by Jerry
The streamers which held the Magellanian while his mind was being emptied, unwound from his form and darted into the metal casing. When it withdrew, there was nothing left but a metal shell that collapsed in a heap upon the ground. The streamer, with a score of others, reached toward the globe and struck swiftly, striking as snakes strike at their prey. Bach time a streamer struck, a metal form collapsed upon the ground like a pricked balloon.
The Magellanians, who had been operating the violet beams, threw aside their seemingly useless weapons and plunged desperately in to lend their aid in assembling the machines they had brought with them. It was a race with death. Startling were the deadliness of those darting streamers.
One of their machines was at last completed and from it a dense pall of blackness billowed forth and over the sphere. A brisk wind blowing at the time had no effect upon the billowing cloud of blackness. The wind made it apparent that it was no cloud of minute particles. Soon it hid the sphere and the invaders who still were pouring forth from it.
The streamers entered the blackness, but their deadly accuracy was gone. As the blackness continued to spread over a greater and greater area, the streamers began to find it difficult to penetrate fully.
It was to be expected that the invaders had a means of defense against the deadly force which concentrated will-power of a race could become, otherwise they would never have won past the edge of our island universe.
Hurriedly, the Two began to move away from the spreading blackness. They reached the first line of man’s robot-manned ordnance when a second machine was assembled, attached to the sphere. That machine began to nullify both gravitation and the force that held the sphere within its grip a few feet above the ground. Slowly it began rising, then faster and faster. If they could whisk that sphere somewhere out in space, man was doomed.
A third machine was assembled and began hurling a barrage of powerful explosives and deadly gases in the direction of the Two. A terrific roar sounded from within the center of the blackness and another. More machines were nearing completion.
As the Two passed the first row of robot-manned ordnance, sharp clicks could be faintly heard, followed by a rumbling sound that swelled swiftly to a thunderous roar. Louder and louder the massed artillery roared. The robots were bringing their weapons into action at last. The ships high in the air above the rising sphere began to drop their deadly missiles, striking it again and again, blowing it to bits. The ground heaved and sank. Incandescent matter ringed the region, swept toward the center where the sphere had been.
SUDDENLY the roar died down. No living thing was within that circle. Of the metal-clad invaders with the many machines they were assembling there was no sign. A few twisted and fused fragments here and there was all that was left of the sphere and the interstellar matter-transmitting apparatus it contained.
Before the Two had ordered the robots to begin firing, while the black cloud from one of the invaders’ machines belched upwards, there had been two terrific explosions and two Magellanians sealed in slender torpedoshaped shells had been hurled up and away from that region into the vacuum of space between Earth and Luna. Those two shells were tiny space ships. They were somewhat similar to the individual life-ships of space that the larger interstellar craft operating between the planets carried for emergency purposes. About one million miles was their cruising limit under their own power.
Earth was too densely populated for them to return without discovery. Besides, the Two had instilled in them a wholesome respect for the inhabitants of that planet. There remained only Luna with its covered cities, its walled plains, its craters and deep rifts that led far into the moon’s interior. There those two invaders must have thought they could hide without fear of detection. As long as even one of them remained alive and at liberty he would be a menace to the inhabitants of the solar system he was in.
Those two tiny space-ships, on leaving Earth’s atmosphere, flashed toward Luna and entered one of the deep crevices that radiate in every direction from the crater, Copernicus. Swiftly did they drop down that black forbidding chasm until they reached its bottom, then they shot down sloping caverns and clefts that led from it until they could go no farther. The ships dropped to the floor of the blind cavern and the two Magellanians leaped out carrying cylinders that generated the violet disintegration rays.
No living creature was in sight. The darkness, except in the immediate neighborhood of some luminous planet-life growing at the entrance of the cavern, was that of untenanted space between universes. Equally profound was the silence. The two waited, tensed, for some sign that they had been followed, for eyes that watched. There was none. Silence and darkness reigned.
At last they began to think themselves safe from observation down in that nethermost pit They did not know that large Lunarian eyes had kept track of them since first they entered the chasm in their tiny craft Not a move did they make that some Lunarian eye did not follow and report. Those eyes, whose range of vision included infra-red and ultra-violet found no difficulty in keeping them under observation by the feeble light of the luminous vegetation, or even by the heat waves that radiate from the warm rocks of Luna’s depths.
Every cavern beneath the broken surface of Luna, every cleft, had Lunarian-made tunnels running parallel with it. At regular intervals there were tiny openings that gave full view of the caverns and clefts from the hidden tunnels, at other points there were finely balanced stones that could be swung noiselessly aside. Since the advent of man to their world the Lunarians had waited for a certain moment, had even prepared for another biped invasion that was sure to come, if what they planned failed.
