Star of Ill-Omen

by Dennis Wheatley

  Harsbach was being kept busy with the bee-beetles. The one from the chart room had joined the other two, and the three of them were buzzing angrily up and down in front of his face. Keeping the lever pressed over with one finger, he waved them away with his free hand. He was hoping desperately that the Saucer was still over the oasis, as he had no means of following their swift flight; and if they had risen at even a small angle from the perpendicular he feared he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to get it back over the oasis again. His voice sharp with anxiety, he shouted to Kem:

  ‘Have you got a sight yet? Where are we?’

  Kem was now back in the bomb-aimer’s box. As he had been landed by night he had never had a bird’s-eye view of the part of Mars in which they had lived for so many comfortless unhappy months. Now that he was looking down upon it from a cloudless, sunlit sky, from his memory of the map Escobar had drawn he believed the great oasis to be one called Lucus Feronia. But this was no time to speculate on such a matter. Quickly he called back:

  ‘We are not quite over it, but nearly. Perhaps a quarter of a mile from the south-east edge.’

  ‘Near enough!’ Harsbach cried gleefully. ‘Nothing will be left but rubble within five miles of its explosion point. Let her go!’

  Kem pulled over the firing lever. The thirty-feet-long bomb slid from under him like a huge silver fish. ‘Bomb’s away!’ he shouted, then followed its course as it floated downwards. Owing to the lightness of the material from which it was made it went down comparatively slowly. Gradually it diminished to vanishing point, but he continued to stare along the track it had taken.

  Suddenly a small white puff appeared; it swelled unevenly, rapidly increased to a great cloud that displayed fantastic shades of orange, red, pink and purple; then seemed to rise up like a huge black monster that sought to tear them from the sky.

  For a few minutes after Harsbach had stopped the Saucer spinning it had continued to rise; then it had seemed to hover; now it had begun to fall. In swift alarm Kem yelled:

  ‘Switch on! For God’s sake stop her falling!’

  Harsbach had already felt their downward motion. At that very second he had turned over the little lever, and the surfaces of the Saucer again began to rotate, shutting off Kem’s view of the sinister, radium-charged mushroom that seemed to be reaching up to engulf them.

  Next moment there came a crack like thunder, and the air rush created by the explosion struck the Saucer’s underbelly. It had had no time to gather upward speed from its own power, but was lifted like a frail bark upon a tidal wave. For a moment or two it rocked wildly, then settled down to pursue its upward course.

  No sooner had it done so than Harsbach found himself hard put to it to deal with the situation in the control tower. It seemed probable that the lens through which one of the bee-beetles was looking was attached to some type of periscope that had enabled it to see the bomb burst over the edge of the oasis. In any case, the vibrations of the insects told him at once that they realised they had been tricked, and did not mean to take the destruction of their great plant lying down.

  The nine he could see were joined by four more, who flew down from inside the stumpy mast that projected above the Saucer’s roof. All thirteen of them swished wildly back and forth, showing signs of utmost fury. One dived back into the bridge cabin and hurled itself on a lever. Instantly the Saucer tilted sideways. Harsbach was thrown off his balance. By grabbing a girder he managed to save himself. Thrusting out his free hand, he pushed the lever back, but only just in time to prevent the Saucer turning over. The insect threw its weight against another lever. The Saucer stopped going up and shot forward; but Harsbach did not worry about that. He was now having all his work cut out to defend himself. Twelve out of the thirteen bee-beetles were violently attacking him. Once more he winced and swore as they tore at his exposed flesh with their pincers. Again the insect in the bridge cabin threw over a lever. Suddenly the Saucer went into a steep dive.

  Realising now that he could not overcome them singlehanded, he shouted to Kem: ‘Come up here and help me! Quick!’

