The Stone From the Green Star

by Jack Williamson

  “We refused, of course. And he is waiting. Waiting, I suppose, for us to win the catalyst, so that he can step in and rob us of the spoil!”

  CHAPTER XI

  The Cones of Blue

  STEADILY Dick grew stronger, as his body manufactured the vital fluid of which the inconceivable vampire—the Thing of Frozen Flame—had robbed it. On the second day, he was able to walk unaided up the corridor to the bridge. A week later, he was feeling well—though he sadly missed the buoyant vitality of youth of which he had been cheated. He was an old man, short of breath, stiff of back, easily fatigued. But, Midos Ken told him, he was as strong as he would ever be—unless they won the catalyst of life from the weird race of vampires that guarded it.

  On the day that he went to the bridge, Thon pointed out to him the fliers of Garo Nark which were lying near them in the green-black gloom of the narrow canyon.

  Strange-looking things they were, covered with the light-absorbing substance which made them invisible in the darkness of space. It reflected no light at all—the ships could not actually be seen. They seemed merely black shadows, holes in space, against the green luminosity of the snow and the canyon walls—mere blobs of nothingness, vague-edged shadows of darkness.

  They were stationed close together, and down the canyon from the Ahrora. They lay just above the covert between the boulders, from which Dick had watched, and where the weird entity of cold fire had found him to suck away his vital force of youth.

  Vague, half-invisible, somehow almost painful to the eyes that watched them, those waiting ships were strange things, ominous. Dick stared at them a long while.

  Don Galeen was busy over some little device set against the wall—a device that had little quivering needles which he watched intently. Thon was busy with an involved computation, a queer writing instrument in her slender fingers flying over a smooth white sheet. Midos Ken was sitting silent and motionless, his blind eyes shaded—but his finely trained mind, Dick knew, was directing whatever was in progress.

  “How are the experiments coming?” Dick inquired of Thon when she looked up from her calculation.

  “We are studying this planet,” she told him, “the strange radioactivity that causes the green luminiscence of the rocks and the snow, and the various phenomena of the intelligent life of the planet that our instruments can detect.

  “There is a link between the radioactivity and the life of the monsters that inhabit the planet. Under those emanations, and in the intense cold of this atmosphere, Chemical combinations are stable that could never exist in our world. The conditions here are as necessary for the alien being we have found as they are hostile to us.

  “We are discovering the forces that might be used against us, and planning our defense.

  “Already we have accomplished something. You remember that rose-colored haze of light that was about me when I came—came to help you.” She shuddered at the recollection of the vampire-monster. “It is a screen of stable free electrons, an electronic armor that shuts out the strange radioactivity that causes the green phosphorescence—it is opaque to the short waves of that radioactivity, and to the long waves of heat, while it lets light through. You can see through it. But it is warmer than any insulated suit. And it shuts out those sinister emanations!

  “And the monster could not touch me through it. It is protective against its strange substance as against the radioactive vibrations that make that substance possible.”

  “And the things you drove it back with—the black ray—” Dick asked. “What was that?”

  “It was not really a ray. A development of Dad’s ether-exhausting bombs. It drives the ether out of a long, thin, cylindrical section of space. And the exhaustion of the ether, cutting off these emanations, seems harmful to the monsters.”

  Suddenly a mellow, chiming bell-note rang from the side of the little bridge-room—the signal that someone was calling on the television.

  “Nark again, I suppose,” Thon said. “No harm to hear what he has to say, anyhow.

  She moved a little lever. A television screen lighted on the wall. The heavy, evil features of Garo Nark appeared upon it, visible against a background that evidently was the wall of a flier’s control room. There was a cruel mouth, a huge, jutting nose, and deep, malignant, black eyes.

  His mighty shoulders were in sight, with his garment of crimson silk fastened over one of them. And Pelug, the scrawny man with green, snake-like eyes and scraggy yellow beard, was standing behind his master, looking over his shoulder.

