Immediately there was a terrific crash from down the passage way, followed by an agonized scream. Another crash. More screams.
Hekalu started, and then making a hurried gesture to Alkebar which indicated that he was to guard the inventor of the Atomic Ray, he drew his automatic and dashed down the corridor to investigate the disturbance. The Earthman however, was in no mood to be guarded. No longer shackled, he leaped to his feet and over to the center of the room. The great voiceless beast from the stars stood before the doorway with his long arms outstretched. He was not trying to capture the Earthman—only seeking to block his path.
But Shelby had no time to waste. Gathering himself together, he hurtled straight for the ankles of his opponent. The fact that the artificial gravity of the ship was of the same strength as that of Mars—only a trifle more than one-third that of Earth—added to the effectiveness of his plunge. The mighty-muscled Alkebar, puzzled by the unheard-of tactics of his agile though vastly weaker foe, suddenly found himself in a sprawling heap on the floor. Shelby leaped over him through the door, slammed it, and raced precipitately down the corridor.
In the meantime Hekalu Selba had reached Janice Darell's room, but when he had unlocked it and had thrust his head inside to see what the matter was, a heavy urn, deftly aimed, had crashed full into his face. Shelby saw him sprawling in the passage badly dazed, and a split second later Jan dashed from her cabin. She looked around, and when she saw Shelby coming swiftly toward her she flashed him a quick smile of triumph.
But Alkebar had wrenched the portal of the Earthman's recent prison open, and was in hot pursuit. He was tugging frantically at the pistol in his belt.
"Run, Jan, quick!—To the control room!" Austin shouted.
He caught up Hekki's automatic which had dropped from the Martian's grasp when he had fallen, and wheeling, fired at the black colossus. The bullet struck Alkebar's right hand with which he was raising his pistol. The tough natural armor which covered the monster from head to foot prevented it from doing any serious damage, but it must have stung badly, for his weapon clattered to the floor. While he was stooping to recover it, Shelby hurried forward to catch up with Jan. It was but a few yards to the control room. If they could get there, overcome whoever was in charge and barricade themselves in, they could master the ship!
Their luck had been good, but it was not destined to be as good as that. They caught but a brief glimpse of the bewildering array of switches, dials and levers, that constituted the brain-center of the craft. Standing on guard before his instrument panels was the mahogany-colored slave Koo Faya. He was half crouching, at bay. There was a murderous light in his eyes, and he held leveled in his hands a light machine gun. Shelby's automatic was leveled too, and he pressed his trigger an instant before the Martian. Four bullets whizzed into the control room, splattering close about the thin mummy-like body of Koo Faya. A glass globe that glowed redly on the top of a complicated mechanism, was struck and burst with a popping sound. A rose-colored vapor floated ceiling-ward.
Simultaneously Koo Faya's weapon began to whir. Then, even as Shelby jerked Jan back out of danger, the wild shriek of an alarm siren mingled with the discordant clashing jangle of ungoverned machinery running amuck, rang through the ship, and the huge metal cigar pitched and careened like a frightened thing.
Alkebar, having recovered his pistol, was staggering down the passage shooting rapidly. But owing to the crazy motion of the space flier his missiles were momentarily not taking effect.
Austin and Jan knew that Koo Faya was leaping to a position where he could shoot his poisoned darts at them again. What now? Cornered? No! Janice Darell wrenched open a door in the side of the passage and shoved Shelby into the tiny room beyond.
In the opposite wall of the closet was a round dark opening. "The emergency flier," Jan shouted. "Into it!"
As quickly as they could they climbed through into the submarine-like interior beyond. Fighting to keep themselves erect, they slammed the heavy duralumin portal to and fastened it. Alkebar was already groping on the opposite side. But he was too late.
Shelby leaped to the control panel and cut the electric current from the magnets that held the emergency flier anchored to its mother ship. It floated, free from the careening hulk. Its rocket motors roared into life.
