by Earl
Gest Laro shrugged his shoulders as if reluctant to argue the point. He was about to speak again when someone rapped on the door. Laro arose and spoke sharply in an unknown tongue. The door opened. A man stood framed in it. In appearance he was a prototype of the Koor. He babbled something in the same mysterious tongue. Gest Laro answered. The man saluted, closed the door, and was gone.
Koor Laro then walked to the apparatus Bill and Sam had taken for a radio. He threw a small switch. There was a low whine of power. A square convex shield of glass above began to glow. Music filled the room and when it reached the correct pitch, a scene appeared on the glass screen.
Bill and Sam were on their feet. A television radio! They gazed with wonder-filled eyes. Before them they saw the WIBO studio and Ray Summers with his orchestra.
“I have something important to do outside. You two can enjoy this music while I’m gone. Please do not leave this room.” He turned on his heels and left.
CHAPTER IV
In a Quandary
l When Bill and Sam found themselves alone, after the door closed behind Koor Laro, they sank back into their seats and just stared at each other for some time. Things were happening so fast and of such unexpected and surprising nature that it bereft them of speech. To begin with, they had witnessed a sight in the icefields of the Arctic that their wildest imaginings could not have pictured. Now they found themselves in a ship such as they, if not the whole world, had never seen the like of before. To top it all off, a man tells them that he comes from Pluto, billions of miles away! It was breath-taking!
“Bill, is it possible that Laro told the truth?”
“Huh, I should say not. Don’t fall so easy,” Bill answered vehemently. “Answer me a few questions. Where did he learn to speak English? Up on Pluto? How come he looks so much like a. . . . a human being? How come he tunes in a radio station on earth? I could think of a hundred questions like that. You see, it’s this way, Sam. This Koor Laro has something big. Maybe he’s working for some higher boss, maybe for himself. But anyway, he’s mining something. . . . radium is the best bet. When lie gets enough to become the richest man on earth, he’s going back to civilization and raise hell. Now why all the secrecy? It’s simple. He doesn’t want anybody else to come up here and dig radium after he’s left. He wants to be the one and only big shot when he goes back. See?”
Sam looked dubious much to Bill’s exasperation. “That may and may not stand up, but did you ever see anything like this ship before?”
“Of course not. Supposing you had never seen a zeppelin before and suddenly found yourself in one. Wouldn’t it look mighty queer and outlandish to you?”
“I suppose it would. But it hardly explains this.” Sam waved an arm to take in the wonders of the room.
“Most of it’s dummy stuff, I bet,” said Bill irreverently. “I tell you, this contraption has never been beyond the stratosphere.”
“Maybe.”
“Sam, you’re too soft. Next thing this Boor Karo. . . . er. . . . Koor Laro will be selling you some of this stuff. Maybe I can make a deal with you?”
“You might if you used the Indian sign language.”
“Why, you. . . .”
They both turned to face the door after Bill had shot a poisoned glance at his tormentor. It was opening slowly. In its entrance stood a heavily-bearded man. Despite that dense growth that covered his face, he radiated youthfulness. He was slender and of medium height. He hesitated; he must have thought the room unoccupied.
“Hall, Plutonian,” shouted Bill, reckless of consequences. He figured that as long as these people were practicing gross impositions on him, he wouldn’t have to treat them at all as respectfully as would ordinarily be proper to strangers.
“Say, Bill, for what the other one lacked in hair, this baby certainly makes it up,” Sam whispered hoarsely.
The stranger still hesitated. His eyes showed great surprise.
“Come in, Plutonian, from the far reaches of space,” continued Bill in his reckless mood.
“Say, are you two fellows. . . .? Well, flesh and blood humans! Plutonian? I’m Jack Berry of Seattle!” he spoke gravely, closed the door, and walked up to them.
Their eyes swept him from head to foot. The swish of a fan could have knocked them both senseless. A hairless man tells them he’s a Plutonian, now a bearded one tells them he’s Jack Berry, the lone adventurer. There is tropic warmth in the Arctics, a ship is supposed to have traversed space, and a ray that kills airplane motors! Were they dreaming?