  Kem, much perturbed by the alarming motions of the Saucer, was already making his way by the hand-holds towards the control tower. Scrambling up, he squeezed himself into the narrow space beside Harsbach, and, while the Herr Doktor flicked the lever back, drove his attackers off him. As soon as the Saucer had come out of its dive and was soaring up again, Harsbach said:

  ‘Keep them off me while I show them the diagrams we drew, and try to drive a bargain with them.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be best to give them a chance to settle down first?’ Kem asked.

  ‘I doubt if giving them time to think over what the destruction of their plant may mean to them would put them in any better humour. Besides, I don’t think we dare risk it. The other Saucers may be chasing us by now, and they may have some means of cutting off our power. Unless we can persuade or coerce these little devils into carrying us off at full speed in the next couple of minutes, we may never get away at all.’

  As he was speaking Harsbach had taken from his pocket two sheets of Carmen’s notepaper. On one there was a map showing the main features of the locality below them and drawings of the two bombs, one of which pointed to the oasis and the other to the hive. On the other sheet there was a diagram of the solar system with an arrow pointing from Mars to Earth. While Kem continued to keep the insects off him, Harsbach laid the two papers flat in the bridge cabin and sent out the telepathic message:

  ‘Choose. Make up your minds. Which is it to be?’

  For a moment all the bee-beetles ceased their attack to circle above the papers. Then they resumed their attack with increased fury. In vain the Herr Doktor strove to impose his will upon them. They conveyed as clearly as if they had been shouting their refusal to be intimidated by the threat to their hive.

  Harsbach shot a worried glance at Kem, and muttered: They are probably banking on our not being able to locate the hive now, owing to the huge dirt-cloud that the effect of the bomb must be spreading out below us. The only thing left is to try what terror nearer home may do.’

  As he spoke he caught one of the bee-beetles between his finger and thumb. Slowly he squeezed it, till the frantic waving of its legs and pincers ceased. Laying the crushed body on the map of Mars for the other insects to see, he jabbed his finger impatiently on the diagram with the arrow pointing to Earth.

  To take such a drastic step was to tempt Providence; and its result was totally unexpected. The twelve remaining bee-beetles flew straight up into the hollow of the mast and disappeared.

  Kem stared upwards after them. There were several small compartments in the upper part of the mast, which protruded above the Saucer’s roof. It was possible that they had taken refuge in them; but somehow he did not think so. The memory of his arrival on Mars had brought to his mind a sudden awful thought.

  ‘My God!’ he gasped. ‘I believe they’ve abandoned ship!’

  Harsbach’s face went white. ‘If they have, we’re finished. We’ll never be able to get back to Earth without a pilot.’

  Before they even had time to consider the appalling situation in which they had landed themselves, they were faced with an infinitely worse one. A soundless flash of bright, white light lit the lower part of the control tower. Next second a spurt of flame roared towards them. Instantly, they realised that before abandoning ship the bee-beetles must have deliberately set it on fire.

  28

  Walking like Agag—Delicately

  The Saucer was many thousands of feet up in the air. It carried no parachutes. There was no escape from it. Under extreme pressure the bee-beetles had had the last laugh. Their wings would enable them to glide back to terra firma, but one of them had set in operation the emergency destruction mechanism to ensure that no lucky fluke of navigation should enable their enemies to do so. Short of a miracle, within a few minutes the Saucer must become a white-hot furnace and everything within it be utterly consumed.
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br />   Miracles rarely happen without reason, and there are miracles of courage as well as miracles of faith. Had Kem been asked at the moment he saw the flame what he thought their chances of survival were, he would have answered, ‘Nil’; but that did not prevent his acting on the principle that ‘While there is life, there is hope’.

  Without a second’s hesitation, he let himself drop to the level of the fountain of flame and flung himself at it. With arms outspread he fell upon the place between the struts, low down in the control tower, at which he had seen the bright, white light. An agonising pain seared through his chest. Next moment his clothes and his hair caught fire. He heard himself scream; but he knew he had found and was pressing upon the mouth of the small flask from which the fire-raising element was spurting. The pain in his chest became as though a hundred rats were gnawing a great hole in it. All about him flames were roaring, licking and flickering. He beat at them frantically with his bare hands. Then the eye protector, which he had worn on Mars for so many months that it had become almost a part of him, burst into flame. The confused scene of criss-crossed girders caught in a burning glow and casting sharp black shadows was wiped out by a sudden fierce glare; then darkness came, but the burning agony in all his limbs still went on.

