She looked at the visiplate. Suddenly she became conscious that she had been holding her breath for some time. The girl exhaled deeply and tried to relax. It was useless.
The red speck crawled toward the comet. It was less than an inch away.
Half an inch . . .
All the future crawled by her. Gerry was immobile at the controls. There was hell In her eyes. No sound came to her from the outside hull. She could guess nothing of what was happening there. And that was, perhaps, the worst. She didn’t know whether Strike was still alive or not. Should she call Quade on the audiophone?
A quarter of an inch, and the gap still narrowed.
The red speck touched the white circle!
GERRY’S iron control snapped. She flicked a switch, called shrilly.
“Quade! We’re in the coma—”
“Hold it, kid,” said a low voice behind her. The girl whirled, pivoting on her seat. Tommy Strike, disheveled and feebly grinning, was standing on the threshold, unzippering his space suit. Behind him came Quade, his face glistening with perspiration. Gerry’s reaction was instantaneous.
“It’s about time!” she snapped. “I’ve been—”
And then the tornado struck!
Only a super-ship could have withstood it even for a moment. The electronic bombardment would have destroyed an ordinary liner instantly. Gerry spun back toward the control panel. Her slim fingers played the keyboard like a pianist’s. The vessel rocked, shuddered, swayed, screaming in tortured agony.
No meteorite-storm, this! The very fabric of matter was the target for a blast of pure, unadulterated energy that raved and tore at the hull. Refrigerators rose into a shrill, high-pitched whine of incredible power.
Nevertheless the outer hull glowed red. The weak patches flared into white incandescence.
The skeleton of the ship strained and stretched as though on the rack. Girders and struts of toughest metal screeched. Gerry felt a warning tingle in her fingertips. Quade sprang to the audiophone.
“Special suits on!” he shouted. “Double-quick, every man!”
He dragged three black suits from a locker, threw one to Strike, donned one himself, and pushed Gerry from the controls with little tenderness.
“Get into it,” he snapped, his mittened hands manipulating buttons. “Hurry!”
The girl obeyed. She knew that not even the ship’s armor could entirely withstand the terrific bombardment of radioactivity. Too much of it would short-circuit a brain, unless protected by a helmet such as Gerry was hastily donning.
CHAPTER V
Humiliation
VISUALLY a space ship is silent. But now it was bedlam. The motors keened in rhythmic, throbbing pulsations. The visiplate glowed and paled. It showed nothing but a racing flood of white light. The instruments and gauges were haywire.
“Blind flying,” Quade grunted. “If we crack up—”
He turned the ship into a narrowing spiral and began to decelerate. A bell rang warningly.
“One of the patches has gone out,” Strike said. “Listen. I can go inside the hull with a welder and repair it?”
“Wouldn’t work,” Quade snapped. “You wouldn’t last three seconds.”
“My armor—”
The movie man merely shook his head silently and bent over the controls. The ship drove on doggedly, battling an environment that no space craft had ever encountered in history. Searing, blasting fires of pure energy battered at the hull. Instruments were useless. Exposed metal began to glow with dim, faint fluorescence.
Quade was worrying about his precious film. Raw celluloid would have been rendered useless minutes ago. He had known that in advance. The special thin-wire film he had taken in lieu of it might resist the bombardment. But then it might not. There was no way to tell.
Suddenly, without warning, it was over. The crackling thunder of the storm died. The visiplate gave a last flare and became normal. It showed—
The nucleus of the comet! Something that had never been seen before by any human being!
Quade had a brief impression of a pale mass expanding with terrifying speed, a globe that rushed toward him like a thunderbolt. Small at first, it grew nearly to the Moon’s size before he could decelerate. It was dangerous business. Swift deceleration would cause something worse than the bends—caisson disease—and a crack-up would mean insanity, death.
Quade swung the ship aside, circling the comet’s body in a wide orbit. He could as yet make out no features of the sphere beneath him. The ship was moving too fast. He touched buttons.