The occupants of the tiny craft looked back at the Selba. It had ceased its mad motions now, and was hanging quietly in space. Evidently Koo Faya had succeeded in righting matters to some slight extent at least. Would he be able to patch things up entirely? The red globe could be replaced in half an hour. It would be that length of time at least before the Selba could engage in pursuit.
But the arm of a space ship, equipped with weapons commonly used in the void, is long. Hence Austin Shelby considered it his first duty to put as much distance between his craft and Hekalu's ship as possible.
Still four million miles away, Mars glowed—a tiny red disc; and he headed toward her giving the flier full freedom to do its best. The fiery vapors fairly tore from the rocket nozzles.
With one hand in readiness on the control lever, which resembled in appearance and operation the joystick of an airplane, and his feet on the bar used for steering in a lateral plane, he kept his eyes fixed on the receding bulk behind. Jan had handed him one of the two pairs of binoculars which she had just found in the supply compartment.
Austin knew what to expect from the direction of the Selba, and it came well within schedule. A flash of green fire spurted from the foredeck of the ship. It showed up with startling vividness against the jeweled sable of the void.
Abruptly Shelby drew the control lever back. In response to his movement the rocket nozzles, now deflected from alignment with the central axis of the craft, sent it into a steep climb. The terrific angular acceleration seemed intent on forcing the two fugitives straight through the metal floor. It drew the blood from their faces and made them grow pale and giddy. But they escaped being struck by the torpedo.
It exploded a hundred yards beneath the flier's keel. Fragments of it banged against the hull. In rapid succession other flashes darted from the Selba, which had dwindled to a silvery speck far to the rear. But still those missiles, directed by incredibly delicate sighting mechanisms, and hurled at almost the speed of light, continued to score remarkably close to their target.
If it had not been such an elusive target they most certainly would have blasted it to fragments. But Shelby, skilled as were most of the men of his time, in the handling of small space craft, was able to endow his flier with much of the agility of an alarmed dragon fly. Darting, weaving, zigzagging, yet always keeping its general course fixed toward Mars, it careened away. Always it was ringed by an aura of green flashes.
However, good fortune is seldom perfect. The tempered duralumin plates of the flier managed to withstand the force of all of the torpedo fragments which showered them—with one exception. One dart from Hekalu's ship exploded barely fifty feet to the right of the fugitive craft, and a flying chunk of steel sent it pitching and tumbling through the ether.
When the two bruised occupants had regained their equilibrium they heard a faint hissing above the roar of rockets. They knew that there was but slight chance that the Selba could do them any further harm, for though the torpedoes continued to come, the distance between the two vessels was now so great that a damaging shot was almost an impossibility. Nevertheless, the present situation was serious enough. A leak!
Fixing the nose of the flier toward the Red Planet, and locking the controls, Shelby left the pilot's seat to determine the extent of the damage, while Jan searched the supply compartment for something with which to repair it. There was a deep dent in one of the ceiling plates and a thin wriggly crack through the center of it—not an easy job to patch that out in space under the best of circumstances.
The young man whistled when he saw how near they had come to a hideous death. Several times he had seen the bodies of men who had been suddenly exposed to the pressureless airle
ss cold of the outer void—hideous bloated things through whose skin the livid blood had forced its way.
"Any luck, Jan," he asked, looking back at his companion. "Did you find some cement?"
She shook her head.
CHAPTER VI The Space Men Attack
First stepping to the oxygen supply valve and opening it a trifle wider, Shelby hastened to assist the girl in her quest. Their ears were ringing. The air pressure within the hull was dropping rapidly. Diligently they ransacked every nook and corner, but found nothing more valuable than a can of thick grease. Shelby smeared some of it over the crevice; it helped but did not by any means check the flow of the escaping air entirely.
"It's a race with time now, Jan," he said quietly.
She looked at him. Her face was a trifle pale, but her lips and eyes were smiling. "Are we on our way to Mars, Captain?" she enquired.
He nodded. "We are, Admiral. The fuel tanks are full and if our air lasts we'll get there."
