by Jerry
“I’ll tell you a secret,” the ruler said smiling. Now that men were coming to Dryadaeum she had acquired a new serenity. “Your ship has been ready for some weeks now.”
“And you let me endure this—this!” he cried accusingly.
“Oh come, Leeds, is that polite?” she asked him. Then, an odd light in her eyes, “Are you sure you wish to pursue your travels alone? You might take any of several thousand splendid girls with you.” She was very evidently proposing herself.
“My dear Madame President,” said Leeds, who had grown genuinely to respect her during his stay in her residence, “I must beg you to remember the conditions under which I left my own world and time and what has happened here. To me at any rate it has been like one continuous occurrence. Certainly my efforts to get free of human entanglements, to free my thoughts for science, have failed miserably.”
Some of the light went out of her limpid dark eyes as she sighed and said, “Yes, Leeds, you have proved your right to freedom. In fact there is nothing I can deny you after what you have done for the women of this planet. You will find your ship waiting at the field. It is set for the planet you selected in far Andromeda. This time it will not take you eight centuries. Our new dimension-drive will get you there in less than two weeks.”
“You’re sure the planet is in a stage one of population?” he asked anxiously. This would mean the sparsest sort of pioneer settlement with few or no women present.
“Here is the latest galactic report,” she said, lifting a sheaf of documents from her desk. But Leeds Markham waved it away.
“Very well,” he said. “And thanks—thanks very much.” Their hands touched briefly and warmly and then, for the second time in the course of his stay, U1 Stell kissed him full on the lips.
“Go now,” she said, her voice husky. “Go quickly. You’re a very great man—and a very great fool.”
* * * * *
There were no straps, no couch, no elaborate instruments on the panel of Chariot II. Leeds simply sat in an armchair and pressed two buttons—one for predetermined direction of passage, the other for take-off. It was very comfortable, very casual.
Acceleration was so gentle, thanks to almost limitless atomic fuel, that no braces or straps were needed. Leeds sat back in one of the two armchairs with which the cabin was provided and looked at the starscape on the screen above him.
He relaxed and luxuriated in his relaxation. It was the first such ease he had known in many weeks. He speculated briefly upon his destination, then thought back upon his recent experiences on Dryadaeum. On the whole it had been stimulating. But if he had stayed there another week he would have softened and cracked. He thought about U1 Stell and her dark dynamism, then more lingeringly about Aleta and her red hair and green eyes and volcanic emotional potential. Yes, Aleta had been a lot of young woman—and a pretty fair scientist to boot. He wished a trifle longingly that he had her eight centuries of added learning to add to his own.
“I’m going out of my mind,” he muttered aloud as a faint scent; reminiscent of Aleta, spread to his nostrils.
“Oh, no you aren’t,” the red-head said calmly from the other armchair. “I’m right here with you.”
Leeds Markham looked at her—and she was very inviting and very defiant and very lovely in the soft light of the cabin. And as he reached for her he thought, “Well, I stuck it for almost eight centuries—but praise Allah I was unconscious most of the time.”
STRATOSHIP X9
W.B. Clarke
DAN MADOC thrust through the chill night of Iskar, keeping his eyes on the blue fire. The tongues danced in giant formations on the horizon. The flickering plumes of blue fire seemed a weird witchery even from this distance.
Dan wondered if the Brethren were far behind. If he had outdistanced the Iskarites, he was lucky. Those clumsy, four-legged bears could nevertheless move fast when they desired. And now that the Earthian prisoners had broken out of the machine jail, the Iskarites would be moving damned furiously.
Iskar was a cold planet. Even though he had maintained a fast pace for the last hour, Dan Madoc still felt the freezing atmosphere sting through his nylon clothes. His face was raw with cold, although there was no wind on Iskar.
