“Chris, old boy, what happened to you? How did they get you?”
The dying man motioned to the bottle. Penger administered another dose of the stimulant. A little color came into Bell’s cheeks.
“Why don’t we do something for him, Mr. Penger?” burst from Britt.
“Nothing we can do,” was Penger’s hopeless response. “Once that dart-poison gets into you it’s only a question of time before you kick off. Only thing that’s kept him alive so far is the thong he’s tied around his leg. But the poison’s seeping back in spite of it—can’t you see how black his skin is above the tied part? Soon it will reach his heart.”
Chris was talking again, his voice a little stronger, with the false strength lent it by the whiskey. He was answering Arnim’s last question.
“Came through the Curtain.”
“Through the Curtain! How in Hades—”
“Yes. Through the Curtain. It was charged, I’m sure of that.” Bell’s voice was blurred with agony, low, but very clear. An inner strength seemed to be supporting him, to be warding off the hovering death.
“It was charged, but just as I was going over to the Wanderer to take off, there was a whine from the jungle, a whine that rose and fell, and a shower of darts. Most struck against the Curtain, and fell, but some got through, and one clipped me, hung in my leg.” A glance of astonishment passed between Penger and Haldane, but they did not interrupt the wounded man’s laboring narrative.
“I dragged myself in here, strapped the leg. Knew it was no use, but I had to get a message through to you. I called and called, while that whine rose and fell, rose and fell out there somewhere, and the savages showed themselves around the Curtain and blew their darts through it. I watched them through the open door while I called you, and waited, dizzy, for the answer that never came.
“Just a little round spot, I noticed, in the Curtain where the darts came through. I kept shouting for you, till I passed out. Then I came to again, and called again. And that infernal whine still came from the jungle, and the fish-faced natives were dancing. And still you didn’t answer.
“Then everything went black again. Don’t know whether I dreamed or not, but it seemed I came to, and the noise from the jungle was louder, and through a haze I thought I saw a Venusian creep up to the Curtain, and start through. Coming through the Curtain, though I could hear my generator going full force! Then, when his body was halfway through he seemed to shrivel up and drop, with an awful look of agony on his face.
“Again I passed out. Thunder, thunder and lightning roused me. Thank God, the whining sound had stopped. A last dart hit the very spot the others had come through, but fell back. I called again hopelessly. I heard your answer. Then—blackness again…”
The last word trailed off into nothingness. The white eyelids drooped, but came open again. Bell struggled into a sitting position.
“Don’t, don’t let them beat us, Arnim. They—never licked us yet. Do you hear me—old man—it’s getting—dark. Where—where are you?”
“Right here, Chris, right here beside you. What is it you want me to do?”
“The Wanderer—the papers are there—and a letter—for you. Oh—oh—the pain,” his hand clutched at his heart, his eyes stared unseeingly before him. “Arnim—Britt—get that claim filed. Go! As you love old Earth—leave me and go!”
He fell back.
“Good-bye,” he whispered. Then he quivered, and lay still.
“Good-bye, pal.” There was the suspicion of a sob in Penger’s voice. Then he turned to the white-faced, shaken Haldane. The veteran’s face was grim, his eyes like chilled steel.
“If you ever make half the man he was…” He choked, left the sentence unfinished, strode across to the still open door, and stood there, staring out.
Britt bent to the motionless body, straightened it, threw over it a blanket from the neatly made bunk. A thick silence reigned in the room, broken only by the eternal swish, of the rain.
“Britt—come here!” Penger’s voice cut startlingly through the quiet. Haldane leaped to the doorway. “Look!”
A red, metallic sphere was rising from the jungle, a scant quarter-mile away, and disappearing in the haze.
“That’s Rutnom’s station ship, or I’m a dog-faced Jovian!”
“Rutnom! That’s the Mitco super on Venus, isn’t it. What’s he doing over here in ‘Venus, Inc.’ territory?”
“That’s what I want to know. I’ve run up against him before, on Jupiter. A sneaking, dirty fighter. I’m going out there.”
