Asteroid Man

by R. L. Fanthorpe

  "They're stronger than human beings like us," she blurted, "and they're just terrible; they're—they're things!" Masterson felt his own courage trying to ebb away. He caught at it desperately, as a drowning man clutches at a straw.

  "What kind of things?" he persisted. "Are they monsters like that thing outside? Are they human or do they look human? Are they as big as a house? They can't be that big, or they couldn't get through these passages after us. Have they got teeth or claws or scales?" In answer the girl pointed one trembling hand down the corridor along which she herself had just come.

  "Now you try and describe them to me."

  "Good God," said Greg. The thing that was coming was remotely like a human being, and yet so remote was the resemblance that it was more a caricature than anything else. It shambled, as though its bones had all been smashed and set in the wrong way. It had two forelimbs, and it walked upright. The eyes in its hideous, twisted face were evil and blemished. The teeth, great fang-like teeth, protruded from a mass of ebullient flash; the forelimbs hung by its side, in the style of a great, anthropoid ape. It was covered with matted red-brown hair.

  "Are they all like this?" gasped Masterson.

  "No—only some of them. The others are worse."

  "Worse! Is there anything worse than that? Good grief, it must have been spawned in hell!"

  "It was spawned in the brain of the master," she said quietly, "and that's worse than hell, a thousand thousand times worse. The devil would never take the likes of him."

  "I bet he wouldn't. He'd corrupt their morals! Ye gods, a man who could think up a thing like that would probably put the brimstone out!"

  The thing was uttering low articulate growlings as it came, a half human, half animal roar, like a beast that has been deprived of its prey. It stood, Masterson would have said at a guess, about eight feet tall, but it looked bigger than its probably was. The great shoulders of the brute rubbed against the side of the corridor as it ambled and lurched along. Its hideous, mottled eyes were fixed on the spaceman and the girl cowering behind him.

  "We'll see how he likes a dose of this," said Masterson, and pressed the trigger savagely. There was no result.

  "It knows you're here," said the girl. "It's put on the nullifying rays."

  "Blast," muttered Masterson. He looked round for some other weapon. There had to be something. If this thing could neutralize the effects of an atomic charge he'd have to try something older.

  The awful, claw-like extremity at the end of the creature's arms were the focal point of Greg's gaze. He realized now why the door handles were designed so oddly. The thing had no thumbs. The awful face twisted into the caricature of a grin as it came shambling forward.

  "Back away and get ready to dodge up one of the other passages while I deal with this brute," said Masterson. "If I don't get away, run for your life."

  "Its no good running," said the girl. "They'll only take me back to him. If it gets you, I'm just back where I started from." There was an awful, dull resignation in her voice.

  "It hasn't got me yet," said Masterson, "and I don't intend it to. How strong would you say that brute is?"

  "It can open that door as easily as you or I could put a finger through a piece of tissue paper."

  He remembered the space suit. Among the tools on it was an axe! It seemed the ideal weapon. "Move," he urged. "Third passage on the right as you go back! My space suit is lying there. I left it as a decoy. There's an axe on the belt."

  He spoke as he ran, reached the space suit, unsnapped the axe with fingers that shook a little, and turned to meet the beast in the wider space where the corridors met. The thing continued to give vent to the hideous guttural sounds. They seemed very appropriate from so dreadful a throat.

  One of the great raking talons swung toward him.

  "No, you don't," said Masterson sharply, and swung with the axe. The creature backed away with a scream that was more expressive of pain than anything else.

  "Ah, so you're vulnerable, are you, you brute? Then see how you like this!" The girl had backed away into the passage and covered her face with her hands. The thing came on again, swinging the undamaged claw. Masterson slashed at that. There was another scream of pain. The hideous distorted face was only a few feet from his own. The axe was short but heavy. He held it in both hands and swung down with the strength of a pole-axe. There was a satisfying thud as the axe went home in the enemy. It fell down and lay still.

