by Earl
THE SPACE MONSTER
Cruising in space near the planet Saturn, Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol picked up the distress call and asked what was wrong.
“This is the space-liner Orion,” came back the words anxiously. “Our engines failed and we made a forced landing on one of the moons of Saturn!”
“Which one?” asked Jon.
“Dione, the fourth moon!”
“Dione?” It was almost a shout from Jon, and he felt his face turn pale. Dione was the one world in the Solar System that ships had always shunned. No colonists had ever attempted to settle there. Not even space pirates dared use it as a hideout. Dione was avoided like poison. For on Dione lived the most frightful monster ever known! It was called the Titanosaurus and was worse than a hundred dinosaurs rolled into one!
Jon almost groaned as he turned his ship for Dione. Duty required him to speed to the aid of the shipwrecked people, but no one had been known to escape alive from Dione. It was certain doom to land there! But Jon set his lips grimly and continued.
He spied the stranded liner and landed beside it. “Hurry!” he yelled. “Try to fix your engines.”
A mechanic shook his head. “It’ll take at least another hour. And listen—!”
Already in the distance could be heard a rumble like thunder and a steady thump as if an earthquake had started. It was the approach of the Titanosaurus, scenting its prey!
Jon rounded up all the men and passed out the ship’s emergency rayguns. Could they stop the monster?
At last it appeared on the horizon, like a moving mountain. Jon gasped. It was at least five miles long, from snout to tail! All the frightful stories about it were true. Each time its mighty paw came down, it left an imprint the size of a lake. Its mile-long tail swept huge trees flat as if they were matchsticks. And its gaping jaws were big enough to swallow an entire village of people in a single gulp!
“Open fire!” Jon yelled, as its enormous eyes, each seventy-five feet across, could be seen. All the rayguns blasted out with enough power to hurl back an army.
But the gigantic beast ignored the burning rays as if they were mere mosquito bites, and kept lumbering on. They fired again and again, emptying their guns, but it did no good against that scaly hide four feet thick. The men threw up their hands, screeching in mortal fear, arid fled. Jon held his ground for another round of shots and then turned too. How could you kill a monster the size of a city?
Jon had one more thing to try. His miniature Rocket Atom Bomb. Jon sent it roaring straight within the mighty jaws. There was a muffled explosion from within. A mushroom of white smoke came out of the monster’s mouth. For a moment it stopped, as if in startled surprise. Then with a deafening bellow, it came on in angered fury. Jon could see, as the smoke cleared, that several of its great teeth were gone. About all the powerful little Rocket Atom Bomb had done was give it a toothache and made it more ferocious than ever!
Jon tried now to race for his ship, but it was too late. Over his shoulder he could see the monster gobble up the huge space-liner and crunch it to bits, swallowing it as if it were a tasty morsel. Then its long tongue whipped out and curled around a dozen fleeing people, flicking them into its cavernous jaw. The people had all tried to run, but the huge flicking tongue easily picked them all up.
Just as Jon leaped within his small one-man ship and tried to rocket away, the huge tongue curled around the ship. Jon used full rocket power to break away, but it was useless. The mighty tongue held on and flipped the ship back into its jaws. The jaws snapped shut like a thunderclap.
It was all over.
The space-liner was gone. All its passengers were gone. Jon Jarl and his ship were gone. The monster rested its massive head on the ground, to slumber and digest its latest meal.
Once again the fearful Titanosaurus of Dione had wiped out a group of unlucky Earthlings that had dared land on its world. Jon Jarl, who had risked his life in amazing adventures all over the Solar System, had at last met his nemesis in the Titanosaurus of Dione!
Such were Jon’s own thoughts as his little ship tumbled within the mighty jaws. Jon himself was flung about within the ship like a peanut rattling within its shell. It was the end, Jon told himself.
But it was not the end. For soon the ship quieted down and seemed to be sliding and floating along smoothly. Jon looked out of his window, puzzled, and then gasped, seeing a long red tunnel down which his ship was sliding. The tunnel was huge, with plenty of room for his ship.
