Hell-Stuff for Planet X!
and
Other Old-Timey Space Opera,
by
Raymond Z. Gallun
Tom's eBooks July 2021
(c, ebook) - 102,300 words
Introduction, Tom Dean, (in) *
The Moon Mistress, (nv) Wonder Stories May 1932 - 11654
Moon Plague, (nv) Wonder Stories Jan. 1934 - 9677
Dawn-World Echoes, (nv) Astounding July 1937 - 10143
Red Shards on Ceres, (ss) Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec. 1937 - 4228
Strange Creature, (ss) Science Fiction Aug. 1939 - 4010
The Lotus-Engine, (ss) Super Science Stories March 1940 - 6971
Death and the Dictator, (ss) Science Fiction Oct. 1940 - 4607
Secret of the Comet, (nv) Thrilling Wonder Stories Jan. 1941 - 9937
Gears for Nemesis, (ss) Startling Stories Jan. 1942 - 7012
Hell-Stuff for Planet X, (ss) Startling Stories June 1943 - 5767
Bluff Play, (ss) Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec. 1950 - 4547
The Great Idea, (ss/nv) Startling Stories Jan. 1952 - 7740
The Guthrie Method, (nv) Science Fiction Quarterly May 1954 - 9972
The Gentle Anger, (ss) Astro-Adventures #5 Oct. 1988 - 6041
Bibliography of Gallun collections
Contents:-
Introduction
The Moon Mistress,
Dawn-World Echoes,
Red Shards on Ceres,
Strange Creature,
The Lotus-Engine,
Death and the Dictator,
Secret of the Comet,
Gears for Nemesis,
Hell-Stuff for Planet X,
Bluff Play,
The Great Idea,
The Guthrie Method,
The Gentle Anger,
Introduction
Herewith is our fifth, and final, collection of short science fiction from neglected SF author Raymond Z. Gallun. As noted before, these collections are meant to stand apart from two earlier collections from Renaissance Ebooks, The Old Faithful Saga, and A First Glimpse and Other Science Fiction Classics, thus resulting in seven collections with no overlap between them; see our Bibliography at the end of this eBook.
Concerning Gallun: his early novels People Minus X, and The Planet Strappers, are both available for free courtesy of Project Gutenberg. His first novel, Passport to Jupiter, is still available from some eBook outlets. Other novels seem to only be available from the "Nameless Somebodies" on the Internet.
Back to work....
Tom Dean
July 2021
******************************
The Moon Mistress,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Wonder Stories May 1932
Novelette - 11654 words
THIS story follows the successful “Revolt of the Star Men” and “Waves of Compulsion” of our author. He turns his attention now to the desolate, mysterious, adventure-filled moon. We do not see the moon here as a place for men of science to explore, to fight with brutal nature in order to extract from her mysterious craters new knowledge. We see the moon as a place that man might make habitable, and that he might turn to the devious uses of the human mind.
The peculiar conditions of the moon lend themselves to many purposes. Upon its surface “The Moon Mistress” provokes a series of events—bizarre, cruel, almost fantastic; but portrayed by Gallun as realities of tomorrow.
CHAPTER I
FOR my own part I felt as if I had suddenly discovered a sharp sword suspended above me by a thread. I half believed that entering this forbidden precinct of La Terre Rouge aroused similar feelings even in old Parks, who was a veteran tramp of the lunar globe.
The room was fairly large. From our position beside its low-arched entrance we could get an excellent view of it. Scattered about the multi-colored stone flagging of its oval floor were low tables, and about each richly carved and upholstered couches were set. Almost every couch had an occupant—some a man and some a woman.
Both sexes were represented in about equal numbers. The patrons sucked smoke from long, thin-stemmed pipes while, with languid, listless movements, as though they lingered on the borderline of dreamland, they played with tetrahedron-formed dice. The several lamps which hung from the barbarically-tooled ceiling cast their subdued light down through a reek of muddy, greenish vapor. The odor sickened me with its overpowering sweetness, and yet it caused tiny bells of pleasure to tinkle inside my head. From far above, through a narrow slit of a window, a small segment of the green earth was visible against the black sky.
But these impressions were not of prime importance to us now. Anxiously we scanned each of the half-drugged occupants of the room, searching for one whom we felt certain should be somewhere within this notorious dive of the moon’s great radium city.
“He is not here,” Parks told me quietly after several moments.
I glanced at him. His face was as calm and impassive as ever. It was a hard, square face, seamed by countless deep wrinkles that were in marked contrast with the coal-blackness of his close-cropped hair, that started low down on his forehead. A livid mottled scar covered almost his entire left cheek. A leak in a space suit somewhere out on the lunar plains had caused that, I had guessed.
His dingy grey suit, wrinkled and unpressed, bulged sloppily from his squat bear-like body. Queer, rough, old intellectual Parks was talkative and laconic by turns. In the two days that I had known him, I had found some slight reason to doubt the honesty of his motives, and yet I had already come to like him.
I was painfully conscious that the suspicious Oriental eyes of several of the patrons were on us. But it was easy to see that those worthies were too far gone with drugs to pay much real attention to us.
