Raiders from the Rings

by Alan Edward Nourse

  For Ben and Tom the work was exhausting and absorbing, as the damage to the ship was repaired bit by bit. With Joyce happy at other things, they both occasionally forgot meals. But the day that the final tests and timing adjustments on the main jets were done both boys worked halfway around the clock before they realized that Joyce had not been back for several hours.

  “Probably down in one of her fool gullies,” Tom said sourly. “One of these times she’s going to get a foot caught and we’ll have to go haul her out.”

  Ben nodded. “I suppose we’ll have to lay down the law,” he said. “We only have a couple of more days of work here. It’d be a pity to have her losing her bearings and getting lost, or breaking a leg or something.” He glanced at the chronometer. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Let’s find something to eat.” They fixed a meal and finished it in silence. Still Joyce didn’t appear. “Maybe we should signal her,” Tom said. “She wouldn’t have gone out of straight beam range.” Ben tapped out a signal that Joyce should pick up, but there was no response. They waited a while longer, growing more uneasy by the minute. Finally Ben said, “Well, I suppose we’d better go out and see what’s happened.”

  “You don’t suppose she’s gotten hurt?”

  “I don’t know how. But she must be gone for six hours now.” Together, they climbed into pressure suits, and dropped down to the ragged surface below the entry hatch. The sun was directly overhead now, so that the surface was visible from horizon to horizon. There was no sign of Joyce. But off to the right there was a promontory of rock affording a better view.

  They had just started across toward the rock when the glint of a pressure suit helmet appeared over a rock ledge to the left of them, and Joyce came into view, scrambling through the rubble. But she was not returning at a normal, casual pace. She was running, or trying to run, fighting to disengage her magnetic boots and tripping over them in her haste. For a moment she stopped to look back over her shoulder, and then came stumbling and falling down the path toward them, catching herself on rocks and picking herself up again to hurry on. Ben’s earphones picked up the sound of gasping breathing mixed with frightened sobs; then she saw them, and was screaming for Tom in a voice filled with terror.

  Tom gave Ben a swift glance and rushed across the rocks to meet his sister. She fell into his arms, her words coming so fast that Ben couldn’t catch them as he moved slowly toward the pair. When Joyce saw him she clutched her brother even closer, her eyes wide with horror. “Don’t let him come near,” she sobbed. “Keep him away, Tom, don’t let him come near. This time we’re the ones that are trapped, just because we listened to this—this traitor!”

  Ben stared at Tom, his jaw sagging. Tom shook his sister. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Get hold of yourself! What do you mean?”

  “I mean I saw them, that’s what I mean!” The girl’s voice rose hysterically. “He’s been lying to us all the time! They’re here, I saw them, back there in the rocks. They were standing there staring at me…

  and he said there weren’t any such things!”

  “Any such whats?”

  “Monsters,” Joyce Barron gasped. “Horrible mutant monsters.” She turned to glare at Ben Trefon.

  “You can stop lying to us now, because it won’t do any good any more. You people have an army of monsters, all right. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. And this horrible rock is alive with them!” 8 THE CLEFT IN THE ROCK

  FOR THE FIRST moment Ben Trefon could hardly credit his ears. He stood staring at the girl as her words tumbled out. She couldn’t really mean what she was saying, he thought, but there was no mistaking the words. Even though she was not making sense, he had heard her with perfect clarity. And from the scornful look on her face, she was not joking in the least.

  Ben shook his head in confusion. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Just slow down and wait a minute. What are you talking about?”

  Joyce clung to her brother’s arm. “I’m talking about monsters,” she said. “I saw them back there—three, four, maybe a dozen. Horrible little things three feet high with gray skin and wrinkles and eyes like fire.” Her voice was unsteady as she tried to keep from sobbing.

  “Take it easy, now,” Tom said gently. “Pull yourself together. You mean that you actually saw something?”