“But—the Venusians.”
“Darn the Venusians. I want to know if he was at the bottom of this deviltry, why the Curtain failed. God help him if what I suspect is true!”
“Then I’m going with you!”
“You stay here!”
“Mr. Penger, I would never forgive myself if you got into trouble out there and I wasn’t able to help. Please…”
“Oh well, if you will be a fool. Listen—when we’re through the Curtain, let me go ahead. Follow about fifty feet behind. Keep in what shelter you can, and protect my rear.
“For the love of Mike, don’t fall asleep, and don’t take your finger off the button on your projector. If they get me, try to get back. Understand!” Haldane nodded.
Once outside the protecting network; he crouched in the shelter of a gnarled root, and marveled at the dexterity with which the veteran moved through the thicket, darting from cover to cover like a gliding shadow. When his time to proceed came Britt strove to imitate his leader, but by comparison with the other’s silent passage he seemed to be crashing recklessly through the tangled underbrush.
Suddenly Arnim halted, bent low, was staring at something through the bleached foliage. Haldane obeyed the covert signal to halt. After long minutes, Penger gestured for him to come up.
“Look at that!” Penger pointed with his projector through the leafy screen. Britt strove to pierce the mist and the rain, could make out nothing in the haze. Then a vagrant breeze cleared away the obscuring fog. He was looking at a clearing, man-made. He could see the hacked stumps of the jungle growth, still raw.
In the center of the opening was a tangled mass of wires, coils, broken glass. The ground was blackened and scarred as if a lightning bolt had just struck. To one side, a depression in the mud, rapidly filling with water, showed where the Martian sphere had rested.
“That’s where the whining noise came from. I half-thought Chris was delirious—but I see it now. That’s why the Curtain failed—why we couldn’t hear Bell. Some ray-projector like a searchlight—that neutralized the Grendon vibration where it impinged and also drowned the communication waves.
“Concentrated, it was powerful enough to open a passage for the darts, but when they diffused it to cover a space big enough for a man to get through it neutralized only partly. That’s what killed the savage.”
“How could the natives have invented anything like this?” ventured Britt.
“Natives, phooey! It’s Rutnom, up to his old tricks. Using the savages to cover his own tracks, so that he could put on a bland smile of innocence when the B. P. C. police investigate. He pulled that before on Jupiter. But why? Why? There’s plenty of web here for both of us.”
“Mr. Bell said something about filing papers on the Wanderer—and a letter.”
“Of course. I see it now. That was a jovium burn on his arm. And I thought he was raving, was dreaming himself back in the old days. Wait. The Satona, the Mitco relief ship, is due here in a week. We have no time to lose. Come on!”
The trader was off at a run, reckless of possible ambush. Britt followed, wondering, back into the compound.
“No time to bury him now. We’ll be back,” Penger shouted as he sealed shut the door of Bell’s tomb. In moments the Earthmen were in the little two-man flier. Penger sprang to the control levers, a roaring blast stirred the mud beneath. Then the Wanderer had leaped free, was shooting thro
ugh the cloud banks at terrific speed.
Britt was thrust to the floor by the tremendous force of acceleration. Arnim clung to the control levers, gasping. In the visor screen there was nothing but grey drifting wisps of vapor. Then came a sudden glorious burst of light—the sun!—the sun the Terrestrials had not seen for half an Earth year!
CHAPTER II
The Chase through Space
The Wanderer reached the limit of its la normal speed, settled down to its steady pace of two hundred Earth miles a second. Released from the pressure of the acceleration, Britt felt a sudden lightness. Already they were far enough from Venus to be losing the effects of her gravity.
Penger switched on the coils that normalized this condition within the ship. He studied the banked gauge faces, with their serried rows of quivering needles, leafed rapidly through the chart book conveniently clamped beside the control levers. Then he made certain adjustments, and locked the levers.
“All set. She’s on the automatic control now. Nothing to do about navigation until we get within a quarter-million miles of Ganymede. Now let’s take a look at what’s happening behind.”
