by Earl
And suddenly he remembered the arbitration episode, back at Saturn. Lorg had asked for five planets and all their moons, and threatened to take them by force, if balked. Now Shelton knew Lorg had meant that literally!
Lorg smiled arrogantly. “We will discuss that later,” he said abruptly.
His alien, scale-covered features flicked from the screen.
ON and on into the dim void sped the powered satellite, pushing stolen Pluto, in the tongs of artificial gravity, before it.
Already oppressed by the knowledge of the alien menace, the Earth people were still more crushed in spirit by the dark, sunless caldron of outer space around them. The Solar System seemed lost. The Sun was now a distinctly yellow star, almost unthinkably remote.
But Shelton did not let mental lethargy destroy all initiative. He drove Traft and Benning to plotting the exact direction of their flight, in relation to the fixed stars. Long hours of tedious work gave result. Shelton smiled grimly. The direction of Tor, the alien sun, was known, in case earthly forces should wing out here.
Six Earth days passed, after the departure from what had been Pluto’s orbit, as the ten-billion-mile gap was negotiated at the prodigious velocity of twenty thousand miles a second. Lorg’s “guests” slept, ate, and inspected their oxygen units regularly, carrying on the details of life while their brains were torture chambers.
At last, far out in the hollow immensity of space, deceleration was felt. It pressed them for hours, as the Great Machine groaningly dragged at their plunging speed. Sudden, quakelike vibrations arose and died, and their motion veered.
“Putting Pluto in an orbit around Tor,” observed Traft.
They waited anxiously to see Tor, the sister sun of Sol. It rose slowly above their horizon, a giant, redly glowing globe, whose atomic fires had long since burned low for reasons that the cosmos only knew. Its surface temperature could not be much more than that of heated iron? perhaps a few hundred degrees centigrade. Its rays were too feeble to reach across the void and register in earthly telescopes. It would be a corpse sun, truly dark and dead, in another million-year tick of the cosmic clock.
Its ruddy radiance cast a ghastly glow over the landscape of Iapetus, paler than moonlight. The Earth people shuddered under that alien luminescence, A more unearthlike setting could not be imagined.
Caught in a spell, Traft almost forgot to snap pictures, but finally did with his camera lenses open to their full light-gathering power for the darksome scenes. He hoped the weird colors would come up.
A full Earth day was taken up in maneuvering Pluto into an orbit around Tor. The Great Machine’s song of vibration changed pitch hourly as. greater and lesser forces were brought into play. It was fantastic, this manipulation of heavenly orbs!
They could feel a sudden surge as Iapetus finally ungripped its planetary burden. Soon Pluto was seen receding, slowly rotating, following its given orbit. Tor was its primary now, and its dark surface was lit somberly by the dull torshine. A planet that had circled the Sun for ages on end had been transplanted to a new part of the universe!
It grated against Shelton’s every instinct. The whole thing wasn’t right; a violation of the design of space.
Then Iapetus picked up speed and raced inward toward the dark sun. A planet appeared, perhaps as large as Saturn, gloomy and shadow-haunted. Torm, the home world of the aliens who had come marauding to the Solar System!
IAPETUS lowered until it must loom in Torm’s sky as a huge moon. It halted there, for some reason.
Shelton tuned the radio and finally an opti-screen view appeared of milling crowds of aliens within a city square. Thousands upon thousands were there, cheering and waving hysterically. Their combined voices thundered from the speaker. They were cheering Lorg, who had brought them the first of new worlds!
Shelton started suddenly, listening. The warp must be off, if radio waves came through! But even as he turned to remind the others, Lorg’s face blotted out the other scene.
“We are hovering above Torm, my home world,” he said. “For the present the warp is not in operation. But do not try foolhardy escape. You will note that several of my ships hover over you. If you try to leave, the warp will be immediately turned on. You would not like to crash, like the Ranger ship!”
The alien face, mocking, flicked from the opti-screen.
Shelton looked out of the port. Above hovered a half dozen black ships, silent sentinels. It would be madness to attempt a dash for freedom.
