Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  Exulting, the tree-ferns stared, then in one accord dozens of long arms shot out. This time they would have him! But no, the man was wary enough. Before the opening was resealed for the last time something came arching through the air to land at the roots of old Gorn. It was the flaming torch!

  Again the Ancadus turned to their leader for advice. Should they try their strength upon the cylinder, crush it and pluck the creatures like bav from their hole? For the first time in their existence the old patriarch had no advice to give. He was more concerned with the hungry flames at his feet, one of which had already tested the texture of an old gnarled root that had broken through the forest loam.

  The next instant the cylinder was taking to the air, filling the forest with an ugly roar. Then it was level with the fern-crowns. For a moment it seemed to hang suspended between land and sky. And to the horror of the Ancadus its rear end seemed to ignite—in a great blast of withering fire.

  The fire-breeder had his revenge as the long tongue of flame bit deeply into the heart of the Ancadus grove. With his departure a new sound came into the forest, a deep throaty roar interspersed with strange unnamable creakings and cracklings wherein were intermingled the cries of the dying race, the loudest of which was the shriek of old Gorn.

  Once inoculated with the virus of the fire, the whole world seemed ready to burn as immense flowers reared their angry, licking flames into the tallest perches of the forest, devouring everything in their path.

  Elsel, the young free-moving tree-fern who had taken his hurt to the river, a good quarter of a mile from the clearing, there to lave his tentacle in the flood, saw the flame-flowers advance, apparently pushing the small band of perambulatory ferns that hurried ahead of them, toward the river.

  All the world burns, the young ferns told Elsel; all are gone—Gorn, Naxum, Tunnux, Nushu, Geeb, Masur—all the great ones, all the middle-aged, all the newly rooted—all, all consumed by the ravenous flame-flowers that the intruders had loosed into their paradise. All were gone. All.

  Standing on the river bank they waited, fearful, uncertain. They knew they could launch themselves upon the broad river, float upon its bosom into new lands; or they could cross the river to the salt barrens into which no self-respecting perambulatory tree-fern ever treads.

  But their own hesitancy closed the first path as the florescent flames were seen to gather at the river’s edge, a few hundred feet below, hissing as their fiery tongues tasted that liquid flood, painting the overhead clouds in their lurid light.

  Out in space the fire-breeder saw that same pyrotechnical glow, saw in his mind’s eye that calorific hell that he, a modern Prometheus, had engendered upon the bosom of Venus.

  The Fall of Mercury

  Our readers will be glad to see a story by Leslie Stone. She was one of our early contributors and has won quite a reputation for imaginative writing. We shall hope to have more stories from her in the future, and if they are equal to this in merit we will be perfectly satisfied. There is endless imagination exercised in the narration.

  CHAPTER I

  “The Spot”

  “IT’S a useless expenditure of time, Bruce; I’d advise against it. Mercury, as all our scientists agree, is unworthy of exploration. I don’t see why you’re so set on going. Of course, I’ll tag along, but still I think it’s a fool’s errand.” That was Morton Forrest’s opinion when first I proposed a jaunt to the first planet of Sol. And in his own way I knew he was right.

  Mercury, a barren, ugly world, was too hot on one side and too cold on the other for human comfort. What ores it possessed weren’t worthy of exploitation—counting the difficulties of getting them out. And every scientist throughout the Federation had declared it a thoroughly useless waste, impossible to life, or anything, for that matter.

  Call it a hunch, on my part, a plain American hunch of the old school, coupled with a dogged stubbornness for which I am famous among my friends, but to Mercury I had to go. It kept me awake nights thinking about it, wondering . . . I had to go for peace of mind. And good old Mort Forrest! Pals since boyhood, he wasn’t the one to desert me now; we had been partners too long for that.

  Nevertheless, the day I was seated in the control turret, hands upon the controls of the old, battered but still staunch ship Victory, headed for Mercury, I had my qualms. Our departure had caused a good laugh all down the line; even our standing as seasoned explorers stood us poorly. The newscasters gave us the merry ha-ha; and we had been laughed at so much we were glad when the trip was begun at last.