While one of the Magellanians kept guard, the other began dismantling the two tiny space ships and one of the deadly ray generating cylinders. From the numerous parts he began constructing an apparatus that was apparently to be used for purposes of communication. After completing the mechanism the metal-clad being manipulated it with his tentacles for some time, then dismantled it and the second ray generating cylinder. Both then began to work frantically to construct an apparatus that bore a rough resemblance to the mechanism that the sphere on Earth had housed.
For the time the two Magellanians were utterly defenseless. Just as they had almost completed their apparatus, a sound disturbed them. They listened. It was a steady plod-plod of some creature approaching. Whatever it was, it made no effort at concealment. It came from the passage that led to the cavern’s only opening. The sound stopped. By the feeble glow of the luminous vegetation growing near the entrance, the metal-clad beings made out a Lunarian carrying a lethal tube standing there.
Panic for a moment claimed the two Magellanians. Leaping erect, they turned to flee. A blank wall barred their way. They spun around and faced the Lunarian armed with his deadly lethal tube which members of their race had already learned was just as destructive at short range as their own violet rays. The tube followed their every move.
Seeing that there was only one creature threatening them, each picked up a piece of metal and rushed at the Lunarian. There was a slender chance of reaching him before both were destroyed. One might survive to complete the apparatus and bring their comrades from beyond the edge of the galaxy.
As they left the side of their uncompleted machine, a score or so of Lunarians dropped down from the cavern’s roof and stood between it and the Magellanians, who were charging one of the Lunarian’s kind at the entrance.
The two metal-clad beings, on hearing the sound of dropping bodies behind them, stopped and spun around. They saw Lunarians dropping steadily, each armed with a lethal tube. Trapped!
Desperately they now turned to try to beat their way past the Lunarian guarding the entrance, but when they turned again they saw, instead of only one menacing figure, the entrance choked with large-eyed inhabitants of Luna’s depths. Even as they stood undecided, a large stone slid smoothly aside in the cavern’s wall nearest to them and disgorged yet more armed Lunarians. From every direction they were pouri
ng into the cavern.
Realizing at once the utter futility of trying to win to safety in this alien solar system that seemed so admirably equipped to resist foreign conquest, the Magellanians viciously hurled the pieces of metal they still gripped with their tentacles at the nearest of the Lunarians who faced them and waited for death.
Death was not yet to be their fate. The Lunarians wanted them alive. They had already learned what had happened on earth; the casting of man’s lot with the Confederated Solar Systems, the invaders’ unsuccessful attempt to gain a footing on earth.
NO report of their capture was made to man. Spiriting their captives to one of their hidden cities in the deepest of Luna’s depths, the Lunarians prepared two large metal cages and locked their prisoners in them. Around those cages they then stationed a guard of Lunarians armed with lethal tubes.
The city in which the prisoners were housed was one of the many hidden cities of Luna, which were making preparations for one desperate attempt at freedom. All the latest weapons of war were being manufactured and stored there. Amongst other things that were being stored in that city were tens of thousands of tiny space ships. Those tiny ships were atomic-powered and lightning fast. They were equipped with a lethal tube of Lunarian invention that was slightly superior to man’s most destructive weapon of like size.
No altruistic motive was behind the Lunarian’s intention to spare the lives of the two metal-clad captives. They feared the Two and the power they were vested with. Long ago would they have dared to try to win back their world had they but a force to cope with it. And now, fortune sent, came the Magellanians, who had, in the black cloud, a defense against the streamers the Two controlled.
As soon as they numbered the machines for producing the black cloud as one of their defenses, they would be ready to attack, to repay mankind in full. The attack must be launched before man completed the great matter-transmission machine he was planning—otherwise they would have the forces of the Confederation at the entrances to their underground cities.
First, though, they would have to learn If it was at all possible to exchange ideas with their captives. Since those two metal-clad beings had been captured, they had made no sound. Their demeanor, following their imprisonment in the guarded cages, had taken on a noticeable air of sullenness. Had the Lunarians the faculty of thought-transference such as man possessed, the exchange of ideas before them and their captives would have been relatively simple.
The problem of communicating with the two Magellanians, which at first had seemed easy enough, was becoming increasingly more difficult. There was absolutely no starting point. Their captives moved to the middle of their cages and stayed there, making no audible sound except that produced by the movable parts of their flexible metal shells. No nourishment of any description did they take, foods and liquids being kept continuously before them, nor did they seem to be a form of air-breathing life.
Lunarian scientists, trained by man, were secretly summoned to solve the problem. A few at a time came from wherever they were stationed to examine the metal-clad beings and the apparatus they had almost completed. Their temporary absence would go unnoticed in the general excitement of the Solar System’s feverish preparation.
Audible sounds, pantomime, and drawings brought no answering gleam of intelligence from them. They might have been, for all the response they made to the efforts of the Lunarians, to communicate with them, mindless machines.