He hoped the other twenty-five Earthians had escaped successfully, but he doubted it. There was nowhere to escape to. Iskar was a tiny planet in a System of four hundred other planets, it was incredibly distant from Mother Earth. And Earth was fighting wars with the winged Sirisites. At the moment Iskar hardly existed in the memories of those at home. So that the break from the machine jail was a move of desperation. The Earthians could not leave the tiny planet.
The machine jail had been a hellish place. The Iskarites had attempted to create a machine civilization similar to Earth, Mars and Venus, but they had no ability with machines. Machines were alien to the bear-like creatures. Still they had persisted with their plans, and so built the machine jail with slave labour.
The machine jail was a grotesque factory of silent metal mechanisms imported from Earth just before the wars. The humans were strapped to the mechanism. Arms and legs were bound to metallic components so that the prisoners of the machine jail were part of the remorselessly working tools. This was the Iskarites’ conception of machine minders. Men and women, captured as they landed to prospect on Iskar, provided human components for the imported machines. Contorted flesh had to operate with the machines. From the chutes and belts the products the Iskarites desired emerged.
The break had been planned by Dan Madoc and Chet Wilson. The two men, sent by the four-legged Iskarites to repair a conveyor, had seized their guards. A fight and the guards were dead, their skulls broken by metal bars. The remainder of the Earthians were freed and the breakout started. It was an escape of desperation. Death awaited many of them, but there are worse things than death. Most of the Earthians had hoped they might evade the Iskarites in the night.
Dan Madoc had found himself separated from Chet Wilson. There had been nothing else but to plunge on desperately. He guessed he had been lucky in evading the bear-people. He had heard screams of pain in the night as claws had ripped human flesh. Others had probably been rounded up, for the Iskarites would not want to lose their mechanistic slaves.
Now the blue fire danced mockingly on the horizon ahead. That was his destination, for he had heard strange tales about the cold, blue flame of Iskar.
He ran on, lurching a trifle, his mouth sucking painfully at the knife-edged air. The terrain was rocky and moss-covered. He had crossed hills and gullies where ice crusted the ground. He had gone on and on, realising that by some amazing fluke he had avoided the Iskarites.
The leaders of the Iskarites were called the Brethren. They were the ones who made the decisions. They were the ruling class. The Brethren would be issuing orders right now in their grunting language. They would find out who had got away, and they would make plans to scour the small planet.
The blue flames danced eerily and closer now. Dan Madoc panted for air and ran on. Then he felt the queer fumes in his lungs. He was really near to the jagged holes from where the flame of Iskar spouted. There was no heat. Remembering the tales he had heard, he knew he would encounter no heat. Cold blue flames danced like mere light on a screen.
On and on he ran, staggering somewhat as he breasted the final slope to the ridge of rocky gaps where the flames issued. Then he halted, sucking at the air and staring at the flames.
It was odd, but there was not the slightest heat. As he breathed heavily, he felt the peculiar fumes rush into his lungs. It was not an unpleasant sensation. In fact, it had a narcotic effect upon him, steadying his nerves.
He advanced, his head back, staring up at the leaping blue flame as it towered thirty feet into the air. The light blue flame flickered up from a series of trenches in the rocky pileup.
At the fringe of the actual flame he hesitated. Then he dived forward. He thought he could not be hurt if there was no heat or poisonous fumes. He had to test
the strange tales he had heard about the blue flames. At least, he could not be in any more danger than if he waited until dawn for the Iskarites to find him.
He walked right into the flame. He halted and sucked for air. He got mostly a lungful of the fumes. They did not irritate or choke, but he had a curious feeling of dizziness.
Dan Madoc stood right in the centre of a thirty foot pillar of Iskar flame and waited, his hands clenched by his side. Then, after some ten minutes, while he rocked under the narcotic effect of fumes, he raised his hands and stared at them.
He could see his hands all right. They looked normal, work-stained and with rough red patches where he had been strapped to a coil-winder.
He could see his hands—and his legs—but he wondered if the tales of Iskar flame were true. Was he now invisible? Was he invisible to others? Had the flame coated him with the strange deposit?
