by Earl
He made a sweeping gesture. “Suppose the enemy, planning long, have thousands and thousands of ships—” He stopped, appalled at his own suggestion.
Traft was unworried. “What good would superiority in space battles do them, granting that? We have people on Jupiter and Saturn. Their space ships couldn’t fight ground forces. They’d need ground forces. And I doubt they can stand up under the sun without going blind, and getting a heat stroke. Unless they were bio-conditioned. But they don’t know about that.”
Shelton suddenly went cold. Unless they were bio-conditioned! Was that where he came in, in the aliens’ plans?
He jumped up.
“Talk is useless,” he ejaculated forcefully. “Earth must be warned! Earth must strike first—wipe out this alien nest! If we could only get in touch with our men in the ships, on the surface—”
He strode to their vac-suits and grabbed up his own, with the helmet-radio attachment. He snapped it on, holding the helmet upside down, and spoke tensely into the tiny microphone.
“ETBI-Fourteen, attention! ETBI-Fourteen, attention! Shelton calling!”
He tried this for long minutes before he gave up. “Not enough range, as I expected,” he groaned hopelessly. The helmet-radios were for suit to suit converse, at short ranges of a few hundred feet. He whirled. “We’ve got to get to the surface!”
“Guards outside,” muttered Hugh Benning. “They’ll be more watchful since I made my break.
“Never mind about guards!” Traft rumbled grimly.
“But they’d run us down,” Benning said in a monotone. “And we have no guns.”
The four looked at one another helplessly. They had priceless, vital information that should go to Earth, and no way to transmit it.
Shelton paced up and down with a concentrated frown. “Get thinking, all of you!” he urged. “One way or another, we’ve got to escape!”
Traft made a mental inventory, aloud. “No guns, no lights, no weapons of any sort. We’re outnumbered a hundred to one. We have to have some way of holding them off for about ten minutes, while running up the slope.”
“Light would do it,” mused Shelton. “Bright light alone! Their eyes are extremely sensitive to light, and therefore blinded by what to us is normal light.”
TRAFT was looking around. “There’s not a thing here to help us,” he growled. “No flashlights, candles, or even matches.”
“Matches!” murmured Benning tonelessly. “They would be useless anyway. Things don’t burn in the thin Iapetus air!”
Myra Benning, less despondent than her brother, pointed at the globular bulb hanging from the ceiling, shedding its pale reddish glow over the room.
“Can we use that?”
Shelton shook his head. “Too dim. Some kind of cold light, without blue rays. We need something with strong blue rays. They are the strongest.” He snapped his fingers suddenly. “Listen, all of you!” He held up the helmet-radio at which he had been staring. “If we can find a way to short the battery and produce an arc, we’d get a bright light, much brighter than our flashlights were. An arc would blind them so thoroughly we’d have a chance to get away! We’ll try it! How about you, Benning? Can you go out there without a suit again?”
Benning nodded. “I’ll go as far as I can.
“And after that I’ll carry you!” finished Traft. “Let’s get set—ready for them when they come with food!”
When three aliens entered with food a little later they let out hoarse cries as three determined Earthmen attacked with whirlwind speed. Benning tripped one and struck him on the head with a table leg. Shelton knocked his adversary out with a clean uppercut. Traft disposed of the third with a hammerlike blow to the forehead. Taken by surprise, the aliens were easy prey, although in a normal fight they might have been more effective, using their taloned hands.
“Come on!”
Shelton hustled Myra into the lock left open by the aliens, the others following a moment later. The outer seal flung open, automatically, after the inner seal had closed. They stepped out.
Hugh Benning gasped as he met the frigid, sparse air outside, but set his lips grimly. A dozen outside guards stared for a moment in surprise, then leaped forward. Shelton was fumbling with his gauntled hands at the two bare wires he had previously drawn from the radio coils, at the peak of his helmet. He touched the wires and then drew, them slightly apart.
A blinding blue radiance shot from the contact as hot sparks sizzled across the gap. In the thin air, conditions were ideal for a high voltage spark. The advancing aliens let out painful shrieks as the glaring light bathed their light-sensitive eyes. They flung up their arms and staggered back.
