by Lee Sheldon
"Guess that must be some kind of game," Woody said. "Can't say that I like the way they play, though."
Jeff's mouth dropped open as he listened. He understood every word Woody said as clearly as he had ever understood anything. But Woody had spoken Illustrian, sounding almost exactly like Dood.
"Do you realize what language we are using?" Jeff asked, using the new language himself.
"How did we learn that?" Woody demanded, reverting back to English.
"I imagine we got a package deal when we had those helmets on," Jeff said. "A sort of instant education. Learn while you sleep—that sort of thing."
Woody nodded. "I reckon. But we weren't asleep. At least not long enough to learn anything like a new language."
"Maybe these machines are faster than we think."
"This whole business is spooky if you ask me." Woody stared out through the transparent panels. "Hey, look at the sun! We're going back toward it."
Jeff stared. There was the sun and it was many times bigger than it had been when he had last looked at it.
"How could we have turned around and gone this far toward it in the little time we were in those chairs?"
"Beats me," Woody said. "But we're heading home and I'm not going to ask questions."
Jeff couldn't let it go at that; he realized that they must have been in those chairs longer than they thought. He looked out into the ink-black sky. Nothing except the sun looked any different, but that wasn't surprising; everything in space had looked monotonously the same to him since he left Earth.
He stared at the sun, rubbed his eyes and stared again. It wasn't bright enough yet to hurt his eyes, but he was seeing double. A spot was close to the sun, smaller and not so bright, but looking like a small sun itself. He remembered being scolded as a boy by his mother for staring at the sun until it seemed he was looking into a huge drinking glass and the sun became the deep bottom of the glass. Maybe this was something like that.
"Woody, do you see spots when you look at the sun?"
Woody stared for a moment then nodded. "I see one spot, all right. It's off to one side of the sun, though."
Jeff nodded. "We both see it then. You know what I think, Woody? That's a double sun."
"Who do you think you're kidding? Our sun isn't double."
"That isn't our sun."
Woody stared for a moment at the sun, then at Jeff. "You mean that's one of those double stars astronomers talk about?"
Jeff nodded. "That's what I think."
"Then—then we are in another solar system?"
"I think so," Jeff said. "We must have been in those chairs quite a while. Apparently they are equipped to put a fellow into suspended animation for long space flights. We've probably been traveling at the speed of light for a long time."
"Or maybe faster than light. Anybody with brains enough to invent a ship that can travel at the speed of light might have found some way to make it travel even faster."
Jeff shook his head at the magnitude of the supposition. "I doubt it. If there was anything faster than light, surely some of our great scientists would have discovered it."
"They never discovered Illustrians," Woody said significantly. "But I'll vouch for the fact that they exist."
Jeff sighed. "All right, I won't argue. But if we were in suspended animation for a long time, that could explain how we could be taught the Illustrian language so thoroughly. Those things—telecators Dood called them—must have been designed to teach the Illustrians the language on their way to Earth."
"That doesn't explain where they learned the language in the first place."
"There are a lot of things we don't know about them," Jeff said, thinking that was probably the understatement of his life. "They were on Earth several years ago, we know."
Woody nodded. "And they knew our language then. That means they must have been there years before that." Woody stared outside. "Suppose we are about to get to this planet, Illus?"
"I imagine. It must be one of the planets in this system. Otherwise, our ship wouldn't have slowed down. We'd still be in those telecator chairs."
Woody scratched his head. "Wish we knew what the Illustrians planned to do with us."
"Let's hope the planet is enough like Earth that we can live in its atmosphere. If we can't, what they plan won't make much difference."
"They seemed to exist in our atmosphere all right. If we can get out of the ship and hide from those men, maybe we can find Sue."
"Then what?" Jeff asked. "Can we fuel up this ship, reprogram its computers and head back for Earth?"
"You make it sound mighty discouraging."
“I’m simply trying to be realistic," Jeff said. "We're in a spot. Let's face it. Our chances of getting back to Earth are about one in a billion, but maybe we can do some good for the people back on Earth, anyway."
"If you're right in guessing where we are, we must be four or five light years from Earth. Just what can we do for the people back home now?"
"Keep these Illustrians from returning and taking over Earth," Jeff said. "You've seen their faces. Do you think they have good will in their hearts for the people of Earth?"
Woody shuddered. "They have the meanest looks of any creatures I ever saw."
"I'm guessing they kidnapped your uncle and Peter Ingram, and now they've taken Sue just to study them to see how people live on Earth so they can adapt to Earth. Then they will go back there and take over. You surely can't doubt that they can do it. Anybody who can build ships like these must know a lot more than our most brilliant scientists."
"You've convinced me," Woody said. "So the two of us are going to outsmart these people you say are so much smarter than anybody on Earth. How?"
"I don't know. Maybe we can find a way to wreck their space ships. Think of our families and friends back on Earth who are going to suffer if we don't do something."
"When you put it that way, I guess we don't have much choice but to play the noble knights."
