Slaves of Ijax

by John Russell Fearn

  “I don’t like it!” Peter declared more than once. “Something’s going on!”

  “The Tower has not been touched anyway,” Lanning reminded him; “and that is the most important thing. Only tonight and tomorrow night to hold out.”

  As things transpired they had no need to hold out. There were no further attacks. The fateful two nights went by and the cover remained untouched...then on the third morning they had all just assembled in the main room after much needed sleep—the watch over the Tower having, ended in the early hours at moonset when the sealed doors splintered inwards under the force of electric cutters.

  Peter dived instantly for one of the guns, but he wasn’t quick enough.

  “Stand still!” commanded a voice.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EXILE

  Peter turned slowly and raised his hands. Too late to do otherwise Lanning and the girl did the same. A party of Governing Council militia came into the room, the commanding officer holding a levelled energy gun.

  “You’re under arrest, all of you,” he announced briefly.

  “At least tell us how you got past the energy dome,” Lanning said.

  “We dug under it,” the officer retorted. “It doesn’t go down into the ground, merely lies flush with it like a cover. It was a hard job to burrow through the metal street and the metal floor in this building, but we managed it and so got inside. Now march!” he snapped. “You are to be brought to immediate trial for defiance of Governing Council directives and causing serious delay to the consummation of the Task.”

  There was nothing else for it. Under orders Lanning switched off the energy dome and then with Peter and Alza he marched out among the guards. The three were not taken to prison cells, as they had expected, but directly into the Hall of Justice where the Governing Council and the Western Federation’s legal experts sat in serried rows, waiting. Nowhere was there a friendly face; only implacable coldness.

  “Don’t like the look of this,” Peter muttered to the girl, as she stood beside him. “Some thanks you get for trying to save the world from being blown up!”

  He was ordered to be silent and with Alza and Lanning was conducted to, raised platform with a rail round it. Here spotlights came into being and drenched the three of them in hot, vivid brilliance.

  “Mark Lanning, Peter Curzon, Alza Holmes, the terms of the indictment against you are that you have acted treasonably and against every interest of the State and the world....” It was President Valroy himself who spoke, white-haired, a traditional legal gown swathed across his narrow shoulders. “All of you, and you in particular, Mark Lanning, knew of the Task upon which we have all been working and for some reason you sought to prevent it coming to consummation. Through that act you caused innumerable deaths and chaos....

  “Two nights ago Ijax spoke to us. He told every one of us throughout the world that the consummation of the Task had somehow been prevented and that it was our bounden duty to root out the offenders and hand them over to State law. We knew, of course, whom to look for and accuse. We are now promised that the Task shall be consummated a month hence, on the Twenty-Sixth September, two nights before the next full Moon.... Have any of you anything to say?”

  None of the three spoke,

  “Further,” the President continued, “you did, for some reason of your own, and contrary to the orders of Ijax, cause a cover to be placed over the moondust in the Grand Tower summit. We endeavoured to move that cover and you destroyed the planes attempting it. We could have atom-bombed the cover out of existence, of course, but that would have shattered more of the Tower itself—so your plan worked satisfactorily. Further, you ordered engineers to prepare a spaceship, your obvious intention being to commit suicide in the void after you had prevented us all from reaping our reward from the Task.... I confess that such reasoning is hard to follow. Your intended spaceship has been confiscated.... I repeat: have you anything to say?”

  “Yes,” Lanning said in a grim voice. “None of you are fools, Mr. President. Can you not realize—as I have done—that when the moonlight strikes the moondust at full Moon it will become energized and so explode the atomic force powder in the channels, which have been gouged round the world? That is what I fought to prevent, in company with His Excellence and Miss Holmes. Cannot you see, all of you, that you are slaves of Ijax? That you are accomplishing your own destruction? Cannot you see that at the next full Moon—or rather two nights before it on September Twenty-Sixth—the dust will become energized if you remove the cover and the world will be blown to pieces?”

  “It is strange to hear you, Mark Lanning—so ardent a devotee of Ijax—now completely turning against him,” the President retorted. “However, the scientific issues on moondust and atomic force do not concern us since we have learned to trust Ijax. And how do we know that moondust will react in the way you have said? You are the only one who has made moondust tests. We know nothing of its behaviour. Your word alone—the word of a traitor—is not enough.”

  “You’re hypnotized, you damned fools, everyone of you!” Peter shouted, banging the platform rail with his fists. “Don’t you realize it? Somebody—probably Anton Shaw, the greatest scientific criminal who ever lived—is hypnotizing you from the Moon through Ijax images, and you’re all under his sway!”

  “How is the hypnosis produced?” the President asked dryly.

  “That I don’t know—yet.”

  “Why is it that you are not under the influence?”

  “Because—because I’m different!” Peter declared desperately. “I’m seven centuries behind everybody here.”

  “And you, Miss Holmes?” the President asked cynically. “I do not perceive that you are in any way hypnotized—nor you, Mark Lanning.”

  “Look here—!” Peter raved; but he stopped as Lanning caught his arm.

  “No use, Excellence,” he murmured. “It is a waste of time explaining. They are completely dominated by Ijax.”

