by Earl
The large chamber beyond, to their amazement, was outfitted with earthly furniture, or more properly, with the fittings of a space ship’s cabin—bunks, trap-chairs and even a washstand outfitted with a water tank. Shelton saw the name, Galileo, in black letters painted across the tank. A ship of the Exploration Service, reported lost years ago!
Traft had already opened his visor, sniffed at the air. He began stripping off his suit.
“Earth normal pressure and warmed!” he said with forced cheerfulness. “We’re prisoners but we may as well be comfortable.”
Shelton and Myra followed his example, glad to be free of the encumbering vac-suits. They were not too curious at the moment as to how such a chamber as this existed.
Not much had been spoken among them, since the battle. A depressed silence had weighed their tongues. But now the girl burst into sudden tears.
“It’s my fault!” she sobbed. “For making you men go—”
“Of course not!” snapped Shelton. “We just didn’t know what we were running into. This thing is turning out to be bigger, more amazing, than we could suspect. First of all we have to revive your brother, find out from him all we can about the aliens.”
Hugh Benning’s physical condition approached that of a man who had been lying on a mountain top, exposed to its bitter conditions. His skin was blue, his breathing labored. He moaned and twitched at times.
Shelton strode to a medicine cabinet he had already seen reposing in a corner, also taken from an Earth ship. He returned with a chemical warming pad and stimulants that gradually brought the unconscious man around. They waited breathlessly.
But suddenly a large round screen on the wall before them flickered with spangled lights. Though of strange design, it was an opti-screen. A moment later the features of an alien peered out at them, with an expression they could only interpret as sardonic. Large, greenish eyes flicked from one to the other, as though surveying specimens in a goldfish bowl.
“Well,” Traft rumbled insultingly, “what are you staring at, you two-footed snake! I wish you could talk our language. I’d—”
“I do speak your language!”
These words, spoken clearly with a precise accent, coming from an utterly alien creature of non-earthly origin, brought incredulous cries of surprise from the three Earth people. It was more astounding almost than any of the crazy events of the past hours.
TRAFT had lost his voice, his mouth agape, but Shelton recovered and stepped before the screen. He stared directly into the enigmatic, unblinking eyes.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The alien face drew up in what might have been a smile.
“I am Lorg, a Superior of my people, the Torms. As you would say, I am one of their rulers. You are surprised that I know your language? I have known it for many years. Our instruments pick up your Earth radio programs, and thus I hear your language constantly.”
“Why have we been imprisoned?” Shelton demanded. “Retribution will follow, at the hands of Earth authorities, if you hold us against our will!” He glared at the Alien-Superior in a boiling anger that had been accumulating since the capture.
“I am not easily intimidated,” Lorg said harshly. “You will remain here at my will. You are out of touch with the Earth authorities. They will not interfere. You will be treated well.” Shelton cooled down suddenly, passing a hand over his forehead.
“What is this all about?” he asked wearily, as if talking to himself. “Just what do you want with us?”
“You are Dr. Rodney Shelton, of ETBI!” Lorg stated blandly. “We will have much to talk about later.” Abruptly, the image in the screen faded away, with a queer expression that human eyes could not interpret.
“He even knows my name, who I am!” murmured Shelton.
He threw up his hands. It was all an insoluble, soul-shaking mystery. And each succeeding event seemed more cryptic.
“Hugh,” Myra Benning was saying in a glad voice, “you’re awake! Thank God—”
Benning had finally opened his eyes, with a sharp horror in them, but this died away as he stared around eagerly at their faces. He struggled to sit up, Myra helping, and grinned at them weakly.
“Hello, Hugh!” Traft boomed heartily, gripping his hand. He gave Shelton a brief introduction.
“Glad you’re here!” Hugh Benning said fervently. “Three weeks among the Torms—” He shuddered. “You can’t imagine the feeling of being the only one of your kind, among aliens—”
Shelton patted him on the back, soothingly. “Take it easy, old man. Begin at the beginning and tell us what happened.” He realized that they couldn’t rush the man into telling what he knew of the aliens.