The quick deceleration punched him in the stomach and slammed him against the padded control panel. Gerry and Strike went flying across the room, to bounce off the cushioned walls. That was the worst of it.
Quade pushed more buttons. The ship slowed down and spiraled inward. It wobbled badly. More of the gravity-screens had blown out.
“We’ve got to land for repairs,” he said briefly. “Strike, check up on the damage.”
Tommy nodded and went out. Gerry came to peer over Quade’s shoulder at the visiplate.
“It looks—dead,” she said. “No mountains or bodies of water. Just a featureless sphere, smaller than the Moon.”
“Featureless?” Quade retorted. “Look over there!”
Rising from the pale surface beneath them was a black structure, tiny in the distance, resembling a huge monolith or tower. It flashed past and was gone.
The vessel slanted down swiftly. It paused, hung in mid-air, dropped to a clumsy, lopsided landing.
“Whew!” Quade leaned back in his seat, relaxing for a few moments. “What a job.”
He removed his helmet and wriggled out of the special suit.
“Well, we’re here,” he announced, sighing with relief.
Gerry watched Tony crunch a caffeine citrate tablet between his teeth and swallow it wryly.
“There’s life here, Quade. That tower—”
“Looks like it. But we’ve got to take precautions.”
“Exactly. The air here can’t be breathable. I’ll find out.”
She examined the automatic atmosphere analyser.
“Cyanogen,” she said. “We can’t breathe it, of course. We’ll need space suits outside the ship at all times.”
Quade pondered. “What sort of life-form can live in cyanogen?”
“Why not cyanogen instead of oxygen? I can’t guess what the life-forms might look like. But there must be life. That tower proves it.”
“First of all, though, we need rest and repairs,” Quade said. “We don’t want to be marooned here when the comet reaches the Sun.” He barked orders into the audiophone, and rose to superintend matters. “None of the crew was hurt. That’s lucky.”
EVENTS marched. For the nonce, Gerry was left out of things, and she didn’t like it. Even Tommy Strike seemed to ignore her. He was always busy inside the hull, welding on a patch. The girl wandered about for a time, resentment mounting within her.
At last she decided to take matters into her own small but capable hands. After all, she wasn’t merely the supercargo.
She donned a space suit, pocketed a gas-gun and an explosive-projectile pistol, and let herself into a space-lock. The outer valve slid open. Gerry stepped out, closing the portal after her.
Loose, gritty gravel crunched under her booted feet. She looked toward a sharply curved horizon of low, rolling dunes, all apparently composed of the same substance. No vegetation was visible.
Well, that was logical enough, she thought. A comet, being made of a lot of loose particles bound together by mutual attraction, would have a fairly solid core. But the surface should be pretty much like deep, loose gravel. The stones themselves resembled granite, hard, gray, rounded by eons of friction.
Gerry looked up. A little thrill of awe shook her.
No sky stretched above. A flood of white flame was her heaven. She was inside the comet—within the coma! The vault above her was neither blue nor the starry black of space. It was p
ure white, seething and crawling in strange, vast tides, rippling in amazing perpetual motion.
These were all—the pale glory of the sky, the gravel dunes all around, and, behind Gerry, the towering bulk of the ship. But the girl had marked her direction well. She stepped out confidently in the direction where the black tower had reared.
She was, perhaps, too confident. But after all She was Catch-’em-Alive Carlyle. She had made certain that, if necessary, she could communicate with the ship by her suit’s audiophone.
Gerry Carlyle, the first human being to stand on a comet’s surface! A little smile touched her red lips. That really meant something.
She hiked on doggedly. It was hard going, and the loose gravel made the muscles of her calves ache. She consulted a magnetic compass, which wasn’t working. She shrugged and continued trudging. Gerry, of course, had an excellent sense of direction.
But the rolling dunes were utterly featureless, bathed in the shadowless white glow. The nucleus was a land of perpetual daylight . . .