Ceremonies went on endlessly for a day. Black gravity ships, plastic-hulled, shot back and forth. A scene showed Lorg, high on a balcony, bathed in torshine, addressing the mad crowds.
Periodically they cheered. It was a scene that might have been recorded anywhere on Earth, with the return of a conquering hero. Lorg was the great man of the hour to the Torms, an explorer who, with no new lands to discover, had brought back a land, fetched it from the heavens!
“He’s having his moment now!” growled Traft. “But just wait!” Tense worry gripped Shelton.
What were Lorg’s plans in regard to them? Were they to be incarcerated in Torm, in some Earth-conditioned prison? Shelton knew that Lorg wanted something with him, for he had hinted it, and in Shelton’s mind was horrible suspicion.
Even as the Earth people helplessly waited down in the Torm city, Lorg faced Murv in a private chamber. Outside the ovations of the crowd over Lorg’s speech, could still be heard.
The two aliens eyed one another, faintly hostile.
“You have made bold hints, Lorg, in your speech,” said Murv. “Hints that you would not only bring back more planets, but defy the Earthmen entirely. I warn you against such a dangerous course, Lorg. You must arbitrate with Earth, lest we earn bitter enemies for all time. It may be too late already, though I think they will condone the taking of Pluto. But you must arbitrate with them now, or you will plunge our two worlds into a war of practical extermination, on one side or the other!”
“Yes, yes, of course I will arbitrate,” assured Lorg, averting his eyes, “Am I not taking the Dr. Rodney Shelton back with me, for that purpose?”
Satisfied, Murv turned away. Lorg watched him with a twisted smile.
CHAPTER XVIII
Solar Menace
ALL the Torm celebrations over the great event done with, Iapetus leaped away, back the way it had come. The great red sun, Tor, began to fade behind, as the course was set for Sol.
The Earth people felt instant relief. Their hearts gladened at the mere thought of returning—home! The utterly alien world in which they had been stifled their senses, frayed their nerves. They watched as the dim bulk of Tor, dark sun of the aliens, dwindled into the midnight of space.
Only a short while later, Traft suddenly let out sharp cry.
“Look!” He pointed out of the port. “The Space Scientist’s ship! What in thunder is he doing here.”
Shelton saw the large torpedoshaped ship with two white crosses on its sides. It scudded over above the warp, blocking out the stars, and darted for open space.
Shelton started for the radio, then stopped and groaned.
“What’s the use?” he murmured, “He doesn’t care about us, or the Empire! He’s probably here only to observe, like a aloof god. Somehow he followed all the way from the System. But only to fit all this into his mad theory, whatever it is. It’s ironic, that he alone should be able to warn the Empire—and won’t!”
Time seemed to stand still in the star-powered void. Their hurtling velocity was in nowise apparent. They could not see the approaching Solar System, precluded by the satellite’s backward motivation. But they knew they were nearing Sol, and hourly their spirits lightened—and at the same time grew tense.
What would the outcome of this cosmic drama be, the first act of which they had seen unfold?
Lorg contacted them when it seemed an eternity had winged past. Still flushed by the triumphant reception his people had given him, his tones rang.
“The culmination
of a century’s planning!” he fairly crowed. “You have seen, Earthlings. Is there anything to stop me? I will take planet after planet, as easily as this first! I will build a great empire, and my people will make me Grand Superior, ruler over all Torm!”
Shelton asked the question that was haunting him.
“How many planets do you plan to take?” In the back of his mind drummed that self-command; “Find out all you can!”
“At first it was planned,” the Alien Superior said loftily, “to take only Pluto, Neptune and Uranus, and their moons, and those only after arbitration with Earth. Certain timid elements in our ruling body fear warfare with Earth. But I do not fear it!” His reptilian eyes blazed. “I will not arbitrate. I am going to take all the planets, one after another! Your Sun will be stripped bare. My sun, Tor, will beam down upon a great brood. Every planet, Earthman, do you hear?”