Hugh Benning nodded. He was a small, slight man with a studious air about him. His knowledge of science, as Myra had previously revealed, was extensive. lie had been with the Planetary Survey as one of its best technical men.
“I was standing on the rock lip of the cave, at that time you know about, looking in,” he finally began. “Suddenly I was choking and turning numb. I felt myself falling, then everything went black. I woke up in a big room, filled with instruments. I thought it was a nightmare when I first saw the aliens!”
Again he shuddered. “I’d been lying in a sort of glass coffin. There were many more around me, in tiers, containing other humans, in suspended animation. I had come out of it for some reason. A big machine stood in the center of the room, radiating bright, colored rays. I think it was some kind of mind-reading process, because I felt my mind being probed, searched, revealed.”
HIS eyes were dull with perplexity. “I’m not sure what it was. All I know was that I broke out of my glass container like a maniac and ran from the horrible place. Aliens pursued me. I went unconscious, from the thin air and cold. I woke up in this room. Since then my one thought has been to get away. When I saw your lights at the top of the slope, from the window, I went wild. The jailer had just come in with food for me. I knocked him down and ran out.”
He shivered. “It was cold and cruel to my lungs, but I knew I could stand it for a few minutes. I ran toward you—the rest you know.”
His story, brief and jerky, left an aura of horror in the minds of his listeners more by reason of what was left unsaid, rather than what he had told.
“Do you know anything definite about all this?” asked Shelton, “These aliens, and what they’re doing, planning?”
Benning’s eyes went bleak. “Just enough to give me an awful fright when I think what it might mean!” he said, his voice shocked. “I didn’t tell you, but I escaped once before, while I still had my vac-suit handy. It had a few hours oxygen-supply and I figured to get to the surface. I got there, all right, slipping past the guards—to find the ship gone. I was marooned! The guards chased me back down, but I managed to elude capture, hiding in shadows. I suppose I went a little mad, then. I crept past the city—” His voice became tense. “This is only one part of their community. There are other chambers beyond. One is filled with big black space ships. Another with thousands of cold force projectors. Several others”—his eyes were stark—“with dozens of bodies of Earthmen in those glass coffins, in suspended animation. Men from missing expeditions.”
“The devils!” cried Shelton, white-lipped. “What—”
“Wait!” Benning went on. “There’s something still more significant. I looked down a deep shaft. It seemed to be miles. Down there is a gigantic workshop, and some great machine”—he drew a breath—“some great machine! I think it means danger to the whole Solar System!”
“Why?” asked Shelton, startled at the bare suggestion.
Benning shook his head. “I can’t tell you why. I don’t know. But I do know it represents a great science, perhaps superior to ours!” He lowered his voice. “These people don’t use metals! They use plastics. Look at the walls which aren’t stone, the window which isn’t glass, the whole city which hasn’t a scrap of metal in it. They use plastics for everything!”
&nb
sp; “Plastics?” echoed Shelton. “Why should that—”
“The science of plastics is not a simple one,” Benning said, with an assured scientific air. “It is just beginning on Earth. We know of celluloid, cellophane, bakelite, and so on. They are the basic simples of a possible industry supplying every material need of mankind. These people have gone into it deeply. They have plastics harder than steel, clearer than glass, more lasting than stone! And all made of chemical ingredients at low temperatures. They don’t have to use elaborate blast furnaces, coal, power, or dig ores. Theirs is a laboratory civilization if there ever was one!”
HE waved a hand suddenly. “It’s mainly conjecture on my part, but”—his face went haggard—“I have the feeling all this activity within Iapetus spells danger to the Space Empire. It broods in the air here. It—”
“The Empire can take care of itself!” Traft burst out belligerently. “When the time comes. Why, these fish-eyed aliens haven’t even guns, if it came to war. Earth’s Space Navy could surround Iapetus and bottle them up.”