Jeff had never felt as helpless and full of despair as he did now. Clutching at something, like the dream of wrecking the Illustrian spaceships, was about his only hope of keeping his sanity.
They couldn't plan anything beyond trying to get out of the ship when it landed, and hiding before the Illustrians found them, and Jeff realized that even this was a remote possibility. The ship would most likely land at some spaceport already selected by the automatic guiding system, and the Illustrians would be waiting for them.
Through the transparent panels of the ship, Jeff kept a close watch on the stars. It wasn't long until he noticed that one point of light was rapidly getting larger. He pointed it out to Woody.
"Must be Illus," he said. "It definitely is a planet and it's growing bigger all the time. None of the others are."
"We're heading right for it, too," Woody agreed.
The planet grew larger until it looked as big as the moon looked from home. Jeff studied it through the telescope. He could see clouds clearly and he pointed these out to Woody.
"There must be atmosphere if there are clouds."
"We don't know what kind of atmosphere," Woody said.
As they came nearer, Jeff pointed out a patch of green through a break in the clouds. "Looks like vegetation of some kind, too."
"Keep talking," Woody said. "You'll make this planet look like Earth yet."
The ship was slowing rapidly. Jeff was not aware of any feeling of deceleration, but the speed of their approach to the planet was slowing noticeably. Jeff saw now that the ship wasn't aiming directly at the planet; it was going into an orbit around it.
As the ship swung out around the planet, descending toward it as it circled, Jeff and Woody got a bird's-eye view of this new world. From up here, Jeff could have sworn they were descending to Earth. He saw lines that he was sure were rivers, and there were green patches of vegetation all around the center of the planet. There were white areas at each pole and Jeff concluded those were ice caps.
"Almost makes you w
ant to look for the North American continent,” Woody said softly as he stared at the planet.
Jeff nodded. "I know what you mean. Sure looks like Earth."
Then the ship seemed to stop. Jeff was aware of this only because the planet stopped rotating below them. They began to descend rapidly but once more without the feeling of movement.
"Must not be any gravity down there," Woody said nervously.
"Got to be," Jeff said. "A planet that big has to have gravity. Remember we had no sensation of leaving gravity when we took off from Earth. There is some kind of gravity counteracting machinery on this ship."
"That must be it," Woody agreed. "Hey, look coming up to meet us."
Jeff saw the three ships break through some fleecy clouds below them. They were yellow, and much smaller than the spaceship he and Woody were in. They were round and had something that might pass for wings. To Jeff they looked more like stabilizer fins.
"Welcoming committee, I suppose," Jeff said.
"How are we going to get away from them when we land?"
Jeff didn't say anything. The answer was too obvious. They wouldn't; they were being taken prisoners even before they landed.
Chapter VI
As the spaceship settled down toward the surface of the planet, the three yellow ships moved in closer until they were almost touching it. As it had on Earth, the spaceship came to a stop a few feet above the ground then gently touched down.
"Suppose we can keep the door closed," Woody suggested. "It has to be opened from inside, hasn't it?"
"I don't know," Jeff admitted. "This button apparently operates it but they seem to have ways of controlling things in here from wherever they are. Remember the orders they gave those telecator chairs?"
"Yeah," Woody grunted. "It's hard to win the game when the other fellow owns the ball."
The glow inside the ship gradually faded and Jeff remembered that this was the last thing that had happened in the observatory yard before the door opened. He looked through the transparent panels at the world outside. In one direction there seemed to be nothing but monotonous landscape with only a few swells that could pass for hills. There was lush vegetation out beyond the large bare spot where the ship had settled down.
When he turned, Jeff saw what appeared to be a gigantic building that stretched out as far as he could see in either direction. Its walls were thirty feet high and reminded Jeff of a mammoth apartment building.
The spaceport where they had landed was just outside this wall. Strange people were pouring through a gate that looked like a big door in the wall and were streaming toward the ship. The three yellow escort ships that had gone up to meet them were parked now on three sides of the spaceship, leaving only the side with the door unguarded.
Strange as the surroundings were, it was the people that fascinated Jeff the most. They were short like the men he had seen in the ships on Earth but these people had four arms. Each arm seemed to work independently of the others as the people carried things, waved, or motioned to others. Jeff remembered John Trillingham saying that the men who had been killed on the desert had shown evidence of having another appendage under each arm. These people had a second arm there with a very usable hand attached to it.
Their heads were large in proportion to their bodies and their faces, while not as fierce and hate-filled as those of Dood and his companions, were far from beautiful, according to Jeff's standards. The eyes were small, the nose large, and the lower lip protruded in an exaggerated pout.
"The original boogy men," Woody said softly, moving over to the panel of lights.
The mass of people outside the ship stopped a few feet away while a strangely balanced one-wheeled vehicle came through the gate onto the field. The crowd parted to let it through.
When the vehicle had come within a few yards of the ship, it stopped and the door of the ship began to open. Then suddenly it closed again. Jeff wheeled to look at Woody. He was pushing the button that controlled the door.
"What are you doing?" Jeff asked.
"Making them work to get to us," Woody said. "This button still shuts that door."