  It was not until Kem had actually smothered the incendiary machine with his body that Harsbach realised they had any hope at all of saving the Saucer and themselves. Swiftly, then, he flung open the door to the upper deck, yelled to the girls to bring water, and hurried to Kem’s assistance. Between them, by sluicing the contents of some fifty flasks about the lower part of the control tower, they got the fire under.

  In these terrible moments the Saucer had shown no eccentricity in its flight, but Harsbach was now fearful that at any second it might; so he was frantically anxious to get back to within reach of the little row of levers that controlled it.

  Kem was still screaming. Blinded and helpless he hung with his body wedged among the girders, two-thirds of the way down the tower. Between them, Carmen and Anna got him out; but now that Harsbach was again halfway up the tower it was impossible to get Kem to the upper deck, and the lower was still rendered unusable through gravity pulling everything in it down to the Saucer’s whirling under-surface.

  For a moment the two girls supported the moaning, writhing man, wondering what to do with him, then, simultaneously, they thought of the new closet. While having the Saucer converted, Harsbach had recalled the awkwardness of using the well-like tank-contained lavatory originally designed for a crew of giants, and had taken steps to arrange something better suited to humans. The control tower, acting as the hub of the great disc, did not revolve, and the soil pipe ran down through it. He had had the pipe cut off eighteen inches from its exit and had turned the bottom five feet of the tower into a small circular compartment which would give privacy and reasonable comfort.

  The closet was just below them. Anna scrambled down into it and Carmen lowered Kem to her. As she did so tears streamed from her eyes at the sight of him. His clothes were falling in tatters from his scorched body; his face was blackened and burnt almost beyond recognition. His screams had ceased. His head had fallen forward and his limbs gone limp. After suffering a greater degree of torture than he had ever thought that he could bear, he had laspsed into merciful unconsciousness.

  It was a long time before he became capable of any coherent thought. For what seemed an eternity his mind swam in a sea of pain, marked only by alternate ebbings and risings to new heights which even screaming could not alleviate. The ebbings were caused by Carmen drugging him with her remaining sedatives, and doing what she could to ease the devouring ache of his worst burns. During her three months on Mars, knowing that she would never be able to get any replacements, she had exercised the greatest economy in the use of her toilet preperations: now she had cause to bless the fact, as she still had skin oils and soothing creams which were invaluable; but their quantity was limited and to her heart-breaking distress there were times when she could do nothing at all to help him bear his agony.

  The worst of his burns was in the middle of his chest; but it was his eyes which gave her the greatest concern, as she feared that lack of proper medical care might result in his becoming permanently blind, and in spite of his struggles to tear it off she kept a bandage always over them. He was often delirious, and it was only by the change in his tone that she recognised the fact when at last his mind cleared a little. She had been readjusting the bandage over his eyes, and he asked in a feeble voice:

  ‘Who are you? Why are you preventing me from seeing?’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is Carmen. You have been terribly, terribly ill; but surely you remember me?’

  ‘Carmen,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, but what’s happened? Where are we?’

  ‘In the Saucer. Don’t you remember? We managed to get aboard it, but the bee-beetles abandoned ship and set it on fire. You saved us all by putting the fire out; but you received the most ghastly burns, and you must keep the bandage over your eyes for a little while yet.’

  He moaned and drifted off into unconsciousness; but a few hours later he had another lucid interval and asked her to give him an account of what had happened.