The scientists of Luna had no success until one of their number, first installing a delicate recording instrument capable of recording sound vibrations and electro-magnetic impulses, had the machine which the Magellanians had almost completed before their capture brought near the cages and made a sudden motion with a lethal tube as if to destroy it. A sudden surge of vibrations showed on the recording instrument. The instrument also showed that the vibrations were in a narrow band of electro-magnetic waves. Reproducing the vibrations with the aid of a loud-speaker, two sharp audible sounds were heard. Ordinary radio waves were employed by the Magellanians to communicate with each other.
The Lunarians, using the same wavelength their captives employed, tried to gain their attention by that means. For a time the two within the cages maintained a stubborn silence, then seeming suddenly to realize that their captors intended them no immediate harm; on the contrary, sought by various means to prove themselves friendly, hastened to learn the Lunarians’ speech. Soon they mastered it The Lunarians plied them with questions, seeking to learn the secret of the black cloud, promising them life and freedom if they gave it but on that subject their captives displayed an amazing lack of comprehension of their newly acquired tongue.
Time passed swiftly. Soon it would be too late.
MAN quickly constructed another small matter-transmitting apparatus, protecting it with suitable mechanism that would make it impossible for those metal-clad invaders ever to gain footing in the solar system by that means again, to take the place of the one he had to destroy. Getting in touch with the headquarters of the Confederation, he asked them to prepare quarters for his representative and suite, outlining the peculiar needs of the human creature. After a short lapse of time word came back that everything was in readiness.
One of the men, specially bred and trained to succeed the Two, slim of form with high and bulging forehead, was selected as man’s representative and left the solar system to take his place as a member of the Supreme Council. With him went his suite, men of almost the same mental caliber. No lethal weapons did they take with them, unless the human will, which could be tapped by the representative at any instant, could be called a lethal weapon.
Man then, in accordance with the advice of the Confederation’s great ruling body, began work on a vast transportation mechanism that would be capable of handling their largest interstellar warships.
At the edge of our island universe the Magellanians were beginning to encounter some real stubborn resistance. Waves of strange life from the interior of the galaxy were hurling themselves upon the invaders with a fury and persistence such as they had never encountered before. They were coming in titanic space ships with crews of ten thousand and more; in smaller, swifter ships, whose crews ranged from five hundred to five thousand; in tiny ten-being ships of incredible swiftness. Armed with forces that wrought havoc silently and swiftly in the void of space; disintegration rays that broke down the molecule, heat waves that fused, electronic streams that penetrated metal barriers and killed, paralyzing beams that held the living immoveable, they converged upon the invading ships from a thousand points. Against the invaders, who were fortifying the worlds they had already captured, they rained down shells loaded with the most powerful explosives, containers filled with chemical horrors. Fearful was the toll of life they were taking and that was being taken from them.
Young mankind fumed and fretted as he trained, fearing that the struggle would be over before man was ready to launch his tens of millions. Another one of those men who were trained to succeed the Two was selected to lead the first of the human forces against the invaders.
Soon would the first wave of human beings be ready. While the older and less fit members of the human race built huge interstellar warships and complicated machinery capable of automatically producing a completed section of those vast ships and other war material, the flower of mankind went through a continuous round of training for their part in the colossal struggle.
Man then tried training a force of Lunarians, but they showed such opposition that the attempt was given up. The Lunarians were becoming more and more antagonistic. Realizing the risk even a hostile force of Lunarians entailed, if left in the solar system with the pick of the human forces at the edge of the galaxy, the Two began seriously to consider giving them back their ancient world with the privileges of full and equal citizenship in man’s civilization.
BACK in the depths of Luna the two metal-clad captives were learning the history of the Lunarian race and the bitter hatred of the human species, who wer
e now ruling them with an exceedingly lax hand. Thinking that it was only the natural discontent of a conquered race, they planned to turn it to their own advantage. They did not know that the Lunarians, waiting but word from the Elder City—the Elder City was silent, for 4-P-2269-L, hereditary Overlord of the chief of Luna’s underground cities, was still on Earth and under the watchful eyes of Don Stelite—would soon be ready to go forth against their biped rulers. Had they known the extent of Lunarian preparations, they would willingly have given them the secret of the black cloud and any other information that would have aided the destruction of these bipeds who were getting ready to leave for the edge of the galaxy to war on their own kind. War between the civilized races of the galaxy’s interior was one thing they were most willing to encourage.
Work upon the first of the great interstellar transportation mechanisms, which was being erected on Earth near the South Pole, passed the halfway point.
The Lunarians woke to the fact that they had little time left They began to assemble their forces. In the vast subterranean depths of Luna, this rather peaceful race who, aside from the slaughter of their kind centuries back at the hands of man, had never known real warfare began grimly to train. Dividing their forces, they staged thrilling mock combats. Up and down the wide clefts in approved military formation, flashed thousands upon thousands of tiny space ships, harmless beams of colored light stabbed ahead, artillery loaded with blank shells roaring until the endless caverns trembled. Dodging beams, turning, diving, flashed at and passed each other, they came to know the thrill of combat; liked it.