Shelton set the lead away from t-he city, up the slope. It was a long stretch. If the arc lasted till the top, they were not likely to be cut off. They would have to take their chances with any cold beams.
As they bounded up the incline, the whole city seemed to burst into movement. Aliens rushed from all sides, shouting in their queer, dissonant tones. But the blazing arc at the top of Shelton’s helmet kept them off. They would approach within thirty or forty feet, try to run against the light with face averted, and finally reel back, rubbing t-heir tortured eyes.
TO them, Shelton knew, it was like running toward a hot, incandescent furnace whose beams would burn their eyes out, and whose heat crackled on their scaly skin. Skin on which water at just above the freezing point would have felt like live steam!
Once in a while the arc sputtered, and Shelton had to reach up quickly to adjust the gap. Several times, the instantly numbing force of a cold beam struck at them and made them stumble. But each time it died away as quickly. The operators were having a hard time focusing on what to them looked like an unveiled sun.
On and on they raced. Time and again the aliens would have cut them off except for the blue-bright bail of fire they could not face. But gradually the arc weakened. The small batteries were being quickly drained. With a hundred feet to go, the arc flickered out entirely.
Instantly the aliens leaped forward, in the dark which was normal to them. Traft, at the rear, began lashing out with pummeling fists, fighting them off. A dynamic whirlwind, he protected the other three completely. They gained the top. Shelton whirled to help Traft, but saw he wasn’t needed. The big pilot had just picked up an alien bodily and flung him among the rest. Then he dashed up, grunting exultantly.
Brazenly he stood for a moment at the slope’s rim, taking a camera snap as a gesture of defiance to the aliens.
“You and that fool camera!” barked Shelton. “Come on!”
A cold beam bit at their muscles, but they staggered through into the corridor leading to the surface. Here they knew they could easily get away, protecting their rear. The aliens did not even follow, as though shirking the prospect of facing the ferocious Earthmen in a narrow space.
Hugh Benning let out a bubbling gasp suddenly and collapsed. Traft caught him and swung him to his shoulder without lessening his pace.
“Made it!” panted Shelton. “Though we’ll have to watch for guards at the cave mouth.”
CHAPTER XII
Message to Earth
WHEN the glow of the city behind them died away, Stygian gloom slowed them down. Shelton fumbled with the wires and managed to eke a little more current out of the batteries, enough to give a dim, sputtering radiance. It served to warn of out jutting rocks and treacherous underfooting.
But finally the glow of the cave mouth appeared ahead, like a steady candle, and they entered the large cavern. The guard detail of aliens, evidently warned of their coming, had their path blocked with their cold beam projector. Its paralyzing grip touched them.
Shelton raised his voice in a shout to the two Rangers that had been left on guard. Two flashlight beams stabbed into the cavern, centered on the Earthmen for a minute and then swung to the aliens. Guns spoke and with wild cries the aliens Sung themselves flat. Shelton and his party raced past.
The two Rangers greeted
them warmly.
“Glad you’re back, sir,” they said, saluting Shelton. “We were about to organize a search party. Where are the others?”
“No time to explain now!” Shelton said shortly, and headed for the ship.
The sun had set. The desolate topography of Iapetus was eerily lit by a blend of starlight and the reddish glow of Saturn hanging like a moon in the sky. The scene was quiet, peaceful. Shelton found it hard to believe they had just returned from a bustling city deep underground. It had all been like a nightmare, tumultuous and unreal.
Within the welcome interior of the ETBI-14 again, the bruised and battered party took off their vac-suits, and basked in the warmth of the ship. Shelton left all explanations for Traft to make and dashed for the pilot’s cupola. He jerked over the radio stud.
“Dr. Rodney Shelton of ETBI calling from Iapetus!” he barked into the microphone. “Titan station, please answer immediately!”