“Don’t underestimate their cold force weapon,” Benning said quietly. “It can be as effective as a heat force. They’re probably developing it day by day. As for Iapetus, this is not their native world!”
Shelton nodded. “I surmised that. Iapetus is barren of native life. But where have they come from?” Benning shrugged. “Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto. They are a race inured to cold, hating light. It must be one of those three.”
“Or all three!”
Shelton Was suddenly pacing up and down. Some of timing’s conjectures has seemed wild, the ravings of a man whose imagination had been touched off by three weeks in a strange, dark world of aliens. But now Shelton felt that the true scope of it might be still more incredible.
“Saturn,” he said, “has been Earth’s frontier. Beyond lies the unknown. I’ve seen the official records, not often revealed. More than half the exploration ships that have gone beyond Saturn have never returned. ‘Natural hazards’, the official epitaph is. I wonder!”
Traft tied things together, sweepingly. “Looks like the aliens, on Pluto, Neptune and Uranus are expanding inward, while Earth is expanding outward. Where the two meet, here at Saturn—hell will pop!”
“We’re painting a pretty lurid picture,” muttered Shelton, dazed by the tremendous implications of it.
He shook his head. It might all be a poisonous mushroom blooming from the spores of undigested facts. They must get down to basic facts. He turned to Benning.
“But why has this room been prepared, with Earth conditions, for live prisoners?”
“I can’t guess,” admitted the technologist. “They’ve fed me, kept Earth-pressure here and warmth. They haven’t mistreated me. I’ve just been sitting here, brooding, marooned, surrounded by aliens, thinking—thinking—”
He was sobbing suddenly, and Myra comforted him. They realized what he had gone through. It was plain in his sensitive, lined face; the marks of an experience no human could have passed through without mental scars.
CHAPTER XI
Dash for Freedom!
LORG, the Alien Superior, sat in his seat of authority. He turned as Murv, his second-in-command, entered and advanced with quick tread. Murv stopped before him and saluted respectfully.
“Lorg,” he said, in their own speech, “we must try arbitration with the Earthlings, now that the hour draws near. They are more powerful than you think. That has been part of our plan from the first, and for that reason the Earth-conditioned room was prepared. You have in it now their Dr. Rodney Shelton, a high official, with a voice of authority. Through him you can arbitrate with the earthly government.”
As the Superior shook his head, the spines of his head swayed.
“I think it will be useless at this point,” he objected. “We are ready to strike. After the first point in our plans is carried out, then will be the time to talk. They will be impressed.”
“They will be enraged!” Murv insisted. “Take care that you do not ruin everything, Lorg! Best that you arbitrate now. And”—he spoke firmly—“do not make your demands too high!”
“Who are you to speak thus to me?” shrilled the Superior, rising angrily.
“The voice of those of our people who do not want a war with the Earthlings!” returned Murv, eyeing Lorg steadily.
“All right!” he snapped. “I will attempt arbitration. But I make my own demands, and follow my own judgment thereafter!”
Once again the opti-screen in the Earth people’s prison chamber flared with pulsing lights. The Alien Superior gazed down at them, singling out Shelton.
“Dr. Rodney Shelton,” began Lorg, “you have authority, I believe, that can connect directly with your supreme Earth Government? What you say, they will believe—and consider?”
“Yes.” snapped Shelton. “But how do you know that? How—”
The sounds made by the alien might have been amused laughter.
“Do not be astounded,” he murmured. “We have been in contact with Earth affairs for a long time. Not only through radio, but by gleaning information from Earth minds—those whose bodies we have in suspended animation. We developed the cold force for that purpose, as well as for a weapon. The cold coffee is a pseudo-magnetic field that absorbs all electrical nerve currents in the human body. The nerves become dead, frozen, but without affecting any of the other organs.
