“They’re two of the pirates!” she shrilled. “They might have murdered us all in our beds! I knew this would happen when we left Earth—”
Kenniston’s mind was seething with despair as he stood there with hands upraised. His whole desperate plan was ruined at this last moment.
He wouldn’t let it be ruined! He would get this cargo of machines and materials to John Dark if it meant his life!
“Turn back at once toward Mars, captain,” Gloria was saying quietly to the stunned officer. Her face was still very pale.
Kenniston, standing tense, had had an idea. A desperate chance to make a break, in the face of Murdock’s atom-gun.
The captain had said that he had just ordered the pilot to slow down the Sunsprite. In a moment would come the shock of the braking rocket-tubes firing from the bows—
That shock came an instant after the wild expedient flashed across Kenniston’s mind. It was only a jarring vibration through the fabric of the ship, for the pilot knew his business.
It staggered them all on their feet, for just a moment. But Kenniston had been waiting for that moment. As Hugh Murdock moved his gun-arm involuntarily to balance himself, Kenniston lunged forward.
“The bridge, Holk!” he yelled as he hurled himself.
Kenniston’s shoulder hit the captain and sent him caroming into Murdock. The two men sprawled on the floor.
Holk Or, with instant understanding, already had the door of the cabin open. They plunged out into the corridor together.
“Our only chance is to make the bridge and grab the controls!” Kenniston cried as they raced down the corridor. “We can keep them long enough to land on Vesta—”
Hiss—flash! The crackling blast of the atom-gun tore into the lower steps of the ladder up which he and the Jovian frantically climbed. Murdock was running after them as he fired, and there were shouts of alarm.
Kenniston and Holk Or burst into the glassite-walled bridge. Bray, the pilot, turned for a startled moment from his rocket-throttles.
Beyond the pilot, the transparent front wall framed a square of black space in which bulked the monstrous sphere of the nearby asteroid.
The World with a Thousand Moons! It loomed up only a few hundred miles away, a big, pale-green sphere encircled by the vast globular swarm of hundreds on hundreds of gleaming little meteor-satellites.
“Why—what—” stammered the pilot, bewildered.
Kenniston’s fist caught his chin, and the man sagged to the floor.
“Bar the door, Holk!” yelled Kenniston as he leaped toward the rocket-throttles.
“Hell, there’s only a catch!” swore the Jovian. He braced his brawny shoulders against the metal door. “I can hold it a little while.”
Kenniston’s hands were flashing over the throttles. The Sunsprite was moving at reduced speed toward the meteor-enclosed asteroid.
The cruiser shook to the bursting roar of power, as he opened up all the tail rockets. It plunged visibly faster toward the deadly swarm around Vesta, picking up speed by the minute.
Rocking, creaking, quivering to the dangerous rate of acceleration Kenniston was maintaining, the little ship rushed ahead. But now there was loud hammering at the bridge-room door.
“Open up or we’ll burn that door down!” came Captain Walls’ yell.
Kenniston didn’t turn. Hunched over the throttles, peering tensely ahead, he was tautly estimating speed and direction. His eyes searched frantically for the periodic break in the outer meteors.
There was a muffled crackling and the smell of scorched metal flooded the bridge-room. A hoarse exclamation of pain came from Holk Or.
“They got my arm through the door, damn them!” cursed the Jovian. “Hurry, Kenniston!”
Kenniston was driving the Sunsprite full speed toward the whirling cloud of meteors around the asteroid. He had spotted the break in the cloud, the periodic opening caused by the gravitational influence of another nearby asteroid.
It was not a real opening. It was merely a small area in the swarm where the rushing meteors were not so thick, and where a ship had a chance to worm through by careful piloting.
Kenniston only remotely heard the struggle that Holk Or was putting up to hold the door against the hammering crowd outside. His mind was wholly intent on the desperately ticklish piloting at hand.
He cut speed and eased the Sunsprite down into that thinner area of the meteor-swarm. Space around them now seemed buzzing with rushing, brilliant little moons.
