“But why were our engines stopped? Were we deliberately marooned here?”
“We cannot begin to guess at motivations,” McIlrath replied uneasily. “This is not Earth. The creatures of this planet may have entirely different reasons for their acts than we have.”
Then the first shot came. Bang! The second one came right behind it.
Somebody was using a gun. His first shot had missed. But he had taken dead aim to make certain the second one did not miss.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Three more shots followed closely on the heels of the second. Whoever was using the gun had missed with the second shot. Now he was emptying the weapon at a charging enemy.
“It’s in the main control room,” Sparks said. “Come on.”
Yanking his pistol from its holster, he raced down the corridor. McIlrath came right behind him. They almost ran over Sutter as he came out of the galley, a gun in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. The archaeologist brought up the rear.
Sparks kicked open the door.
Orsatti lay on the floor. Sparks did not need to see the sick agony on his face to know Orsatti was probably dead or dying.
Frome was alive. He stood stiffly erect, his feet wide apart, taking aim with his pistol. Flame lanced from the muzzle and the sharp thunder of the shot smashed through the room.
He yanked the trigger again and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. With a single motion of his arm he threw the weapon at the thing coming at him.
The sight paralyzed the radio operator. What he saw—was impossible! The thing that moved toward Frome was a two-foot ball of reddish gas. A globe of swirling gas, lit with a baleful red brilliance. The thing glittered with microscopic pinpoints of light. It made a sound as it moved, a high-pitched note like the whine of a distant motor generator.
There were two of the gas balls. One of them was darting toward Frome. The other was down on the floor, on Orsatti’s body, and the whine coming from it held a gloating note, like a ghoul feeding.
Everything happened in split seconds. The gas ball streaked toward Frome. A thundering explosion smashed Sparks’ eardrums. He saw a pistol poked past him and he knew that McIlrath was firing over his shoulder. He jerked up his own gun and the two pistols spat a salvo.
The gas ball flinched as the bullets hit it, wavered and dodged.
“That’s the medicine,” Sparks shouted. “Hot lead.” He fired again.
Before the third shot had left his gun, he knew the weapon was useless. The gas ball flinched as the slugs hit it, but they passed through it unimpeded. It struck Frome on the chest, clung to him like a leech. His hands jerked up to tear it away, but as it touched him his whole body seemed to be paralyzed, and his arms fell limply. A look of startled agony writhed over his face. His eyes popped open in sudden horror. He screamed and slumped to the floor.
As he fell, he saw the radio operator standing in the doorway.
“Close that door,” he gasped. “Barricade yourself behind it.”
Sparks did not move to obey him.
“Save yourselves, the weak words came. “Never mind us. We’re done for.” The voice found strength in some hidden sources and Captain Frome rasped out his final command. “That’s an order. Obey it.”
He was the captain. His authority was final.
“Obey it, hell!” Sparks snarled. He leaped into the room, McIlrath and Sutter right behind him.
What happened next was always afterward a blur in Sparks’ mind. As a boy he had fought bumblebees in the meadows of Earth. This was something like fighting bumblebees, except that this bee was deadly. Slapping, slugging at the reddish mass of gas on Frome’s chest, they tried to tear it loose. To touch it sent jarring needles of pain up their arms. Their hand smashed through it. It swirled and re-formed.
But when the fight was over, Captain Frome was on one side of the door and a reddish mass of gas was singing angrily on the other.
And Sparks was turning back to the door. When he came out the second time, he had Orsatti’s body in his arms. He had enough strength left to lay the biochemist down. Then his legs buckled under him and he collapsed.
~ * ~
When he recovered consciousness the old engineer was dribbling whiskey into his mouth. He tried to sit up but McIlrath pushed him back.
“Lie still, lad, until ye get your strength back.”
“But those gas balls.”
“Lie still and I’ll tell you what we’ve decided about them.”
“But where are they?”
“Forward in the control room whining to each other. Captain Frome thinks he has found out what they are.”
“Captain Frome? How is he?”
“Weak as a kitten, but we think he’ll live. He says the gas balls came from the ruby jewels, that while he and Orsatti were working with the crystals they suddenly turned to gas right before their eyes—”
“But that’s impossible.”
The old Scot shook his head. “Captain Frome says the gas balls and the crystals are two different forms of the same life species. He thinks they are similar to the cocoon and the butterfly that we know back on Earth. The crystal is the cocoon stage. The ball of gas is the butterfly stage. He says he thinks they live on radiant energy, and that they attack our engines and us for the same reason.”
“But—” Sparks choked off his protest. Frome was a thoroughly capable physicist. And he was not given to idle statements. If he made a statement, he had a good reason to back it up. “What connection is there between our engines and us?”
