"Zarth, they are monsters! Not men, yet not beasts-"
Gordon saw that the fight was going badly. The rubbery horde had pressed Dick Undis' men back close against the wreck.
It seemed that the weird attackers could not be harmed. For those who were hit simply melted to jelly and flowed away.
The generators in the wreck began humming loudly. Then Linn Kyle and his two men emerged dragging a heavy cable. At the end of this they had hastily attached one of the pressure-ray jet projectors that ordinarily propelled the ship.
"Use it, quickly!" shouted Durk Undis. "The brutes are too much for us!"
"Stand clear!" yelled Linn Kyle.
He switched on the heavy ray-projector he held. Blinding beams of force leaped from it and cut through the rubbery horde. The ground instantly became a horrible stream of creeping, flowing jelly.
The monstrous attackers sullenly retreated. And the viscous slime upon the ground retreated also toward the shelter of the jungle.
There came then a raging chorus of unhuman, throaty shouts from out in the ocher forest.
"Quick, rig other jet-projectors!" Durk Ungis ordered. "It's all that will keep them off. We need one on each side of the wreck."
"What in the name of all devils are the things?" cried Linn Kyle, his voice shrill with horror.
"There's no time for speculating on that!" rapped the other. "Get those projectors ready."
Gordon and Lianna witnessed another attack, a half-hour later. But this time, four jets of pressure-rays met the rubbery horde. Then the attacks desisted.
"They've gone!" sweated a Cloud-man. "But they carried off two of us!"
As the generators were turned off, Gordon heard a new sound from the distance.
"Lianna, hear that?"
It was a pulsing, throbbing sound like the deep beat of distant drums. It came from far westward in the nebula-lit jungle.
Then, breaking into the throbbing drumbeat, there came a faint, agonized series of human screams. There swelled up a triumphant chorus of throaty shouts, then silence.
"The two Cloud-men who were captured," Gordon said sickly. "God knows what happened to them out there."
Lianna was pale. "Zarth, this is a world of horror. No wonder the Empire has left it uncolonized."
The menace to themselves seemed doubled, to Gordon. Almost, to assure Lianna's safety from the nightmare terrors of this planet, he would have gone willingly back to the Cloud.
But his determination returned. They'd get away, but not to go back to the hands of Shorr Kan if he could help it!
He forced himself to continue the slow, squirming movements that rubbed his plastic fetter against the rough crack in the chair-frame. Finally in weariness he slept, to awaken hours after dawn.
In the coppery sunlight, the ocher jungles were deceptively peaceful looking. But captives and captors alike knew now what weird horror brooded out in those golden glades.
Gordon, through the long day, continued to squirm and hitch to increase the abrasion on the fetter. He desisted only when the eyes of their guard were upon him.
Lianna whispered hopefully, "Do you think you can get free?"
"By tonight I should be able to wear it through," he murmured.
"But then? What good will it do? We can't flee out there into the jungle!"
"No, but we can call help," Gordon muttered. "I've thought of a way."
Night came, and Durk Undis gave his men sharp orders. "Two men on each of those jet-projectors, ready to repel the creatures if they come! We'll keep the generators running continuously."
That was welcome news, to Gordon. It made more possible the precarious scheme he had evolved.
He felt that by now the tough plastic must be abraded halfway through. But it still felt too strong to break.
The generators had begun humming. And the worried Cloud-men had not long to wait for the attack they dreaded. Once more from the nebula-illumined jungles came the weird, throaty shouts.
"Be ready the minute they appear!" called Durk Undis.
With a chorus of throaty cries, the rubbery horde rolled in a fierce wave out of the jungle. Instantly the jet projectors released beams of the powerful pressure-rays upon them.
"It's holding them back! Keep it up!" Durk Undis cried.
"But they don't die!" cried another man. "They melt down and flow away!"
Gordon realized this was his opportunity. The Cloud-men were all engaged out there in defending the wreck, and the generators were running.
He expanded his muscles in an effort to break his fetter. But he had misjudged its strength. The tough plastic held.
Again he tried, straining wildly. This time the fetter snapped. Hastily, he unfastened the other fetters.