Bill Nevers was the first to speak. “Look here, stranger, what credentials have you to prove yourself Jack Berry? HI be damned and toasted if HI take anything for granted around here!”
The other pulled a wallet from his pocket and handed several letters to the reporter. Bill glanced through them. He looked up and extended his hand.
“Pm Bill Nevers of the Daily Tribune, that is to the best of my knowledge. I may find out Pm a Martian in another moment. Anyway, this is Sam Peters. Came up on business and also to find you.”
“For me?” laughed Jack Berry as he shook their hands.
“Sure. My editor sent me up here either to report this ship or to find you. And of all places to find you! This is the North Pole and it’s warm outside; there are things around here that I hardly dare believe, green heat rays, Eiffel towers, funny-looking airship, and funny-looking men. . . . say, I think Pm going crazy!”
Berry caught the undercurrent of humor and smiled. “It’s good to see you two humans,” he exclaimed. “These others, you know. . . .”
“But how did you get in the ship?” burst in Sam.
“Saw this layout on my way across. Circled it to get a better peek and then came down when my engines were killed by a ray from the tower.”
“Same thing happened to us!” Sam said excitedly.
Bill nodded. “But, Berry, that was nearly a year ago. Have you been here all that time?”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Yes,” Berry answered unconcernedly. “You see, Bill, Pm going to Pluto with this ship!”
“Say, Berry, are you trying to pull that one over on us, too?” Out of the corner of his mouth, Bill whispered to Sam, “In cahoots.”
Jack Berry looked from one to the other. Plain disbelief showed in Bill’s eyes, a doubt in Sam’s.
“Honest to goodness, Berry, as a fellow American, quit the spoofing and tell me the say. Pm going to cover this story from beginning to end. It’s my one big opportunity. I don’t want to be the big jackass of the newspapers. Give me the straight goods, will you?” Bill Nevers pleaded with all his heart.
“So help me, Nevers, it’s one of these truths that’s stranger than fiction,” Berry said seriously.
l Sam Peters had a look of indecision on his face; the slightest evidence one way or other could have changed it to disbelief or belief. Bill was writing again. Feverishly his hand flew over the notebook. He was taking down the words of Berry and Gest Laro on the chance that they might prove verifiable later on. He looked up.
“Say, this is going to be the biggest thing since the flood,” he cried in delirious joy. “It’ll knock the cockeyed world flat—breathless.”
“It was you then who taught Gest Laro to speak English?” Sam spoke up.
“Yup. He’s a great chap, this Koor Laro. He hates Pluto. He told me all about it. It’s a gloomy world The people are like the weather, morose and taciturn. They work in the mines. They have little fun and few recreations. Of course, the upper classes lead a better life. Although Pluto has hardly any sunlight to speak of, the climate is very warm because of the heat from its radioactive ores in which it abounds. They eat but one thing, a synthetic food made from a woody plant. One of the essentials needed in its preparation is malachite, an ore of copper. Their mines have petered out of this. Their scientists knew of this long before it happened, so they had time to bend their efforts to a search for malachite on some other world of the solar s
ystem. They sent ships to the various planets. On Neptune and Uranus they could not get any because the temperature was too low for them to work in. Jupiter and Saturn are in a liquid state that made a landing impossible. Mars was such a hotbed of warlike races that it was certain death to stop there. Throughout the years that passed, they found some here and there among the numerous satellites, but not enough, and the search finally led this ship to Earth.”
Bill Nevers was scribbling like mad.
“They are a very clannish race and absolutely disinterested in other peoples. When the ship came here three years ago and searched the ground for malachite, they found it in other places besides here. But the other places were populated. So when their green ray signalled that malachite lay abundantly beneath the Arctic ice, the ship went back to Pluto. Its scientists got busy with the data it carried back. All this apparatus was built on Pluto and shipped crated, to be assembled here.
