Krull took Rotherson's place at the radio and began talking to Rashak about the computer course which he had lined up. Krull and Rashak soon discovered a great affinity for each other. Between them they could almost make a computer talk. They began plotting probability courses for the asteroid. It wasn't long before they arrived at a directional path which they felt would be more than probable—but distinctly possible. They moved along it and kept detector screens probing in front. Somewhere on that asteroid the Altarians hoped they would locate their missing Princess; somewhere on that asteroid the earth men hoped to find their missing Greg Masterson. What else they would find, they could only guess.
It seemed as though encountering one another had brought luck to the expeditions, for mere hours after joining forces the radar screen leapt into excited life. The asteroid had been sighted.
Like two angry hornets, the ships roared down, the green ray sweeping and swirling like a swathe of pure radiant energy across the artificial pebbled surface of the weird world. All that Rashak had claimed of it was justified. It cut deep into the surface and beyond, exposing a section of the labyrinthine honeycomb. As yet, it seemed, the asteroid man was unaware of his danger. Either that, or his nullifier beam was ineffective against the green ray. The Altairians signaled to the earth ship.
"Try a small bomb to test his nullifier field," requested Rashak.
Jonga was on the point of dropping a missile at random when his attention was suddenly focussed upon a hideous carnivorous monstrosity crawling across the face of the asteroid. It was the hideous, primeval, experimental beast which had almost destroyed Greg Masterson on his arrival.
Jonga decided it would make an excellent target. He let fly with a quarter megaton bomb, the smallest in the armory. The deadly missile landed within a few feet of the beast and exploded with a devastating roar.
"Some visiting cards," said Rotherson with a grim smile.
The fragments of the asteroid man's gruesome little pet were scarcely distinguishable from the pebbles.
"My device is even more successful than I dared to hope," signaled Rashak. "It has obviously counteracted the effect of the nullifier force field."
They came in to land; the nine space-suited figures leaped out with the agility of commandos and made their way into the gaping hole which the green ray had torn in the planetoid's surface. The asteroid man's hideous army of Frankensteinian monstrosities were racing through the labyrinth to drive off the attackers. But the asteroid man had made his last, fatal mistake. So confident had he been that his nullifier ray was the ultimate weapon that he had little else in working order to repel a surprise attack. His shambling caricature men were pathetically useless against invaders whose guns were working.
Rotherson was leading the charge. His powerful hand blasters cut swathes of carnage into the ghastly ranks of the shambling monsters. One got past his fire, seized the general's gun in a grip of steel and wrenched it from his hand. But Dolores and the enormous Pythol were close at hand. Before the creature could do any serious harm, the vast Altairian Negro smashed his gun butt down on the creature's skull, lifted the vast body as though it were a toy and hurled it into the ranks of its companions. Dolores seized another and smashed it to a pulp, as a child tosses a rag-doll against the floor of a nursery.
There was no stopping this avenging expedition. With axe, gun and knife, with muscle, brain and courage, they cut through the asteroid man's defenses as a red-hot knife goes through butter.
Through labyrinth after labyrinth and chamber after chamber, they drove his blemished army back until they reached the throne room of the insane creature itself. The mighty portal split and twisted from the heat of Rotherson's gun blast, and they were through! On a raised dais at the end of the chamber, they beheld their enemy!
The asteroid man himself, hidden by the mysterious shadows beyond his dazzling, camouflaging light beams. Chained to a wall, a few yards from him, were the Princess Astra of Altair and Squadron-Leader Greg Masterson.
"Stop!" screeched Ultimus in frenzy. "Stop where you are and surrender, or I shall destroy them!"
The tableau was frozen into dramatic immobility. None of the rescuers dared move.
Masterson wrenched at his chains like Prometheus in his underground cavern.
Ultimus dared not carry out his threat, for if he did so, nothing would stop his opponents from destroying him in vengeance. His voice became oily again.
"Perhaps we can strike some kind of bargain?"
Astra and Greg exchanged glances. They knew just how much reliance could be placed on the word of this scheming, lying devil incarnate.
Rotherson was wondering whether or not he could pull the trigger before the asteroid man could carry out his threat. It was a risk he did not wish to take.
Imperceptibly the chain holding Greg Masterson to the wall began to weaken. The squadron leader sweated blood in a last desperate effort. The chain snapped.
"Rush him!" he roared, flinging himself between Astra and the asteroid man's gun.
Two shots crashed simultaneously, and the battle was over. Singed and breathless, but otherwise unhurt, Greg Masterson began freeing the Princess.
The asteroid man was dissolving in a heap of charred flesh. Rotherson reholstered his smoking gun.
It was Tandos, the red Altairian priest, who expressed the thoughts in every mind.
"If all the races and all the planets will work together," he said softly, "there is nothing which they cannot achieve—"
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
Asteroid Man Page 15