  "Got it," said Masterson. "Got the swine! Astra, don't be afraid; it's dead! Astra! Astra!" he spun round, shouting. The corridor was empty. There was nothing but echoing darkness. From the darkness, seemingly very distant and far away, he heard a faint guttural laugh, and a girl's faint scream for help.

  "Darn!" he swore savagely. He called himself every kind of fool under the sun. He knew nothing of these labyrinths, but the creatures, servants of the master, did. Even as he had been laying this brute low, one of the things had come from the other direction and dragged the girl away. The question was along which passage? He listened again, and then, switching on his torch, and with the bloodstained axe held at the ready in his strong right arm, the useless gun thrust into the belt at his waist, he hurried off in what he hoped was the right direction. It was eerie, following that slim pencil of white light along the corridor. The girl's own green vapor light apparatus had disappeared along with her, and he realized how inefficient his own light was. It was looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. His field of vision was very badly limited, but he had to keep on. He didn't know how it had happened; he couldn't even begin to understand. He had always been a lonely, adventurous, shyly masculine type of man; a man's man, an adventurer, a man who had never allowed himself to have time for women. And now he found himself like a tongue-tied schoolboy in the presence of this beautiful princess, who was a helpless prisoner of the foul thing that controlled this miniature world. He knew that his bold, carefree heart had been bound; he knew that he was held as no force field ever could hold him. He was desperately in love with a girl that he had met only a few minutes ago. Was it minutes, or was it an eternity? Was it possible that he had just met her for the first time? His mind went winging back over the great fields of philosophical speculation. Was there any truth in the reincarnation stories? he wondered. Had he met her before in another world, another life? Had he been separated from her by time and space; had they lived and loved a million years and a million worlds away? Was there, after all, an answer to his apparently insoluble question about the soul of man? Was there a tiny external inextinguishable flame, a tiny spark, a glowing, incandescent immortal something hidden within flesh and blood, and had that tiny spark known that girl before somewhere? Beside that immortal spark, time and space were meaningless. Distance had no real objective existence. Time was as irrelevant as a child's toy to a full-grown man. He knew, deeply intuitively and instinctively, knew by the depths of this passion that had flared up within him, that it must be so. The feelings that he had were too great, too enormous. They had to have always been; just as he knew that if there was a God, then that God must be an eternal being, so he knew his feelings must be eternal. They were too great to have been born out of the complex nerve endings which he called his physical brain. There was something in that feeling that went beyond physical attraction, though he would have been the last to deny that the girl was attractive. He didn't want her in the sense that a cave man wanted a mate to share his rough skin bed and raise his young. He wanted her as a companion, not for a time alone, but forever and forever, and for all the tomorrows that forever might hold. Would he be risking his life pursuing her into the depths of this crazy asteroid if it was purely a physical instinct that urged him on? He realized that it had to be more than a mere instinct. The strongest instinct of all was self-preservation, and when two basic instincts come into conflict it is the stronger which wins, and he knew that self-preservation was the strongest of all. That was basic psychology, first-year college stuff.
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  This was something altogether greater. This was a product of will, and will had been inspired by something that came from outside the material physical brain. Will was being spurred on by something from the immortal, nobler part of Greg Masterson. There was something distinctly noble and ethereal about the way he felt for the girl. There was nothing earthy about it at all. She was completely and utterly different from any woman he had ever known before. She was more a goddess, a green goddess. He thought of the ancient legend of Pandora's box, and the trouble that had been released when Pandora had undone the magical knot. Then he thought of Hope, who had come after the troubles and the trials and tribulations; a glorious, representative figure, preserved in the ancient mythology. Amidst all his trials, in the midst of the black sea of troubles that threatened to overwhelm him here in the depths of this asteroid, he had found the epitomization and the personification of Hope herself: this girl, this goddess, this mysterious enchantress, Astra of Altair. He knew that unless he could find her, and rescue her from this super intelligent fiend that controlled this mad world, he would never again know anything even vaguely approaching happiness. Unless he could rescue her and rescue her quickly, he would never be able to face himself again. He would never be able to live with himself. There were some things which a man had to do. They had to be done, and unless they were, life was empty, meaningless, dark.