  “Enough of this foolish waiting!” Garo Nark began, in a heavy, brutal tone. “What can you do alone? A blind old fool! A girl! An ignorant adventurer! An ape from the past! You are insane to fight me and the perils of this planet at once—”

  The thick voice stopped suddenly as he saw Dick. And then he burst into harsh, jeering laughter.

  “And look at the ape!” he shouted coarsely. “The ape from the past! Did his hair turn white with the horrors of space? Or does he just begin to remember that he was born two million years ago?”

  He laughed brutally again.

  “Thon Ahrora, my pretty one,” he began, leeringly, “I have a place ready for you in my palace. Come to me. Let me help your father win the secret of life. And we’ll be happy forever, darling!”

  And at Thon’s white-faced wrath he burst again into roaring, bestial laughter.

  With a swift motion of her hand, the girl threw over a lever that darkened the screen.

  Dick looked out through a port at the two black ships that lay, shadowy and unreal, below them in the canyon.

  In a moment the pale violet finger of an El-ray beam flickered from one of them. It struck the faintly luminous face of the cliff behind the Ahrora. A huge cloud of steam puffed from it, to fall in a white flurry of snow.

  More El-rays stabbed out, seeking the little flier. And among the pale, flickering violet fingers of them were broad beams of mellow golden radiance.

  “A NEW ray!” Thon cried. “Dad, they are attacking with a golden ray!”

  “One of the ether-exhausting bombs, daughter!” the old scientist cried. “It will plunge us into darkness, and stop the experimenting. But we can afford to take no risk—”

  “My God,” Dick broke in. “Look at that!”

  He pointed down the canyon. Above the black, indistinct blurs that were the half-invisible fliers, the green-black sky was visible, a little scrap of the shimmering, ghostly green expanse of snow could be seen.

  Scores of little points of bright light were visible in the dusky green gloom of the sky, above that bit of desert horizon. They moved with amazing speed. They were driving down toward the fliers of Garo Nark.

  “They are like the thing that attacked me!” Dick cried. “Dozens of them. Coming back!”

  In a few moments they were clearly visible. Shining green worms, with slender, iridescent wings, and huge eyes, red and malevolent, glittering things, with the brightness and transparent unreality of flame. And they were cold—so cold that they seemed to chill the eyes that watched them—they were things of frozen flame.

  On they flashed, scores of them, toward the fliers of Garo Nark.

  Suddenly the direction of the violet and golden rays was changed. No longer were they played upon the Ahrora. They flashed across to meet the horde of swiftly flying monsters.

  Despite the rays, the vampire-things came on. They seemed unharmed. And they struck back.

  Slender arrows of frozen purple flame flew from them, and struck the half-invisible ships. They writhed over the fliers, coiled about them. In a few moments the ships were dark shadows covered with a bright net-work of the shining purple ropes.

  The ships were lifted.

  They were swung free of the shimmering banks of green snow, carried swiftly in the direction of the flying rows of monsters.

  Streamers of violet luminescence swirled back from their tails, as their crews fought to jerk them free of the net of living purple rope that held them.
But the K-ray generators, powerful as they were, were no match for the weird power of the vampire things. The ships were helpless in the writhing coils of frozen purple flame that held them.

  In five minutes, ships and monsters alike had vanished.

  Garo Nark had been captured by the alien entities of cold fire. His ships had been carried off, in the direction of the cones of blue light beyond the horizon.

  The Ahrora remained apparently undiscovered.

  Midos Ken, Thon, and Don Galeen continued their experimental work. Dick rapidly convalesced, until he resembled a hale old man of about seventy years.

  Seven more days went by. Nothing had been seen of Garo Nark, or of the vampire things that had captured him. The experiments were finished.

  “We know as much of this planet as observation from this one point will teach us,” Midos Ken said. “And we have devised means of protection against the hostile forces we have found. We are ready, now, to try to find the catalyst.”

