For seconds that seemed to expand into hours and then eternities the bright, saucerlike orbs stared relentlessly into the fright-dilated eyes of the Earthman.
Ross felt his faculties wavering. Light receded from all the objects about him. Their mist-enveloped contours shimmered nebulously; then vanished into darkness. The tendril giant’s eyes became tapers of bright flame burning through a curtain of impenetrable gloom. For a time Ross fought frantically against the stupor which was engulfing him. Momentarily he succeeded in beating his way back to the gates of consciousness. Bursts of light stabbed through the gloom; flashes of clarity showed him familiar objects for an instant. But it was a losing struggle.
The hypnotic orbs were glowing more brightly now than the blinding giant suns of outer space. They usurped his world, his universe. Relentlessly as he struggled oblivion clutched at him with iron fingers and dragged him down into the abyss.
CHAPTER V
Captives in Space
When Ross opened his eyes again be was lying on a smooth, cold expanse of gleaming metallic soil. Obscurely amidst the vapors which clogged his sleep-drugged brain a glimmer of light appeared. Slowly it widened and spread. He became aware of dim shapes that moved slowly across his befogged and distorted vision.
Slowly his faculties expanded. He moved his limbs; raised his head and touched the oxygen filter on his face. For an instant he stared upward into the swirling green mist, bewildered. Then memories came rushing back. With a groan he twisted about and rose to his knees.
Instantly a sense of wonder and utter alienage pervaded his being. A few feet away, partly obscured by the luminous mist, eight tendril giants were standing on their little tubular legs, silently watching him. As his gaze penetrated the mist his eyes widened in sudden, joyful recognition. Within his mind human memories and impulses were now intertwined with images vast in scope, and of non-human origin. For the first time he had perceived the compulsion under which the tendril giants labored and did not recoil from them in revulsion.
The tendril giants were endowed with a wisdom far transcending anything of which the human race could boast. An insatiable, all-consuming curiosity was their dominant appetite. This appetite was more pronounced and aggressive than the simple emotional desires of the Earthmen and included a fierce, uncontrollable urge to explore every crevice of the known universe, to fathom every variation of animal and vegetable behavior on every planetary system. It was this urge which had sent them Saturnward across wide gulfs of space, bent on exploration and discovery.
Resting on the gleaming soil by Ross’s side was the reclining form of a slim young Earthwoman. Sweat beaded her white forehead, and her copper-colored hair was damp with clinging moisture. She had risen on her elbow and was watching him with a slight, perplexed frown. Suddenly she plucked at his sleeve.
“You are James Ross,” she said.
Slowly Ross gazed down at her, nodded. His face showed no surprise.
“And you are Marta Nichols,” he said simply. “You are to be my companion in the great journey which lies before us.”
Ross’s face grew suddenly stern and impassive.
“We have lived lives of folly, Marta,” he murmured. “We have squandered our vain human energies blindly, stupidly. How these great beings must despise us! How loathsome we must seem in their sight! Their cold, impersonal intelligences transcend our little lives as we transcend the lives of worms and insects.”
Slowly he rose and extended his hand.
“Come, Marta,” he said.
The Earthwoman’s face was an enigmatic mask. Her pale features were resigned, composed even, but there was a look in her eyes which was vaguely disturbing. No muscle of her face twitched as she slipped her palm between Ross’s fingers and followed him over the shining soil to where the tendril giants rested. But her eyes were not the eyes of one who has gazed on cosmic glories and experienced a mental rebirth. Her eyes were womanly, human, with glints of rebellion still in their lustrous depths.
Before the tendril giants Ross and the girl paused, in tremulous awe. Their loathsome appearance did not alter the expression of almost rapturous acceptance on Ross’s face. From the group of ten plant-creatures two arose and drew near to Ross and his companion. With soft murmurs that seemed to hold accents of approval and admiration they seized them gently in their tendrils and lifted them from the ground.
