Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

“It’s the find of the century, Gorely, no question of that, if only it yields a third the amount of cosmicite[1] Wendell says it will. If so we’ll be multi-millionaires after this trip.”

  “Well, at least, we won’t be in the same straits that the Sellers crowd were. We know what we’re up against with Wendell on hand. What a fight he must have put up to come through alone.”

  “Hush . . . here he comes . . .”

  The pair, Tom Gorely and Jack Morgan, were standing in the forward turret of the space ship Adventure. Both were seasoned explorers as were all Captain Timothy Beale’s crew. They had been in many odd places together, to Diane on the very edge of the solar system, but this was their first time so close to Sol, beyond Mercury. They wore the dark glasses and insulated refrigerated suits necessary scarcely more than twenty-five millions of miles from the sun.

  The refrigerant units of the Adventure, despite the heat insulating coating of cosmicite, were hard taxed to keep a liveable temperature within the shell of the space flyer, but the men were not heeding the heat.

  They were looking forward to their descent upon the orphan of the solar system, Vulcan, innermost planet, discovered by the crew of the Corsair four months before.

  Astronomically speaking, Vulcan had for many years in the past been conceded as a possibility by scientists. The perihelion of the orbit of Mercury moves somewhat faster than it should if the planet were acted upon only by known forces, and this fact had led astronomers to believe in an intra-Mercurian planet. The peculiarity of Mercury’s motion pointed toward an attraction of a planet whose orbit lay between that world and the sun. A planet in this position could be observed only with difficulty, for its elongation from the sun would always be small. Several times in the past it was supposed to have been observed, yet others disputed the truth of such a discovery. Naturally it would be next to impossible to see this tiny planet against the glare of the sun’s disc.

  It had taken Captain Boris Sellers to find it; but he had not survived his discovery. Every man of his crew had died a horrible death, except Bill Wendell who alone managed to pilot the Corsair back to Earth with its gruesome burden of dead men, and his tale of discovery. That awful journey had left its mark on him as one could see at a glance, as he came into the Adventure’s turret.

  Although only thirty-four he looked a man of sixty. His hair had turned snowy white, his eyes were dimmed, still filled with some nameless horror which lurked in their depths. Heavy lines creased the flesh about his mouth; and his walk was that of a man whose body is tortured by the pains of senility.

  Only the lure of the vast deposits of cosmicite, that priceless metal without which no ship could dare travel the void, had brought him back to Vulcan. He had the guarantee that half the wealth the Adventure would unearth would go to him and to the families of those men who had lost their lives on the ill-fated journey of discovery.

  The men of the Adventure were diffident about addressing Wendell. He seemed to move in a world of his own, annoyed if others sought intrusion there. But today was different—he had come seeking the company of those in the turret.

  He stood gazing out the thick port giving view to the world they were approaching. The window, like all the shell, was daubed with a covering of cosmicite put on with a spray so that it was so thin as to be transparent. But for that coating, the crew of the Adventure could not have withstood the terrible emanations of the cosmic and heat rays that pervaded space.

  The discovery of cosmicite is a story in itself. One remembers the first intrepid space explorers who lost their lives in attempting to conquer space with no knowledge of the danger they faced when they plunged out of the Earth’s atmospheric blanket. Oddly enough the man who discovered the only material impervious to the dangerous rays was one by the name of John Cosmo!

  “A few hours and we’ll be there,” Wendell was saying in his quavering voice more to himself than those in the chamber with him. “Vulcan, the monster itself in beauty, festering in poison . . . Sellers, Tomlin, Berber, Keep, Lassier, Morton, Chin . . . all dead . . . and only I am alive to tell the story!”

  “But you found the mines, didn’t you?” Gorely asked timidly, suddenly realizing how little they knew of what lay before them. Wendell had, of course, explained everything to Captain Beale, but for the most part the men were ignorant of what they were to face. Men of space never asked questions; their trust lay in their leaders.

  Wendell looked up in surprise at the other’s voice. He studied the man before him as if seeing him for the first time in his life, though purposely he had come here seeking companionship.

