the'stuffed monstrosities' mentioned in the page out of the log. Nowonder the cook was afraid of them. Some of then do look hellishlyalive!"
He started across the hold, shrinking involuntarily from the armoredenormities that seemed crouched to spring at him, motionless eyesstaring.
So, at the end of the long space, he found the treasure.
Glittering in the blue light, it looked unreal. Incredible. A dazzlingdream. He stopped among the fearful things that seemed gathered as ifto guard it, and stared with wide eyes through the opened face-plateof his helmet.
He saw neat stacks of gold ingots, new, freshly smelted; bars ofsilver-white iridium, of argent platinum, of blue-white osmium. Manyof them. Thousands of pounds, Thad knew. He trembled at thought oftheir value. Almost beyond calculation.
Then he saw the coffer, lying beyond the piled, gleaming ingots--ahuge box, eight feet long; made of some crystal that glittered withsnowy whiteness, filled with sparkling, iridescent gleams, and inlaidwith strange designs, apparently in vermilion enamel.
With a little cry, he ran toward the chest, moving awkwardly in theloose, deflated fabric of the Osprey suit.
* * * * *
Beside the coffer, on the floor of the hold, was literally a mountainof flame--blazing gems, heaped as if they had been carelessly dumpedfrom it; cut diamonds, incredibly gigantic; monster emeralds,sapphires, rubies; and strange stones, that Thad did not recognize.
And Thad gasped with horror, when he looked at the designs of thevermilion inlay, in the white, gleaming crystal. Weird forms. Shapesof creatures somewhat like gigantic spiders, and more unlike them.Demoniac things, wickedly fanged, jaws slavering. Executed withmasterly skill, that made them seem living, menacing, secretlygloating!
Thad stared at them for long minutes, fascinated almost hypnotically.Three times he approached the chest, to lift the lid and find what itheld. And three times the unutterable horror of those crimson imagesthrust him back, shuddering.
"Nothing but pictures," he muttered hoarsely.
A fourth time he advanced, trembling, and seized the lid of thecoffer. Heavy, massive, it was fashioned also of glistening whitecrystal, and inlaid in crimson with weirdly hideous figures. Greathinges of white platinum held it on the farther side; it was fastenedwith a simple, heavy hasp of the precious metal.
Hands quivering, Thad snapped back the hasp, lifted the lid.
New treasure in the chest would not have surprised him. He wasprepared to meet dazzling wonders of gems or priceless metal. Norwould he have been astonished at some weird creature such as one ofthose whose likenesses were inlaid in the crystal.
But what he saw made him drop the massive lid.
A woman lay in the chest--motionless, in white.
* * * * *
In a moment he raised the lid again; examined the still form moreclosely. The woman had been young. The features were regular, good tolook upon. The eyes were closed; the white face appeared verypeaceful.
Save for the extreme, cadaverous pallor, there was no mark of death.With a fancy that the body might be miraculously living, sleeping,Thad thrust an arm out through the opened panel of his suit, andtouched a slender, bare white arm. It was stiff, very cold.
The still, pallid face was framed in fine brown hair. The fair, smallhands were crossed upon the breast, over the simple white garment.
A queer ache came into his heart. Something made him think of a whitetower in the red hills near Helion, and a girl waiting in its fragrantgarden of saffron and purple--a girl like this.
The body lay upon a bed of blazing jewels.
It appeared, Thad thought, as if the pile of gems upon the floor hadbeen hastily scraped from the coffer, to make room for the quiet form.He wondered how long it had lain there. It looked as if it might havebeen living but minutes before. Some preservative....
His thought was broken by a sound that rang from the open hatchway onthe deck above--the furious barking and yelping of the dog. Abruptlythat was silent, and in its place came the uncanny and terrifyingscream that Thad had heard once before, on this flier of mystery. Ashriek so keen and shrill that it seemed to tear out his nerves bytheir roots. The voice of the haunter of the ship.
* * * * *
When Thad came back upon the deck, the dog was still barkingnervously. He saw the animal forward, almost at the bow. Hacklesraised, tail between its legs, it was slinking backward, barkingsharply as if to call for aid.