“They have carted back thousands of tons in the twenty-six months in which they have been digging here. Laro told me that there were as many as three ships here at one time. The supply is running out. In fact, there is only enough left to fill the hold of the present and last ship. When this last ton or so of malachite is dug, the ship is going back never to return again.”
“In other words, they are robbing us,” cried Sam.
“That would be one way of putting it. You can hardly blame them, if our world were faced with such a predicament, what would the peoples of this world do? That is a question easily answered by reviewing past history. Were not the Aztecs, Mayans, and other Indians butchered and robbed for their gold? That was not even necessity. . . . just greed. Were not the American Indians robbed of their heritage? We can be thankful that the Plutonians, faced with starvation, are not blood-thirsty.” Jack Berry looked from one to the other. They nodded their heads at the logic of his words. “Here I started to tell you about Laro and I end up with Plutonian history.”
“You can’t say too much for me, Berry; keep right on, please,” Bill urged anxiously. Down in his heart, Bill hoped that upon later investigation, this would not all turn out to be an elaborate hoax; it would make a rip-snorting story if only it were true. He hoped and prayed it would be.
“All right, I’ll tell you something about this crate we’re in. This is not a rocket ship, but a gravity ship. In other words, it’s run by gravity distorters. I’m not a scientist at all, so I’ll say what there is about it in my own way. For instance, when this ship came to earth, they decreased the pull of Pluto’s gravity with their machines and increased the sun’s pull by the same means. You see, the earth is so near the sun to the Plutonians that, for most of the trip, they could use the sun’s pull which is more powerful and gives them much more speed. When they got near the earth, they increased Jupiter’s pull, which was directly back of them, and in that way slowed themselves up. The ship is a maze of intricate machinery. You can imagine for yourselves what a remarkable thing it is to juggle gravitation, speed through space by that force alone, and land a ship like this as lightly as a feather. When they came very near the earth, the most ticklish part of the whole trip had to be mastered. By using the magnified gravities of Mars, Venus, and the moon at proper times, they maneuvered the ship all around the earth looking for malachite and finally landed here at the North Pole. It certainly is beyond my comprehension. That’s why I’m going to see how the whole thing is done for myself.”
“You’re really going to leave in this thing for Pluto?” Sam spluttered aghast.
“I certainly am. Laro and I have become great friends. He has taken an immense liking for our world and my curiosity has been aroused about his. So I’m going back with him. I’m going to see all there is to see and if he can get his discharge from the mining business, we’re coming back here in a ship of our own some day,” Jack Berry ended proudly.
Bill Nevers squinted his eyes and looked sharply at the other. Somewhere back in his mind there was still a doubt about this Pluto story. He wondered as he looked at Berry if he might not be unbalanced, or had been duped into believing this tall story. Somehow Bill believed and yet disbelieved. Was it the swiftly consecutive shocks that had overwhelmed him since they landed that had so jumbled his mind? He was about to say something when the door opened.
Koor Laro stepped into the room. His face lit up with a congenial smile. He was rubbing his hands together in the anticipation of some good news or entertainment.
“Hello, Jack,” he flung at his friend. “Have you been entertaining my guests?” The other nodded. “Good. In five more minutes we’ll hear the Cubs-Giants baseball game. Jack, my bet still stands that the Cubs will win, two to one.” Smiling, he made his way to the radio and began to turn the dials.
As Gest Laro tuned in, Bill Nevers threw a dirty look at Jack Berry. A scornful, bitter smile turned the corners of his mouth which Berry did not see as he was watching the Koor. Bill was thinking to himself. A Mongolian trained in an American college might show such interest in this sport, but never an alien from far-away Pluto. Bill Nevers was mad. He had come to the North Pole to get a story and he was hampered at every hand by a group of foxy bedtime story tellers. They had made a jackass of him once, but by all the ice around him, not twice! He’d get to the bottom of this. He snapped shut his notebook and put it in his pocket, lit a cigarette, and slid down in his chair.