  Once more they gathered in the little bridge-room. Thon inclined the bright control lever, pressed the white cylinder of the accelerator button. The bank of shining green snow dropped away beneath them. The Ahrora darted upward, past the luminous walls of the canyon, into the green gloom of the starless sky.

  Again the girl moved the little lever. The flier ceased to rise.

  Straight northward they flashed, low and fast. The luminous desert of snow raced backward beneath them, a flat and desolate plain, shimmering with weird green radiance. Above them arched the sunless sky, almost black, faintly flushed with the green light from the snow.

  Their speed, Dick knew, was well above a thousand miles an hour. At this rate they should reach the mountains beyond the desert in a very few minutes.

  Each of them wore, fastened to the arm, a tiny, humming mechanism which charged the body with electromagnetic energy, producing about it the roseate luminosity of the electronic screen. Both of them were bathed in a clinging mist of rosy light. It was their armor against the vampire-things, as well as against the bitter cold of the outer air. And each carried, thrust in a pocket of his slight garment, one of the slender tubes which projected the ether-exhausting force, so as to make a thin, stabbing bar of blackness.

  “A few hours—perhaps only a few minutes—and we shall have won or lost,” Midos Ken said, sitting thoughtful by the wall.

  Don Galeen was bent over a little device on a stand, watching spinning needles.

  Dick had nothing to do but to watch.

  He looked at Thon, intent over the control lever. Such a girl! So gloriously beautiful. So vital. So young.

  He loved her!

  A few days ago he had been as full of the buoyant force of life as she was, brimming with life and energy. And he had let foolish doubts and fears hold him back, keep him silent. And now he was old. He flexed a twisted arm. He felt its muscles—stringy, flabby. He cursed under his breath.

  Then he saw Don Galeen raise his eyes for a glance at Thon. Bright eyes. Flashing with courage, with the fire of youth. And filled with admiration for Thon, with devoted affection.

  “I hope they are happy!” Dick murmured to himself. “I’m too old to think of love.”

  He felt a tear in his eye, and brushed it angrily away.

  In a few moments rugged mountain peaks came into view above the edge of the ghostly, shining desert of snow. Dark and grim, but outlined with faint fire of green, they rose against the green gloom of the sky.

  Above them, beyond them, were cones of blue light. Vast conical heaps of cold blue radiance, motionless and dim. Scores of them, scattered across a rough mountain plateau—scattered irregularly, yet somehow suggesting the buildings of a human city. They were cones of frozen blue flame, faintly resembling the conical wigwams of an Indian village.

  “Look!” Dick cried suddenly. “They are coming!”

  Bright cold points of light were darting through the sides of the vast blue cones, flying rapidly toward them. By scores, by hundreds, the vampire-monsters were rising to meet them.

  Dick raised his telescope lens. In it he could see them clearly, long worms of cold green flame, with motionless wings of flashing diamond light, and frozen, evil eyes of ruby. There were strange ovals of violet on the sides of the heads—behind the green, viscid sucking disks.

  Some of them seemed to have dark protuberances—humps—upon their backs. But these he could not see clearly enough to distinguish what they were.

  Frozen arrows of red-blue fire sped from those weird ranks, toward the Ahrora.

  In a moment the air about the little flier was filled with twisting fiery streamers—writhing ropes of chill purple fire. They coiled about the little vessel, wrapped it in a living net of flame.

  Their headlong speed over the desert of shining snow was suddenly checked. The luminous ropes had stopped them. Thon moved the useless lever, holding the white accelerator button at the bottom of its socket.

  The Ahrora trembled a little. But the full power of her K-ray generators could not break her loose. The things of cold fire were dragging them down to the snow.

  “The electronic armor!” Midos Ken cried. “Quick, Don Galeen!”

  Don Galeen was still stooping over the little device on the stand, watching the vibrating needles. Now he adjusted a little dial, moved a lever.

  A nimbus of rosy flame spread suddenly over the little flier, over the surface of every object within it. It was a mist of roseate radiance such as mantled each of the adventurers.