  Janus Richter, the leading astronomer of Tellus, who had given us good advice in the past, had been against our going. He visited Forrest and me on the eve of our departure, begging us to call off our mad adventure, “fool’s errand” was the least of his verbosity as he told us what he thought of our proposed trip. Furthermore, he warned us that the Venerian “Whirlpool” was acting up again. And now, to confirm his dire warnings, the Spacial Bureau on the island of Marta in the Red Sea of Venus was sending out its flashing danger signals.

  The “whirlpool” or “spot,” as some called it, is no more to-day, and for those unfamiliar with its history I will digress a moment to describe its peculiarities. It was an area in space lying in the vicinity of Venus that had been the cause of the deaths of so many early explorers; an area turning and twisting upon itself, sweeping to its heart any foreign body having the misfortune to come within its range. There were old hulks of ships, long dead, floating in its “pool,” and even fragments of small meteors! Nothing, it appeared, could withstand the terrific pull exerted by the Spot.

  At the time of which I write astronomers of Venus had the whirlpool in control; that is in mathematical control, since they computed its mean position day by day and thus kept interplanetary shipping aware of the Spot’s location. For the Whirlpool was not stationary. It swung on an eccentric orbit between Venus and the sun, sometimes a million miles from Venus, sometimes forty or fifty millions of miles away. It had also been known to push forward between the orbits of Venus and Tellus, but that happened only twice in its known history.

  HOWEVER, knowledge of its position had not prevented an occasional flyer or freighter from becoming ensnared every once in a while. Its arms were long; appearing in unexpected channels.

  Morton Forrest and I are explorers by profession and preference. “Pioneers” the newscasters see fit to call us, when we have come back with tales of odd, out-of-the-way places in the solar system. Many and varied are the adventures we have experienced together, but, to-day, we both agree that the greatest adventure of all is the one I am about to relate. Actually, we did little to rid the Federation of the monsters who would have made us a race of slaves; we did have the honor of being eye-witnesses to the greatest feat of all time, and that is something!

  Although against the trip from the start, once having given his word to accompany me, Forrest was not one to back out when public opinion disapproved. His statements to the news-bureaus and to Richter put no blame on me, although rightly I deserved it. Privately he told me he had come “to see I didn’t get into trouble.”

  No two men could be more differently constructed than Forrest and I. Forrest is a fat man, whereas I am as thin as a rail. In ordinary life people would have snickered at the incongruous picture we made when standing together. Forrest, short, rotund, scarcely five feet tall, appearing as broad as he was long, his round moon-face as fair and hairless as a babe’s, his domelike head as innocent of hair as a billiard ball; while I, with my dark Indian face, my shock of unruly black hair that won’t stay put, was as lean as I was tall. Fun-loving cartoonists have caricatured us often enough, making Forrest rounder and shorter than in life, and me, taller and leaner than I am. Neither of us could explain what had brought us together in the first place, although we enjoyed the joke of our odd friendship as much as did the rest of the world.

  We were exact opposites, not only physically but mentally as well; opposites in everything but our mutual love of exp
loration. And even in that we differed. Forrest’s interest was that of scientific achievement; mine, the pure joy of adventure, the love of new sights, new sounds, the thrill of treading virgin ground. Science baffled me. I could use machines, even repair them to a certain extent; but their mathematical precision, the reason they performed what they were supposed to do, escaped me. I knew the effect, but not the cause. Whereas Forrest deduced the cause from the effect.

  Five hours after we had left Tellus behind Forrest was asleep in one of the bunks in our modest quarters, half a deck below the control turret. I was jotting down the figures coming to me from Marta, comparing them with those given us by Richter. I was surprised to find how the two accounts differed. The Spot was most certainly acting up to-night, since Richter’s report of the day previous showed a too apparent discrepancy. Slowly I spelled out the message from Marta:

  ALL SHIPPING WARNED NOT TO MOVE WITHIN MILLION MILES OF WHIRLPOOL? ALL INDICATIONS SHOW AREA INCREASING IN SIZE MINUTELY, CAUSING INTENSE DISTURBANCE. BEWARE!!!