“Jumping Jupiter!” Jon exclaimed in wondering joy “The monster swallowed my ship whole! No damage was done. And now I’m sliding along down its mighty throat, as big as a tunnel!”
Jon was still alive—within the monster!
Soon, the throat-tunnel opened out into a huge “cavern” which Jon knew would be its stomach. As the ship dropped down toward a big “lake” of digestive fluids, Jon tried his rockets.
They worked! And Jon flew his small ship up from the lake and higher into the gargantuan stomach chamber. It was all like a strange nightmare. Jon was flying his ship within the mighty body of the monster as if it were a new world he was exploring!
Jon snapped his fingers in sudden thought. “The other people—maybe they’re alive too!”
Jon sped his ship over the huge stomach “lake”. Then he saw the people, clinging to pieces of their broken space-liner, still alive. Jon lowered a rope ladder and picked them up one at a time, swiftly carrying them to certain high ridges along the high walls of the stomach cavern. These were like flat ridges along a mountainside and they were safe there for the time being.
“But now what?” groaned one man. “We’re still trapped within the monster!”
Jon soon saw that, at he tried to fly his ship back through the throat tunnel. It was tightly constricted. Closed! The throat was open briefly only when the monster gobbled something.
Suddenly the passage opened. The monster was again eating. A horde of animals was taken in this time. Then again the throat opened!
Jon rocketed halfway down the mile-long tunnel toward freedom, but abruptly the passage closed ahead and forced Jon back. Trapped again!
An hour passed. Jon’s mind spun dizzily, pondering the fantastic situation. Was there no way out? Suddenly he sped away in his ship, without a word. Time passed. The passengers shook their heads hopelessly. Evidently Jon Jarl was lost somewhere deep within the monster and would never return. They were all doomed.
But there sounded a muffled boom and they were all hurled off their feet, as the monster threshed wildly. A few moments later all was still. And it was the utter stillness of death itself!
Then Jon’s ship reappeared and he yelled at them excitedly. “The monster just died! Now its throat muscles will relax and open the way to freedom. Get moving, all of you. It’s a walk of a mile and you’re out.”
An hour later, they are emerged from the monster’s mouth, between its slack jaws and teeth. They cheered as if being released from prison.
“How did you kill the monster?” asked one man, amazed. “The Titanosaurus of Dione has lived here for a hundred years and nobody ever could kill it. Even a warship was unable to stop it with its big guns. How could you do it?”
Jon grinned. “Simple enough,” he said “Compared to the monster, I was only the size of a germ, you might say. So like a deadly germ I was able to follow a giant artery to its heart. One of my small Atom Bombs did the rest. The monster was absolutely invulnerable to attack from without. But it was not protected from sabotage within!”
THE GREAT SPACE PIRACY
The billboard read in huge letters—
PAUSE FOR A TREAT!
DRINK COOLA COLA!
It was not Earth of 1951. It was the year 2261 A. D.; and the giant billboard itself had been erected on a stony meteor in space, so that all passing spaceships could see it. Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol smiled wryly as he cruised past it in his rocketship on his way to Ganymede, moon of Jupiter.
Yes, those advertising signs were just about all over the solar system, from one planet to the next. Later, as Jon Jarl overtook a small flock of meteors that whizzed past like telephone poles, he saw single words painted on each in glowing letters.
SPARKLING! was on the first one. There followed in rapid succession—DELICIOUS! THE—ORIGINAL—FORMULA! THE COOLA—COLA—COMPANY! FOUNDED—IN—THE—20TH CENTURY!
“Can you beat it?” Jon mused to himself. “They’re still in business after more than three hundred years! But I wonder what’s wrong at their new bottling plant being constructed on Ganymede? I picked up their SOS an hour ago.”
As Jon Jarl came down for a landing outside Ganymede City, he saw the huge plant under construction, now nearly completed. A tremendous neon sign proclaimed to the universe at large—COOLA COLA! Jon smiled. A favorite joke around the space lanes was that no ship could ever get lost. All you had to do was follow the Coola Cola signs home!
