by Anthology
"The Prometheans have to unseal their poles when they feed," she explained. "See that grounded wire? It's just a device for short-circuiting. I'll show you -- " She called to Michaels presently he appeared bearing one of the creatures. Gerry took the Promethean and dropped him to the ground, where he remained still a moment.
Then he moved directly toward the power plant. His round body slid on to the iron plate. He reached up toward a bare, dangling wire -- Puff.
"He's dead," Gerry observed. "Caught with his seals open. His condenser charge is gone just like that."
And, sure enough, the Promethean lay flabby and motionless, all the gay fireworks gone, limp and obviously dead. Gerry kicked the creature off the plate. "Organize a bucket squad," she called to Michaels. "And open the wall -- two foot radius."
Silently a gap widened in the space ship's hull. Rainbow sparklings brightened as the Prometheans surged forward. Quade suddenly noticed that Gerry wore high rubber boots, and that the woman was eyeing him with a certain malicious amusement. With grimly set lips he took the pail she handed him and waited.
The Mercurians poured in through the gap. But only a few at a time could enter, and they sped in an unerring, narrow stream toward the power plant. And, like the first Promethean, they reached up toward the dangling wire, and -- Puff!
"Scoop 'em up," Gerry commanded tartly. "We need elbow room here."
Quade obeyed. Along the sloping corridor men stood at intervals, a bucket brigade that passed along empty pails as Quade sent up Promethean-filled ones. There were more of them than he had thought. Presently his arms began to ache, and the glances he sent toward Gerry, who was lounging negligently against the wall, were expressive.
"Keep your temper," she advised. "You're not out of the soup yet."
Since this was true, Quade didn't answer but bent to his task with renewed vigor. There must have been five or six hundred of the creatures from Mercury. But at last they were killed -- all but a few too large to enter narrow opening.
At Gerry's command, Michaels enlarged the gap so the rest of the Promes could surge in. Quade made a bound for safety, but the woman ahead of him and blocked the passage. "Don't just stand there," he said. "One of those things is heading for me."
"Sorry," Gerry said, and with a dexterous movement managed to propel Quade back, where he collided with a fat Promethean and was hurled to the ground by an electric shock. Muttering, he rose and watched the last of the creatures die. Gerry's cool voice came from the passage. "That's all. There isn't any more."
Simultaneously lights flared up all over Hollywood on the Moon. Michaels had sent out a reassuring message, and the power once more went racing through a maze of cables and wires. The jet starry sky faded and paled as the lighting system went into action. The air rectifiers lunged into frantic operation; the force beams flared out; the heating plates and coils glowed red and then white.
Quade followed Gerry into the control room. The woman sank down into a chair and lit a cigarette. "Well?" she inquired. "What's keeping you?"
Quade bushed. "Not a thing," he said. "Except -- I want to say thanks."
"Don't thank me. I've got my fee," Gerry's sly sideward glance took in Quade's somewhat flushed face. "'There's one Promethean left, and he's tucked away safely in my lab."
"You're welcome to him. Only&" Quade's voice became suddenly earnest. "Miss Carlyle, do you realize what a picture this would make? Gerry Carlyle in The Energy-Eaters! Can't you see that billing placarded all over the system. We could make it easily. One word from you and I'll have our best scriptwriters grinding out a story. Have a special premier at Froman's Mercurian Theater -- it'd clean up. You'd have enough dough to build a dozen Arks. And we could shoot the pic in three weeks with double exposures and robots..."
"Robots!" Gerry bounced up, crushed out the cigarette viciously. But Quade failed to heed the warning signals.
"Sure. We can fake 'em easily --"
"Mr. Quade," Gerry interrupted sternly, "first of all, I should like you to understand that I am not a fake. The name Gerry Carlyle means the real thing. I have never let down the public, and I do not intend to begin now. And, once and for all, I will not make a fool of myself by appearing in one of your corny pictures"
Quade stared, his mouth open.
"Did you say -- corny?" he asked unbelievingly.
"Yes."
"My pictures?"
"Yes," Gerry said, pouring acid on the wound. "They smell."
"That ends it," Quade snapped. "Nine Planets will keep its agreement with you. Take your Promethean. Though I doubt if it will survive your company for long." With that he turned and marched out of the Ark, leaving Gerry chuckling happily to herself.
However, if she, had seen the object Quade took out of his pocket with such care a few moments later, she might not have been so pleased.
* * *
Twenty hours later Gerry Carlyle and Tommy Strike strolled along Broadway. Strike had just treated to hot-dogs, and with the corner of his handkerchief wiped mustard, from Gerry's nose. "Thanks," she said. "But don't interrupt. Tommy, do you know what this means to us?"
"What?"
"A fortune. Customers will come like flies -- that Promethean will draw millions of 'em to the Zoo, and, they'll pay, too."