  “Of course I saw something!” Joyce Barron wailed. “What do you think I’m saying? They’re all around back there. For all I know we could be surrounded right now.” For a moment the thought of space fever crossed Ben’s mind. Every Spacer knew that this kind of irrational break-down could occur as a result of isolation for long periods in the loneliness of space.

  Sometimes the pressures of just staying alive in the face of a hostile environment could become overwhelming and break forth in hallucinations and hysteria. Ben had spent two weeks on a ship with a man who had broken down in such a fashion during his training school days, but there had been clues to what was coming for days before the break occurred. It was impossible to believe that such a thing could strike out of the blue without the slightest warning, unless Joyce Barron were a far better actress than Ben thought she was.

  There was only one alternative: that Joyce actually had seen something that nearly frightened her out of her wits. A rock formation, some movement of shadows on the asteroid surface, perhaps a shifting of the surface rubble under the influence of the asteroid’s barely measurable gravity—whatever it was, there was only one way to deal with it. “If you really think you saw something,” Ben said, “then tell us what.

  Not what you think you saw, I mean what you really saw.”

  “As if you don’t know perfectly well,” the girl said bitterly. “And to think we believed all your talk about the poor, mistreated Spacers and their good intentions!”

  “All right, let’s get that straight first,” Ben said. “Maybe you did see something, but if you did it was nothing I know anything about. There aren’t any Spacer mutants. We don’t have any monsters bottled up in caves anywhere.” He looked at Tom. “Maybe I can’t make you believe that, but it just happens to be true all the same.”

  “Then what did she see?” Tom said.

  “I don’t have the vaguest idea,” Ben replied. “But believe me, if it was three feet tall with gray skin and wrinkles I want to see it too. I’ve been on a hundred of these rocks, and I’ve never seen anything alive on one yet. If there is something living here, we’d better find out about it fast.” Something in his voice must have told, for a little of the terror and bitterness in the girl’s face softened.

  “There was something there, all right,” she said. “I was following the trail I made around that spur of rock over there, looking for some more of the crystals I found over there yesterday. I was working to shake loose a piece that was wedged into the rock when something made me look up and I saw this face staring down at me. It just sat there and looked at me, and then all of a sudden it was gone.”

  “Couldn’t it have been a rock formation?” Ben asked. “Sometimes these rocks move without anybody touching them.”

  “Have you ever seen a rock with blue eyes?” Joyce said. “That blinked? It was no rock, it was an ugly, horrible thing with long spindly arms and little crooked legs. And then as soon as I moved I saw two or three more scurrying back into the rocks.”

  Ben looked up at Tom and shook his head. “I think we’d just better have a look,” he said.

  “Well, you’re not going to get me back there,” Joyce said firmly.

  “I’m afraid we are. You’ve got to show us where you saw these—these creatures, and which way they went.” Ben found a locker key in his pocket, tossed it to Tom. “Go open my foot locker,” he said.

  “You’ll find your revolver there, and a couple of tangle-guns.” Tom disappeared into the ship and emerged a moment later with the weapons. He caught Ben’s eye and drew him aside. “Do you really think we’re going to find anything?” Ben shook his head. “I don’t see how. There’s no atmosphere on these rocks, an
d nothing even remotely resembling food. I hate to say it, but I think your sister’s imagination got out of control.

  Somehow she fooled herself into thinking she saw something that she didn’t see at all.” But he didn’t quite feel the conviction of his words. There was another thought in his mind which Ben just couldn’t shake off. Of course there was non-human life in many parts of the solar system. Mars had an abundance of desert life: little gopher-like creatures that lived in burrows in the sand, tiny sand-snails that could dissolve sandstone for the algae living in its crevices, even the Jumping Jacks that could bound twenty feet in the air and travel at enormous speed across the dunes like a cross between the kangaroo and the jack rabbit. He had seen the Venusian mud-puppies that thrived in the steaming bogs of the second planet, and the strange pterodactyl-like birds with leathery wings that skimmed through the thin methane atmosphere of Saturn’s Titan, settling down like Satanic demons in rows on the rocks to watch Spacer exploring parties.