CHAPTER V
The Man from Pluto
l How long Bill Nevers sat slouched down in his chair, he could not even guess. His mind was so occupied with far-away thoughts that he was completely unaware of the others, their enthusiasm over the ball game, their occasional shouting, and the drone of the announcer. A dozen cigarette stubs lay on the metal floor beside one of the chair legs and he had hardly been conscious of lighting that many. His thoughts were in a jumble. He was between the devil and the deep sea. One part of him believed the fantastic tale as firmly as another part of him scoffed at it. But one thing he had made up his mind to do; he would see the thing through.
A lusty shout awoke him from his deep reverie. He pulled back his hat from the position it had, covering his face. He saw Gest Laro, the man from Pluto, fairly dancing for joy because the announcer had just droned, “And so the Cubs win their fourth straight from the Giants.”
The reporter was thinking deeply. A plan suddenly flashed into his mind. Should he take a chance? There was enough to corroborate Berry’s story. As for Koor Laro. . . . even so there was something he could tell the world about that it knew not at all. He sat up with interest.
“Koor Laro,” he spoke in an even tone, “can you broadcast with your radio?”
“Yes, there is a broadcasting unit attached to it. Why?” The alien’s eyes perceptibly narrowed.
“I would like to give my paper the story,” came blandly from Bill. With a look that somehow seemed hurt, the other replied, “Sorry, Bill, but that is strictly against my orders.”
The reporter leaped to his feet. “Then we’re prisoners, is that it?”
“I would rather call you my guests.”
“A damned polite way of putting it,” snorted Bill.
“As you wish, then,” Koor Laro shrugged his shoulders.
“What are you going to do to us?” Sam asked in a strained voice.
“Absolutely nothing, if you remain peaceful and return the courtesy I am trying to extend to you. Otherwise I shall be forced to lock you up.”
“Well I’ll be. . . .” Bill started to say.
Laro interrupted him. “In the near future, the ship leaves for Pluto.”
“Aw, hell,” Bill broke in disgustedly, “are you still trying to put that one over on me?”
For the first time, a look other than geniality came into the eyes of Gest Laro, a look of hardness and deadliness that made Bill and Sam freeze to immobility. The silence that followed was gravelike. Their eyes followed Koor Laro as, with hands behind his back, he walked up and down, giving neither of them a glance. Jack Berry, sitting by the ra
dio, had his eyes on the floor.
The Koor stopped his pacing. He faced them. “Look here, you two, you are making this hard for me. I have hardly what you might call an argumentative nature. Neither have I the nature or the art of telling lies. I am Koor of this ship. Although at my word two hundred and fifty men will jump to obey, I cannot very well command you to believe what you stubbornly won’t. So for the last time, I say to you that I am an alien from the planet Isot, or as you call it, Pluto.
“I am what you might call. . . . different. . . . as a Plutonian. There is in me a distinct deviation from the gloomy nature characteristic of my race. Because of that I have taken an immense liking to your world. I have conceived a warm friendship for Jack here who taught me the English language. Ours is a dark world and it seems the darkness has imbued us Plutonians with the shadows of night in nature. Do not think, however, that we lack pride or self-respect. In fact, I think we exceed your race in both. That is why we are so aloof. We have our own pleasures and recreations. I am positive that of all my men, not one of them would exchange places with an earthman. They love their world; to them it is home. I am telling you this to show you how different I am from them. I love the bright sunshine of your world, the clear blue skies, the carelessness of your natures, the sportsmanship and the reckless humor. Our race, on the other hand, takes life too seriously. From childhood on we are trained with harsh discipline to be forever loyal to the royal and ruling families. You see, this early training is about the only thing that remains in me. I have been instructed to come here, look for malachite, have nothing to do with the peoples of this world, and to return as silently and secretly as we came.
“Were I to allow you to call your paper and the consequent result of having hundreds of planes come up here to pry into our business, don’t you see that I would be failing miserably in my duty as Koor of this expedition? I would be a contemptible outcast forever. My early training, my own racial pride, shouts aloud against it. I cannot help myself.