Part II
Concluding a remarkable two-part serial of unique life and adventure on a far-off star.
The Stone from
the Green Star
IT has been said often that we cannot conceive that which is outside of our experience. It might also be said, with equal truth, that everything that the mind can imagine is possible. But neither of these statements limits possibility, for things beyond our wildest conception may prevail outside our own sphere.
Is it, therefore, logical to assume that all forms of intelligence are housed in the type of bodies that we know? In the following chapters our lyrical-prose writer concludes for us a breath-taking story of unique life and adventure that will be remembered for a long time as an example of science fiction.
What Went Before:
IN a little box of some unknown material, which mysteriously appears on his library table, the relator of this tale finds several hundred sheets of a thin, stiff, flexible material, on which is written, in the unmistakable script of his missing friend, Richard Smith, the following amazing story of his disappearance:
When Smith starts down the raised bridge or walk over the waist of a tanker, heavily laden with oil, he sees a sudden streak of luminosity. As he stops to stare in wonder, this pillar of azure radiance begins to spin, steadily increasing in brilliance, until it becomes a wondrous vortex of fire, of color. Then it explodes. He finds himself next on a huge table or platform in a vast, six-sided room. Soon he hears a soft, interrogative voice behind him. Turning suddenly around, he sees two persons—Midos Ken, an old, blind man—a scientist—and his beautiful daughter and assistant, Thon Ahrora.
He is convinced, after several hours of conversation, that he was snatched from the present, two million years into the future, by means of a time machine, with which the scientist and his daughter hope to draw that substance which will rejuvenate the old and give to the young eternal youth.
Don Galeen, one of the many scouts sent in search of this substance, returns with the news that he has located it on the Green Star, but that it is apparently guarded by horrible creatures that almost defy conception by the human mind.
Caro Nark, fiendish Lord of the Dark Star, determined to get Thon Ahrora and the secret of this much sought after substance, overhears Don Galeen’s report, kidnaps Don Galeen and takes him to the Dark Star. The other three—Midos Ken, his daughter and Dick Smith—decide to engage passage to the Dark Star for themselves and for the smaller space ship Thon Ahrora, originally built for a trip to the Green Star. They stop en route and devote their efforts to rescue Don Galeen.
Thon goes to the castle of Garo Nark herself, disguised; she gains access to Don Galeen’s cell, but is betrayed by one of the guards, and is imprisoned too. Midos Ken and Dick Smith go to the throne room of Garo Nark to demand the release of the two captives.
CHAPTER VIII (Continued)
SUDDENLY he heard a low, humming note from the pocket of his garment. The signal to call him to the television device. A message from Thon, at last.
He snatched the little black disk from his pocket, and held it before his face.
It had lighted. There was a tiny picture upon it, a bright miniature. It showed a cramped little room, with gray metal walls. Low, metal ceiling. A poor bunk in a comer. A narrow window, high, heavily barred. Evidently a prison cell.
Thon was facing him, in the tiny vignette. Apparently unharmed, though she looked anxious and exhausted. Beside her was Don Galeen. Dick could see only part of the mighty body, still clad in the soft buff leather garment, ornamented with the blue shells. Don seemed to be holding some weapon in his hand, guarding them, though it was out of Dick’s range of vision.
“Hello, Dick, dear,” Thon’s voice came to him from the little disk. The volume of sound was small, but he could understand without difficulty holding the disk about a foot from his face.
“We have been besieged in this cell for hours. I did not call you up before, because your answer would have betrayed the location of the flier. But now, that you are here in the palace, it can do no harm. You see, my instrument has a directional device, so I can tell where yours is located. I called when I found you were here in the palace.”
Dick looked up quickly, glanced about the magnificent room.
Silence had fallen. All eyes were upon him, but no one else could see the disk. And the volume of the sound directed up toward hint was so slight that no one else—except Midos Ken, with his keen hearing—was able to distinguish the tones of Thon.
Pelug, scrawny and green-eyed, was standing up to whisper something to Garo Nark, who listened with head inclined, frowning malevolently.
