by Jerry
“Watch our chance, and wreck the ray machine.”
“And us with it,” grumbled Moore.
“Most likely,” Ross agreed.
They entered a softly lit room, in the wake of Horta. As their eyes became accustomed to the dim light they gasped. There was Illeria. But beside her was the queen—Boada!
SHE swept them with a glance in which contempt was mingled with a kind of pity. “You did not expect to see me here,” she said harshly. “But I serve the destiny of the Moon. The wise men have shown me that the Moon was never destined to serve the Earth, but must stand with the Blue Stars when the Universe is rent asunder. And now the Moon is ready to defend itself, thanks to the new King Horta!”
In the silence that followed Ross heard the girl gasp. The queen spoke softly. “And you, my daughter, shall be the new queen, wife of the almighty Horta the Liberator.”
“Not,” Ross muttered between his teeth, “if I can help it.”
“Me, too,” whispered Moore.
The girl said nothing. But her eyes sought Ross with piteous entreaty.
Horta broke the silence. “The nuptials shall be solemnized in tomorrow’s full light. You, Earthmen, shall remain under guard until you have given earnest proof of your fealty.”
The guards punched the two as Horta rapped an order in the Moon tongue, and they allowed themselves to be led away. Through a dim corridor they passed, and into a stone cell, with oddly fashioned stone bars and a door that slid on a metal base, locking them into their tomb.
Ross circled the cell, then shook his head. “We couldn’t get out of this without a ray machine,” he muttered.
Moore sat down against a wall. “Guess not. Say, Bruce, did you hear the old girl?”
“The Universe is to be rent asunder,” grunted Ross. “Where does that leave us?”
“Behind the eight ball, as I believe they used to say back in the twentieth century,” grinned Moore. “That is, that’s where we would be if the Universe really were to be rent asunder.”
“Oh!” grunted Ross in heavy sarcasm. “So it isn’t going to happen?”
“Gosh, no,” chuckled Moore. “It’s the silliest kind of astrological fake, discredited two centuries ago. Where Horta picked it up I don’t know. Probably he got some power from the blue stars by accident, and his faker astrologists strung him along on the big bust-up idea.”
“Nice clean fun,” muttered Ross. “Well, we missed. Horta’s still got his ray machine. He’s also got the princess—and the queen for an ally.”
“He’s also,” amended Moore dryly, “got us.”
“And how,” grunted Ross. “How long do you suppose we’ll last if we don’t—”
He stopped abruptly. A faint noise came to his ears. “Hear that?” he asked, puzzled.
Moore cocked his head to one side. “Running water,” he remarked. “They haven’t got a river down—”
A scream, faint and far away, took his breath away. Another sounded, and then a chorus, dimmed by space and the stone walls. Suddenly Ross and Moore whirled to face one another.
“Artana!” cried Ross.
“He’s opened the reservoirs!” gasped Moore.
They leaped to their feet. Ross tried the door, savagely. Moore broke the skin of his hands on the stout stone bars of the window. In a moment, water was swirling at their feet.
Moore stared down at it gloomily. “I was two days on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic,” he sighed, “and I didn’t drown.”
The water rose to their knees.
V
ROSS tugged at the door. “You aren’t drowned yet. How did this door open?”
“From the outside,” grumbled Moore, tugging with his chief. “It rolled—ha! It’s opening! We’ve got it!”
The door was sliding open. A rush of water swept them half off balance, and they splashed into the flood when the Princess Illeria catapulted into them. “Princess!” yelled Moore. “Good girl!” Ross gripped her arm. “What’s going on?”
“Panic,” she panted, clinging to him. “Horta and his steadiest men are at the ray machine, fighting to keep the water out of the ray reservoir. The Queen went with him. I’m—afraid—”
“Cheer up,” Ross consoled her. “And let’s get out of this.” He led the way out of the cell. Water was waist deep in the corridor. Ross pointed up an incline, where the swirling waters ran thinly. “Looks good,” he suggested. He whirled then on Illeria. “Where do you suppose we could get some guns?”
“What good would they do?” growled Moore.
“There’s that ray machine,” Ross reminded him.
“Oh! Yes. But—” Moore shot a glance at the Princess. “Don’t forget—the Queen—”
Ross scowled. “I know.”
Illeria touched his arm. “If the Queen must die, that the Moon people and the Earth folk may be saved, let it be so,” she urged simply.
The two men bit their lips.
“Come!” urged the girl. “There is a guardroom above. There must be weapons.”
“I could use one of those antique hook-’em swords on old Horta,” growled Moore.
They burst into the guardroom prepared for sudden and violent action. But the great chamber was empty of Moon men.
On the walls hung ray rifles. Ross and Moore each snatched one.
“Now where?” asked Moore.