The journey which ensued led northward along the valley over a level, moist terrain covered by corpse-white fungus growths and a convoluted, sanguine-hued plant which grew close to the soil and bore a nauseating resemblance to the lobes of a human brain.
The valley widened as they advanced, the soil becoming soggier, and the vegetation more brightly-hued and luxuriant. The tendril giants varied their gait to accommodate themselves to impediments under foot, but no obstacles presented by the changing landscape seemed too difficult to surmount, and Ross and his companion remained safely suspended above the swaying shoulders of their carriers.
Despite the changing topography the journey, in its initial stages, was monotonous, but after an interminable series of detours they ascended a nearly vertical escarpment of bleak, forbidding rock and emerged on a flat, mile-wide plateau above a narrow ravine.
An exclamation of joy and wonder burst from Ross’s throat’ at the spectacle which confronted him. The entire plateau was studded with huge, wedge-shaped spacecraft which rested on elevated landing discs, slowly revolving in the mist-light. Between the enormous dark vessels hundreds of tendril giants were moving over the reddish, pitted soil, testing great projecting valves with upraised tendrils. Others were vaporizing the solid masses of potential energy in the gleaming propulsion tubes which enormous lifting cranes were depositing in the basal compartments of the skyward-pointing vehicles.
A little group of six plant-creatures was bearing to a grim ravine-burial at the edge of the plateau a few shapeless things which had been horribly mangled in the abysses between the stars.
“Look, Marta,” Ross murmured. “Here are nearly all the space-voyagers, the cold, audacious ones who explore the interstellar gulfs. No Earthman has ever before beheld one of the great projectile bases. Two-thirds of all the spaceships of the star people come to rest here.”
Into Marta’s blue eye’s crept a dim flicker, which suddenly became a steady glow, burning into the eyes of her companion. Then it vanished. With a little sigh she stared upward into the mist, as though a grim presentiment weighed upon her.
Progression on the level plateau, despite its pitted surface, presented fewer difficulties to the tendril giants than the plant-infested lowlands beyond and they progressed with unbelievable rapidity on their tubular legs to the base of one of the landing discs.
Still more quickly the two were lifted to the disc; assisted into the great vessel by the down-reaching tendrils of a plant-creature pilot. With soft murmurs the two carriers withdrew from the revolving disc, lumbered backward over the plateau. The pilot drew Ross and the girl quickly upward, over a shining surface of space-weathered metal that glistened in the mist-glow and down into the interior of the vessel.
Ross offered no resistance. A boundless joy surged through him at the thought of the stupendous gulfs he was about to traverse. But Marta struggled a little as though in resentment as the tendril giant pilot fitted her slim body into a passenger berth that was at the rear of the pilot chamber.
The immense compartment in which they found themselves was filled with a fantastic assortment of charts and mechanisms. Green globes filled with wavering fluids, metallic testing meters with altitudic readings which operated by infra-atomic control motion-balancing energy-depleters in square boxlike containers. An illuminated control panel studded with little, glittering dials and surmounted by a celestial chart of huge dimensions, in which the constellations were wondrously displayed, usurped the wall-space directly opposite them.
Ross rested beside Marta in the pas�
�senger berth. The tendril giant pilot stood before them for an instant, waving its tendrils and swaying its rootlike body in the throes of unfathomable emotions. Then it turned and advanced across the chamber to the elevated pilot’s seat which abutted on an observation window of such curious molecular construction that its atoms were rearranged constantly as it passed outward into space, enabling it to remain utterly transparent in the alien magnetic fields and inconceivably lowered temperatures of far star-clusters.
The pilot tendril giant ascended into the elevated seat and curved one of its tendrils about a longitudinal bar projecting from the glowing switchboard beside it. The bar was wrenched violently from its socket, turned about and reinserted in an adjacent connection. Instantly it began to revolve, while green and purple sparks ascended in a blinding, whirling cascade to the roof of the chamber. The bar was a generator of stupendous energies. Composed of magnetically-conditioned molecules it acted as a kind of transformer, releasing stupendous fields of force in the liquid reservoirs of potential energy which reposed in the basal compartments of the great vessel.