He got to his feet and quickly freed Lianna. Then he hurried across the corridor toward the stereo-room just opposite.
"Watch and warn me if any of the Cloud-men come back in here!" he told the girl. "I'm going to try to start the transmitter."
"But do you know enough about it to send out a call?" asked Lianna.
"No, but if I can start it up, any untuned wave will direct instant attention to this planet," Gordon explained swiftly.
He fumbled in the dimness of the room for the switches he had observed the operator use to start the transmitter.
Gordon closed them. The transmitter remained dead. There was no whine of power, no glow of big tubes. A baffled feeling grew in him as he realized the failure of his plan.
19: World of Horror
Gordon forced himself to remain calm despite the wild din of struggle outside the wreck. He went over the switches he had seen the operator use to start the transmitter.
He had missed one! As he closed it, the motor-generators in the stereo-room broke into loud life, and the big vacuum tubes began glowing.
"The generators must be failing! Our jets are losing power!" came a cry from one of the Cloud-men outside the wreck.
"Zarth, you're drawing so much power from the two generators that it's cutting their ray-jets!" warned Lianna. "They'll be in here to find out what's wrong!"
"I only need a moment!" Gordon sweated, bending tensely over the bank of vernier dials.
It was impossible, he knew, for him to try sending any coherent message. He knew almost nothing about this complicated apparatus of future science.
But if he could send out any kind of untuned signal, the very fact of such a signal coming from a supposedly uninhabited planet would surely arouse the suspicion of the Empire cruisers searching out there.
Gordon spun the verniers at random. The equipment sputtered, hummed and faltered, beneath his ignorant handling.
"The brutes are getting through!" Durk Undis' voice yelled, "Linn, get in there and see what's wrong with the generators!"
The battle outside was closer, fiercer. Lianna uttered a cry of warning.
Gordon whirled around. Linn Kyle stood, wild and disheveled, in the door of the stereo-room.
The Cloud-man uttered an oath and grabbed out his atom-pistol. "By God, I might have known-"
Gordon dived for him, tackled him and brought him to the floor with a crash. They struggled furiously.
Through the increasing din, Gordon heard Lianna's horror-laden scream. And he glimpsed weird figures pouring into the room from astern and seizing the terrified girl.
The rubbery attackers! The spawn of this crazy nebula world had broken through Durk Undis' weakened defenses and were inside the wreck!
"Lianna!" Gordon yelled hoarsely, as he saw the girl borne swiftly from her feet by clutching hands.
The blank faces, the ghastly eyes of the rubbery aliens were close to him as he tore free from Linn Kyle and tried to rise.
He couldn't! The rubbery bodies were piling on him and on the Cloud-man. Arms that felt like tentacles grasped and lifted them. Linn Kyle's wild shot hit one and it melted to crawling jelly, but the others seized the Cloud-man.
Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the corridors
of the wreck. Durk Undis' high voice rang over the wild uproar.
"Drive them out of the ship and hold the doors until we can get the ray-jets going again!"
Gordon heard Linn Kyle's yell choked off in his throat as he himself and the Cloud-man were swung swiftly up off their feet. The rubbery horde was retreating out of the shattered stern of the wreck, and were taking the two and Lianna with them.
Gordon fought to free himself of the clutching rubbery arms, and couldn't. He realized with horror that his weakening of the Cloud-men's defense to send his desperate call had exposed Lianna and himself to a more ghastly peril.
"Durk, they have us!" screeched Linn Kyle. Through the crash of guns and yells, Gordon heard the other's startled cry.
But they were out of the wreck now, and their captors were bounding with them through the towering jungle. The whole rubbery horde was retreating into the nebula-lit forest as Durk Undis and his remaining men got their ray-jets in action again.
Gordon's senses swam. These hideous captors hurtled through the jungle with him like preternaturally agile apes. Lianna and Linn Kyle were borne along as swiftly. Down from the flaming nebula sky dripped a glowing radiance that silvered the unearthly forest.
The pace of their strange captors quickened, after some minutes of travel through the jungle. Now rock slopes began to lift from the thick forest.