Ross surveyed the room. Windowed on all sides, it had only two doors, the one they had entered and another opposite. “We’ll try that,” Ross decided. “What we’ve got to find now is a spot that commands the square where the ray machine is bedded.”
The sloping corridor led them to such a spot. On a balcony they stood and for a moment were content to watch Horta’s artisans toiling with sandbags and debris to make barricades against the flood.
“They’ll do it, too,” Moore said aloud, voicing his chief’s thought.
“Artana’s trick was probably just to help us out,” Ross judged. “He hadn’t enough water to flood ’em out.”
Moore fidgeted. “Let’s do something, Bruce! There’s that ray reservoir. Think these pop-guns will punch a hole in it?” Ross raised his rifle, and lowered it as suddenly. For into sight, beside the giant Horta, walked Queen Boada. Moore exclaimed under his breath, fingering his rifle.
It was the Princess Illeria who, snatching the rifle from Moore’s hands, leveled it swiftly and fired. As Ross sought to snatch it from her she faced him defiantly. “Let destiny rule us!” she exclaimed. “My mother is an unhappy woman who stands in the way of peace. Let me fire again!” Her demand left Ross irresolute. As he held her hand, Moore cried out. “They spotted that shot, Bruce! They’re looking for us!”
It was true. Horta stood, legs spread, his fierce glance sweeping the open space. Workers had begun to drop sandbags and pick up guns. Ross loosed his hold.
“Let’s fire together, then,” he said heavily. “The double shot may pierce that thick metal. Aim at the muddy mark, Illeria! Ready—fire!”
The two rifles spat together. Moore yelled, “You’ve done it! Duck—fast!” They could not take cover fast enough. Ross had one glimpse of a tremendous sheet of flame licking out of the hole they had blasted, saw its counterpart high in the sky at the mouth of the ray cylinder, heard a great roar, and seemed to know nothing else.
HE regained consciousness on the platform of Peak Four, where his flagship, now repaired, rested airily. Artana, Moore and Illeria bent over him solicitously.
“What happened?” he asked, fretfully. Artana spoke soberly. “The Queen is dead.” He turned to Illeria, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head. “Long live the Queen!”
Ross glanced at Moore. The navigator winked. “Order is restored, Chief,” he explained. “That blow-up finished Horta and all his works. And Earth is on the phone. All serene there, since the Los Angeles disaster. You are ordered to return and report.”
Illeria dropped to her knees beside Ross. “You will not go? You will stay—and my people shall mak
e you king!”
Ross looked long into her eyes, and the Earth seemed far away and an unreal world. But he slowly shook his head as he rose and gently lifted her to her feet. “I must go, Illeria,” he said. “But—perhaps I shall return. Good-bye, Artana, you will restore peace to the Moon.”
The Lord of the Peaks bowed his head, “That I will, farewell, Ross!”
With one last glance at the white-faced princess, Ross nodded shortly to Moore. They strode to their ship without a backward glance. At a curt order the helmsman took her off, and in seconds the two figures on Peak Four’s platform had dwindled to specks.
“You can come back,” Moore grunted.
“Think so?”
“Sure. When the Council hears what you’ve done they’ll give you twenty years’ leave. With pay.”
Ross smiled. And the smile lingered as he turned to Jorgens to dictate a message for the Earth. The rocket ship droned on through space.
1940
THE INTRUDER
Emil Petaja
It was in San Francisco, on the walk above the sand and surf that pounded like the heart of the earth. There was wind, the sky and sea blended in a grey mist.
I was sitting on a stone bench watching a faint hint of distant smoke, wondering what ship it was and from what far port.
Mine was a pleasant wind—loneliness. So when he came, wrapped in his great overcoat and muffler, hat pulled down, and sat on my bench I was about to rise and leave him. There were other benches, and I was not in the mood for idle gossip about Hitler and taxes.
“Don’t go. Please.” His plea was authentic.
“I must get back to my shop,” I said.
“Surely you can spare a moment.” I could not even to begin to place the accent in his voice. Low as a whisper, tense. His deep-set eyes held me . . . his face was pale and had a serenity born of suffering. A placid face, not given to emotional betrayals, yet mystical. I sat down again. Here was someone bewilderingly strange. Someone I wouldn’t soon forget. He moved a hand toward me, as tho to hold me from going, and I saw with mild curiosity that he wore heavy gloves, like mittens.
“I am not well. I . . . I must not be out in the damp air,” I said. “But today I just had to go out and walk. I had to.”
“I can understand.” I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in his words. “I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visited your shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of the covers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right?”
I nodded, “But how . . .”
“You have tried writing, but have had no success. Alone in the world, your loneliness has much a family man, harassed might envy.”
“That’s true,” I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fake mystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to his pocket-book. His next words were a little amused, but he didn’t smile.