He could see himself, but perhaps that was part of the odd effect. Could the Brethren see him?
Grimly, Dan Madoc walked out of the flame. He figured he might soon have the opportunity of testing whether he was invisible or not. How long would the effect last—if the change had taken place? He had heard tales. The reflective deposit wore off after so many hours, depending upon friction, his own exertions and climatic changes.
Dan clambered down from the rocks and paused again. He’d have to test the whole thing. If he was invisible, there was a great chance of getting to the one and only spaceship belonging to the Iskarites. The craft lay outside the town, crewless and little used by the un-mechanistic bear-people.
Dan Madoc jumped down from some rocks and made to stride out through the eerie blue light thrown by the flames. He would be back at the town before dawn and test his invisibility. Life or death hung on the test.
Then, all at once, he crouched as he sighted a figure move less than ten yards ahead. The bluish light mingling with the dark made identification of the figure difficult. For a moment he thought the figure might be one of the grey, furred Iskarites. Then, with a sudden leap of his heart, he knew the creature was two-legged. One of the Earthians!
He hurried over the rocky ground. He made a few sounds with his boots, and the figure whipped around in fear.
Dan Madoc saw the girl’s face and recognised her. She was Alix Denyer, one of the most courageous of the Earthian prisoners. She was nearly as tall as he. She had swung her golden head in alarm at the sounds he made.
Then he laughed and ran forward at the same time. She heard the laugh and whipped around, bewildered, staring for a sign of the man who had laughed.
Dan Madoc was within two yards of the girl when he realised the flame had been tested already. Alix Denyer could not see him!
He rapped out reassuring words.
“Alix—this is Dan Madoc! This voice! You can’t see me! I am invisible!” He laughed again and reached out to grasp the girl’s arm. She was turning her head, searching for sign of him.
“The flame! So you’ve been through the flame!” she panted. “It’s true! The stories are true!”
He held her arm. She steadied and put out her hands to grasp his invisible body.
“Can’t you really see me?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No. There is no sign of you—and yet you’re close enough.”
He had always liked Alix Denyer, though the routine of the machine prison had separated them just when their friendship was ripening.
“That’s a fair test,” he said. “Come closer to the flames and tell me if I am completely invisible to you.”
They went closer, so that the blue light danced all around. She assured him he was completely invisible.
“I hope the Iskarites have no greater range,” he said grimly. “They have the sense of smell, like the animals they are. But maybe we can outwit them. You must stand in the flame for about ten minutes. You’ll be unharmed. I’ll wait for you to emerge. I won’t go in again. Over-exposure might bring queer results.”
She nodded, clung to him for a minute and then steadied. Watching her, he thought she was a proud, good-looking woman. Even the oil on her face, brought from the machine jail, could not disguise the fine lines of her face, her generous lips and liquid eyes.
“I made this way hoping to find a hideout,” she confessed. “I thought the tales of the flames were just more inter-space rumours. I don’t know how I got away from the prison. Oh, it was terrible hearing the cries of those killed and captured!”
“You’ll have to forget that!” He led her to the nearest pillar of flame. “Go in there and endure the dizziness for as long as ten minutes. I’ll wait for you.” He had a theory he would be able to see her when she emerged from the flames. He could see his own limbs, so probably he would be able to see Alix. There was some queer chemical action in the deposit laid over a body that entered the flames. He had no time to think about analysing the mystery. With him the invisibility was an accomplished fact, and that was that.
He waited and ten minutes later saw Alix Denyer stagger out of the concealing pillar of flame. He was grimly triumphant that his theory was right. He could see Alix. Yet she had been unable to see him earlier. So they were now both invisible to those unaffected by the flame.
He strode up and helped her down to smooth ground away from the fumes.
“Look, Alix, we’ve got a chance to get off this terrible planet. We might get to the spaceship.”