There was a thunderous detonation and a blinding spurt of light as trillions of electron-volts ripped the wave packets from the sealed ends of the propulsion tubes, lifted the great ship from the earth, and sent it hurtling outward in the direction of the glimmering constellations.
Ross’s eyes were shining. He turned to the girl.
“Do you not see, Marta,” he murmured gently, “that we are about to share an immortal adventure? The star people are testing us, testing our unworthy kind. Hitherto we have been swayed by violent and petty emotions. But now, on some far galaxy, we shall be tested and proved worthy.
“Just what the nature of the test will be, I do not know. But I believe that we shall be given some heroic task to perform. If we do not falter, if we do not allow our petty human emotions to sway and hamper us the star-people will know that there is still hope for our little race. Still hope for the little, primitive bipeds, Marta!”
“You have absorbed the star-people’s knowledge and speak with an alien tongue,” Marta said after a while. “They are great, but they are not as great as we. I, too, have submitted to hypnosis, but though I share their wisdom I am not so easily swayed.”
Ross’s face hardened. He tore his gaze from her countenance and stared at the glowing observation window which revealed a blanket of shimmering suns beyond the gently swaying body of the tendril giant pilot. He knew that somewhere in the far, outer cosmos, perhaps in some superuniverse of inconceivable dimensions, he would be tested gloriously and rise forever superior to the tormenting limitations of his human heritage.
“Look at me, James Ross,” said Marta suddenly.
Ross shivered a little, tried to keep his eyes riveted on the window. But the woman’s voice and gaze had forged a double weapon which threatened him with painfully sweet urgency. He turned again, and their eyes met in a swift, visual embrace.
“For only a brief moment, which was darkened by enmity, were we together, James Ross, in our dear human world. But somehow I—James Ross, I speak now to save you. The reticence which becomes my sex I; must thrust aside. When first my eyes looked into yours, James Ross, I loved you.”
Ross’s lips were mute, but a thrill of wonder went through him. It was as if her voice had penetrated to some secret, inner recess of his being, jarring faculties which slumbered, restoring him to a world of loveliness which was alien to the tendril giants’ nature.
“I know that everything that is human seems distant now and pitiful,” she murmured. “But once it was not so. A hideous spell has been laid upon us, so that a mist films the bright face of that other glory. But through the mist I can see it dimly, and I know that the star-testings you speak of shrivel into insignificance beside it. Look at me, James Ross. Look steadily into my eyes. Perhaps we can recapture it before it is too late.”
ROSS complied. For interminable minutes he gazed deeply into her eyes, until their soft radiance filled his world, his universe, until the tendril giants were forgotten and the glory which Marta saw appeared to him in mistless splendor, and he recognized it as the miracle of love.
Suddenly his shoulders tensed and a grim expression came into his face. Swiftly he descended from the passenger berth and moved across the chamber. The tendril giant was bent above the controls, oblivious to his approach. Ross crept up behind it in utter silence. Slowly, cautiously, his arms went out.
Marta screamed as the Patrol officer tore the writhing creature from its high metal seat, and hurled it with violence to the floor. The next instant Ross was down on the floor beside it, clawing and tearing at its writhing bulk.
The tendril giant looped its appendages about the Earthman’s limbs and tightened them into knots which sank cruelly into his flesh. Marta screamed again. Bright human blood appeared in a swelling rim about the tightening vegetal coils; spurted over the rootlike creature’s repulsive, slowly twisting back.
Ross continued to claw frantically at the torso of the prostrate monster. His fingers tore at pulpy flesh; his nails sank deeply into the thing’s soft vitals. He saw the wavering ceiling of the chamber through a pinkish mist which slowly deepened to the hue of blood. Excruciating stabs of pain cut through his chest and snaked agonizingly down his limbs. He was choking for breath, gasping in an extremity of torment when the pressure slowly relaxed.