He twirled the wheel of the periscope. On the visor screen, against the blackness of space with its myriad golden twinkling points, the great ball of Venus stood out, a vast sphere of heaving vapors, glowing glorious in the light of the sun. The two men crowded close to the screen, searching for sign of a pursuer.
“The Martian isn’t following. Wise boy, his small boat hasn’t the speed of the Wanderer; we’d walk away from him.”
“Here’s the letter, sir, that Mr. Bell spoke about.”
A fleeting smile crossed Arnim’s face. “Oh, you want to know what it’s all about, do you. Can’t blame you. Hand it over.” Penger read aloud:
“Arnim: I’m writing this to drop down into your enclosure from the Wanderer before I make off for Ganymede. I’ve got great news for you, but I don’t dare talk to you over the teletalker, for fear the Martians will overhear.
“First, I owe you an apology. For the first time, I think, in the nearly twenty years we’ve fought together as Venus, Inc. men, I’ve kept a secret from you. And that’s because it wasn’t my secret. Last time I was on Earth, Stromstein told me, in strictest confidence, that the jovium mines on Jupiter, both ours and Mitco’s, were petering out. He didn’t think they’d last another two years.”
“No wonder!” Arnim exclaimed. Britt looked at him questioningly, but Penger resumed his reading.
“You know what that would mean, of course. So you can imagine how I felt when, on that mapping trip I took, I stumbled on a mountain of the peculiarly greenish rock that is characteristic of the jovium deposits on Jupiter.
“I immediately staked the claim, then worked back through the jungle to where, about twenty miles away, I had left the Wanderer. I had to get a badinite flash, you see, to take a sample in, according to the rules of the B. P. C. Mineral Claims Commission. The stuff was almost pure. I got a nasty burn on my arm when I brushed against it, too.
“On my way back after I got my sample, I ran into Astna, Rutnom’s sidekick. He looked queerly at the flask, and the burn on my arm, but I thought fast and told him I was out collecting insects, and the flask was the only thing I could find to put them into. I think I fooled him, but I’m a little worried.”
“Yeah, he fooled him!” Penger interrupted himself. “You can’t put much over on those Martians.”
“Nothing much more. I’ve got the Wanderer all set for a long trip, and as soon as I finish this I take off for Ganymede to file the claim. After that we can thumb our noses at Rutnom.
“You’ll be back on Earth by the time I return. Lucky fellow. Give my regards to the bright lights. And tell the kid I’ll get in touch with him as soon as I get back. Venus won’t be such a lonely place when they start working the mine. So long. Chris.”
“Just about what I figured,” Penger concluded, “When I saw what Rutnom had been up to. Let’s take a look at the location papers.”
“Here’s the dispatch box, sir. But it’s sealed.”
“Sealed! Well I’ll be darned.” Penger looked disconsolately at the square box of argento-platinoid that Britt held out to him. “That’s a tough note. Suppose we lose that somehow—only Bell knew where that deposit is; and he’s gone.”
Even captains of interplanetary trading ships are sometimes venal, and Mitco was ever willing to pay well for a glimpse of the reports and other dispatches that shuttle across the skies between the Earth Company’s far flung stations and the great Central Headquarters at Denver.
Hence these dispatch boxes were devised. Once sealed, they could not be opened save by the intricate unsealing apparatus that existed only at Denver and, by virtue of the supreme power of the B. P. C., at such control points of the august body as the Mineral Claims Office on Ganymede Any attempt to get at the contents by force, released a chemical within that utterly destroyed everything enclosed.
“Well, we’ll have to take good care we don’t lose it,” Arnim continued. “I see the badinite flask is here, with the sample. Good. Now what do you say we get some food into us?”
“I think that’s a splendid idea. Mr. Bell certainly stocked the ship up well with food tablets. And the water tanks are all filled. Say, if it wasn’t for thinking of him lying back there, this would be a lark. I never expected to be on my way to Jupiter.”
