ship is through!"

  There was pause; some seconds elapsed before the answer that whispered so faintly in their ears came out of the night.

  "You are right, sir," the operator said in corroboration of McGuire's remark. "There is that wait every time."

  "The ship answers at once," said McGuire; "the station only after a wait."

  "Meaning--?" inquired the captain.

  "Meaning, as I take it, that there is time required for the message to go from the ship to the station and for them to reply."

  "An appreciable time like that," Captain Blake exclaimed, "--with radio! Why, a few seconds, even, would carry it around the world a score of times!"

  Lieutenant McGuire hesitated a moment. "It happens every time," he reminded the captain: "it is no coincidence. And if that other station is out in space--another ship perhaps, relaying the messages to yet others between here and--Venus, let us say...."

  * * * * *

  He left the thought unfinished. Captain Blake was staring at him as one who beholds a fellow-man suddenly insane. But the look in his eyes changed slowly, and his lips that had been opened in remonstrance came gradually in a firm, straight line.

  "Crazy!" he said, but it was apparent that he was speaking as much to himself as to McGuire. "Plumb, raving crazy!... Yet that ship did go straight up out of sight--an acceleration in the upper air beyond anything we know. It might be--" And he, too, stopped at the actual voicing of the wild surmise. He shook his head sharply as if to rid it of intruding, unwelcome thoughts.

  "Forget that!" he told McGuire, and repeated it in a less commanding tone. "Forget it, Mac: we've got to render a report to sane men, you and I. What we know will be hard enough for them to believe without any wild guesses.

  "That new craft is real. It has got it all over us for size and speed and potential offensive action. Who made it? Who mans it? Red Russia? Japan? That's what the brass hats will be wondering; that's what they will want to find out.

  "Not a word!" he repeated to the radio man. "You will keep mum on this."

  He took McGuire with him as he left to seek out his colonel. But it was a disturbed and shaken man, instead of the cool, methodical Captain Blake of ordinary days, who went in search of his commanding officer. And he clung to McGuire for corroboration of his impossible story.

  * * * * *

  There was a group of officers to whom Blake made his full report. Colonel Boynton had heard but little when he halted his subordinate curtly and reached for a phone. And his words over that instrument brought a quick conference of officers and a quiet man whom McGuire did not recognize. The "brass hats," as Blake had foreseen, were avid for details.

  The pilot of the incoming plane was there, too, and the radio man. Their stories were told in a disconcerting silence, broken only by some officer's abrupt and skeptical question on one point and another.

  "Now, for heaven's sake, shut up about Venus," McGuire had been told. But he did not need Captain Blake's warning to hold himself strictly to what he had seen and let the others draw their own conclusions.

  Lieutenant McGuire was the last one to speak. There was silence in the office of Colonel Boynton as he finished, a silence that almost echoed from the grim walls. And the faces of the men who gathered there were carefully masked from any expression that might betray their thoughts.

  It was the quiet man in civilian attire who spoke first. He sat beside another whose insignia proclaimed him of general's rank, but he addressed himself to Colonel Boynton.

  "I am very glad," he said quietly, "very glad. Colonel, that my unofficial visit came at just this time. I should like to ask some few questions."

  Colonel Boynton shifted the responsibility with a gesture almost of relief. "It is in your hands. Mr. Secretary," he said. "You and General Clinton have dropped in opportunely. There is something here that will tax all our minds."

  The man in civilian clothes nodded assent. He turned to Captain Blake.

  "Captain," he said, "you saw this at first hand. You have told us what you saw. I should like greatly to know what you think. Will you give us your opinion, your impressions?"r />
  * * * * *

  The captain arose smartly, but his words came with less ease.

  "My opinion," he stated, "will be of little value, but it is based upon these facts. I have seen to-night, sir, a new type of aircraft, with speed, climb and ceiling beyond anything we are capable of. I can only regard it as a menace. It may or may not have been armed, but it had the size to permit the armament of a cruiser; it had power to carry that weight. It hung stationary in the air, so it is independent of wing-lift, yet it turned and shot upward like a feather in a gale. That spells maneuverability.

  "That combination, sir, can mean only that we are out-flown, out-maneuvered and out-fought in the air. It means that the planes in our hangars are obsolete, our armament so much old iron.

  "The menace is potential at present. Whether it is an actual threat or not is another matter. Who mans that ship--what country's insignia she carries--is something on which I can have no opinion. The power is there: who wields it I wish we knew."

  The questioner nodded at the conclusion of Blake's words, and he exchanged quiet, grave glances with the general beside him. Then--

  "I think we all would wish to know that, Captain Blake," he observed. And to the colonel: "You may be able to answer that soon. It would be my idea that this craft should be--ah--drawn out, if we can do it. We would not attack it, of course, until its mission is proved definitely unfriendly, but you will resist any offensive from them.

  "And now," he added, "let us thank these officers for their able reports and excuse them. We have much to discuss...."

  * * * * *

  Captain Blake took McGuire's arm as they went out into the night. And he drew him away where they walked for silent minutes by themselves. The eyes of Lieutenant McGuire roamed upward to the scudding clouds and the glimpse of far, lonely stars; he stumbled occasionally as he walked. But for Captain Blake there was thought only of matters nearby.

  "The old fox!" he exclaimed. "Didn't he 'sic us on' neatly? If we mix it with that stranger there will be no censure from the Secretary of War."