“We’ve got to find the kid!” I whispered with hoarse emphasis. “It isn’t only his neck. It’s the secret that they lured him here to get... the mine... radium...”
Parks waved a horny hand toward me in a silencing gesture. “I know all that better than you do,” he said. “And we’ll find him if we can.”
A thin-limbed attendant clad in a loin cloth and turban approached us and asked with stiff politeness if the Sahibs desired pipes. His speech betrayed his Indian ancestry.
“We have important business now,” Parks told him. “Here is one who seeks admittance to the cult of Mu-Lo. We would see the Master.”
My companion handed the Indian the tiny golden figure of a repulsive insect-like creature, which had been the pass that had admitted us to this inner chamber where few were permitted to enter. The man took it and scrutinized it closely, searching for the minute mark which verified its authenticity. Satisfied, he returned it, and motioned us to a divan along the wall. Without a word he circled around to the other side of the room and entered a curtained doorway.
Having seated myself on the soft cushions, I undertook the difficult task of straightening out one of the most involved puzzles which I had ever encountered. A short time before, Russell Joywater, an old friend of mine, had died at Cleveland back on Earth. His sole heir was his son Jack, who had not yet reached his majority. I was placed in charge of the small estate.
During the last few months of his life, Joywater had done considerable exploring in the little known region of the moon which lies far to the southeast of the lunar colonial city of Tycho, and on that hemisphere which is invisible from the earth. Joywater’s death came suddenly after his return to his native planet. There was a hint of foul play.
Among his personal effects was found a hastily-sketched map showing the position of a vast deposit of radium. There were also several samples of the ore, and no more than a hasty test was necessary to show that it was of unprecedente
d richness. To modern civilization radium is almost life, for it is the catalytic agent which makes atomic energy possible. At the time of which I write, there was only enough radium available to keep in service five space ships of the safe modern type.
NO LEGAL action had been taken to claim the mine. And with the limited data we had, we could not claim it. Lunar law demands that a careful survey be made of the site, and photographs be taken. Neither of these requirements had been fulfilled. In consequence, it was necessary for Jack Joywater and me to come to the moon. Since we had never before ventured into the lunar wilderness, we had enlisted the services of Fred Parks, an archaeologist who had known Russell Joywater. From youth, ever since the early days of lunar colonization, Parks had wandered over the empty, airless plains, searching for evidence that the moon had once been peopled by thinking beings.
When we arrived at Tycho, young Joywater, quite naturally I suppose, had immediately wandered off by himself in search of excitement. On those rare occasions when he did return to our hotel he was evasive and noncommittal in answering my questions as to what he had been doing. He spent several hours studying his father’s map and taking notes. I thought little of his actions. Tolerantly I remembered that I had once been nineteen myself. But when, a short while before the time set for departure for the mine, he had told me he was going on another tour in the Oriental quarter of the city, I had warned him emphatically that he must be back two hours before six o’clock lunar time.
He was half an hour late when Parks came to my rooms. He had received a phone call from someone whose name he would not give me. Jack was at La Terre Rouge—had been there often during the four days, Earth time, that we had been on the moon.
I could see no cause for alarm in this information, but Parks quickly assured me that there was danger—great danger. While our monocar had carried us toward the notorious dive he had talked to me.
“You do not know the moon as I know it, Grey,” he said. “You have been here only three times, and then you always remained beneath the air-tight domes of the cities. I arrived in the third rocket following the one Johan Saunders piloted—the immortal Saunders who shot himself into the void, knowing certainly that he could never return, knowing also that five hours after reaching his destination his oxygen supply would be gone and he would perish.
“He bargained his life for the thrill of the unknown and for the sake of giving his newly-acquired knowledge to the world. I, too, came in search of knowledge, but there were many more who came for other reasons. Some were voluntary exiles, radicals, psychopathic dreamers and other misfits who sought to build on the moon a home better suited to their peculiar temperaments. Then, too, there was a steady moonward migration from the overcrowded Orient. The Tata family of India, which for centuries has worked mines there, set itself to building rockets.
“Whatever mixed faults the immigrants may have had, certainly they all possessed the virtue of courage. They had to be courageous to trust themselves to the crude space vessels of those days. One out of three exploded en route.
“Among such an assemblage of colonists, it is natural that secret societies should be formed. Most of these have now been suppressed, but today there is one strong enough to defy even the government. Its rulers love wealth, and they have ways of getting it.” There had been a crooked, suggestive smile on Parks’ weather-beaten countenance.
And now, as I sat beside the old lunar veteran in this inner chamber of La Terre Rouge, I felt that I had reason to suspect him of duplicity. Where had he obtained the insectiform amulet, which was certainly a badge of membership to the cult of Mu-Lo? Did he belong to the same organization which he claimed was trying to steal the radium mine from Jack Joywater, perhaps had already taken his life? Another thought came to me. Perhaps Parks was luring me into the clutches of his superiors. I knew about the mine; it was best to have me out of the way too! A panicky feeling started to grow in the center of my chest. But certainly Parks was not a crook; he had been too well recommended.