“Where are you?” Dick whispered swiftly into the television disk. “And what can we do to help?”
“Don and I are together in a cell—a cell cut in the living rock beneath the palace. I came here to let him out. We were betrayed, and attacked. We are surrounded here. My weapons are deadly enough so that we have been able to stand them off. But we can’t escape!”
“Tell me how to get down there!” Dick cried, in low tones.
“There’s an open elevator shaft at the wall behind Nark’s purple throne—an air elevator like those on the liner. Get off at the level numbered 17. Go down the corridor. Take the second passage to the right; we are in the ninth cell.
“But don’t risk your life, Dick, dear. If you and father aren’t prisoners, go on and leave us! There is no chance that all of us can get away, out of the very palace! Father’s science, and his great discovery must not be lost, just in attempting to save us. Leave us to sell our lives as dearly——”
The crash of an explosion came through the disk, reduced to a sound no louder than the snapping of a twig. There was a flash of greenish light, so bright that it obscured the tiny picture. As it faded, Dick had a glimpse of Thon springing back in alarm.
Then the disk went black. He put it to his ear, but the humming stopped, and he heard no sound.
“Ape of the past,” Garo Nark addressed him jeeringly, “you will see no more, I think. My men have put a stop to that. You will see nothing more until the disk lights again, to show you what is happening to those two.
“No, you need not fear that they will fall into the hands of rough soldiers. My surgeons will take charge of them. Very skilful men, those surgeons of mine. They will be careful that the two do not die—too soon!”
An ugly laugh, gloating, mocking, rang from the purple throne. And scraggy, green-eyed Pelug echoed the laugh of his master with a ghastly, triumphant chuckle.
“Now!” Garo Nark’s order cracked like a whip.
Dick had not heard the invisible men gathering about them.
But, as the sharp order rang out, he heard footsteps all about him, rushing forward. He and Midos Ken were surrounded with a ring of Nark’s invisible men!
Throbbing violet rays blinded him. They were at the focus of a score of converging El Rays, thrown suddenly on them from all directions.
But they still wore the little metal devices upon their wrists, to charge their bodies with the protective electronic force. Though dazzling, painfully bright, the El Rays were harmless.
“So you are breaking the truce, Nark?” old Midos Ken asked in a calm voice, which carried an ironical note of pained surprise. “The ruler of a mighty planet cannot keep his word to an old blind man? Well, this releases me from my pledge. You must take the consequences!”
Before the old man had finished speaking, a score of invisible men had flung themselves bodily upon them. Dick felt heavy, unseen hands snatching at him. He tried to strike with his fists, only to have his arms caught in the grasp of many fingers.
But old Midos Ken was not disturbed.
A queer change had come suddenly over his body. It was bathed in rosy flame. A rose-colored mist of pale fire had appeared abruptly, clothing his erect old body in a luminous aura.
And that glow of rose-pink radiance seemed fatal to all who touched it. The air about him was fille
d with screams and groans, as the invisible fighters, rushing up to seize him, were hurled backward to the floor as if they had touched a powerful electric eel or ray.
At Garo Nark’s cry of “Now!” the long lines of black-garbed men along the walls had rushed forward, raising their long jet tubes, in which violet lights were flashing. They were already half across the room.
To Dick, still struggling with the invisible men who had seized him, it seemed that they must be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Garo Nark, on his purple throne, was leering with malevolent satisfaction.
But still the old blind scientist stood alone, mantled in a mist of rosy flame. The weapons of his attackers could not harm him. They could not lay their hands upon him.
Then he raised in a gnarled old hand the little cylinder of topaz-yellow crystal that Dick had seen him use once before, to strike down their invisible assailant as they were escaping from the liner. It was the projector of an actinic ray, Thon told him afterward, which caused a slight change in the chemical composition of the neurone fibers of the nervous system, resulting in instant paralysis and death.
Guided apparently by his marvelous sense of hearing; he swept this little cylinder of smoky yellow crystal in a slow, deliberate arc.