Each time Woody took his finger off the button, the door began to open but when Woody renewed the pressure on the button, the door closed again. Outside, Jeff could see one of the men in the vehicle stand up, shaking two of his hands in the air. His features, already homely but not vicious, gradually changed to look something like the expressions of Dood and his companions when Jeff had first seen them in the observatory yard.
"You're getting that fellow awfully mad," Jeff said. "Maybe we'd better play along with them."
"That's fine if they're just playing. But I don't figure they are."
"Eventually they're going to get in here," Jeff predicted. "We can't reprogram this ship to take us back to Earth so time is all on their side."
"I have a feeling our time will be short when they do get in here."
Woody kept his finger on the button that closed the outside door and finally the man standing in the vehicle pointed one of his arms back at the wall and suddenly the glow died in the ship. The second the glow faded, the button lost its power to close the door and it slid open.
"Come out of there!" the man in the vehicle shouted in English.
"Sounds like Dood," Jeff said as he moved toward the door.
"This one has four arms," Woody replied, hanging back. "They were tough enough with just two."
Jeff stepped out of the ship and Woody followed reluctantly. The ground was as hard as pavement and Jeff wondered if it was like this all over the planet, or just here where the spaceships landed.
The man hopped out of the vehicle and moved up to face Jeff and Woody. His face was gradually changing back to look like those around him. His anger was fading, Jeff decided.
"Can you understand me now?" the man asked in the Illustrian language.
Jeff shot a quick glance at Woody, then turned a blank stare on the man. "What are you jabbering about?" he said in English.
The man turned to his companions. "Evidently our telecator didn't have any effect on them," he said.
Jeff was surprised at how well he could understand every word the man said. He hoped that Woody wouldn't give away their secret; knowing the language but making them believe they didn't could come in handy.
"You will follow me," the man said in English, then turned and marched stiffly toward the wall.
Jeff and Woody followed. As soon as they went through the gate into the complex, they found themselves in a long, shiny corridor. A strange light filled the place and Jeff saw that sliding doors opened off both sides of the corridor. He couldn't see the end of the corridor but he had the feeling that it stretched out to infinity.
Jeff and Woody were taken through one of the doors and down another long corridor and into another room. There they were seated in chairs that were too small to be comfortable. Several men came in and either sat in chairs or squatted along the walls. The man who had ordered them here faced them now.
"You don't seem to recognize me," he said in English. "I am Dood."
"You've added a few things since we saw you last," Woody said.
The lower arms suddenly disappeared like fishing lines rolling onto reels. "This, you mean?" Dood asked, and Jeff was surprised that he seemed to have a sense of humor. For a moment, his face seemed almost pleasant.
"La de da!" Woody murmured, and Jeff figured he was trying more to keep up his courage than to be funny.
"We must know how you made that ship operate?" Dood asked then, completely serious again.
"Like we told you on the radio," Jeff said, "we used oil to cut away the rust."
"We don't have anything like rust here."
"Must be a dry climate," Jeff said.
Dood seemed to think about that for a moment.
"We have water," he said finally. "Water flows in rivers."
"No rain?" Woody asked.
"Rain?" Dood turned to the men squatting along the wal
l and chattered at them. Jeff realized that these must be the older and wiser men because Dood was asking them what rain was. They replied that history recorded how it used to rain here but now all moisture fell on the poles in the form of snow. This melted, running down the rivers, and water from the many rivers filtered under the surface of the ground and made vegetation grow without rain.
Dood turned back to Jeff and Woody. "No rain," he said. "Rain makes what you call rust. What do you use to destroy rust?"
"Cutting oil," Woody said. "We told you that."
"Do you have it with you?"
"In the ship," Jeff said. There was no point in denying it; they'd find it, anyway.
Dood nodded then directed one of the men to take Jeff and Woody away. They were led out of the room and down another corridor. After a long walk, they came to a door and stopped. The man put a thumb into a socket and the door opened; he motioned them inside then stepped out and the door slid shut.
"We're alone," Woody exclaimed. "Let's get out of here." He ran to the door, rubbing his hand over it. "Hey, there's no doorknob."
"I noticed that. That fellow seemed to have a magic touch. The door just opened when he wanted it to."
"It shut the same way," Woody said in despair.
"We're prisoners in a room with a door that probably isn't even locked.”
"It's locked to us," Jeff said. "Look at all the buttons on this panel here." He crossed to a panel on the far wall that had several lighted buttons. Some of the lights behind the buttons were blue, others red.
"Suppose any of those buttons will open that door?" Woody asked, coming up beside Jeff.
"There's only one way to find out. Apparently they expect us to use these buttons or they wouldn't have left us alone with them."
"Then none of them open that door," Woody said. "They don't expect us to get out of here. You can bet on that."
Jeff reached up and pushed one of the buttons with a red light; immediately a picture flashed on the wall to their right. Both turned and stared at it. The picture was of an empty room that looked similar to the room in which they had been questioned.
"That picture doesn't help us any," Woody said, after a minute. "Try another button."