The big burly man leaned toward me and whispered softly: “I’m afraid that things are going to move pretty fast around here in about a minute, Grey. That Hindoo will be back pretty soon. So be on your toes and keep that pistol cocked; and above all stick close to me. We’ll find the boy if he’s here, and if he isn’t we’ll find out where he is!”
“There’s one thing I want to ask you, Parks,” I said. “Just what is the cult of Mu-Lo?”
Parks turned toward me with a quick jerk of his head. A slow smile spread across his face. “You don’t have to know that now,” he replied cryptically.
A clash of weird music caused me to look toward the opposite end of the hall, where there was a broad platform or stage. A woman, wearing an exotic costume consisting mostly of jewels and a filmy veil, had mounted the platform. Her supple body was bending and swaying majestically to the slow rhythm of the music. As she danced, she caused the veil to flow and eddy about her like a living thing made of a diaphanous mist. There was no denying that she was beautiful—gorgeous would perhaps describe her better. But about her finely-chiseled features, her smooth black hair, and her great dark eyes there was more than a hint of the seductive siren. She glanced imperiously about, over her subjects at the tables. One sensed that they were her subjects. Those who were still conscious enough to do so, raised their right hands, palms toward her in salute.
HER eyes fell upon us at the back of the room, and then she smiled a slow, and it seemed to me, triumphant smile at Parks. He met her gaze with a cold unseeing stare.
Her dance seemed like a religious ceremonial. She had begun to chant liltingly, her rich voice pouring out strange unearthly words and phrases in caressing, questioning, questing notes:
“Maieu seweeah? Haieu! Haieu!...”
The Hindoo servant returned, circled softly around the room to where we were. “The Master awaits you. Come,” was all he said.
As the slave led the way to the curtained door, I looked again toward the queenly woman on the stage. There was one thing about her costume which I would have liked to scrutinize more closely. She wore a thin band of silver about her head to hold her hair in place. Set in the forward portion of this band was something which sent back to me baleful flashes of frosty light. Was it—could it be a real jewel of that size? The Queen gave me a taunting smile.
We entered a dim-lit passageway. The Indian was in the lead, and Parks took pains to hover close behind him. I brought up the rear. My hand was in my pocket, clutching the butt of my electronic pistol for, whatever Parks’ motives, I meant to aid him in what he did.
We proceeded for some considerable distance along the narrow corridor, and down several flights of stairs, coming at last to a hall where the small illuminating bulbs were fewer and farther between.
It was here that Parks acted. He clapped a silencing palm over the mouth of the Indian and hurled him heavily to the stone floor. I hovered close to give aid, but it was not needed. The frail Oriental seemed as incapable of resistance as a bundle of rags, in the hands of his bear-like assailant. Parks was sixty, but if his age had detracted any from his physical prowess, it was not noticeable.
We used our handkerchiefs to gag the servant, and we trussed up his hands and feet securely with a piece of rope Parks had brought along for just such an emergency. We left the man in a small storeroom at the side of the passage.
A little farther on, my companion located a stairway. We descended. Parks flashed his electronic pistol against a certain spot in one wall. A shower of incandescent sparks shot out soundlessly. Peering into the blackened hole, I saw a switchboard which had been hidden behind a concealed panel. Cautiously Parks thrust his hand into the hole, groped about questioningly, and then unscrewed three fuse-plugs. He thrust them into a pocket.
“Now,” he said, “we are ready to meet the Mekal.”
Some moments later we entered the luxuriously appointed apartment of the mysterious man of power. He sat before a desk, engaged in scanning some docu
ments. At our entrance he looked up. Immediately he became tauntingly cordial.
“Greetings, my friends,” he breathed wheezily. He was a dark, fat man with oily skin and hair. I noticed that one of his pudgy hands rested on a small shiny lever.
We ignored his gesture which invited us to be seated in the chairs which stood before his desk.
Parks came abruptly to the point. His voice was hard as flint. “What have you done with Jack Joywater?” he inquired levelly.
“Jack Joywater?” The Master shook his head innocently. “I have not been honored with the acquaintance of the person you mention.”
Parks’ hand crept slowly into his pocket. “No? That is most strange—most strange indeed, my friend,” he said mockingly. Gradually he was withdrawing his hand from the pocket.
The Mekal’s eyes caught the gleam of the heavy weapon the gnarled fingers held. His own fat hand forced down the lever at his side and—nothing happened!
I had noticed the network of copper cables that crisscrossed the ceiling above our heads, and the broad metal plate under our feet. Now I understand why my companion had removed the fuse plugs.
Parks’ weapon was on a level with the Master’s breast. “Now perhaps you will consent to talk business with us, O Great One,” he purred, still using the stiff speech which I later learned was characteristic of the devotees of Mu-Lo. “Again, what have you done with Jack Joywater?”
The Mekal’s face was chalky and yet, now that he was cornered, he managed to muster up a rat-like courage. He tried to reach for an alarm button, but Parks checked him.
“Place your arms straight out on the desk before you and answer my question,” Parks advised. “Lock the door, Grey.”
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