He repeated the call several times, using the full power of the ship’s radio. Waiting for the return call, he fidgeted nervously, cursing radio operators who couldn’t see blinking signal lights before their very eyes. At last a rather sleepy voice answered:
“Titan station. Go ahead, Dr. Shelton.”
“Emergency!” he snapped. “Get this and get it right! Call the Navy outposts, both yours and on Rhea, and say I want every fighting ship available here at Iapetus, as soon as possible. There is to be no delay. This is a matter of vital importance. Tell them an alien menace is here that requires their presence. Every fighting ship! Is that clear?”
His keenly stirred mind seizing on the smallest details, Shelton timed the reply just right—forty seconds from Titan, at opposition, to Iapetus, three million miles, back and forth.
The operator’s voice was no longer sleepy, but puzzled. “This is such an unusual request, sir!” he objected. “Are you sure—” He broke off. “Please give me opti-screen contact, Dr. Shelton. Routine, you understand.”
Shelton growled, but was aware that the operator had the right to be startled, and careful. This was perhaps the most momentous call that had ever hummed across the ether lines. Shelton switched on the iconoscope and adjusted its electrodes rapidly to catch his face clearly in direct focus.
“NOW,” he declared, knowing he would be recognized, “I want those ships immediately. Then call me back.” Just to make it stronger and avoid any delaying red-tape, he added: “If you question my authority, you’re questioning the authority of Extra-Terra Bio-Institute! Understand?”
Forty seconds later: “Yes, Dr. Shelton! I’ll call the outposts immediately. And then call you back.” The operator’s excited voice clipped off.
Ten minutes later his signal light flickered and Shelton rushed back from the pilot port. He had been staring out at space, beyond Saturn, wondering where out there lay the alien civilization that had sprung upon the ken of man with such blinding, threatening swiftness.
“Titan station reporting,” said the operator alertly. “Both Navy outposts have answered, Dr. Shelton. They will send all available ships as quickly as possible, though it will take a little time to organize the details. The Rhea outpost says it will have five Rangers there in about eight hours, others to follow. Anything else, sir?”
“Yes,” Shelton stated. “Put me through on a line to radio-central, Earth, right away.”
“Go ahead, Dr. Shelton!” acknowledged the Titan operator, after the appropriate time lapse.
Shelton spoke slowly and distinctly.
“Radio-central, Earth. Dr. Rodney Shelton of Expedition Ship ETBI-Fourteen calling. Attention, Director Grant Beatty, by transcription, if necessary. Say this: ‘Director Beatty, I’ve been on Iapetus just ten hours and in those ten hours the incredible has happened. Aliens, intelligent beings, are on Iapetus. That’s a bare, unbelievable statement. I know it will shock you.’ ”
Shelton went on to give the details, as far as he thought necessary.
“ ‘And so, Director,’ he concluded grimly, ‘this alien menace has been flowering secretly on the three outer plants. They are looking inward. They have a foothold in our empire, on Iapetus. They must never get any further! I don’t know what powers the aliens have, but they must have a highly developed science. It is evident from what we’ve seen and heard. Lorg, the Superior, as he calls himself, radiated confidence that he could get what they wanted, by force if not arbitration. I can only describe him as a devilish character, capable of devilish plans and deeds!’ ”
Carried by humming radio waves across the deep gulf of interplanetary space, Shelton’s voice became hard, inflexible.
“ ‘My idea is to force their hand. I’ve called for all available fighting ships from Titan and Rhea. Send from Earth a fleet of whatever ships can be spared. If necessary, the aliens must be blasted out of Iapetus! I know, Director Beatty, that you’ll want me to leave Iapetus immediately, when you hear this. But I’m staying! Don’t waste breath begging, demanding or cajoling me back right now. I’m here to see this thing through. I’ll open negotiations with the aliens as soon as the first ships arrive. I’ll await acknowledgment of this call.’ ”
SHELTON turned away from the radio, heaving a great sigh. Earth had been informed. Regardless of what happened to him, the most important thing had been taken care of.
As he stepped away, the signal light flashed, signifying another call. Shelton turned back, and started, as the strangely leering face of Lorg. the Alien Superior, rippled into the glowing opti-screen!