  For him the one thing that had to be done was to rescue the girl.

  Greg became aware of a cackle of insane laughter; spine-chilling, blood-curdling laughter, it congealed and congested the very blood in his arteries. It was a hideous sound; like the other foul noises that had been emitted by the weird servants, this sound too was more animal than human, a foul, despicable, frightening, hyena-like sound.

  It seemed to fill the whole asteroid, to echo through the whole asteroid like a weird, mad carillon.

  Greg pulled himself together with an effort. To some extent this was a war of nerves. He was in the enemy's country, and he didn't know what devil he was heading for. He didn't know what was round the next corner. Uncertainty was pulling at him as though it had claws. On top of that was this weird semi-darkness beyond the bright light of his energy beam.

  He had to keep moving; it was like groping his way through a thick fog. The beams of your headlights threw the fog back at you. It was like that, and yet it wasn't. The visibility conditions were roughly equivalent. He kept on moving. He reached another point in the corridor where it branched and again he stood listening for that weird, cackling laughter. Over and above it he thought he faintly heard another scream for help.

  I've got to get to her. I've got to get to her quickly. His grip on the axe tightened. His jaw set in determination. Blast the creature that controls this place. In his mind he could see a mental image of the girl being dragged along those Stygian corridors by the likes of the creature that he had slain, the thing with the blemished eyes and hideous distorted face. The foul caricature of a man. At all costs he had to overtake them. He kept on moving. The laughter again. It was everywhere, echoing.

  The whole experience was turning into some crazy kind of nightmare.

  He still walked determinedly down the corridor. Now, throwing caution to the wind he started to run. They probably knew where he was, anyway; probably had some way of plotting his exact position. He was no doubt under the surveillance of half a dozen beams. His position could be pinpointed as accurately as a spider could tell upon which strand of its web a fly has alighted.

  By running, he probably stood a better chance than by walking slowly and cautiously. If they knew where he was anyway, it was far better to run. The position would change far more rapidly. He thought about obstructions and pits and traps, and then let the thought fade away into oblivion. It was not a pleasant thought; oblivion was all it deserved! He saw something up ahead of him, something that lent wings to his feet. It was the faint backtrack of the green light that he had first seen, the green light that he had come to associate with the girl, Astra, Princess of Altair. They had not gotten very far; no doubt she was struggling as fiercely as she could. He thought again of the hideous deformed things that obeyed the wishes of the insane ruler of this peculiar asteroid. He increased his speed again. There was another wild ringing laugh, the green light faded from sight, and suddenly, almost undetectable in the slim light of his flash, he saw what had to be the toils of a net… It couldn't be anything else. The net was directly in front of him, around him. He spun quickly on his heel; it was behind him as well! He slashed at it savagely with the axe, but it appeared to be quite impervious to the blows of the hatchet. It was closing in on him. He struggled wildly, trying to keep his balance. Somehow it had gotten under his feet. The net seemed to be everywhere, thin, but immensely strong. He tried to tear it with his hands, but it was tougher than cord, and cut his fingers…

  He got his feet and shoulders against it, braced himself and tried to break it, but it simply gave a little and then came back into position.