“There is this connection, lad. The source of power in our engines is the radioactivity of the uranium atom. The source of the energy that keeps the human heart beating is the element potassium, which is slightly radioactive. If you remove the uranium from our engines, they won’t generate power. If you remove the potassium from our bodies, our heart stops beating.”
“But the uranium was not removed from our engines, and the bodies of the dead men show no marks of any kind. How was the potassium removed without leaving a mark?”
“It is not the uranium or the potassium that is removed. Captain Frome says these gas balls live on the radioactive emanations, the alpha, beta, and gamma rays, discharged by these elements, leaving them inert. Just as a leech sucks blood, they suck the radioactive discharges. Are you feeling better now, lad?”
Sparks sat up. A wave of dizziness sent his head spinning, but he forced himself to his feet and walked over to where Captain Frome lay on the floor. Frome’s eyes were closed and he was breathing in slow, gasping sobs.
Sutter was bending over Frome. “His heart is barely beating,” the archaeologist said. “Those damned things almost sucked the life out of him.”
Sparks said nothing. He walked to the nearest port and looked out. Swift dusk was falling over Mars. Sharp shadows were creeping over the city. Blobs of darkness were huddling behind the buildings. Night was coming over this city where for centuries red death had patiently waited for the last of the Martians to awaken.
The men of Mars had not taken refuse in frozen sleep to escape a drought cycle. They had fled from a deadly enemy. The Martian had committed suicide when he saw that jewel glittering in the sunlight at the entrance to the cavern. He had known what it was. He had preferred to die by his own hand rather than face a more agonizing death.
A movement in the shadows caught his eye. He looked again, to make certain he had not been mistaken. Then he saw what it was—a ball of red gas drifting along a foot or so above the sand. It came out of the shadow and moved directly toward the ship.
Another dead butterfly had emerged, another cocoon had burst.
But they were safe. The stout steel hull of the ship would protect them until a rescue expedition could arrive. They had plenty of food and water. Even if a thousand cocoons released their drifting death, they could not get through the walls of the ship.
Someone breathed heavily behind him. Turning, Sparks saw Angus looking out over his shoulder. The old engin
eer squinted at the drifting ball of gas. “Another one? I was afraid there would be others. Those two behind that door in the control Toom have been squealing as if they were calling to others of their kind.”
“Do you think they can call others?”
“I dinna know, lad. Back on Earth the moths do it and I doubt if yon red devil came here because of idle curiosity.”
The radio operator followed the red monstrosity as it drifted out of sight. He shivered, and said, “Well, were safe here.”
“About that, I dinna know either,” McIlrath answered, shaking his head.
It was not so much what he said but the way he said it that sent a sudden chill to the radio operator’s heart. But Angus refused to answer his questions. Instead the engineer led him down the corridor to the control room. The door was still blocked. It was a stout sheet of aluminum alloy.
Putty had been plastered around the cracks.
“While you were still unconscious,” McIlrath explained, “those devils began to ooze through the cracks between the edges of the door and the facing. We stopped them up with a bit of putty, but—”
“But what!” Sparks exploded. “You surely don’t think they can come through that door?”
“I think they can’t, lad,” the old Scot answered, “but I remember that door the Martians built to seal their cavern. It was at least a foot thick. But the outer surface was pitted with holes that were almost six inches deep, as if something had tried to eat its way through the barrier, and had failed. It wasn’t rust, either, for in this cursed dry desert metal will scarcely rust. So something else must have eaten those holes in that door, and the only thing that could have done—”
He broke off to stare in slowly mounting horror at the door they were facing. At the same instant Sparks saw what was happening.
A tiny smudge had appeared on the gray surface. It looked a little like a drop of acid. It was about the size of a dime, and it was growing in size. As it grew it turned distinctly reddish.
“They are eating their way through the door!” Sparks whispered. He started to slap at the reddish spot but McIlrath knocked his hand away. The engineer seized a wad of putty from the floor and slapped it over the spot. It ceased growing. On the other side of the door an angry whine sounded. “Damn you,” he grunted. ‘‘That stops you this time.”
“Yes, but for how long?” Sparks whispered.
McIlrath didn’t answer.
Sutter came running through the corridor. “I just wanted to tell you,” he panted. “There are a lot of those things outside. They’re doing something to the glass in the portholes, and—”
They didn’t wait for him to finish but raced back to the stern of the ship. A glance showed that the archaeologist was right. Dozens of blobs of glistening gas floated over the ship. A few were clamped over the glass of the ports. Under the action of some acid they secreted, it was flaking away.
Nobody said anything, but each knew that doom was coming toward them. Slowly but surely the glass in the ports would be disintegrated. If they closed the ports with metal, the monstrosities would eat through the metal. There was no place in the ship that promised safety, with the possible exception of the cook’s galley, which was in the heart of the ship and protected by metal barriers on all sides. In time even those barriers would fall.