The meteorometers had gone crazy, blinking and buzzing unceasing warning, their needles bobbing all over the direction-dials. Instruments were useless here—he had to work by sight alone. He eased the cruiser lower through the swarm, his fingers flashing over the throttles, using quick bursts of the rockets to veer aside from the bright, rushing meteors.
“Hurry!” yelled Holk Or hoarsely again, over the tumult. “I can’t—hold them out much longer—”
Down and down went the Sunsprite through the maze of meteor-moons, twisting, turning, dropping ever lower toward the green asteroid.
A last gasping shout from Holk Or, and the door crashed off its burned-through hinges. Kenniston, unable to turn from the life-or-death business of threading the swarm, heard the Jovian fighting furiously.
Next moment a hand gripped Kenniston’s shoulder and tore him away from the controls. It was Murdock, his eyes blazing, his gun raised.
“Raise your hands or I’ll kill you, Kenniston!” he cried.
“Let me go!” yelled Kenniston, struggling to get back to the throttles. “You fool!”
He had just glimpsed the jagged moonlet rushing obliquely toward them from the left, bulking suddenly big and monstrous.
Crash! The shock flung them from their feet, and the Sunsprite gyrated crazily in space. There was a blood-chilling shriek of outrushing air from the fore part of the ship, and the slam-slam-slam of the automatic air-doors closing, down there.
The cruiser’s whole bows had been crushed in by the glancing blow of the meteor. Now, ironically, the ship was falling clear of the meteor-swarm for Kenniston’s piloting had almost won through it before the impact. But the Sunsprite was falling helplessly, turning over and over as it plunged down toward the green surface of the jungled asteroid.
“By God, we’re struck!” came Captain Walls’ thin yell.
“This is your fault!” Murdock blazed at Kenniston. “You damned pirates will die for this!”
“Let me at those controls or we’ll all die together in five minutes!” Kenniston cried. “We’ll crash to smithereens unless I can make a tail-tube landing—”
Heedless of Murdock’s gun, he jumped to the controls. His hands flew over the throttles, firing desperate quick bursts of the tail rocket-tubes to bring them out of the spin in which they were falling.
The brake-rockets in the bow were gone. The ship was crippled, almost impossible to handle. And the dark green jungles of Vesta’s surface were rushing upward with appalling speed.
Kenniston’s frantic efforts brought the Sunsprite out of the spin. By firing the lateral rockets, he kept it falling tail-downward.
“We’re goners!” yelled someone in the stricken ship. “We’re going to crash!”
Air was screaming outside the plummeting ship. Kenniston, his hands superhumanly tense on the throttles, mechanically estimated their distance from the uprushing green jungles.
He glimpsed a little black lake in the jungle, and near it the big circle of an electrified stockade. He recognized it—John Dark’s camp!
Then, a thousand feet above the jungle, Kenniston’s hands jerked open the throttles. The tail rockets spouted fire downward.
Sickening shock of the sudden check almost hurled him away from the controls. His hands jabbed the throttles in and out with lightning rapidity, checking their further fall with one quick burst after another.
A sound of rending branches—a staggering sidewise shock that flung him from his feet. A jarring thump, then silence.
They had landed.
CHAPTER IV
The Vestans
Kenniston picked himself up groggily. The others in the bridge had been thrown against walls or floor by the shock, but seemed no more than bruised. Holk Or was nursing his burned arm. But Hugh Murdock, staggering in a corner, still held his atom-pistol trained on Kenniston and the Jovian.
“My God, what a landing!” exclaimed Captain Walls, his plump face still white. “I thought we were done for.”
“Maybe we still are,” Murdock said grimly. He said savagely to Kenniston, “You think you’ve won, don’t you? Because you’ve managed to crash us on this asteroid where your pirate boss is waiting?”
“Listen, Murdock—,” Kenniston began desperately.
“Keep your hands up or I’ll kill you both!” blazed Murdock. “March down to the main cabin.”
Kenniston and the Jovian obeyed. The Sunsprite was lying sharply canted on its side, and it was difficult to scramble down through the tilted passageways and decks to the big main cabin.