The weird horde swept with them into a deep stony gorge. It was a place more awesome than the jungle. For its rock cliffs gleamed with a faint light that was no reflection of the nebula sky, but was intrinsic.
"Radioactive, those cliffs," Gordon thought numbly. "Maybe it explains these unholy freaks-"
Speculation was swept from his mind by the hideous clamor that arose. There were hordes of the rubbery creatures here in the gorge. They greeted the captives with throaty, deafening cries.
Gordon found himself held tightly beside Lianna. The girl's face was deathly white.
"Lianna, you're not hurt?"
"Zarth, no! But what are they going to do to us?"
"My God, I don't know!" he husked. "They had some reason for taking us alive."
The quasi-human horde had seized on Linn Kyle! They were stripping all clothing off the Cloud-man's body.
Throaty clamor like the applause of an infernal audience rose loudly as Linn Kyle was now borne forward. Rubbery creatures squatting on the ground beat it with their limbs in a drumming rhythm.
Linn Kyle, struggling wildly, was carried quickly on down the gorge. Then as the horde parted to permit his passage, Gordon glimpsed where they were bearing the Cloud-man.
At the center of the gorge, ringed by faintly glowing radioactive rocks, lay a sunken pool twenty yards across. But it was not a pool of water, but of life!
A great, twitching, crawling mass of jelly-like life, heaving and sucking beneath the light of the flaring nebula-sky.
"What is it?" cried Lianna. "It looks living!"
The final horror assaulted Gordon's reeling mind. For now he saw the things around the edges of the pool.
Little jelly-like things like miniature human bodies budded out of that mass of viscous life! Some were attached to the main mass by mere threads. One broke free in that moment and came walking uncertainly up the bank.
"God in Heaven!" he whispered. "These creatures come from the pool of life. They're born from it!"
Linn Kyle's screams ripped the din of throaty shouts and drumming rhythm. The rubbery creatures who held the Cloud-man tossed his naked body into the viscous pool!
The Cloud-man screamed again, horribly. Gordon turned aside his gaze, retching.
When he looked again, Linn Kyle's body was engulfed by the viscous jelly that swirled hungrily over it. In a few moments the Cloud-man was gone, absorbed into the pool of life.
"Lianna, don't look!" Gordon cried hoarsely.
He made a mad attempt to free himself. He might as well have been a child in the grasp of those rubbery arms.
But his attempt drew attention to himself. The creatures began to tear away his clothing. He heard Lianna's smothered cry.
Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the infernal din of drumming and shouting! Pellets exploded in blinding fire amid the swarming horde. Rubbery creatures staggered, fell, melted into jelly that promptly flowed back toward the pool!
"Durk Undis!" yelled Gordon. He had glimpsed the young Cloud-captain's narrow face and blazing eyes, forcing through the horde at the head of his men.
"Get Zarth Arn and the girl, quick!" yelled Durk Undis to his men. "Then back to the wreck!"
Gordon almost admired the ruthless young fanatic, at that moment. Durk Undis had been ordered by Shorr Kan to bring Gordon back to the Cloud, and he'd carry out that order or die trying.
The monstrous horde swirled in crazy uproar, momentarily stunned by the unexpected attack. Gordon wrenched free from the two creatures who still held him. He reached Lianna's side.
It was a crazy chaos of whirling, quasi-human figures and exploding atom-pellets, of Durk Undis' yells and the throaty uproar of the horde.
As the bewildered horde fell back for a moment, Durk Undis and his men blasted the last creatures still around Lianna and Gordon. Next moment, with Gordon and the half-senseless girl in their midst, the Cloud-men hastily retreated back out of the gorge.
"They're coming after us!" yelled one of the men beside Gordon.
Gordon perceived that the ghastly horde had recovered presence of mind. With a hideous throaty clamor, the unhuman mob crashed into the jungle in pursuit.
They made half the distance back to the wreck of the Dendra before the jungle ahead of them swarmed also with the creatures.
"They're all around us-have cut us off!" Durk Undis exclaimed. "Try to fight through!"