"And when we do," she put in, "the best of luck to Hekki and his friends!"
A vision swept through Shelby's mind—batteries of fantastic machines whose maws spewed flames of faint lavender fire—blinding flashes of light and world-rocking explosions: a hideous thing to dream of—hideous yet glorious, for the civilizations and freedom of two worlds depended upon it. To the Red Planet—they must make it!
Janice Darell had placed her hand lightly on Shelby's arm. Her expression was serious, almost hard. "Austin," she said, "tell me truthfully, can we really reach Mars? It is likely that we shall get there before we go out?"
"Certainly, darling," he replied, putting as much assurance into the words and expression as was possible. "Why do you ask?"
There was something that suggested doubt, perhaps even displeasure in her answer: "We have a duty to perform, Austin—a duty infinitely bigger than our own petty existences. You have not seen what I have seen—small scouting patrols that came to the Selba riding strange round things that must have been machines of some kind. One look at those henchmen of Alkebar, their great black bodies, their quick nervous movements—like eager panthers, their wicked-looking weapons which they carried with such an air of easy assurance, and you would have known what they hoped to do. Most of these devils are within the orbit of Mars for the first time. Certainly Hekki has told you something about them?"
Shelby nodded. "Very little; but I have noticed a few of Alkebar's remarkable peculiarities," he said.
"Well," she continued, "if we can't get to Taboor, there is one thing we can do—destroy the Selba, and with it Hekki and Alkebar."
"Destroy the Selba!" Shelby exploded, "with what? Those toy machine guns on the nose of this bus? The bullets wouldn't even make noticeable scratches in the hide of that tough old girl."
"Not with the machine guns," Jan said slowly, "with this flier! A little luck and it would work."
The idea flashed through Shelby's brain. Ram the Selba at high speed! Absolutely certain self-murder! A wave of tremendous admiration for the girl came over him. She had something more in her favor than mere beauty and intelligence.
"Your idea is a pretty good one, Jan," he told her. "But rest assured that unless you can overpower me, it will never be put into execution. However, I'll tell you the truth: we have about a fifty-fifty chance of reaching the Red Planet alive."
And so they tore on their way across the void while they watched the dial on the oxygen tank. They were racing with a tiny needle that crept ever nearer to the zero point that was its goal.
By allowing the pressure within the flier to drop to the lowest point that they could endure, they managed to conserve considerable oxygen, for then the rate of escape from the crevice the torpedo fragment had made was naturally not so rapid.
Frequently they examined the sky behind them, expecting momentarily to discover the tiny speck of flitting silver that would be the Selba. But if the ship was pursuing them it had not yet come close enough to be seen.
However, there was another, and perhaps greater menace which kept their eyes turning this way and that, searching for signs of danger. Clusters of dully-glowing specks in any quarter of the heavens would be the first indications of its presence. They would grow larger, come hurtling on like racing meteors in the sun's glow. Only there would be an odd wobbly motion about their darting flight. Shelby tested the trips of the two machine guns. Spurts of green flame plumed out of the muzzles.
He had set the radio transmitter in operation, and was sending occasional signals for assistance. But he knew that this was practically a useless move. Hekalu had taken them far off the beaten track, and they were still half a million miles from the Terrestro-Martian traffic lane. The range of the transmitter of this craft was only ten thousand miles. Even if they had been much nearer the chances of their signals being picked up were slight.
The Martian disc was growing larger. It had become an ochre sphere delicately ringed and mottled with greens and browns like a cloudy opal. The flier was fairly eating up the distance.
Shelby had just said: "I believe we're going to make it, Jan," and then the signs which they had hoped would not appear came. Ahead of them and a little to their right, a vague cluster of specks glimmered into view. It wavered like a wisp of luminous smoke buffeted by a light breeze. This was the one thing that distinguished it from a meteor cluster.