The cabin was a scene of confusion, for it was impossible to stand upright on its tilted floor. Young Arthur Lanning had been stunned, and Gloria Loring and the scared blonde girl, Alice Krim, were bathing his bruised forehead. Robbie Boone was peering wildly through a porthole at the sunlit tangle of green jungle outside. From Mrs. Milsom came a shrill, steady wail of terror.
“Stop that screeching,” Murdock told the dumpy dowager brutally. “You’re not hurt. Gloria, are you others all right?”
Gloria raised her white face from her task. “Only bruised, Hugh.”
She did not look at Kenniston or the big Jovian as she spoke.
Robbie Boone’s teeth were chattering. “Murdock, what are we going to do? We’re wrecked, on this hellish jungle asteroid—”
Murdock paid the frightened, chubby youth no attention. Captain Walls, Bray, and four of the crew were entering the cabin. The captain and pilot had belted on atom-pistols.
Captain Walls’ plump face was paler. “Two of the crew were killed and our telaudio wrecked by that meteor,” he reported. He glared at Kenniston. “You damned pirate! You’re responsible for this!”
“If you hadn’t dragged me away from the controls, the cruiser wouldn’t have been struck,” Kenniston denied. “And I’m not a pirate—”
Murdock interrupted. “We’ll settle with those two later,” he told the enraged captain. “Right now, we’ll have to get out of the ship. We can’t stay in here until we get it righted on an even keel.”
Holk Or rumbled a warning. “Better be careful about going outside. Those cursed Vestans are thick in these jungles.”
“I’ll have no advice from you two pirates!” flamed the captain. “Bray, you and Thorpe keep your guns on them every minute.”
The heavy main space-door was opened. Pale sunlight and warm, steamy air laden with rank scents of strange vegetation drifted in. Outside lay a raw clearing the falling ship had crushed out of the jungle.
Captain Walls supervised as they all donned lead-soled weight-shoes to compensate for the weaker gravity. Then they emerged, young Lanning being supported by Murdock and Robbie. Kenniston and the Jovian were last to emerge, under the watchful guns of their guards.
The crew and passengers were looking around with wonder and revulsion. The silvery bulk of the Sunsprite lay awkwardly heeled on its side. The symmetrical torpedo shape of the cruiser was now badly marred by the crumpled condition of its bow.
All around them in the thin sunlight rose slender trees whose enormous green leaves grew directly from the trunks. This grotesque forest was made more dense by festoons of writhing “snake-vines,” weird rootless creepers which crawled like plant-serpents from one tree to another. Each stir of wind brought white spore-dust down in a shower from the trees.
The few living creatures of this forbidding landscape were equally alien. Big white meteor-rats scurried on their eight legs through the brush. Phosphorescent flame-birds shot through the upper fronds like streaks of fire. In the pale sky overhead, there were ceaseless gleams and flashes of light as the spinning meteor-swarm reflected the sunlight.
“What a horrible place!” shrilled Mrs. Milsom. “We’ll all die here—we’ll never get back to Earth. I knew this would happen!”
“This is certainly a mean spot to be cast away,” muttered Captain Walls. “God knows what queer creatures inhabit it, not to speak of the mysterious Vestans everybody talks about. And John Dark and his crew are somewhere here. And the telaudio wrecked, so we can’t call for help.”
Kenniston realized that none of the others had glimpsed Dark’s camp as they fell. They didn’t know the pirate encampment was only a few miles away in the jungle.
“What are we going to do, captain?” Gloria was asking, her face still pale but her voice quite steady. “Can we get away?”
Captain Walls looked hopeless. “We can’t take off with the whole bow of the Sunsprite crushed in.”
“We can repair it, can’t we?” Hugh Murdock suggested. “Remember, in the hold is the cargo of machinery and repair-materials that Kenniston was bringing to repair Dark’s ship. Can’t we use that equipment?”
The captain looked more hopeful. “Maybe we can. Bray and the crew and I ought to be able to do an emergency job of patching the bow and installing new rocket-tubes there. But we’ll have to work fast to get away before Dark’s outfit learns we’re here.”
He pointed vindicatively at Kenniston. “Better lock up that fellow and his partner to make sure he doesn’t signal somehow to his fellow-pirates.”