“You made a clever escape, Dr. Rodney Shelton!” remarked the alien imperturbably. “You Earthlings are resourceful. I also overheard your recent radio message.” The voice became ominous. “It will avail you nothing, Earthman! I am ready to strike. You will be too late with your attack!”
“We’ll see about that!” Shelton drawled easily. “When our armed space ships are ready to blast away. If you attack me tonight, remember that I have an armed space ship with me, and several expert gunners.”
“I will not attack you,” scoffed Lorg. “It is not necessary, in the least.” A queer expression flitted across his repugnant features, and the hoarse cackle that came from his lips made Shelton’s nerves grate. “I say only one thing to you. Watch at dawn!” He cackled again, ominously. “Watch at dawn, Earthman!” Down in his chamber, the Alien-Superior turned from his screen when Shelton’s face had vanished.
“Go,” he commanded his aide. “Spread the word. The hour has come!”
The aide saluted and sped away, his face gleaming.
Murv, who was there, pressed his lips together. “You have made your move, Lorg,” he said quietly. “Let us hope it was the right one. You have incurred the wrath of the Earth people. I have often told you of their dangerousness when aroused. The chance for peaceful arbitration may be lost forever!”
Lorg’s ruthless face flared with anger. “Murv, you annoy me with your childish fears. Go!” He added a threat: “And take care that I do not depose you from all authority one of these days, if you try to hinder me!”
Murv turned away with a shrug, his face stony. . . .
In deep thought, Shelton made his way from the pilot’s cupola to the main cabin. Why was the Alien Superior so confident? What did he have up his sleeve? Watch at dawn! What was going to happen at dawn?
The occupants of the cabin looked up at Shelton’s preoccupied, haggard face. Myra Benning had nursed her brother back to consciousness, but he lay weakly in a bunk, still breathing stertorously, Traft had just finished telling the story of their experiences underground. The listening men were looking at each other in shocked horror at the fate of those who had not returned from the cavern of alien menace.
Shelton briefly gave the details of his radio calls. Then he counted his forces. The three engine men, two ETBI men, two Rangers here and two left as guard in their ship—twelve men, including himself. And a girl.
He turned to the Rangers. “You two go back to your ship. Keep one man on guard in case anything
pops during the night.”
They saluted and left. When the air-seal had hissed shut again, Shelton swung on his two ETBI men.
“YOU’VE made preliminary tests of the Iapetus conditions—enough to give a rough approximation of bio-conditioning steps?”
“Not quite finished,” answered one of the biologists. “Couple hours’ work on it yet.”
“Then we’ll finish it now,” Shelton decided. “We must transmit the data to Earth, in case it comes to the point”—his eyes blazed—“where bioconditioned fighting men are needed to rout out the aliens, Mark, you stick at the radio, for any calls. You three engineers keep watch at the ports. Lorg said he wouldn’t attack us, but I don’t trust him. They might try to come sneaking up in the night. Miss Benning”—his voice became gentler as he turned to the worn girl—“you’d better get some rest. This has been a trying day for you.”
“I’m going to help you, Dr. Shelton,” she quickly interposed. “Hugh’s asleep and won’t need me.”
Shelton admired the way she had drawn herself together.
“Incidentally,” he said, “you’ve done a great service to the Empire! Through your search for your brother, the aliens were discovered sooner. Look at it that way, not that you led brave men to a living death. They can yet be rescued. But with the alien menace uncovered, we’ve stolen a march on them!”
The girl’s eyes brightened. It had not been pleasant to think of her part in the half-tragic events since the landing.
“But we’ve work to do!”
Shelton led the way to the small but completely equipped laboratory in the back of the ship. They plunged into their work. The Iapetus air was checked and rechecked for density, pressure and mean temperature. Cosmic radiation was recorded, by means of a sensitive Geiger counter. An anesthetized guinea pig was put in a pressure tube, dosed with adaptene, and his reactions to Iapetus’ conditions noted, his blood count taken.