As Jon strode into the main office, a dapper energetic business man sprang up with a greeting, and extended an open bottle of Coola Cola. Jon accepted. “So you’re opening up business on Ganymede now?” Jon said. He could not help adding, “By the way, is it true that when the first exploring ship reached the wilds of Venus, they found a Coola Cola stand all set up and open for business?”
The superintendent laughed good-naturedly. “We take a lot of ribbing that way,” he admitted. “But we’re all pretty proud of our company and its three-hundred-year record of prosperous business. Back in the Twentieth Century, when Coola Cola first started, it gradually spread all over the Earth, from the North Pole to the South Pole, and even in the heart of Africa. Then, when interplanetary travel came, we were the first soft drink to open business on the Moon, on Mars, and all the other planets!”
“How about other stars and galaxies?” Jon asked with a straight face.
“We’ll get to them, too!” returned the superintendent without batting an eye. “As fast as they find new worlds, Coola Cola will be right on their heels. Our dream is a chain of Coola Cola plants from one end of the known universe to the other!”
Jon was a bit dizzy at the thought. “Okay,” he grinned. “But let’s get down to brass tacks. You sent for me. What’s wrong? Something serious?”
“Yes, serious—to us, anyway. You see, the first shipment of Coola Cola concentrate sent to us from Earth didn’t arrive on schedule. As you know, the unbeatable flavor of Coola Cola has been a closely guarded secret from the start. The concentrate is only made at the main plant on Earth and then shipped to other worlds for bottling and selling. Our ship is hours overdue, and we’re worried.”
“Do you think someone is trying to steal and duplicate your famous Coola Cola formula?”
“Maybe,” said the business man soberly. “Or the ship might just have gotten lost or wrecked somewhere. Can you track it down for us? It followed the regular Earth-Jupiter route.”
Jon promised to do his best and took off into space again, backtracking along the route to Earth. But it was not as easy as it sounded, for of course the planets kept moving in their orbits and thus the route kept changing hour by hour. Jon had to compute the previous course by astronautical charts. Finally he spied the ship floating aimlessly in space. On its prow was only an emblem—a Coola Cola bottle. It had to be the right ship.
Jon set his controls and leaped across in his spacesuit, entering through the emergency lock. He found the crew lying sprawled all over, but they weren’t dead, merely in a drugged sleep. Jon could smell the lingering taint of anesthesia gas.
Opening the spare oxygen tank, Jon pumped the fresh reviving gas through the ship and the crew came awake, bewildered. Finally the captain had recovered and was able to explain.
“Moon Mason, the space pirate, attacked us!” he yelled. “Made us heave to and came in. They shot the anesthesia gas at us and that’s the last we knew. Did they steal our cargo? Our precious Coola Cola concentrate?”
By the captain’s agonized tone, he might have been speaking of a priceless treasure. He, too, was a staunch Coola Cola man. Jon had to force down a grin. But, of course, to them, it was no small matter.
A quick check of the cargo hold showed it empty. The captain gave a shriek of horror. “They took it all!” he groaned. “The concentrate was in jugs sealed carefully in metal cases. They took every last one of them! What will they say at the main office? I’m ruined. I’m in utter disgrace!”
The captain was not far wrong, Jon realized. If the pirates sold the concentrate to some unscrupulous rival company, it might mean disaster for the Coola Cola people. Jon left the captain wringing his hands, gained his own ship, and sped away into space.
And Jon had a trail to follow through space! For he had noticed before the faint moisture on his window. In hurriedly transferring the cargo to their own ship, the pirates had evidently broken one case by accident. Without their noticing it, the concentrate fluids had then spread into open space as a fine mist. And obviously the case had broken and spilled over a portion of their ship, so that it left a trail of mist through space behind them. Jon was following Coola Cola again, in a different way.
The trail led unerringly to a small uninhabited planetoid drifting in space—an ideal pirate hide-out. Jon spotted a light from a cave below, and landed carefully a mile away, reaching the cave on foot. He loosened his ray guns in their holsters before he crept in silently.
The cave opened out into a wide cavern which was the pirate nest. Moon Mason and his band were just opening one of the cases.