  She told him how she and Anna had got him down to the closet, and later moved him into the bomb-aimers open-ended box above the empty cradle of the bomb that had been dropped—as it made a wide, comfortable berth that was just large enough to hold them both—and that Anna brought rations down to them; so that she had never had to leave him for more than a few minutes. For an hour or so, while the Herr Doktor had striven to get the hang of the controls, they had all thought they would never live the day out. The Saucer had behaved like a bucking bronco and they had been flung about like dice in a box. Anna had been knocked unconscious for a while and Harsbach had sprained an ankle; but at last he had fathomed the function of all the little levers, and set a course, at a moderate speed, so that they should not feel the effects of gravity too severely. Except that the Saucer was powered by its great magnet, they still had no idea of the principles on which it worked; so their situation was similar to that of children who had got into a motor-car with no knowledge of what lay under its bonnet, but by experimenting with its switches and pedals were managing to drive it.

  ‘How long is it since we left Mars?’ Kem asked.

  ‘Five days,’ Carmen replied.

  ‘I couldn’t even have made a guess,’ he murmured; ‘except that we’d been long enough on our way to lose the pull of gravity. I feel light as a feather again.’

  ‘Yes; and I thank God for it. Your sufferings would be even worse but for the fact that after the first hour or so your weight went down to zero. You have no means of sensing it, but you are now lying with your back to the ceiling of the lower deck, although hardly touching it; and the lack of gravity has served better than a water-bed in keeping pressure off your burns.’

  After another sleep he woke with his chest still paining him acutely, but with a mind at last capable of fully grasping his situation. Close beside him in the box-like bunk he could hear Carmen gently breathing, and realising that she was asleep he remained quite still, so as not to wake her. His thoughts at once centred on the state of his eyes. They felt gummed up, but they were not quite closed. Cautiously he raised his hand to the bandage and lifted it a little. He knew that the Saucer would now be filled with perpetual daylight, but he could see nothing. For a long time he lay endeavouring to accept the awful fact that he was blind. Then came the consoling thought that they were on their way back to Earth. If they reached if safely a specialist might be able to operate and get him back his sight.

  When he heard Carmen wake he stretched out a fumbling hand till he found her face, gently began to caress it, and said softly, ‘Thank you, my sweet, for looking after me so wonderfully.’

  She took his hand, pressed it and sighed. ‘I only wish I could do more for you, dearest. But, anyway, you’re through the worst now, and will so
on be about again.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘The relative positions of Mars and Earth must have altered a lot since our outward journey. They may be much nearer or much further apart. Has Harsbach any idea how long it will take us to get back to Earth?’

  For a second she hesitated, then attempted to brush aside his question. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t bother your head about that now.’

  ‘But I want to know,’ he insisted.

  ‘I… I hardly know myself. I haven’t seen Kruger Harsbach since the fire. Anna shares the running of the Saucer with him, but she doesn’t tell me much. Anyway, what does it matter?—we are bound to be stuck in this thing for two or three months.’

  His grip on her hand tightened. ‘It matters a lot to me. I doubt if my sight can be saved without an operation. You’re hiding something, Carmen. Please don’t lie to me. How long do they think it will take?’

  She gave a sudden sob. ‘I meant to keep it from you; but perhaps it is best that you should know. They haven’t found any instruments that they can use to determine our position, or any way of getting the Saucer on to a magnetic wave that would take it towards Earth. We have enough water to last us for about a hundred days. But we’re out in space, and simply flying wild.’

  * * * *

  On learning that he had been unconscious for five days and that the Saucer was outside the gravitational pull of Mars, Kem had quite naturally assumed that Harsbach had found a means of setting it on a course for Earth. That he had not was extremely disturbing. It looked now as if, when the magnetism with which the machine was charged ran down, it would cease to be manœuvrable and become an asteroid circling round and round Mars—as that was still its nearest planet—for ever and ever.

  The thought swiftly called up visions of a terrible finale for its crew. They would be like shipwrecked people adrift in an open boat many miles from land, with water running out and death from thirst creeping nearer every day. Worse—on the most desolate ocean there was always the chance of an eleventh-hour rescue; but in space there was none.