The tendril giant untwined its coiling appendages and writhed away from the Earthman’s clasp. The next instant an almost unbelievable thing occurred. The odious creature turned over on its back and began frantically to tear its own flesh. Having suffered injury in some vital region it was proceeding with a frenzied eagerness to escape from the burden of personal existence.
It was all so strange and horrible that Marta sickened as she watched it. Its tendrils went out and ripped all the soft, spongy tissue from its own body. The hideous process of self-destruction continued until there was nothing left of the monster but a fleshless endoskeleton covered with a dark muculent ichor which glimmered offensively in the strange, dim light, of unknown origin, which illumined the interior of the chamber.
Ross got unsteadily to his feet and stared in shivering horror at the prone, repulsively gleaming form. All about it lay pulpy fragments of its own torn and quivering flesh. For several minutes it continued to writhe and move blindly about. Then a convulsive tremor passed over it. It lay still.
Ross’s lips were white. The muscles of his face twitched a little. When he withdrew his eyes from the horror on the floor he stood a moment without movement, staring at Marta who was crouching in an attitude of shuddering incredulity at the edge of the passenger berth.
Suddenly he passed a tremulous hand across his brow.
“Marta I—I believe I can pilot this vessel. I remember how the controls work. They explained the mechanism to me when they put me to sleep. It’s so simple a child could master it.” He was still trembling a little. “They thought that might destroy itself,” he said, nodding toward the denuded horror on the floor. “It often happens. Sometimes they’re seized with sudden, suicidal impulses for no reason at all. They thought if it did happen I’d pilot the vessel back to Hyperion. That’s why they explained the mechanism.”
Suddenly his eyes lit up. His voice grew tense, exultant.
“They were blindly stupid! Do you know what I’m going to do, Marta, my darling? I’m going to reverse our course and fly back to Saturn. Through the airlocks, Marta! Into the skyport!”
Abruptly he turned, limped across the chamber and raised himself with an effort into the high pilot’s chair.
Marta sat as though stunned, silently watching him, hardly daring to breathe. Then a womanly impulse asserted itself. Descending from the passenger berth she crossed to his side and sank to her knees at the base of the pilot’s chair. Her copper-colored hair enveloped a wide expanse of gleaming metal as she laid her cheek against his knee.
“Whatever happens to us, my dear,” she murmured, “we will be together until the end. Either on Earth, or—” Her voice trailed off as the great interstellar craft responded to the guiding hand of its Earthborn pilot. She sat without speaking, gazed tenderly up into Ross’s grimly exultant face, so wrapped up in him that, womanlike, she forgot the perils ahead and thought only of the miraculous present.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NELSON S. BOND (1908–2006) was an American authorwho wrote extensively for books, magazines, radio, television and the stage. The 1998 recipient of the Nebula Author Emeritus award for lifetime achievement, Bond was a pioneer in early science fiction and fantasy. His published fiction is mainly short stories, most of which appeared in pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. Many were published in Blue Book magazine. He is noted for his “Lancelot Biggs” series of stories and for his “Meg the Priestess” tales, which introduced one of the first powerful female characters in science fiction.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR. (1910–1971) was an American science fiction writer and editor. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.
RAY CUMMINGS (byname of Raymond King Cummings; 1887-1957) was an American author of science fiction, rated one of the “founding fathers of the science fiction pulp genre.” He was born in New York and died in Mount Vernon, New York.
JOHN RUSSELL FEARN (1908–1960) was a British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp science fiction magazines. Prolific author, he published his novels also as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms such as Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong, John Cotton, Dennis Clive, Ephriam Winiki, Astron Del Martia and others. Wildside Press is reprinting his most notable science fiction and mystery novels.
The Space Opera Megapack Page 153