Apparently it was retreating from something between Thad and itself.But Thad, searching the dimly-lit deck, could see no source of alarm.Nor could the structures upon it have shut any large object from hisview.
"It's all right!" Thad called, intending to reassure the frightenedanimal, but finding his voice queerly dry. "Coming on the double, oldman. Don't worry."
The dog had reached the end of the deck. It stopped yelping, butsnarled and whined as if in terror. It began darting back and forth,moving exactly as if something were slowly closing in upon it,trapping it in the corner. But Thad could see nothing.
Then it made a wild dash back toward Thad, darting along by the wall,as if trying to run past an unseen enemy.
Thad thought he heard quick, rasping footsteps, then, that were notthose of the dog. And something seemed to catch the dog in mid-air, asit leaped. It was hurled howling to the deck. For a moment itstruggled furiously, as if an invisible claw had pinned it down. Thenit escaped, and fled whimpering to Thad's side.
He saw a new wound across its hips. Three long, parallel scratches,from which fresh red blood was trickling.
Regular scraping sounds came from the end of the deck, where no movingthing was to be seen--sounds such as might be made by the walking offeet with unsheathed claws. Something was coming back toward Thad.Something that was _invisible_!
* * * * *
Terror seized him, with the knowledge. He had nerved himself to facedesperate men, or a savage animal. But an invisible being, that couldcreep upon him and strike unseen! It was incredible ... yet he hadseen the dog knocked down, and the bleeding wound it had received.
His heart paused, then beat very quickly. For the moment he thoughtonly blindly, of escape. He knew only an overpowering desire to hide,to conceal himself from the invisible thing. Had it been possible, hemight have tried to leave the flier.
Beside him was one of the companionways amidships, giving access to acompartment of the vessel that he had not explored. He turned, leapeddown the steps, with the terrified dog at his heels.
Below, he found himself in a short hall, dimly lighted. Several metaldoors opened from it. He tried one at random. It gave. He sprangthrough, let the dog follow, closed and locked it.
Trying to listen, he leaned weakly against the door. The rushing ofhis breath, swift and regular. The loud hammer of his thudding heart.The dog's low whines. Then--unmistakable scraping sounds, outside.
The scratching of claws, Thad knew. Invisible claws!
He stood there, bracing the door with the weight of his body, holdingthe welding arc ready in his hand. Several times the hinges creaked,and he felt a heavy pressure against the panels. But at last thescratching sounds ceased. He relaxed. The monster had withdrawn, atleast for a time.
When he had time to think, the invisibility of the thing was not soincredible. The mounted creatures he had seen in the hold wereevidence that the flier had visited some unknown planet, where weirdlife reigned. It was not beyond reason that such a planet should beinhabited by beings invisible to human sight.
Human vision, as he knew, utilizes only a tiny fraction of thespectrum. The creature must be largely transparent to visible light,as human flesh is radiolucent to hard X-rays. Quite possibly it couldbe seen by infra-red or ultra-violet light--evidently it was visibleenough to the dog's eyes, with their different range of sensitivity.
* * * * *
Pushing the subject from
his mind, he turned to survey the room intowhich he had burst. It had apparently been occupied by a woman. Afrail blue silk dress and more intimate items of feminine wearingapparel were hanging above the berth. Two pairs of delicate blackslippers stood neatly below it.
Across from him was a dressing table, with a large mirror above it.Combs, pins, jars of cosmetic cluttered it. And Thad saw upon it alittle leather-bound book, locked, stamped on the back "Diary."
He crossed the room and picked up the little book, which smelledfaintly of jasmine. Momentary shame overcame him at thus stealing thesecrets of an unknown girl. Necessity, however, left him no choice butto seize any chance of learning more of this ship of mystery and herinvisible haunter. He broke the flimsy fastening.
Linda Cross was the name written on the fly-leaf, in a firm, clearfeminine hand. On the next page was the photograph, in color, of agirl, the brown-haired girl whose body Thad had discovered in thecrystal coffer in the hold. Her eyes, he saw, had been blue. Hethought she looked very lovely--like the waiting girl in his old dreamof the silver tower in the red
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