Shelton recognized the symptoms. Lorg had gone mad with power! It was a common failure with all intelligence, whether Torm or earthly. Perhaps in the unsolved death of Martian civilization, too, could be found the agent of power madness. Moving a world, with all the majestic command of an omnipotent being, Lorg had succumbed to further impossible ambitions.
Impossible? That word again. And so many times had it been the synonym for the real that Shelton felt an ominous dread.
“HOW will you do it?” queried Shelton, quietly. “Earth forces will find some way of stopping you! Even if the warp protects you from attack here on Iapetus, Earth will eventually trace you to Torm, and attack there!”
Shelton hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he was asking leading questions, trying to ferret out the details of Lorg’s plans. But Lorg, in flushed confidence, merely spoke scornfully.
“A great fleet rides with Iapetus, in fact most of our forces—thousands upon thousands of ships. They outnumber your Earth forces by ten to one. Our cold force, though not quite a match for your gunfire, will be effective in massed battles. Whenever Earth ships appear, my fleet will attack, decimate them. Thus we will gradually cut down the Earth forces. They will not find out about Torm till too late. I will go on, all the while, with my planet moving. Iapetus itself is immune from attack, because of the warp. Do you see, Earthling?”
Shelton saw all too clearly. An alien egomaniac whose plans had all the cunning of the power-mad, ruthlessly determined to annihilate a civilization. And there seemed no flaw in his plans!
“What about us—about me?” Shelton asked wearily.
“You were to be the means of arbitration with your Government,” Lorg informed. “But that I have eliminated from my plans. However, I have a use for you, Dr. Shelton. You are an expert in bio-conditioning. You know the formula of adaptene. Later, you will show us how to make adaptene. That is one Earth secret we have not been able to uncover, since it has been guarded so well. With adaptene, we will be able to condition our race to the variations of climate that will result with far-flung planets. Then—”
“But I’ll never give you the secret of adaptene,” Shelton broke in with harsh, stubborn defiance. “If you know Earth people as you claim, you know I’d die first!”
“You have forgotten we have a way of extracting secrets from men’s minds, while they are in suspended animation,” Lorg said calmly. “Our psychic extractor apparatus sends sensitive X-rays into the brain. They come out, modulated by the tiny electrical currents of thought, even the circling ones of the memory cells. By suitable interpretation of the modulated X-rays, we read the original thoughts. It is something like your voice-modulated radio waves being translated to sound.
“I could have used the psychic extractor with you already, Dr. Shelton, save that, as I mentioned before, the first intention was to be used in negotiations with Earth. However, with my change of plans, you will be submitted to the psychic extraction upon my next return to Torm!”
Shelton recalled Bennings’ account of the chambers in which Earth bodies were kept, like living records, for the mind-reading process. He battled with sheer hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm him.
“As I was saying,” resumed Lorg, “the adaptene will be used to condition some of your people to our conditions, when the conquest is over. When your armed forces are annihilated, and your worlds and cities exposed, our cold force beams will sweep over Earthlings, put them in suspended animation, Later they will be adapted. And they will become slaves! Those that are not left to die!”
SHELTON felt a sticky wetness where his own nails had dug into his palms, drawing blood. Now the full depth of Lorg’s terrible ambitions was revealed. He had the true, depraved nature of the conqueror, a desire to destroy and enslave.
“I will have no compunctions,” Lorg continued implacably. “You are, after all, an alien race to us. Two diverse species of intelligence can only have hatred for one another. One must dominate the other. We will dominate yours!”
On this ominous note, the Alien Superior clicked off.
And it was this ominous note, like a tormenting dirge, that whipped through their brains all during the trip back to the Solar System.
“We must get away!” Shelton said a hundred times. “Get away somehow, to organize Earth’s forces, with what we know against Lorg’s horrible campaign.”
But how? They could not get past the warp, with either their radio waves or ship. They had already ascertained, by experiment, that the warp was on at all times, whether the satellite was in motion or not. Evidently it was a fixed and permanent feature of the Great Machine’s operation. Only at Torm had it been turned off for a while.