  “THE mines . . . the . . . oh, you mean the cosmicite mines. No! We did not find the mines. The natives had it. Ingots of it, statues, shields, arrows and spears tipped with it . . . they worship it like a god! Cosmicite. Dasie they called it. Believed it protected them from their enemies. A backward people, but they mined the metal.

  “And they thought we were gods. A kindly people. They wined and dined us . . . only not me. I had a bad stomach, a recurrence of sickness of years back. I was confined to the Corsair, on a soft diet . . . too sick to eat or walk. I was put out by it, I imagined my companions receiving gifts I could not share. I was jealous! I avoided them.

  “The fourth day I felt better. I went out to meet them as they came into the ship laden with gifts—strange fruits, meats, wines and cosmicite. I picked up a bunch of fruit that resembled grapes. I ate one. Then . . . then Berber, my buddy . . . he pitched to the floor screaming and retching. He was sick, something was tearing at his vitals, he said . . . he was burning up . . . fever. A few minutes and he could not speak. We carried him to his berth, dosed him up . . . then Lassier was taken sick. We put him to bed, but he wasn’t the last. Another and another were taken ill . . . then the captain.

  “There were only yellow Chin and I left to treat our fellows. We went from one to another giving medicine that seemed to do no good. Berber could not raise his chest to breathe now. It . . . it was as if his bones could no longer support the flesh . . . they were rotting away! The others were the same. Now Chin could no longer walk. Oh it was . . . damnable. My friends dying . . . I unable to ease them. Berber died, then Lassier . . . they all died before my eyes. Captain Sellers alone knew what it was . . . he told me . . . the fruit, the water . . . all poison. It was radium . . . the soil, the water, the growing things . . . even the natives were impregnated with it . . . and it was too rich in solution for men of Earth. It was killing them.

  “I remembered the single grape I had eaten . . . I thought I felt stomach pangs already, but I had to stand by and listen to Captain Sellers telling me what to do. They think us gods,” he said, speaking of the natives.

  They must not know of this . . . that we die. You, Wendell, take the Corsair back home with all of us in it! You must not bury us here . . . There is a fortune on Vulcan . . . it is stupendous. Cosmicite is scarce throughout the solar worlds, but this planet is filthy with it . . . and radium . . . you must get home . . . tell others what we have seen . . . bring an expedition to mine it. Treat the natives well . . . they may be induced to tell where their mines lay . . . then all the solar system will be ours . . . thousands of space flyers can be built in place of the paltry fifty or sixty now in existence . . . but let no man eat or drink of this world!”

  “He said more, then began to babble, and like the others it grew difficult for him to breathe. I turned away, forced my stomach to give up that bit of fruit I had eaten. I was frantic with the moans of my fellow-men in my ears. Men dying like flies . . .” He lasped into silence while he remembered.

  After a pause the young-old man began to speak again. “I tried my best to ease their pain, some died more quickly than others . . . according to the proportion in which they had eaten the food of the natives. But they had had four days of it. Sellers was last to go, though quite out of his head by then. It was not easy to drive the Corsair without help, to plot my course and watch out for meteorites. It meant days of continu
al vigilance at the controls. And there were the bodies of my fellows below.

  “I could not move them . . . they were already rotting . . . putrefaction had set in almost immediately with their passing. I could only cover them with sheets . . . soon the ship smelled like a charnel house.

  “And I began to feel real pains in my stomach. The single grape had poured poison into my system before I got rid of it. Lucky that I had eaten no more . . . else I would not be here to tell the tale. I suffered . . . my stomach was a fiery pit, my head spun like a top, my knees were weak, and with it all I had to stay at my controls. I fought it off somehow . . . as a result I am a sick man for the rest of my days. I . . . well here I am back for more . . . and if you value your lives, men, if you do not want to die an evil death, do not be tempted by the sweet luscious fruit and sparkling waters of Vulcan . . . it’s . . .”

  He would have said more but Jimson, Beale’s lieutenant, had appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Wendell,” he called, “the captain wants to see you in the control-room.”