Kenniston tried again to explain. “Will you all listen to me? I tell you, I’m no pirate!”
Murdock eyed him sternly. “Do you deny that John Dark sent you to Mars for repair-equipment, and that you told us that lying treasure-story to get the equipment here in our ship?”
“No, I don’t deny that,” Kenniston admitted. “But I’m not one of John Dark’s crew—I never was! I was a prisoner on his ship, captured by the pirates before they themselves were attacked by the Patrol.”
“Do you expect us to believe that?” Murdock said incredulously.
“It’s true!” Kenniston insisted. “My kid brother Ricky and I were captured by John Dark’s outfit several weeks ago. We were prisoners on his ship when it was wrecked by the Patrol. After the wreck drifted onto Vesta here, Dark wanted to send someone to Mars for repair-equipment. He wouldn’t send one of his own men in charge, for fear the man would double-cross him and never come back.
“So he sent me, his prisoner, on that errand. Holk Or came along to help me navigate a ship back. And I had to obey Dark and get the equipment back here at any cost. For Dark kept my brother Ricky prisoner here with him, and told me that if I didn’t bring back that equipment, Ricky would be shot!”
Holk Or spoke up. “It’s true, what Kenniston’s telling you,” rumbled the Jovian. “Me, I’m one of Dark’s pirates and I don’t care a curse who knows it. But Kenniston did this only to save his brother.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Captain Walls flatly. “It’s another of the smooth lies this fellow Kenniston makes up so easily.”
Gloria spoke to Kenniston, her dark eyes still accusing. “If what you say is true and you’re not a pirate, then you brought all of us into this danger simply to save your own brother?”
Kenniston looked at her miserably. “Yes, I did. I was willing to lead you all into capture to save Ricky. But I had a reason—”
“Sure, you had a reason,” Murdock said bitterly. “What did the safety of strangers like us mean to you, compared to your precious brother?”
Captain Walls motioned Kenniston and Holk Or angrily toward the ship. “Bray, take them in and lock them under guard in a cabin,” he said.
Holk Or suddenly yelled. “Look out! There’s a Vestan!”
Kenniston, his blood chilling with alarm, glanced where the Jovian pointed. At the west edge of the clearing, a small animal had suddenly emerged from the dense green j
ungle.
It was a six-legged, striped, catlike beast, not unordinary as interplanetary animals go. But its head looked queer, seeming to have a bulbous gray mass attached behind its ears.
Captain Walls uttered a scoffing exclamation. “That’s only an ordinary asteroid-cat.”
“That is a Vestan!” Kenniston cried. “Shoot at its head—”
His warning was too late. The catlike beast had launched itself in a spring toward their group.
As its striped body shot through the air, Walls triggered his atom-pistol. The crackling blast of force tore into the body of the charging asteroid-cat, and the beast fell heavily a few yards away.
But as it fell, the small gray mass upon its neck suddenly detached itself from the dead animal and scuttled swiftly forward. It moved with blurring speed toward Bray, the nearest to it of the group.
The little gray creature was no bigger than a man’s clenched fists together. It was a gray, wrinkled featureless thing, except for pinpoint eyes and the tiny clawlike legs upon which it scurried. It reached Bray and ran swiftly up his legs and back as he swore startledly.
Kenniston, made reckless of danger by his horror, yelled and lunged toward the pilot. Bray was swearing and trying to slap at the gray thing running up his back. But the little creature had now reached his neck. Clinging there, it swiftly dug two tiny, needle-like antennae into the base of his neck.
“Hold him!” Kenniston shouted hoarsely. “The Vestan has got him!”
Bray had undergone a sudden metamorphosis as the gray creature dug its antennae into his neck. His face stiffened, became masklike.
The pilot turned and began to run stiffly toward the jungle. Kenniston’s leap almost caught him, but Bray lashed out a fist that sent Kenniston sprawling.
“Don’t let him get away!” Kenniston yelled, scrambling up.
But the others were too stricken by amazement and horror to interfere in time. Bray had already plunged into the jungle and was gone.
“My God, what happened?” Captain Walls exclaimed dazedly. “Bray went clean crazy!”
The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 37