It was hopeless and he knew it, and Gordon knew it. A dozen atom-pistols couldn't hold off that mindless horde for long.
Gordon stood with Lianna behind him, using a clubbed branch he tore from a fallen tree as a bludgeon against the swarming, rubbery attackers. With it, he could at least kill Lianna before they dragged her back to that ghastly pool of life!
The whole nightmare fight was suddenly shadowed by a big black mass dropping down on them from the flaming nebula sky!
"It's a ship!" screamed one of the Cloud-men; "One of our ships!"
A phantom-cruiser with the black, blotlike insignia of the Cloud on its bows thundered down upon them with krypton searchlights flaring to light the whole scene.
The rubbery horde retreated in sudden panic. As the cruiser crushed to a landing in the jungle close by, Cloud-soldiers with atom-guns sprang from it.
Gordon, raising Lianna's half-senseless form from the ground, found Durk Undis covering him with an atom-pistol. The newcomers were hastily approaching.
"Holl Vonn!" Durk Undis greeted the stocky, crop-haired Cloud-captain who was foremost. "You got here just in time!"
"So it seems!" exclaimed Holl Vonn, staring horrifiedly at the viscous living jelly still creeping away from the scene of battle. "What in God's name were those things that were attacking you?"
"They're creatures of this crazy planet," Durk Undis panted. "I think they were human once-human colonists who mutated under radioactive influence. They've got a strange new reproduction-cycle, being born from a pool of life and going back to it when hurt to be born again."
He continued swiftly. "That can be told later. The thing now is to get away from here at once. There must already be Empire squadrons searching the whole area west of the nebula."
Holl Vonn nodded quickly. "Shorr Kan said to bring Zarth Arn and Lianna back to the Cloud at once. We'd better run eastward through the nebula and then beat back southward along the Rim."
Gordon had revived Lianna. She was looking wonderingly at the towering ship and the armed Cloud-men.
"Zarth, what happened? Does this mean-"
"It means that we're going back to the Cloud, to Shorr Kan," he said hoarsely.
Durk Undis motioned curtly
to the new Cloud-ship. "Into the Merle, both of you."
Holl Vonn suddenly stiffened. "Listen-by heaven!"
His square face was suddenly livid as he pointed wildly upward.
Four massive shapes were rushing down on them from the nebula-sky! Not phantoms these, but big cruisers with heavy batteries of atom-guns along their sides with the flaring comet-emblem of the Mid-Galactic Empire on their bows.
"An Empire squadron!" yelled Holl Vonn wildly. "We're trapped here! They've already spotted us!"
Gordon felt sudden wild hope. His desperate expedient had succeeded, had brought one of the searching Empire squadrons to this world!
20: Doom Off the Pleiades
Durk Undis uttered a raging exclamation as the Empire cruisers swooped from the sky.
"To the ship! We'll cut our way back through them to space!"
"We've not a chance!" cried Holl Vonn, his face deathly as he started to run toward his ship. "They've caught us flat!"
Durk Undis froze for a second, then whipped out his atom-pistol again. He whirled around toward Gordon and Lianna.
The young fanatic's eyes were flaming. "Then we'll finish Zarth Arn and Lianna right here! Shorr Kan's orders-no matter what happens to us, these two must not get back to Throon!"
Gordon lunged at him as he spoke! In the few seconds since the Empire cruisers had appeared, Gordon had realized that in this desperate emergency the Cloud-man would kill himself and Lianna rather than let them escape.
He had bunched himself an instant before Durk Undis swung around with the weapon. He hit the Cloud-man like a human projectile. Durk Undis was hurled violently backward.
Holl Vonn was running into his ship, shouting orders. As Durk Undis sprawled, Gordon seized Lianna's hand and darted with her into the concealment of the nebula-lit jungle.
"If we can keep out of it for a few moments, we're saved!" he told her. "Those Empire ships will come down here to search."
"Holl Vonn is charging them!" cried Lianna, pointing upward.
Thunderous roar of generators screaming with power broke upon the air as the long, slim mass of Holl Venn's phantom, the Merle, hurtled up into the glowing sky.
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