ON she went, and on. How far was the tower? A warning premonition touched Gerry. Perhaps she had been too rash. After all, this was a new world, with unknown and probably dangerous life-forms. But a glance at her weapons reassured the girl. She went on.
Something like a blue basketball rolled down the slope of a dune toward her.
Gerry stopped immediately. Her gloved hands went with deceptive casualness to the butts of her guns. She stood alert, waiting.
A blue basketball, a foot or so in diameter, stopped ten feet from Gerry. She was able to scrutinize it closely.
The bluish tinge was light, she saw, and the outer skin was translucent, almost transparent. Inside the globe a smaller black object floated, seemingly in liquid. There were no signs of any organs. Eyes, ears, respiratory apparatus, the thing had none of these.
It started to grow, with the speed of a nightmare mushroom.
It expanded to four feet in diameter before Gerry reacted. She read menace in the creature’s actions, or thought she did. Her hand snapped the gas-gun from her belt.
Immediately the sphere vanished, disappeared like the figment of a dream. Where it had been was nothing.
Gerry stood frozen, wondering if the creature had exploded, or departed with incredible speed. But, instinctively, she knew that neither of these guesses was the correct one.
Some instinct made her turn. The blue sphere was rolling slowly toward her from the opposite direction, now nearly six feet in diameter.
Gerry pointed the gun, expecting her enemy to vanish. It did, promptly and thoroughly. The girl whirled. Two blue globes, now ten feet in diameter, were bearing down on her.
The interior body within the outer membrane had not expanded, and was still about six inches in diameter.
Gerry fired. The pellet hit the nearer of the things. Anaesthetic gas spurted in a compact cloud. It did not a bit of damage. The globe expanded still further and advanced purposefully.
GERRY tried the explosive pistol. It was equally useless, for an entirely different reason. True, it blew the sphere to fragments, but when Gerry turned, six new ones, large and bluish, were stealthily approaching.
“It isn’t real,” Gerry said desperately to herself. “I’m going insane.”
She suddenly thought of the audiophone. As she was about to use it, the nearest of the monsters arrested her attention.
On its aquamarine surface a picture was forming. It took shape, color, and size.
A three-dimensional reproduction of Gerry Carlyle appeared there!
“Good Lord,” the girl whispered. “Are they intelligent, after all?”
Cautiously, she eyed her double. The reproduction of herself bent into a hoop-shape and began to roll rapidly forward.
On the screen of the globe’s bluish outer membrane, the scene was amazingly vivid and realistic.
Then the pseudo-Gerry rose and began to walk, stiffly and jerkily. Gerry herself caught the idea. The monsters moved about by rolling. They must be wondering why this strange visitant did not progress in the same manner.
An idea occurred to Gerry. If she could make friends with the creatures, even lure one to the ship, it would be a considerable achievement.
She lifted one arm in the immemorial gesture of peace.
It was misunderstood. The nearest of the globes expanded to twenty feet, jumped forward, knocked Gerry flat. She clawed out her gun and blew it to bits, while trying to rise.
Another sphere materialized in the empty air above her. It smashed on her helmet, knocking the weapon from her hand. Its outer membrane folded elastically around the girl’s space suit. She was lifted, struggling frantically.
The sphere began to roll up a gravel dune. Gerry caught flashing alternate glimpses of light and darkness.
She managed to turn on the audiophone and yell for help.
There was only a faint buzzing sound. The device was broken. The banging around it had received had disrupted its delicate mechanism.
Catch-’em-Alive Carlyle had been caught—alive!
CHAPTER VI
Horror Without End
GERRY wasn’t missed from the ship immediately. There was too much to be done. Not even Tommy Strike noticed that the girl was gone until considerable time had elapsed. By that time, of course, it was too late.
“I’ve learned the value of a getaway,” Quade told Tommy, in the midst of a hubbub of repair. “If we run into real trouble, we want to be able to scram. There’s no use filming and capturing life-forms if we get stuck on the comet when it gets close to the Sun.”