“Those bodies in suspended animation are a library of information to us. We are far more fully aware of your affairs than you would believe possible! We know much of your science, history, social structure, and your interplanetary program of expansion. Daily, we gather more information, with our psychic-extractor apparatus.”
Shelton was tense with horror at the thought of human bodies kept in the pseudo-death, like mechanical records, for the aliens to delve into their minds.
“I THINK I can promise you,” he said harshly, “that when Earth finds out about this, you will be blasted out of existence. You have done things that make you a bitter enemy of mankind!”
“Those men are unharmed,” returned the alien, half apologetically. “The psychic-extraction does not affect them. I would not wish to earn the wrath you promise. I wish to open arbitration with Earth, in fact!”
“For what?” Shelton asked bluntly.
“For control—absolute, undivided control—of certain planets. You might call it a ceding of planets!”
There it was, staring them starkly in the face. Shelton was staggered a little, though it had not been a complete surprise. He was being asked to inform his home authority that an un-suspected outside power, an alien race from somewhere beyond Saturn, wanted planets for its own empire! It was utterly fantastic!
“Which planets?” he managed to query, trying to keep cool.
“Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter—and all their moons!” Lorg calmly informed. “My race is very prolific. The three outer planets are ours in all but name already; our people inhabit them. We are asking only for recognition there of what already is ours. But Saturn and Jupiter, in addition, must be ceded to us by Earth!”
The four Earth people looked at one another. Was this some monstrous joke, spawned in the mind of an alien who aspired to an impossible tin-pot empire?
“You can’t be serious!” retorted Shelton. He suddenly laughed shortly. The thing was ridiculous!
Lorg’s alien features drew up tightly in what was obvious even to Earth eyes as outraged anger.
“Cease your laughter, Earthling!” he snarled, his repugnant face thrusting forward in the screen. “Those are my demands. If I must, I am prepared to take Saturn and Jupiter. The day of earthly dominion over them is finished. I, Lorg, say it!”
Shelton was quickly in the grip of equal anger.
“Take them?” he blazed. “Against all the Earth forces? You are mad, Lorg! Earth might conceivably waive jurisdiction over the three outer planets, since you say your race inhabits them, but Saturn and Jupiter are out of the que
stion!”
Lorg had turned his face and spoke lo someone unseen by the Earthlings. Nor could they guess that what he said was: “You see, Murv? Arbitration is impossible.”
They heard another voice answer, but did not understand when Murv answered in the alien tongue:
“Your demands are too high. Saturn and Jupiter are theirs!”
Only the tone of Lorg’s reply, “You anger me, Murv. Go!” was understandable to the four as Lorg turned back to the mystified Earth people.
“We shall see about arbitration, Dr. Rodney Shelton!” he said ominously. “Perhaps Earth will soon be glad to do so, at my terms!”
“Wait!” said Shelton thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would be best after all. I’ll do it, Lorg!”
The other three stared at Shelton. Was it possible he had been cowed by the alien? He seemed to look so. The Alien Superior peered at him narrowly.
“I know what goes on in your mind, Earthling,” he said shortly. “You would simply make that an excuse to contact Earth and have warships come winging. Fool! I would know of a way to prevent you. But no matter now, I have decided not to arbitrate at this time!”
His image vanished.
SHELTON lurched away from the opti-screen, sank weakly into a chair. The stark revelation of the past few minutes was almost more than the human mind could accept without, he felt, going mad.
“Holy Jupiter!” Traft was exclaiming. “Wants five planets for his empire, and apparently is ready to fight for them.” He balled his fists. “He won’t be so eager after a taste of the kind of war Earth people put up in big doses!”
“That’s the trouble!” Shelton’s voice was worried. “Think once. What fighting forces have we? Actual fighting forces? AH the Space Navy has had to worry about is traffic duty in the spaceways, rescue of stranded ships, and battling a few pirates. In total, the Navy consists of only a dozen battleships, built just in case, a few hundred Space Rangers, and a few thousand lightly armed ships that haven’t fired a gun in years.”