  “Obviously there can be only one penalty for the crimes you have committed,” the President said, after a brief consultation with his colleagues. “For myself I would much prefer that you be shot, in the ways of ancient times. Since however it is the law that you be fired into space in a space-coffin, that law will be carried out. I regret it personally, insofar as it is precisely the death you had chosen for yourselves when you put that space machine into reconstruction.... Now, have you any more to say?”

  Peter tightened his lips and his colour deepened, but Lanning shook his head at him gravely. Alza merely straightened up, her face deathly pale.

  “Very well,” the President said, motioning to the guards. “You will be banished from Earth at six o’clock this evening and may the cosmos prove kinder to you than you deserve!”

  The trial was over. In the space of a few minutes the three found themselves in cells, separated from each other, unable to converse—and they came together again only when at ten to six in the evening they were led out of the prison on to its broad flat roof where the rocket projectile stood angled into the sky. About it were grouped technicians, and with them according to custom the President and the remainder of the Governing Council.

  Without a word Lanning climbed through the airlock into the rocket’s padded interior. There were no seats, no comforts, nothing to make the journey bearable. Hanging from the wall were three spacesuits and above them a square metal box.

  “You are accorded by law the chance of survival should you ever reach another world alive,” the President said through the airlock, after Peter and Alza had climbed in and settled beside Lanning. “Each of you have a spacesuit, food for four days and water for two weeks. That is accorded to every exile, as in your day, Mr. Curzon, provisions were sometimes accorded a castaway at sea. You may survive, though everything u against that possibility. Certainly you will never return to Earth....”

  The airlock slammed from the outside and the three were left in darkness, shoulders pressed against each other—then suddenly
there was the tremendous pressure of upward acceleration. It flattened them hard against the spherical wall of the spaceship’s tail where they were seated, forced the breath out of their lungs and held them paralyzed and giddy as the projectile shot upwards to the stratosphere.

  How long this lasted they could not judge. They retained consciousness, but the sense of infinite weight was a killing strain as the projectile continued to accelerate; then at last the velocity slowly became constant and the battering pressure fell away from them. They were able to move, stiffly, uncertainly.

  Gradually, on his knees, Peter crawled to the nearest rocket port and looked through it.

  “We certainly made that part of the journey in good time,” he breathed.. “The Earth’s dropping away like a kicked football—and gosh! What a view!”

  Alza crawled to his side and they stared breathlessly upon the wastes of space for a moment or two—upon the prominence-girdled sun, the pearly blaze of his corona, the viciously bright stars and Moon, visibly waned from the full— Then, dazzled, they had to look away.

  “What happens now, Lanning?” Peter inquired at last. “Any way of stopping this damned thing from falling into the Moon’s gravitational field and crashing?”

  “None,” the scientist answered, who had been listening to the fading noise of the rocket discharges. “The fuel is all used up now, I think: the rockets have ceased firing. As far as I can see there is no way to stop ourselves crashing right into the Moon.” He sighed heavily. “And back on Earth those moonstruck fools will move that cover from the Tower and seal their own doom. Idiots! Crass idiots!” He wormed his way to the porthole and lay beside Peter and the girl. “At this rate,” he said presently, “we shall reach the Moon in about another ten hours—about one in the morning, Earth Standard time.”

  Neither replied. Their faces were sombre in the moonlight. The girl’s chin quivering a little despite her efforts to control it. Peter had his lips thrust out in vicious rebellion against impending doom. No real expression at all was on Lanning’s face. He seemed to be taking even this disaster with the calmness of complete maturity.

  “Space can be crossed safely, anyway,” he said at last. “This proves it.”

  “Some good it does us,” Peter commented bitterly. “It’s like telling a chicken it has a pretty neck before you wring it.”

  “Shall we—feel much?” Alza asked quietly.

  Lanning gripped her arm gently. “No, Alza. That will be one mercy. The moment we shall see the Moon’s jagged surface hurtling towards us and the next we shall simply smash into...dust. Quick and painless.”

  Peter gave a grim laugh. “I like the joke about the spacesuits and food. What the hell do they expect we’re going to do? Have a picnic on Venus, or something?”

  As neither Lanning nor the girl answered him he fell silent. It was a silence hardly any of them broke, weighed down as they were by the prospect of imminent death. Hour upon hour as the projectile hurtled on at unvarying velocity they saw the Moon change from a waning, unbearably brilliant globe into a distinct landscape, its surface jagged and relentless with craters, mountain ranges, and deep barren gorges. All of it was a glaring study in black and white contrast, the absence of air making both light and darkness savagely sharp.... And behind, Earth dwindled.

  Somehow that enlarging lunarscape mesmerized them. The nearer it came, stinging their eyes with its brilliance, the less they felt able to turn away from it....

  At last the Moon filled the void. It was a titanic plateau below them and they were diving straight towards it.

  “This is it,” Peter whispered, putting an arm round Alza’s shoulders as she gave a little cry of fear. “The last hop, eh, Lanning?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the scientist muttered—and their eyes fixed on the merciless lunar surface they felt the projectile suddenly start leaping towards it with terrifying speed—

  Then—incredibly—when they should have accelerated on the final drop, they began to slow down instead. They all felt it. Their speed was slackening!