“What about the others, now back in the machine jail?” she asked slowly.
For a moment he looked grim, impatient.
“Okay. We’ll try to rescue them. Maybe we are invisible, but the Iskarites will smell us out.”
“The Brethren will have taken some of the Earthians back to the operating points in the machine jail,” she said. “We must try to get them out.”
For a moment, grim, hard man though he was, he shuddered at the thought of going back to the ghastly jail.
“If we keep moving, we might baffle the Iskarites’ sense of smell,” he said. “So let’s get back to the town.”
They left the giant tongues of blue flame and travelled back towards the Iskar town. Hand in hand, they walked and climbed the rough terrain. About ninety Earth minutes later, they stood on a hillock of moss and overlooked the town. The cavernous homes of the bear people lined the streets. There were few mechanistic contrivances on the roads. All markets and shops were inside the caves. That was the way the Iskarites liked to live.
The short night was nearly over. Iskar’s distant sun would soon send watery rays to warm the chill planet.
At one end of the town lay the big, black domed machine jail. It was just a huge cavern of metal, without windows. Staring at it from a distance, Dan Madoc thought of the weeks he had spent in the grotesque jail, and he shuddered.
“I suppose the Iskarites have rounded up the remaining prisoners and stuck them back as human components among those machines,” he said. “Well, now for the test.”
They walked slowly towards the town. He held Alix Denyer’s arm protectingly.
He could see, on the outskirts of the town, the globular shape of the spaceship. It lay motionless and deserted. He remembered the rumours that had gone around the machine jail when the ship had landed on Iskar. The tales said that the Iskarites had stolen the ship from another planet and that they had nearly wrecked it on landing, such was their lack of ability with anything mechanical.
The Iskarites had not gone near the ship after the bad landing. The craft, named Stratoship X9 by some unknown people on an unknown planet, was still assumed to be in flying order, in spite of the bad landing.
Dan Madoc was sure he could reach the ship easily, without attracting the Iskarites. He and Alix had the chance to make an easy getaway. And yet there was the machine jail and its prisoners to think about. The Earthians could not be left to a mechanistic hell.
With swift, grim strides, they walked into the town. Although they were undoubtedly invisible, they tried to avoid the groups of bea
r-people.
Even so, more than once as they passed some of the Iskarites, one of the creatures would rise on its hind legs, paw and sniff at the air.
But Dan and Alix hurried on, leaving the creature puzzled. With swift movement, their scent trail vanished.
In a few minutes Dan and the girl arrived at the big, domed prison. They stood outside the windowless place and heard the clank of moving metal and the occasional shriek of a human, trapped as a living component of the ghastly factory.
The big main door opened. Two furred Iskarites walked out of the sliding door, talking in their “Pog” language. The syllables sounded like “Pog” in every conceivable variation of tone. Judging by the red markings on their fur, the two creatures were engineers, rare individuals on Iskar.
Seizing the chance, Dan and Alix slipped through the open door. The two bear-creatures rose on hind-legs pawing and sniffing the air, puzzled. When rearing like this, they were fully nine feet tall. They had formidable claws.
Inside the cavernous jail it was darkish, and the clank and whine of machinery was everywhere. The Iskarites did not need much light to see; they had animalish perceptions.
Dan and Alix saw the guards lurching awkwardly down the aisles, mimicking Earthian overseers. There were only three in evidence at the moment. The furry creatures walked clumsily on hind legs, pausing occasionally to stare at some wretched human strapped and bolted to a remorseless machine.
Dan Madoc looked around for something handy to use as a weapon. He hesitated. If he wielded a steel bar, the weapon would not be invisible.
But the guards had to be attacked before the prisoners could be released. Nothing could be achieved until the guards were out of the way.
Dan Madoc picked up the steel bar and ran to the nearest Iskarite guard. The creature sensed danger, saw the steel bar rushing forward without any apparent support or motive power. The Iskarite reared and pawed furiously at the steel bar.