  An abundance of life, but never before had any life of any kind been found on the asteroids, particularly three-foot creatures with gray skins and horrible eyes. Ben could not even think of any living creature he had ever encountered that might fit that description. What Joyce had said she had seen was impossible, unless there was some form of life here that had never been detected.

  Or that had just recently come…

  Again Ben’s mind snagged on the thought he had been trying to avoid, a thought that nagged at him now as the three of them started down the trail Joyce pointed out. An invisible phantom ship, Ben thought, that made contact, and watched us, and then slipped away out of reach as soon as it was seen.

  A ship that returned again, perhaps, while he was unconscious following the explosion, and then began mysteriously nudging them into a course that led to this rock. He shook his head impatiently. It was a disturbing thought, but it made no sense, no sense at all.

  No more sense than Joyce’s little gray men.

  Tom led the way, with Joyce at his heels, and Ben bringing up the rear. They reached the great promontory of rock just as the sun slid into view from behind the rock, throwing long black shadows across the valley below them. Here the surface was strewn with giant boulders; Tom picked his way with care as Joyce pointed the way, and Ben’s grip tightened on the tangle-gun at ready in his hand. As they started down Ben felt his tension increase a hundredfold; it seemed as if his whole body were vibrating, and his skin prickled as he peered down at the valley floor for signs of life.

  Soon they were clambering down into a ravine, and Joyce stopped, staring up at a rock with a crack running down its surface. In the crack a large quartz crystal was tightly wedged. “This is the place,” the girl said. “And over there is where I saw the first one.”

  They followed her finger, peering around them as if they expected the rocks themselves to leap into the air. There was no movement, no suggestion of life. Joyce scrambled around the rock. “Yes, this is the place! That crevice over there was where the others disappeared, or was it this one?” She stopped in confusion. “Well, it was somewhere over there,” she said angrily. “I was too scared to see straight. It doesn’t matter, anyway. They were here, that’s all that matters.” The sun had swung high in the sky and was descending rapidly again toward the far horizon. Tom Barron gave an embarrassed cough. “Look, Ben, I think we’d better get back to the ship before it’s dark again, don’t you?”

  “But I tell you I saw them!” Joyce burst out. “You both think I’m crazy, but I’m not.”

  “I think we’ve looked far enough,” Tom said.

  But Ben Trefon shook his head. “Let’s see where that crevice goes before we go back,” he said.

  Something was still bothering him; the closer he had come to this place, the greater his tension had been growing. Now it seemed as though his body were trembling uncontrollably. His feet were actually unsteady as he started to scramble across the floor of the ravine toward the cleft in the rock, and his heart seemed to be pounding a thousand times a minute.

  And then, quite suddenly, he realized that it was not his heart pounding, and not his body that was vibrating. He stopped suddenly and pressed his glove over the capsule in his belt.

  There was no doubt about it. The capsule was emitting a vibration so powerful it was shaking his body with an insistent pulsating beat. The beat was so intense that the capsule almost felt alive at his side.

  Tom Barron stopped behind him. “Ben, we’d better go back.”

  “Not yet.” Ben was scrambling forward now, staring at the cleft that loomed up ahead. Step by step the vibration in the capsule intensified as he stumbled in the rocky path.

  Then, without warning, a tiny gray creature was standing in his path. Ben stopped short. Joyce had not been imagining things; the creature was barely three feet tall, with a wrinkled silvery-gray skin that made it look like a little old man. Its head was tilted to one side as if it were listening intently, and it stood perfectly motionless as Ben stared.

  Tom caught up with him, and Ben heard a swift intake of breath. A stone rattled under Ben’s foot.

  Abruptly the creature turned sharply toward him, and Ben saw his eyes, luminous eyes of a pale iridescent blue.