“No, I’m not a psychic—in the ordinary sense, I’ve visited your shop. I was there only yesterday,” he said. And I remembered him. In returning from my lunch I had met him coming out of my humble place of business. One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, and I recalled pausing to watch his stiff-legged progress down the street and around the corner.
There was now a pause, while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiled walk in the growling wind. Then a sound like a sigh came from my companion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly of a sudden, as tho approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me as it had not before, I wanted to leave.
“Dare I tell you? DARE I!” His white face turned upward. It was as though he questioned some spirit in the winds.
I was silent; curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not be allowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still.
“Were you ever told, as a child, that you must not attempt to count the stars in the sky at night—that if you did you might lose your mind?”
“Why, yes. I believe I’ve heard that old superstition. Very reasonable, I believe; based on the assumption that the task would be too great for one brain. I . . .”
“I suppose it never occurred to you,” he interrupted, “that this superstition might hold even more truth than that, truth as malignant as it is vast. Perhaps the cosmos hold secrets beyond comprehension of man; and what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind? Is nature rather not terrible, than kind? In the stars are patterns—designs which if read, might lure the intrepid miserable one who reads them out of earth and beyond . . . beyond, to immeasurable evil . . . Do you understand what I am saying?” His voice quivered metallically, was vibrant with emotion.
I tried to smile, but managed only a sickly grin. “I understand you, sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such as that without any shred of evidence.”
“There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe that men have lost their minds from incessant study of the stars?”
“Perhaps some have, I don’t know,” I returned. “But in the South of this state in one of the country’s leading observatories, I have a friend who is famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I. If not saner.” I tacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis.
The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied I caught the words “danger . . .” and “fools . . .” We were silent again. Low dark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified.
Presently, in his clipt speech, the stranger said, “Do you believe that life exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered what kind of life might inhabit the other stars in this solar system, and those beyond it?” His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and they bewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible and awful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander might be questioned about things with which the asker is familiar, as I might ask a New Yorker, “What do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge?”
“I wouldn’t attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man,” I said. “Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers of fiction.” I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, but inwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. I suddenly realized, with childish fear, that night was falling.
“Writers of fiction! And what if they were to guess too well? What then? Is it safe for them to have full rein over their imaginations? Like the star-gazers . . .” I said nothing, but smiled.
“Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond most earthly minds—those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps those who are Beyond are not yet ready to make themselves known to Earthlings? And maybe THEY, are annoyed with the puny publicity they receive from imaginative writers . . . Ask yourself, what is imagination? Are earth-minds capable of conceiving that which is not and has never been; or is this imagination merely a deeper insight into worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes of dream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakened from a dream with the sinister feeling that all was not well inside your mind?—that while you, the real you, were away in Limbo—someone—something was probing in your mind, invading it and reading it. Might not THEY leave behind them in departure shadowy trailings of their own minds?”
Now I was indeed speechless. For a strange nothing had started my neck-hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well . . . Two, no three, writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yet inevitable dooms; writers I had known; had recently died, by accident.
“What of old legends? Of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun. That legend dates back to Mu and Atlantis. Who, man, was and is Satan? Christ? And Jehovah? benevolent and all-saving, were but a monstrous jest fostered by THEY to keep man blindly content, and keep him divided among himself so that he strove not to unravel the stars?”
“Man, in my foolish youth I studied by candleflame secrets tha
t would scorch your very soul. Of women who with their own bare hands have strangled the children they bore so that the world might not know . . . Disease and sickness at which physicians throw up their hands in helpless bafflement. When strong men tear at their limbs and heads and agony—seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselves into their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own abominable significance. It is THEM. Who are eternal and nameless, who send their scouts down to test earth-man. Don’t you realize that they have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble, and finally walk? And that they are waiting, biding their time . . .” I shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then, bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly: “How do you know this? Are you one of THEM?” He shook his head violently. “No, no!” I made as to go, feeling an aching horror within me.
“Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell you all. I will not describe them. And I will not assay that which, when upon first seeing you here by the sea, I first intended . . .” I listened. Not daring to look at him; as in the grip of daemonaic dream. My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have been unable to write with them until now. He concluded thus:
“So you see that I am everywhere a worldless alien. Sometimes this secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must feel the presence of someone human near me, else I shall attempt to commit suicide and again fail. It is without end—my horror. Have pity on me, man of earth, as I have had pity on you.”
It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading desperation into his staring eyes. “Why have you told me? What—” My voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered.
He understood. Shrieked one word: “PITY!” into my insensible ear, and was gone.
That was 3 nites ago and each nite since has been hell. I cannot remember how long it was after the STRANGER left that I found myself able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And I cannot—WILL NOT—reveal to you all that I heard.