“It’s no junket, and don’t kid yourself. I’ve never known Rutnom or any other Mitco man to give up without a scrap. They’ll be after us, beyond a doubt. And we’ll have our job cut out to beat them.”
“I’m not worried, Mr. Penger,” Britt retorted confidently. “I know you’ll win out.”
“Say, Mr. Penger,” the lad broke out after a silence, during which both had busied themselves with disposing of enormous doses of concentrated food, “Why should Rutnom go to such lengths to jump our claim? After all, the governments have a monopoly of jovium. There’s no question of anybody making any money out of it.”
“Plenty of reason. If we don’t get this claim filed, there won’t be any Earthmen worrying about making money after a few years. You heard what Bell wrote about the mines on Jupiter petering out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well—you know what jovium is used for. It’s the catalyst that made interplanetary voyaging practical. Oh, we had space ships before the deposits were found on Jupiter. But they had to carry such enormous volumes of fuel to get anywhere that there was neither space nor carrying capacity left for commercially practicable freight nor, what is more important, in the present instance, heavy armament.
“All they were fit for was to carry two or three men on exploration trips. That was the case on Mars as well as on Earth. Their fuel differed somewhat, but the principle was the same.
“Mercury, it is true, had had solar energy motors for ages, but they refuse to divulge the secret.
“Their civilization is so far ahead of ours that they refuse to have anything to do with Terrestrials or Martians, whom they look down upon as we look down upon the savages of Jupiter and Venus. True, they keep the peace, but that is because they feel it an obligation placed on them because of their superiority.
“The discovery of jovium initiated the commercial exploitation of the far planets. It initiated also a race in spatial armament between Mars and Earth, that so far has been a dead heat.”
Britt was listening attentively. He had, naturally, heard all this on the school-broadcasts, but listening to dry history, and hearing it told by a man who had seen the history in the making, had helped to make it, were different matters.
Besides, he thrilled at the thought, he was even now taking part in a new chapter of the stirring story.
“You have seen a little of the ruthless nature of the Martians. What do you think would happen to Earth if our jovium mines were exhausted and they still had a plentiful supply, such as Bell credits to this, new deposit?”
“They’d drive
Earth out of space.”
“Yes, and probably attack us at home. So you see how vitally important it is for us to get that box and what it contains safely to Ganymede.”
“Why were you in such a rush to get off? Once we were away from Venus, Rutnom couldn’t, give us any more trouble. You said yourself that his flier hasn’t nearly the speed of the Wanderer.”
“His ship hasn’t, but the Satona is due in a week. It will take us twenty days to make the trip at our best rate. She can do it in ten. With her armament, we wouldn’t stand the chance of a snowball on the Sun against her should she catch up with us. And she’ll try, my boy, she’ll try.”
“We ought to make it with about forty-eight hours to spare, but those Mitco boats don’t adhere to schedule very closely, and she might well reach Venus a day ahead of time. If she does, you’ll see some fun.”
Day after day the Wanderer drove across the immensity of space. Day after day the Terrestrials watched the visor screens, took turns scanning the wide velvety blackness of the heavens through the electro-telescope. Only the glory of the widespread firmament met their weary glance. A week passed by, and still there was no sign of a pursuer. The Earthmen began to breathe more freely. A little more, and they would be beyond reach of the Martians.
Then, on the eighth day, Britt, at the telescope, suddenly exclaimed.
“Mr. Penger, what’s this? A new star, or…”
Penger sprang to the telescope. Glowing redly in the oblique rays of the sun was a new body, a star where no star should be. Even as he gazed it grew, took the form of a tiny half-disk.
“It’s the Satona all right. And just as I was beginning to think we’d get away with it. Look at her come! Here Britt, watch her while I try to get some more speed out of this scow.”
Haldane clung, fascinated, to the eyepiece while Penger thought desperately of how he might avoid them. With his given energy his speed was sadly limited and the pointer of the speed indicator would not move above the 250 mark on its dials. It would be suicidal to use up energy in getting any more out of the Wanderer.
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