Strike nodded. “Right you are. But things ought to be well under control by now, eh?”
“They are. Where’s your side-kick?” Quade demanded.
“I’ll find out.” Tommy went away. When he returned he looked puzzled, worried. “She’s gone. And a suit’s gone, too.”
Quade swore helplessly. He turned to an audiophone and sent out a QRZ call.
“Calling Gerry Carlyle! QRZ—QRZ—Calling Gerry Carlyle.”
There was no response.
“Well,” Quade said at last, “we’ll make sure she’s not in the ship. But I feel pretty sure she isn’t.”
“She doesn’t answer the call,” Strike observed. “That means she can’t.”
There was orderly confusion. Presently a half-dozen men issued from the ship, clad in grotesque lightweight armor, flexible but airtight. Quade and Tommy Strike led the group.
“We can’t take the ship,” the movie man pondered. “The repairs aren’t finished, and it’s too bulky to maneuver easily. I want no chances of a crack-up till the final take-off. We’ll have to depend on shank’s mare. Our portocars are no good on this gravel.”
“Which way?” Strike asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Can’t see much from here.” Quade took a periscope from his kit, stretched it out, and peered through the eyepiece. “No soap. There’s a high dune. Let’s go up there.”
They did. But nothing was visible.
“Let me—” Strike began. He paused. His jaw dropped. He glared down into the valley they had just left. “Gerry!”
The others followed the direction of his shaky, pointing finger. Gerry Carlyle was down there, her red hair disheveled within the transparent helmet Clad in bulky space armor, she came running in panic up the slope.
But she wasn’t getting anywhere!
Her legs pumped up and down. Her body was bent forward at a sharp angle. Racing as hard as she could, it was all she could do to stay in one place.
Then she vanished!
Strike and Quade looked at each other, gasped, stared back to the valley. Bleak, desolate, and empty, it lay washed in the white glare of the surging skies.
“It was Gerry, wasn’t it?” Tommy gulped. “Like Alice, Quade replied, completely flabbergasted. “She had to run faster and faster to keep in one spot . . . What sort of place is this, anyway?”
“Think it could have been a mirage?” Strike ask
ed hopefully.
Quade led the way down the slope. He pointed to unmistakable footprints, dents in the gravelly ground.
“Mirages don’t do that. It was solid. Gerry Carlyle was there, and she vanished.”
Without warning, the tower materialized! Fifty feet away it sprang into sudden existence. A high, huge monolith of black stone or metal, it was featureless, save for a gaping door and a gleaming bright sphere at the summit. As unexpectedly as it had come, it disappeared.
“Phantoms,” Quade said helplessly. “But three-dimensional, solid, real. Radio transmission of matter?”
“That tower!” Strike said. “We saw something like it from the air.”
“It was back in that direction. Chief,” one of the men broke in. “Not too far to walk.”
“Okay,” Quade replied. “Hop to it. Remember, we’re in a cyanogen atmosphere. Helmets on at all times. Keep your guns ready.” He called the ship and told Morgan his plans. “Take charge till we get back. If we don’t make it before the deadline, take off without us.”
None of the other men made any objection to this. Grimly they shouldered their packs and followed Quade and Strike down the valley.
It promised to be a dull journey. But that was only at first. Strike was the one who first caught sight of the blue sphere.
IT rested on top of a dune, motionless, resembling some strange form of plant life. Warily they approached it. It was a ten-foot globe of translucent membrane, with a black nucleus inside that floated in some liquid. “Think it’s alive?” Strike asked.
“If it is, it breathes cyanogen. If it breathes.”
Quade reached out to touch the thing—and it vanished.
It stayed vanished. Five minutes later, the men gave up and continued their journey. Soon after this they encountered another sphere, similar to the first, but reddish instead of blue.
Quade approached within a few feet. Cautiously, trying not to make any sudden motion, he turned on his audiophone broadcaster. He made conciliatory noises. The globe shivered, and a picture formed on its surface.
Collected Fiction Page 146