The men in black fell before the invisible ray from the tiny weapon. Their dead bodies, queerly stiffened, grasping the El Ray tubes in frozen hands, toppled over like a row of wooden men. They lay in rigid, grotesque attitudes upon the glistening golden floor. It was terrible, appalling.
The little topaz-yellow cylinder made no sound, as the blind scientist, his body bathed in the shimmering rosy light, slowly swung it about. Nothing visible came from it. But the men were smitten with swift, invisible death.
There was no look of triumph on the calm, blind face of Midos Ken. His impassive features were set in a sober, determined expression, almost sad, Dick thought.
The deliberate sweep of the unseen ray was toward the throne of Garo Nark. Fiercely exultant, Dick expected to see him topple off his purple throne, his body frozen in the swift death. But Pelug, the scraggy, green-eyed man beside the throne, after a moment of consternation, flung down a lever beside him.
A SECTION of the golden floor dropped suddenly, carrying down with it the magnificent throne of gleaming purple crystal, with Garo Nark and Pelug. They flashed down out of sight in an instant. There was a heavy, metallic clang. And a great sliding valve or cover had moved into place, closing the hole through which they had dropped.
Dick glimpsed that sudden and unexpected retreat of the Lord of the Dark Star through the floor of his palace. Then he turned his attention to the unseen men who were striving to hold him.
He kicked out with all his force. He could see nothing there, but his foot struck yielding flesh. There was an explosive grunt, from the unseen man whose body he had struck.
Then Midos Ken, whose remarkable hearing was almost a Second sense of sight, reached out an arm that glowed with rosy fire. Evidently he touched the man who had grunted. The grasp on Dick’s left wrist was abruptly released, and an invisible body fell against his feet.
Seizing his advantage, he twisted his right hand free, with sudden fierce effort. A moment later he had swung a blow with all his force at the point that, he thought, should be occupied by the head of the invisible man from whom he had just twisted free. His fist seemed to strike a jaw. There was a sickening crunch, a rush of air escaping from contracting lungs, and the dead thud as an inert body struck the metal floor.
If there were more invisible men, they thought it time to follow Garo Nark in retreat.
The great hall was suddenly silent. Dick and Midos Ken stood alone, near the center of it. Between them and the walls lay the stiff, grotesque bodies of hundreds of the black, visible guards who had died by the actinic ray. The few survivors had just rushed in mad retreat through the high arched portal of the hall, many hundred feet away.
They were the only living men visible in the room.
Old Midos Ken reached a hand inside his garment, apparently to touch some mechanism fastened against his skin. The roseate glow died swiftly from about his body. In a moment it was gone. He put out a hand, touched Dick’s shoulder.
“A charge of high-tension electric energy,” he explained briefly. “Fatal to anyone who receives it suddenly, though the charge, if slowly built up, is harmless. Certain animals have the power of killing with electricity, you know.”
“Now we will try to find Thon?” Dick suggested quickly.
“Yes. We must be quick. Garo Nark is defeated, perhaps, but not vanquished. He will soon appear with some new weapons!”
Dick was already leading the way rapidly across to the rear of the great, magnificent hall, toward the spot where Thon had told him to look for the elevator. He held Midos Ken’s arm, but the old man seemed hardly to need guidance. He appeared almost to see with his ears, by noting the quality of sound-reflection, or echo, from objects about him.
They reached the elevator shaft—a round open well, three feet across, black and bottomless. A current of air was rushing out of it, rising in a twin shaft beside it.
Without hesitation, Dick stepped off the edge. As he fell gently through the dark shaft, he repeated Thon’s instructions for reaching her.
“Get off at the level numbered 17,” she had said. “Down the corridor. Take the second passage to the right. And we are in the ninth cell.”
The luminous numbers were flashing past, with a railing below each, which one grasped if he wished to stop. Dick read them. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. He seized the handrail, swung himself out of the shaft to a stage. Midos Ken came past him in a moment. He snatched the old man’s arm, pulled him out of the current of air.