They were trapped as securely as though in unbreakable chains. Shelton felt himself turning old and gray, revolving scheme after scheme in his mind, none of which promised a ray of hope.
When the familiar feeling of deceleration came, they knew they must be near the Solar System. Probably they were passing vanished Pluto’s old orbit, and approaching Neptune.
Neptune had two large moons, one so dark that it had been unknown and unseen before 1950. This outermost moon, of course, would be the next annexed and spirited away to Torm.
And then the Solar System would be humming with another mystery—the third disappearance of a planetary orb.
And no one would know, or guess, how and where. The black alien ships would take care that no Earth ships followed them out into the void. Only four people knew—four who were trapped on Iapetus. No, five knew—the Space Scientist, too!
Shelton ground his teeth. If only the Space Scientist had spoken one word—But useless to think of that now.
“We must get away!” he repeated through clenched teeth, pacing up and down in the cabin like a caged tiger.
They could feel the beginnings of maneuvers to attach Neptune’s second moon to the gravity hook. Gigantic, cloudy Neptune itself reared into their sky as Iapetus jockeyed into-position. The Great Machine beneath their feet sent its teeth-jarring pulsations through the ship.
Shelton, still pacing, took no notice, a frown of concentration on his face.
“Must get away!” his brain was chanting. “Must get away!” He stopped, glaring at Traft.
“Good Lord, man!” he snapped. “Is that all you can think of doing at a time like this?”
Traft was clumsily fumbling through his collection of small prints with his big paws.
“I’m trying to think, Rod,” he mumbled. “All these shots taken underground—might be a clue.” He went on in spite of Shelton’s snort. “I’m going through them one by one. It’s a sort of review of what we know. Here’s a shot of the cave. Those stalagmites and stalactites shine here”—he used his magnifying glass—“like ice. They—”
RODNEY SHELTON stopped in midstride. “Ice!” he exclaimed thoughtfully. “I noticed that, too, when our flashlights shone on them. They’ve existed there probably for ages, in the uniform cold, with drop by drop adding onto them from water squeezed out of salt crystals in the roof.” His eyes narrowed. “Suppose,” he added tensely, “that a great heat played on th
em. What would happen?”
“They’d melt.” Traft looked up quickly. “With enough heat, steam would be formed!”
“Live steam!” Shelton said tightly. “Blown back into the corridor, down to the alien city underground—what would that do?”
Hugh Benning raised dull eyes in which a light had dawned.
“It would disorganize the aliens, all that heat. Like a terrific heat wave would in any earthly city. Steam to them would be like molten metal to us!”
Shelton spoke tensely. “If we can just force them to shut the Great Machine off for a few minutes—a few seconds—the warp wouldn’t be there to stop us. We could escape!”
Traft hastily ruffled through his prints and picked one out.
“A shot of the Great Machine,” he said. “I took it from the opti-screen while Lorg was showing us views of it. Look, Rod, there’s the cooling apparatus.”
Shelton grabbed the print and examined it carefully with the lens.
“A pump affair, run by power from the city. Mark, this picture is priceless! If we blew steam down there, it would upset their cooling apparatus that keeps the Great Machine at absolute zero. It can only run at that temperature. They would have to shut it off!”
“But how produce the heat, the steam?” puzzled Traft. “It would take a great amount of heat to do the job. And you can’t even light a match in Iapetus’ air!”
“If we had one good heat-gun—”
Shelton glanced about the cabin, knowing in advance there was no such instrument aboard.
“There was one in the Ranger ship,” murmured Benning. He looked out of the port at the crumpled wreckage and shook his head. “No use looking for it. Smashed to bits.”
“Think! Think!” charged Shelton, as hopeless looks were exchanged. “The steam would do it, I’m sure. We must figure out a way of producing it!”
Myra Benning spoke up. “We have plenty of battery power, in a ship like this. Can that be utilized?”
Shelton mulled that over for a moment, dubiously. “No,” he finally judged. “We’d have to have big resistance coils. We haven’t the apparatus—or the time! We need large volumes of heat rapidly.”