“Hurry!” roared Moon Mason. “Let’s see what the haul is.” The next moment a strangled gasp tore from his throat as the box lay open. “What?” he bellowed in rage.
“Coola Cola concentrate? Of all the low-down tricks! What do we want with this junk?” He kicked the jug to bits in fury.
Lurking and watching, Jon had to suppress a chuckle. “This is great,” he thought. “Moon Mason and his greedy pirates stop another cargo ship, envisioning a big haul in gold or diamonds. And this is what they find—Coola Cola concentrate!”
But Jon stopped laughing inwardly. He had a job to do, facing six pirate guns. Jon had it planned in a moment. Silently, cautiously, he crept to the top of the pile of boxes. A pirate spied him and whipped out his gun, yelling a warning. Then six wicked ray guns swung toward the lone Space Patrolman, ready to blast him out of existence.
Jon fired—but not at them. His staccato ray shots riddled a row of the high boxes, ripping them open, smashing the jugs—and pouring Coola Cola concentrate down into the faces of the startled pirates.
Before they could clear their eyes, Jon had easily shot their guns from their hands. All except Moon Mason himself, who had leaped aside. “I’ll drill you, copper!” he roared, firing.
Jon dove headlong back of the remaining boxes and then shoved. As the pile toppled, the topmost box flew through the air. A jug of concentrate broke loose and hit Moon Mason squarely on the head. Brown juice dripped down his stunned face as Jon slipped the handcuffs on him.
Coola Cola,” Jon observed dryly, “sure gets around, doesn’t it?”
Later, Jon reported back to the superintendent of the new Coola Cola plant on Ganymede.
“It was all a mistake,” Jon said. “Nobody was trying to steal your Coola Cola formula. The space pirates thought they were making a big haul! What a joke!”
The superintendent sat stunned. “Joke? What do you mean? They did have a big haul on their hands, worth far more than gold, if they had only realized it. Stupid pirates!”
His tone was insulted! Jon opened his mouth—then shut it, and without a word quietly staggered out. “I’ll never be able to drink a bottle of Coola Cola again,” he muttered to himself. “I’ll have the awful feeling that I’m pouring molten gold down my throat.”
THE DARKNESS DANGER
Two spaceships rocketed through the void between Mars and Earth, one in pursuit of the other. The fleeing ship was piloted by Jet Jaeger, the inter
planetary bandit. The pursuing ship was that of Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol.
“Will I have time to overtake him?” Jon muttered to himself. “Before the Big Blackness comes?”
But at that moment, as Jon peered out of his viewshield at the bandit ship, the orange rocket bursts vanished. Blackness suddenly surrounded Jon’s ship, like a curtain dropping. Not only the bandit vanished from view, but all the stars and planets in space. And when Jon looked over toward the blazing sun, it too faded to orange, yellow, dull-red, and then blinked out like a snuffed candle.
Jon looked in all directions and saw—nothing. It was totally and completely black in all directions. Not a single beam of light from anywhere!
But Jon was not taken by surprise. It had been predicted, this coming of the Big Blackness. A month before, astronomers had detected the patch of total blackness which moved through space, shutting out all starlight behind it. The black patch had grown swiftly, obviously moving toward Earth and its solar system. It was not mysterious. It was simply one of the well-known “Dark Nebulae” that had been seen here and there in the universe. But this one was moving. And it had been calculated that it would overwhelm and surround the entire solar system for a period of thirty hours.
Jon looked out curiously. The Dark Nebula was known to be composed of a fine cosmic dust that cut off all light. But that was all it did. It was harmless. There would be no panic on any worlds, as the sudden shroud of blindness blanketed all light. The people had been forewarned. For thirty hours, till the Dark Nebula passed, they were ordered to simply stop working or traveling and stay quietly at home. All space traffic was ordered to halt, even the Space Patrol.
But Jon did not stop nor did he turn back in the direction of the base. Not when he was this close to nabbing Jet Jaeger! He could still follow him through space—with radar. Jon switched on his radar and picked up the image of the fleeing bandit ship, and continued the pursuit.