  There was more, figures et cetera, but this was the gist of the message. I was thoughtful after receiving it. The Spot lay directly in our course. To avoid it I should have to plot an entirely new course, putting us hours behind our schedule. Mercury was in transit across the sun’s face at the present; and I had wanted to get there and back before it was too far along its way. Because once the planet was on the other side of the sun, our journey back would be lengthened by many hours.

  I might have descended upon Venus to await the passing of the Spot, yet who could tell us how long the Whirlpool would continue to expand? Each time an intense disturbance had occurred in its history, several ships disappeared out of the void. But, on the other hand, now that I was started on the way, I wanted to be finished with it.

  To be on the safe side I plotted a new course, giving the area a wide berth. Again and again I read the flashes from Marta, finding the figures becoming more erratic every moment. Twice I changed course; minutes and hours slipped by as Venus dropped behind us. Soon I could no longer get the flashes from Marta. I grew afraid. I even considered turning back, but Mercury’s call was stronger. I went on and on.

  It was “noon” by the chronometers when Forrest awoke. He was preparing a bite to eat in our diminutive kitchenette, when suddenly I felt the machine give a sickening lurch. It commenced to rock beneath me. I threw the helm hard over. It shook under the strain, but the rocking persisted. With all my precautions the Spot had caught up with us! It seemed determined to encompass all space to-day. It would subside, I knew, in a few hours; but that would be too late. I was in for the battle of a lifetime.

  More and more the ship’s motion became viciously irregular, until I was forced to fear the worst: that the whirlpool had moved altogether too swiftly for me!

  I shot more and more power into the atomic motors. It was our force against that of the Spot, which was like a dozen planetary hurricanes in intensity. The rocking and twisting grew more noticeable. The ship groaned in its travail. I heard Forrest curse below as his coffee percolator spilled. A glance at the meters sent chills down my back. For several moments I tried not to believe it, but the truth forced itself upon me. We were no longer on the rim of the Pool, but in the full grip of it—tight-fast! The crazy motions of the meters showed the ship’s power next to useless.

  White-faced I clung to my post, continuing to manipulate the levers, refusing the truth. Forrest came toward me, climbing the short flight of steps to the turret. I dared not look at him. A glance at the dials was enough to tell him what was happening. Fascinated, he stared at them.

  With contrition I muttered through my teeth what a fool I had been, explaining how I had dared to risk his life and mine against all the warnings from Marta. “Don’t be a chump, Bruce,” he told me kindly. “I’d have done the same on a hunch. You remember that time on Neptune?” I shook my head. The chances on Neptune had been excellent to what we now faced, and we had pulled out of there. The odds and evens were both against us now. I said as much.

  “We’ll fight, Warren, as we’ve always fought. Here, let me see what I can do——”

  It was sheer bluff on his part. I knew by the quality of his Voice that he saw the jig was up, but I refused to relinquish the, controls. That was one thing I could do better than Forrest. I knew the feel of the Victory. If there was any chance to save us, I could use it.

  “Have it your way, fella,” he agreed. “How ’bout some coffee? I saved some . . .” He added, “You know, I always wanted to explore the Spot.”

  I could not help but smile. Forrest had the habitual sang-froid of the fat man; but he was honest in his resignation. He would fight to the last inch if he thought he had a chance, but he was a fatalist. If he felt his number was up, he preferred not to struggle. Often I have heard him remark about the pitcher that had gone to the well too many times, when a dramatic death of one of our friends was announced. Take it or leave it. That was his creed. But I was not ready to die. Not as long as there was breath in my body.

  It did not faze me that no ship was ever known to survive the Spot. I might be the one to escape.