  For a moment Ben thought the creature was blind, for the eyes had no pupils nor whites. Then he saw little flecks of gold shimmering in the pale blue, and he knew that the creature could see him. But the horror and ugliness Joyce had described had been the product of her own mind, for this tiny creature was far from ugly. Rather, there was an other-worldly beauty about him as he solemnly regarded his discoverers. He reminded Ben of something, something he had read of, or heard of, years before. But it was Tom who found the right word.

  “Why, he looks like an elf!” he breathed.

  Ben nodded. “Joyce was right, but there’s nothing horrible about him.” The same instant the creature moved closer. To Ben’s amazement, it spoke to him. There were no audible words, no sound at all, yet somehow Ben heard a soft, musical voice speaking directly into his ear.

  “The belt,” the voice said. “Who has it?”

  “I do,” Ben blurted out.

  The creature fixed its great eyes on him. “Then step forward, please.” Cautiously, Ben took a step ahead. The creature moved close, extended a hand to Ben’s waist. Ben felt the gentlest touch, and the creature stepped back again. “Yes, you wear the belt of power. We have been waiting for you, and your companions as well. You are called Benjamin in the mighty House of Trefon, is that not so?”

  Ben nodded. “But how did you know?”

  “We knew your father well,” the strange voice said. “We knew him long ago when he wore the belt.

  And now that it is in your hands, the time has come for you to use it, if it is not too late. We have waited a long time for you.”

  “But why? Who are you?”

  “Who can say?” the voice replied softly in Ben’s ear, and somehow the creature seemed to be smiling.

  “I am one who has been, and gone, and come again. You saw my ship once, when it was not intended.

  But come, we must not talk here. Your friends also may come, if they come in peace.” The creature turned as if to go, but Ben didn’t move. “I want to know who you are,” he said. “And I want to know what you want with us, before we go anywhere.”

  The tiny creature looked at him. “We want peace,” the voice said in Ben’s ear. “Would your father have given you the belt of power if he had not wanted us to find you? We have followed you across space for days. Could we not have destroyed you at any time if we had wanted to? With a crippled ship, were you not at our mercy here if we had evil plans? Will you men of Earth never learn to cast doubt and suspicion aside?”

  “I’m not a man of Earth,” Ben said doggedly. “I’m a Spacer, and it is hard to cast doubt and suspicion aside.”

  A peal of musical laughter sounded in Ben’s ears. “Not a man of Earth? Indeed! And can you live in space without the protection of you
r suit? Without oxygen to breathe? Without heat, without moisture?”

  “No,” Ben said.

  The laughter came again. “I thought not. You must carry Earth with you wherever you go, yet you claim to be a man of space! Come with me now and you will learn the difference between men of Earth like yourself and men of space.”

  The creature turned and started down the rubble-strewn path. Ben looked at Tom and Joyce for a moment, then started after the creature. The Barrons followed single file. It was difficult going; the creature was nimble and his pace was swift. But presently they encircled another great spur of rock and saw a crude stairway hewn down the rock wall into a cavern. Above them a huge black cliff seemed to rise smooth and gleaming. It was only then that Ben realized that the cavern was a metal hatchway, and that the gleaming cliff was the hull of a ship so huge it seemed to extend from horizon to horizon.

  It was the phantom ship they had encountered before. Now it was visible and at rest, yet even now the outlines were slightly indistinct. Their elfin guide was making his way down to the hatchway, and moments later Ben and his companions were inside the ship.

  Slowly the hatch clanged shut behind them.

  For a moment Ben stopped, trying to adjust his eyes to the dim light inside the ship. They were standing in a huge hallway lighted with luminous poles, with shops and drydocks extending as far as they could see on either side of them. On all sides there were small blue-gray creatures hard at work, hundreds upon hundreds of them. In the drydocks Ben could see a dozen smaller ships swarming with elfin workmen, and across the room showers of sparks flew up from a dozen welding torches. The air was filled with the din of metal on metal; there was hammering and banging, and the whine of winches and the rumbling of overhead cranes carrying crews up and down the hulls of the ships.