  Wendell went with him. Beale was studying the world that rapidly edged closer. They had come halfway around the sun to meet it, and now Vulcan lay in quadrature to them, its first quarter, showing them half its illuminated side. At most it was but 1200 miles in diameter, a small world whose mass was surprisingly great in proportion to its size. Wendell had already explained to Beale that Vulcan’s surface gravity was in excess of that felt by men of Earth when upon the moon. That was because it was made up of the heaviest of metals. Now the captain wanted to know if Wendell knew where they were to land.

  In half an hour the little world looked like a bowl with its upturned edges. They were circling it, passing from the light into the darkness twice. They saw it had no really large areas of water. There were innumerable lakes and rivers, but nothing that could be rightfully called a sea. There were mountains in one hemisphere, but for the most it was flat or slightly rolling country. One thing was particularly noticeable about the night side, the fact that the vegetation gave off a ghostly light, glowed of itself like phosphorus. The lakes were molten silver, the jungles a riot of wild color.

  S they dropped closer Beale saw that landing was to be a problem. Never had he seen a more fecund world. Nowhere could they see the ground, so heavily was it grown with tall spiky trees, fleshy vines and spreading shrubs. Even the banks of the waterways were overgrown, heavy with life. At Beale’s query, Wendell shook his head. Just so had the Corsair found Vulcan. They could blast an opening in the trees for themselves, but if they wished to find natives it would be best to cruise about until they sighted a clearing, a man-made clearing.

  By laboriously pulling out the trees, the men of Vulcan made a council-hall for themselves. In one of these clearings the Corsair had found a ready berth, nor had the natives appeared to resent their using it. The Corsair had found the village near the north pole. Wendell had left too hurriedly to be sure of finding it again, but he imagined they could find another like it.

  Every man able to get near a port-hole was made a lookout. Twice they circled Vulcan again and were rewarded. A circular opening in the jungle lay below, just large enough for the Adventure to fit with little room to spare. Wendell did not believe it the same clearing in which the Corsair had landed, but it was likely enough with a promise of a village nearby.

  With wondering eyes the men stared at the queer life about them, for it was even stranger than it had appeared from above. The trees were for the most part a hundred feet high, straight, slender with trunks that resembled those of a palm tree: smooth, glistening, barkless; but the branches that jutted from their crowns were unlike anything they had ever seen. They were long, stiff, needle-pointed spikes with a feathery lacy froth of needles. The branches were no more than three to four feet in length, solitary and uncrowded. The only shade cast by the whole tree was the straight unvarying image of its polelike length.

  Vines clung somehow to the unyielding trees, vines that dropped festoons of needles from their length linking the jungle trees together. Around the trees was growing a veritable mat of stiff-stalked young trees; bushes, stocky plants, all with underdeveloped spiky leaves and branches. Only on the ground was there a growth with a fleshier leaf—broad and flat, prone to the soil. The bushes mostly resembled palmettos and cacti.

  Nature, at first lavish, had turned about-face and with niggardly hand finished her work, stinting the land of her natural, abundance. Then she had remembered and was more prolific, for on each tree, weighing down the vines, bending the backs of the shrubs, palmettos and cacti were the fruit clusters. Red, yellow, blue, orange, green they were; long banana-shaped fruit, globulars of all sizes, berries, melons—round, oval, cylindrical, every shape and form; luscious peaches, over-sized pears, mouth-watering berries, scarlet cherries, purple grapes, juicy plums, golden oranges . . . all were here in wild profusion, in wild fecundity.

  “It’s the sun,” explained Wendell. “Were the leaves of the trees broad they would absorb too much vitality beside that already partaken of from the radioactive soil, hence they would shrivel and die under the glare of the white-hot sun. Nature can be more prodigal with the fruit because there are enough to make use of it . . . See . . .” He pointed out flocks of tiny birds, no larger than humming birds darting among the fruit, the swarms of insects feeding in armies, the dainty head of some animal feeding on fruit fallen to the ground.