They started down a narrow passage. Suddenly two guards in black were before them, glistening jet El Ray tubes held threateningly. Midos Ken must have heard some slight movement from them. He raised the smoky yellow crystal. The two fell dead and rigid.
They hurried on down the corridor, which was dimly lighted by a luminous, pale-yellow ceiling. Another tunnel opened on the right-hand side of the passage. They passed it, reached a second tunnel, turned.
Around the corner they came upon a group of men. There must have been fifty black-clad soldiers there, crowded in a few yards of the passage. Some were gathered about a curious device which looked a little like a telescope, and somewhat more like a machine gun. It was pointed on down the passage.
Beyond the men was a solid wall of darkness—the edge of a cloud of utter blackness formed by one of the ether-exhausting bombs.
At once the reason for the darkening of the television disk flashed upon Dick. Thon had been forced to use one of the bombs of darkness to protect herself and Don. And the wall of blackness—a literal hole in the ether—had cut off the television rays.
Again Midos Ken used his little topaz cylinder. The men in the passage fell before it. They were piled in grotesque heaps about the strange weapon, which in the last instant of their lives they had tried to turn in the direction of Dick and the blind man.
Again they went forward, stumbling over scattered weapons and the stiff forms of the dead, until they reached the wall of darkness. Midos Ken called out. A glad shout, from Don Galeen, answered him. They stepped into the cloud of absolute obscurity.
Dick felt his way along the wall, counting the doors they passed. In a moment, Midos Ken, at home in the darkness, was leading the way.
Then a soft, questing hand touched Dick’s shoulder. With a little glad cry, Thon threw herself into his arms. He pressed her eagerly to him. He could not see her. But her body felt pliant and strong, warm and throbbing with vitality. He thrilled at the contact.
Passionately, he held her body against his. He bent, seeking her lips with his. His lips brushed her fragrant hair, her smooth brow, her soft, warm cheek. A sort of ecstacy filled him when his lips touched hers.
A storm of emotions and thoughts whirled through his mind. Delight this was, sheer, th
rilling! A man might give a lifetime for a moment of such embrace! What if they lost, yet? What a tragedy if Garo Nark should still seize this wonderful being for his foul uses?
“Thon! My wonderful Thon!” he murmured. “I can’t leave you!”
Then he heard the bluff, cheerful voice of Don Galeen, addressing Midos Ken.
“Glad you happened along,” he was saying. “They were trying all sorts of weapons on us, and we were about ready to blow up the palace and quit!”
His tone was almost casual. Such fantastic struggles seemed a matter of course to him, the hero of a thousand adventures. And this was the man Thon loved, not himself, Dick thought. Her pleasure at seeing a friend, and her natural relief at their coming, had led her to the impulsive embrace. And he had presumed upon her!
“Forgive me!” he muttered, dropping his arms from about her. “I’m sorry!”
“Sorry for what?” she asked innocently.
So she did not understand. She had thought nothing of it. Faint relief lessened his angry gloom. An embrace meant nothing to her, he thought. She had accepted it merely as a casual salutation.
“Let’s be getting out of here,” Don Galeen proposed. “If you, Midos Ken, have weapons enough to keep them off us out in the open.”
“We must try it,” the old scientist agreed. “The best plan, I think, is to use an ether-exhausting bomb large enough to throw the whole city into darkness. Then their invisible men will have no advantage. With my hearing, I think I can guide us safely out.”
“Good!” Don Galeen agreed.
A FEW moments later, Dick heard the tinkling crash as Midos Ken shattered the bomb of darkness upon the floor.
Then they filed out and down the passage, with the old man in the lead. Thon walked ahead of Dick, and Don Galeen brought up the rear. Utter darkness walled them in, rayless, absolute. It is hard for the ordinary person to understand what such darkness means, Dick says. Even on the darkest night, there is relatively a good deal of light. There is some light in the darkest room, in the gloomiest underground chamber—from radioactivity, if from no other source. But in that Stygian blackness, there was not the slightest glimmer of light at all.
The Stone From the Green Star Page 11