  The writhing streamers of cold purple fire were hurled back from the ship. They fell away below it, twisting, contorted, evidently injured.

  The Ahrora leapt forward again. The vampire-things—the winged worms of cold bright flame—darted back, made way for her. Again Dick noticed the dark objects upon their backs. But still he could not distinguish them clearly.

  They flashed toward the faintly shining mountains, leaving the groups of blue cones of light on the rugged plateau behind them.

  In a few moments they reached the edge of the waste of shining snow, where the black foothills rose. It was still a score of miles to the plateau of the cones, which was a full mile above the level of the desert.

  But the cones were of amazing size. Dick guessed that they must be thousands of feet thick at the base, and a mile in height. There were scores of them, irregularly scattered over the green, gleaming plateau.

  It was a city of colossal cones of frozen blue light!—an alien city of an alien world, inhabited by inconceivable vampires—spawn of an alien universe!

  And the four were rushing toward it on a daring raid, to win the greatest treasure that man has ever sought—the secret of immortal youth!

  “We’ve won!” Dick was shouting, when they had passed through the weird ranks of the monsters, and were darting over the edge of the desert of snow. “They can’t do a thing against the electronic—”

  He stopped with a gasp.

  Abruptly, the Ahrora was falling!

  They had hurtled through a straight wall of silver haze, hardly visible. Beyond it, the power of the generators quickly slackened. The little flier plunged downward, in a long spinning flight. Thon struggled in vain with the control lever.

  “THEY are broadcasting some disturbance that interferes with the K-ray!” Midos Ken cried. “It stops the generators as my ether-exhausting bombs do, but doesn’t interfere with the vision!”

  Still they spun downward, toward the foot of the long, rugged slope that led upward toward the plateau of the cones. The K-ray generators were still functioning, though very weakly. Thon was able to check the fall only enough to keep the impact from being fatal.

  The Ahrora struck heavily on a rugged slope of dark boulders that shone with faint green luminosity. She rolled over twice, but came to rest lying almost in a normal position.

  Thanks to her indestructible neutronium hull, the flier was not injured. And the K-ray device which protected the passengers by transmitting all shocks and pressures equally to
all particles of matter in the ship, had still functioned sufficiently to save the four from any serious injuries, though they had been flung roughly against the floor.

  “Pride goeth before a fall,” Dick muttered, as he got to his feet, rubbing a bruise on his head. “And some fall it was, this time!”

  The others were uninjured. In a moment, Thon’s cool fingers were tenderly caressing his bruised head.

  “Poor dear!” she cried. “I hope you aren’t hurt. You were so strong, before—”

  She choked, and stopped, with tears glistening in her glorious blue eyes.

  “Watch!” Don Galeen’s deep voice rang out warningly. “They are coming.”

  “They can do nothing, I think,” Midos Ken said. “Our electronic screen is still intact. They cannot break it.”

  Dick swung open one of the observation ports. He saw that the little flier lay on a rocky mountain slope. Huge boulders, glistening with dim green radiance, loomed here and there about them. Above them was a jutting outcrop of stratified rock. There was an occasional patch of snow, shimmering with greenish phosphorescence.

  But there was no grass, or shrub, or tree. Our familiar kinds of life did not exist upon the Green Star. Its only living things were the weird entities of frozen fire—unless, as Dick had imagined, and Midos Ken had hinted, the core of the planet itself were alive!

  Above them was the black bowl of the sky, faintly flushed with the deepest green.

  In that gloomy void, bright specks of light were visible. The vampires, wheeling above, some of them dropped, became visible as winged worms of frozen emerald light. Writhing serpent-shapes of cold, purple fire sent from them, darted cautiously toward the helpless flier. Things of red-blue light fell in the snow, slithered snake-like about them.

  But still the roseate radiance covered the fallen ship and the four within it. The ropes of fire could not penetrate that electronic armor. Those that touched it darted back, as if injured.

  For an hour, perhaps, the monsters wheeled above them. Then they vanished, flying northward, in the direction of the astounding city of cones.