  He thought of the analogy of the fly in the spider's web. It seemed more apt than ever now. He was hopelessly, helplessly, stupidly trapped. Fool not to have heard or seen it coming, he told himself. Masterson, you don't deserve to breathe. The amount of crazy mistakes you've been making since you started this trip! He rounded on himself reproachfully, and yet— who could have done better? Who could have avoided the net? Who could have known it was there? It had come so silently and so swiftly. The whole corridor was suddenly filled with green light, and he saw the girl helpless in the grip of two of the enormous creatures. She looked very pale and frightened. Another of the creatures was advancing toward him from the other end. He looked at it angrily, defiantly, wondering if it was going to kill him then and there. It was emitting those low guttural, growling noises. He struggled furiously again to break free from the net. All three of the creatures broke out into hideous laughs. He still retained his grip on the axe. If he couldn't cut the net, it could still serve its purpose, he decided. The creature pulled a long, wickedly curved knife from its belt and advanced cautiously toward him.

  "You might kill me, seeing I'm helpless," said Masterson grimly, "but do you realize that you are challenging the mightiest empire of all time? What do you think my people are going to do? Let us get away with it? There are a hundred thousand space destroyers, good astral battleships, waiting back there. They'll blast this asteroid of yours to cosmic dust."

  "Where?" said the creature slowly.

  Oh, it can speak, thought Masterson. It was still advancing, holding the knife.

  "Where are these ships you speak of?" Another horrible laugh.

  "All around you in this system," said Greg. The laugh became even more pronounced.

  "We are thousands of millions of miles from your system. We have crossed deep space."

  Greg could hardly believe his ears. They were no longer in the solar system, and the creature with the knife was still advancing dangerously…

  CHAPTER VIII

  General Rotherson was pacing up and down his study like a caged tiger. His enormous head, itself like a minor planet, seemed to carry the weight of the world. No other neck, save the bull-like edifice which served Rotherson for that purpose, could have supported the weight of that head. It was a colossal, enormous head, and yet, because he was such a colossal, enormous man, it was not disproportionate.

  Sitting on either side of his desk, Jonga and Krull smoked and drank coffee.

  "I don't know what I'm going to do," said the general. "I only wish I did!" He laughed suddenly, derisively; pulled open a drawer in his desk and threw a file of papers across to Krull. "Look at that! I'm being more frankly honest with you chaps than I have ever been with anybody in my life. Just read that! The applicants for this post! Should be men with the ability to act on their own initiative, to make important decisions quickly, and to undertake responsible duties of the highest possible order! When I applied for this post, I thought I could do that! I don't know what's happened to me
! I've never met a situation like this. I suppose I'm one of those fellows who can only act when things are cut and dried. I can't deal with life when it gets too complicated. I don't like the ifs and buts. I like life to be straightforward and relatively simple. I should have no hesitation at all in sending up the fleet, I would have no hesitation in going up with it, as its generalissimo, if I knew that we were being attacked, if I knew there was an enemy there. This invidious, twisting little hole-in-corner thing is getting me down. I like an enemy who will come out in the open and let me hit him. If I'm fighting, I want to fight it out as a slogging match. I want to stand there toe to toe and exchange blow for blow!" He crashed one enormous fist into the palm of the other hand to emphasize the point. "That's the kind of man I am! I'm not suited for all this —this—" He paused, lost for words. "I'm not suited for all this three-dimensional chess-playing. I was a simple, straightforward soldier. I understand simple straightforward soldiering. It's all very well having the prestige of being the defense chief! I was far better off teaching basic military maneuvers at Sandhurst. I was all right with a stream of first-year cadets. I could show them everything they needed to know about ground tactics. I'm a first-class ground tactician. I'm all right in this job as far as the administration goes." He stroked his great grey beard. "I don't know what's the matter with me. Why am I telling you all this?"

  "You haven't had much sleep lately, sir."

  "Neither have you chaps. You're not cracking up!"

  "You're not cracking up, sir—just being remarkably frank," said Krull. "I don't think there's anybody better equipped to deal with the job than you. It's just that the others wouldn't be so honest if they didn't know what to do!"

  Rotherson looked at him intently.

  "D'ye mean that, Krull?"

  "Sincerely, sir! Just think of the work you've done so far. Established a system of asteroid checking, which at our present level of technology is the best we've got available. It's already proved itself!"