  “W-what’s happened?” Alza asked, relief choking her voice.

  It was a question none of them could answer, but the fact remained that when they did strike the lunar surface some ten minutes later, falling into the shadow of the Lunar Apennines, it was only with a slight bump. It jarred them: nothing more. The projectile rolled gently on one side and became still.

  “By all that’s incredible!” Peter exclaimed blankly from the gloom. “Is—is there a scientific reason for it, Lanning?”

  “None,” the scientist replied. “That is, not a natural one—but it is quite possible that Anton Shaw had something to do with it— Yes!” he broke off suddenly. “Look there!”

  Through the porthole, clearly silhouetted against the blazing white of the mountain range where the sunlight caught it, were three bloated figures in spacesuits. They loomed clear and sharp for a moment, then they vanished in the total dark of the shadow. After perhaps five minutes they came into the sunlight again, much nearer this time, hading towards the uncomfortably warm projectile.

  “Well, maybe the spacesuits will be useful after all,” Lanning commented. “We may as well put them on. When that airlock is opened from outside anything can happen.... Obviously it is Anton Shaw, and at a guess I should say the two with him are the criminals who were fired into space a little while before him.”

  He turned and took the spacesuits down, handed them over, and they all scrambled into them. By the time they had screwed up their helmets and connected the air and heating supply there was a pounding on the airlock, clearly heard through their chest audiophones.

  After a moment or two a helmeted face peered in at the port from outside, seemed satisfied at seeing the three in spacesuits, and then withdrew. Peter clumped over to the airlock on heavy leaden soles—just as it suddenly opened. The rush of air out into the void sucked him helplessly forward to the lunar landscape.

  As he picked himself up he saw Lanning and Alza climbing out into the pumice dust.... Not being linked for radio contact no sound reached them now in the airlessness. But the three who had come to them were all holding weapons in their gloved hands, the movement of which was sufficient direction in itself.

  They began to walk across the loose volcanic dust of the plain.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MYSTERIES EXPLAINED

  Altogether the journey was not a long one. Once they had crossed the low-lying ridge in the foothills of the Apennines they went, under direction, down a rocky declivity and so gradually away from the lunar surface into a tunnel. Lights from their captors flashed into being and revealed the rocky, hole-riddled walls.

  Down and still down, for perhaps two or three hundred feet, and at this depth the sponge-like honeycomb rock had given place to the more normal solid variety. They went through an enormous natural doorway and into the darkness of an immense cave. Behind them a rock swung on a natural pivot and closed the opening.... Then for a while their captors moved about, the light of their torches gleaming on instruments, switches, and scientific equipment.

  At last brilliant light gushed forth from overhead and a voice spoke.

  “You can take off your suits and helmets. There’s air in here now.”

  As they did so Lanning, Peter, and Alza looked about them. As they had assumed they were in an underground cavern, an immense place that seemed to be performing numerous functions simultaneously. There were many scientific instruments lined against the walls; there were tables, chairs, and beds, all of the collapsible variety. High overhead in the naturally domed roof two globes hung, their bright yellow light speaking—to Lanning and Alza at least—power from solar-storage batteries.

  Then they had climbed out of their suits and their captors had done likewise.

  “Anton Shaw,” Lanning said grimly. “As I expected!”

  Peter found himself studying a shortish man, broad-shouldered, with a sprouting mop of grey hair. His face was rugged, seams etched round
the large, powerful mouth and a deep cut between the bushy eyebrows. Hit eyes, what could be seen of them, appeared to be bright blue. The other two men with him were nondescript in appearance, powerfully built, with foreheads broad enough to show intelligence lay somewhere behind them.

  “Some time since we’ve met, eh Lanning?” Shaw asked dryly, coming forward.

  He had a gentle voice, with all the culture of education—and yet somehow had a cruel edge in it.

  “Thanks for saving us, anyway,” Lanning answered, “though I can only think that you did it to preserve us for a more—er—interesting fate.”

  “I saved you,” Shaw said, “because you are a good scientist and also because I am desperately short of people here. I, and my two colleagues here—whom you will recall were exiled as lesser scientific criminals; before the same fate befell me—are the only people in the whole land of Luna. There are times when we weary of each other’s company.”

  “How did you know that I was in the projectile?” Lanning questioned.

  “I didn’t. I merely guessed. When my plan for Earth’s destruction failed—on this occasion at least—I realized that only one person could have permitted that failure—you! That automatically suggested that sooner or later the Governing Council would arrest you and bestow upon you the fate of a traitor. So when I saw a rocket coming I slowed it down with force beams. Simple enough. They tried to push the projectile away. Not being able to entirely accomplish that they slowed it down so it fell gently. Naturally I was on the lookout for it.”

  “And now what?” Peter snapped.

  “I don’t believe I know you, my friend—though I am of course acquainted with Miss Holmes here.... Who are you?”

  “The Twenty-First-Century spanner in your scientific machine,” Peter answered laconically. “The man who restored Lanning here to normal and so broke your spell over him. Also the man who’s going to whip the pants off you if he gets half a chance.”