  ALL this while I had not taken my hands from the controls. Twice I felt the Victory take a grip, yet each time she failed again. Then suddenly, under my sensitive hands, I felt the controls stiffen to power once more. I did not hesitate, and for the next few minutes I worked as never before, playing upon the delicate instruments as lovingly as a virtuoso on his violin. Unbelieving, Forrest stared at the dials.

  Minutes of aching suspense, minutes that hung on the pivot like hours. At last I knew we were safe! The impossible was accomplished! We were free, Free. . . .

  Still I dared not relax. Forrest came closer to peer fixedly at the meters, studying them as if seeing them for the first time. He spoke. “Great Neptune, Warren, you’ve done the impossible. We are the first to have pulled out of the Whirlpool!”

  CHAPTER II

  The Strange Cliff

  I NODDED. “Yes, Mort, we’re out of there, but don’t give me the credit. Something else did it, Mort, something—an outside force—I swear it!”

  It was true. The force that had saved us had not come from the Victory; of that I was certain. The motors had frozen, refused to respond, and with all my work it had not been I that saved us. Something out there, some unguessed at power out of the Void, had given us a helping hand!

  “Rubbish!” ejaculated the scientist. “Rubbish. We are too far from Venus for succor, even if they had the power. And, well, naturally there’s nothing on Mercury to have saved us!”

  “Nevertheless something did it, Mort, I tell you. You know the Victory couldn’t have done what you saw done. You saw the force the Spot registered upon our meters. Nothing on the planets can equal that. Something from the outside did save us. I’ll stake my life on it. Otherwise, we’d still be in there, trapped, until food, water and oxygen gave out—unless the Victory rammed one of those derelicts I saw inside. There were fragments of two or three ships with which we all but collided.”

  “There’s some reasonable explanation for it, Warren. We must have swept into a current of the pool that threw us on the rim, and the Victory did the rest. See, the motors are normal now.”

  He would not believe my explanation, even when I made a new discovery as the trip progressed. After leaving the Whirlpool, I noticed the Victory was using very little of her own power. This may have been due to some faulty recording instrument, strained in the fight with the Spot, as Forrest insisted was the case. I, on the other hand, felt differently. Delicate as the instruments were, nothing was wrong; they responded equally as well when I tried them, but the fact remained that something else was motivating the ship.

  Tentatively I switched off most of the motors. And I found that we continued forward on the proper course. It was as if we rode an invisible beam that had us in leash, through which no outside power could penetrate; not even our own! And that power came from Mercury. I went so far as to at
tempt to change our course, only to find it impossible. Of this I said nothing, however. I did not want to be laughed at again.

  MERCURY lay directly before us, a dark circle against the yellow glare of the sun which had grown larger and more splendid as we rushed upon it. Larger and larger grew the planet until its rough sides filled the sky, swung over us, then became a great inverted bowl into which we were dropping. Soon we were hurtling along at the same velocity as the planet, until we seemed stationary beside it. Then we fell toward it. And we moved on our own power. Once more the motors reacted in perfect accord.

  Forrest had since gone to the tiny laboratory he maintained in the ship, and was busily testing Mercury’s physical being, atmosphere, gravity-field, water-pressure, mass, et cetera, to correct and add to the data of the Astronomical Union of the Federation. He reported a thin atmosphere which was chiefly chlorine! His voice was filled with an “I told you so” inference. I merely shrugged my shoulders. I hardly expected more. I knew that Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all possessed an undue amount of chlorine in their atmosphere, but what did that matter? Uranus and Saturn were both known to contain sentient life; so that meant little to my theory about Mercury, even if it also contained that foul gas in its atmosphere.

  I was intent upon bringing the Victory down in the portion of the globe where sunlight and starlight had a common meeting ground; which neither ruled. Here only could we hope to survive, even in our air-suits, for on the sun-side we would have been broiled, and on the night-side frozen, because of the extremes of temperature. In this twilighted sector I had reason to hope for a comparatively normal temperature; and if there was life on Mercury, here would be its home.[*] At best it was not a complete haven, because of Mercury’s irregularities of rotation, sometimes the sunlight encroached, sometimes the blackness of night.