Rapidly the individual points of light grew, becoming tiny stars that glowed by the reflected light of the sun. Within five minutes there was no longer any chance of mistaking their identity, for their flat disc-like shapes and the half-human forms of the things that rode them were already visible through the binoculars. They were approaching at terrific velocity. Both Jan and Austin knew them to be subjects of Alkebar. There was no mistaking their motive. Doubtless orders had been flashed to them from the disabled Selba.
Realizing that these fleet space riders could easily catch up with his flier if they so chose, Shelby made no attempt to elude them. Instead he clung doggedly to the straight course toward Mars.
The twin machine guns, responding obediently to their directing mechanism, swung on their swivel toward the hurtling foes. Shelby peered into the eye-piece of the "sighter," a complicated arrangement of mirrors and lenses which enabled the pilot to always look directly through the ring-sights regardless of what direction the gun barrels were pointing. He pressed the trips, and soundlessly, out in the vacuum of space, the guns went into action. Flickering green flames of detonating radio-active explosive darted from their muzzles.
Almost immediately there were answering flashes among the approaching shapes, for the high-calibre bullets were also loaded with explosive. One projectile took effect—another! Emerald flares of light, and nothing remained of two bold space men and their queer disc-like vehicles but torn fragments of flesh and metal.
The Space Men were very close now. Jan and Shelby could see the light flashing on their jeweled harnesses and on the weapons which they flourished defiantly. There must have been almost five hundred in the party. Somehow their wild charge was vaguely reminiscent of a band of fierce Bedouin marauders, racing madly across the desert, bent on pillage. Only it was the Arabs who suffered by this comparison, for the desert of these mysterious Space Men was the whole of interstellar emptiness; and their forms and those of the things they rode, were the forms of the forces of Iblees himself.
Apparently these henchmen of Alkebar had some object in view other than the mere destruction of the flier, for they made no move to use their weapons. They were pulling upon levers on their vehicles, checking their headlong flight.
Now they were coursing with the little craft, swarming about it, edging nearer, at the same time taking care to keep out of range of Shelby's guns.
There was a scraping against the hull and a light jolt as a talon secured a hold on an eyelet ring. A black bulk dropped down on the nose of the craft. A pair of hands gripped the barrels of the machine guns, and with an easy tug, tore them from their mountings. There were shiftin
g scratching sounds coming through the flier's light shell—heavy bodies moving about, and then a sudden ripping vibration. The control lever felt loose in Shelby's hand. He could no longer guide the vessel. And there was nothing either he or Jan could do except wait. The rocket motors still purred evenly.
"I guess they've got us this time, Jan," the young man said to his companion. "I wonder what they are going to do with us?" He spoke as casually as though this latest unfavorable turn of fortune was no more serious than the loss of a game of chess.
Janice Darell was equally cool. "Next time we win," she laughed. It is odd how human beings so often react to strange and terrifying situations. "I'm always ready, you see. Here I was crouching behind you throughout the fight with this perfectly useless pistol in my hand, hoping foolishly that I might be able to use it. That's loyalty."
They fell to studying the two monsters which rested on the nose of the craft in front of the pilot's observation window, where the guns had been. The Space Man was crouching out there trying to peer in at them. He was very much like Alkebar—only not so large, and his equipment and adornment did not boast so many jewels.
Shelby felt a peculiar sense of the unreality of the creature. He looked into its face and saw its eyes. Beside the left orb was a mottled area that must have been a scar. It seemed as concrete as anything he had ever seen, and yet for the second time, he told himself that such a creature wasn't possible!
Time honored tradition had said: "Life can exist only where there is oxygen, water and warmth." And all three of the requisites were lacking in the void. Shelby realized that tradition might be wrong, but the question still remained: How did these creatures of space live? Whence came the energy that kept their bodies functioning? If not from the combustion of food with oxygen, then where? If there were no moisture in their bodies, and there certainly couldn't be, for it would have been frozen in an instant and diffused through sublimation, how could vital fluids flow through their veins? He put these questions to Jan, but she shook her head.
Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas Page 5