“There’s got to be some way to whip those devils,” Sparks grated.
Sutter was twitching as if he had the palsy.
Only the old engineer was calm and he spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “Yes, lad, there probably is. But guns didn’t work—”
“Sparks,” a weak voice whispered. The radio operator jerked around to see who was calling him. He saw Captain Frome. The captain had spoken. “What’s happening?”
The radio man told him. Frome sighed. “I wish I could suggest something. But I can’t. Too weak even to think. So I’m turning everything over to you, lad—”
“To me!”
“Yes. I ought to put you under arrest . . . for disobeying me . . . when I told you to save yourself. Instead I’m putting you in charge ... of the remnants of this expedition. I’m not doing this just because you showed initiative and daring . . . when you saved my life . . . but because you’re old ‘Find-a-way-or-make-one’ Avery’s son. He never let anything stop him. And you’re his son. You’ll get us out of this mess ... if anybody can.”
The radio man’s mind was reeling. Captain Frome was telling him that he was the boss. “But what about McIlrath and Sutter? Will they—”
“I think they will. But let them answer for themselves.”
Sutter nodded nervously. “I don’t care what’s done as long as we get out of here alive.”
McIlrath said simply. “I followed your father, lad. You’re his own true son. I will not hesitate to follow you.”
The surge of exultation that leaped up in Sparks was drowned in the recognition of his new responsibility. Before, he had been taking orders. Now he was giving them. He well knew that Frome had had another reason for designating him as acting captain. Sutter and McIlrath were both too old to respond quickly in an emergency. He was young, his reactions timed to split seconds. And if they were to escape alive, they had to have a leader who could react instantly.
He stood up. “We’ll carry Captain Frome into the galley. It’s the best protected spot in the ship. We’ll take all our emergency equipment in there. We’ll plug the porthole with putty. And after that—” But he didn’t finish the sentence. He knew the metal walls of the galley would yield in time.
~ * ~
After they had carried everything to the galley, Sparks came back to the stern. McIlrath followed him. “What are ye planning to do, lad?” he asked quietly.
“What makes you think I’m planning anything?” Sparks answered sharply.
“Ye’ve got the same quiet ferocity in your eyes that your father had. When he was planning something dangerous, and didn’t intend to tell anybody about it, he looked just exactly like you do now.”
“Yeah?” Sparks rasped. “Well, I am planning something, but you can’t stop me. You heard what Frome said. I’m in charge now.”
The engineer’s eyes did not falter. “Ye needn’t remind me of that, lad. I’m not trying to stop you. But if I know what it is you’re doing, I might be able to help you.”
“Oh!” the radio man answered. “I am planning something. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you might kick about it— think it was too dangerous. But it’s the only way I can see for us to have even a chance to get out of here alive.”
“And what is that, lad?” McIlrath asked quietly.
“You remember my father had a saying,” Sparks answered. “ ‘For every evil, nature provides a virtue. For every poison there’s an antidote. For every disease, there’s a cure—somewhere—’ There is something that will whip these gas balls, something that will destroy them. They’ve got a weakness, somewhere!”
“I also remember the rest of that saying. Nature provides a way to cure everything that goes wrong. But she doesn’t hand you that cure on a silver platter. You’ve got to find it yourself! I don’t doubt there’s a way to whip these red devils, but, lad, how are we going to find it in the few hours we’ve got left?” The old engineer’s face was wrinkled into a frown of pleading perplexity.
“By going to the only possible source of information, the Martians themselves. They fought these damned things for centuries. If anybody knows what to do to lick ‘em, the Martians do,” Sparks answered.
“But they fought and lost,” McIlrath protested. “They hid away in a hole. If they had known how to whip their enemy, they would have done it.”
The radio man’s youthful face clouded. “I’ve thought of that,” he said desperately. “But maybe they ran out of ammunition to fight with. The fact that they put their city in order shows they expected these damned radium suckers to be gone when they awakened. Anyhow, they’re our only hope. We can either take a chance that they will know how
to whip these devils, or we can sit here and die waiting. I’m damned if I’m going to sit here and wait for one of those things to suck the life out of me. I’m going after one of those Martians. And this one,” he finished grimly, “won’t commit suicide before we get a chance to talk to him.”
“But, lad—”
“But, hell!” Sparks snarled. “I’m going.”
He thought the engineer meant to protest his going because he would have to run the gantlet of the growing number of gas balls outside. But McIlrath had no such intention. The old Scot knew very well that death lurked outside, but the threat of death had never stopped Richard Avery. Nor would it stop his son. It wouldn’t stop McIlrath either. Very calmly he insisted on going along.
Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01] Page 9