  Another creature that looked like a cross between a bear and a monkey was climbing a tall tree toward an especially appetizing cluster of fruit hanging by a slender cord from a vine. The fruit proved just out of reach of the animal, but with infinite patience the bear angled for the prize with long forelegs. At last, unable to gain the fruit by that means, it let go its hold upon the tree-trunk to make a lunge for the fruit cluster, and landed upon it with all four feet. The vine held and the animal went about the prosaic business of harvesting its dinner without a care as to what would happen when it ate away its support.

  A shadow fell against the trees and ground. Glancing up the men saw an unusually large, brightly-plumaged bird plunging downward. Through the thick walls of the ship they could not hear its cry, but they could see its paralyzing effect upon the flock of humming birds which for the nonce seemed suspended on quivering wings unable to move forward or backward. The killer had time to swoop down, gobble a third of their number before their brains began to function properly again, and they could escape. The big fellow made no attempt to follow. He simply turned to the fruit nearest at hand and commenced to gorge himself.

  Beale and Jimson, standing with Wendell, grew aware of even more life in the jungle. Birds of every size and description flew through the trees, creatures lurked among the vines, snakes and tiny furred things raced up and down tree trunks and vines, flinging themselves through the air. There was life on the ground, peering from between the heavy, thick leaves of the vines that crawled upon the earth’s bosom. Suddenly Wendell was pointing out a strange apparition to his companions.

  It stood staring back at them from between two tree trunks, a creature five feet tall, upright on two legs. It had a small pointed face that was fox-like, yet faintly resembled a human face! The head was round, bulging upward from heavy beetling brows. The ears that came to a point at the top were set on the side of the head slightly below the level of the large black eyes. The nose was long, pointed—the cheeks and jowls sloped forward adding to its animal-like appearance. The mouth was wide, the chin rather heavy-set, incongruous looking to the rest of the face, giving it its humanness that was otherwise lacking except in the rather intelligent set of the large beady black eyes.

  CHAPTER II

  Men of Vulcan

  THE face and body were bare of hair, the skin a slate brown. The body was proportionately slender to its height, in repose it leaned forward so that the thin arms dangled below the knee. Hands like the face were free of fur, delicately-boned, almost claws.

  “It’s the man of Vulcan,” averred Wendell. “Or a
t least we called it a man, for such were the creatures we encountered before. This clearing is their meeting hall. They live back among the trees. If these little fellows are like the others they will have cosmicite in plenty!” He was excited.

  “What shall we do?” queried Beale.

  Nothing. Wait. More will come. They are peaceable, or so the others were. Let them see we mean no harm. Let the men stay at the windows—come and go—act natural.”

  For two days no attempt was made to communicate with the strange little “men” of Vulcan. All the crew were now familiar with their bizarre appearance, their foxlike faces, their twitching ears that always seemed in movement, their stiff gawky walk, their strangely shiny bodies. For the most part they seemed unarmed, only a few carried a strange type of ridiculously small bows and arrows. What interested the Tellurians the most was the fact that the arrows and a few spears that appeared now and then were tipped with white metal cosmicite! The metal seemed in common use among the Vulcanites, yet at the same time was held in veneration. They wore strings of it about their necks from which dangled either round nuggets of the same material, or tiny, crudely-carved figurines, amulets. They wore queer elbow and knee-shields of cosmicite, curved plates that fitted over the joints and were held in place with thongs. Some had bits of cosmicite wire twisted about both head and body, and a few carried broad round shields of it on the left arm.

  The very inactivity of the Adventure’s crew seemed to have gained the confidence of the natives. They had drawn nearer and nearer to the space ship, studying its exterior first from afar, then dared to lay reverent hands upon its shell. They appeared to have discovered that it was coated with cosmicite, and this homely truth had wiped away the last vestige of their fear. They could understand that!

  One little fellow, more daring than the rest, enticed two of his fellows to form a living ladder for him to climb upon their shoulders. That brought him up to the level of one port-hole in the ship’s side. There were two of the men within, and for several moments the three stared at each other—the two curious, the fox-man awed by his own daring. From them his eyes flitted to the room beyond. For the moment the savage forgot everything else as he stared at the strange furnishings. Then suddenly he swayed and toppled from their sight. His ladder had given way!