"Well," Strike said slowly, "I suppose so. Only I'm not sure you were right in turning down that guy Quade's, offer. You'd be a knockout in pictures."
Gerry snapped, "I don't wish to hear any more about that. You know very well that when I make up my mind to something, it's settled." She paused. "Tommy! You're not listening."
Strike was staring, eyes and mouth wide open, at a blazing neon-and-mercury marquee above the entrance to a Broadway theatre.
"Gerri -- look at that!" he gasped.
"What?" Gerry demanded. "I don't -- oh."
Strike read the sign aloud. "Scoop. Lunar disaster! See Gerry Carlyle capture the Energy-Eaters."
"Get tickets," the woman said weakly.
Inside the theater they had not long to wait. Presently the feature ended and the special newsreel came on. And it was all there -- Gerry's arrival in the Ark, the exciting scenes at the Plaza filmed in eerie ultraviolet, even the final destruction of the Prometheans inside the space ship.
"Just look at me," Gerry whispered fiercely to Strike. "My hair's a mess."
"You look all right to me," Strike chuckled. "Wonder how he got those shots without your seeing the camera?"
"He had one inside his shirt -- one of the tiny automatic cameras, with sensitized wire film. He was double-crossing me all along. The worst of it is, I can't sue Nine Planets -- Newsreel stuff is common property. Come on -- let's get out of here."
They had to fight their way through the crowded lobby. As they emerged Gerry paused to eye two long queues that stretched far along Broadway. The rush, was beginning. Already radios and advertising gyroplanes were blaring: "See Gerry Carlyle capture the Energy Eaters! A Nine Planets Film."
Strike couldn't resist rubbing it in.
"So when you make up your mind to something, it's settled, eh?" he said.
Gerry looked at him a long moment. Then a half-smile hovered on her lips as she looked around at the increasing crowd. "Well," she said, "anyhow, I'm packing them in!"
* * *
Contents
SATELLITE FIVE
By Arthur K. Barnes
Tommy Strike let out a startled squawk and tried to leap aside. Then suddenly his legs folded limply beneath him, and he fell to the floor.
"Blast it!" be howled at the man behind the desk. "Turn that thing off! You've crippled me for life!"
The man behind the desk was past middle age, with rabbitlike eyes peering through thick lenses. On the desk-top before him rested a lead-gray box, the interior of which contained a bewildering array of weird tunes and coils. There was a portable power unit, and a Cameralike lens: now focused on Strike's lower body. The man fumbled for the activating switch, snapped it off.
"Oh-so sorry, Mr
. Strike. No harm intended. Just checking my-er-apparatus, seeing that it's in working order." Which explained nothing as far as his victim was concerned.
Strike reassured himself that his legs were still sound, then advanced on the older man, who retreated around the desk in alarm with apology very plain on his face.
"I've never struck a man as old as you," Strike said grimly, "but so help me, I've a good notion to clip you down!"
It was at times like these when Tommy Strike was led to wonder, privately, if he had been really bright in allowing Gerry to argue him out of the independence of a trader's life -- boring and ill-rewarded as it had often proved to be -- to become her second-in-command and the so-called "Captain" of The Ark. Gerry -- in one of her rare, very rare, melting moods could certainly wear a fellow down and Tommy had begun to suspect that where Gerry Carlyle was concerned he was sometimes not quite bright -- a thought he kept very much to himself. Anyway be had made his bargain- even if it had been when he had been completely dazzled -- and he was too stubborn now to admit that he should have waited a little before he mortgaged his future. At any rate-if Gerry thought that he was going to be one of her "yes men," she was very much mistaken.
Just then the office door slid noiselessly open, and all activity was automatically suspended as a young woman entered. One with a mind of her own to judge by her firm chin and high-tempered arch of nostril.
Her presence in the office brought an elusive suggestion of far-away places and unfamiliar, romantic things-a breath of the thin, dry wind that combs the deserts of Mars, a faint memory of the spicy scents that throng Venus' eternal mists.
"Tommy!" Gerry snapped. "That'll be enough! This is the New York office of the London Interplanetary Zoo, and was not designed for brawling. Now what's it all about?"
Strike pointed at the visitor.
"This crazy inventor crashed in here with his box full of junk, acting mysterious and refusing to tell me what it's for. Then all of a sudden he turned the darned thing on me and my legs went out from under me -- '
"Oh, my. My, no. Not a crazy inventor. I am Professor Lunde, head of the department of physics at Plymouth University."
"Oh!" There was a wealth of intolerant scorn in Strike's voice, and he glanced significantly at Gerry. Lunde was well known as an overly self-important and doddering old fool many years past his prime. He had contributed nothing to advance physical research for ten years, hanging on at Plymouth by virtue of decades-old triumphs.
But, surprisingly, Gerry nodded.
"Sit down, Professor." Turning to Strike, she explained, "Professor Lunde has been sending me a letter each day for the past week, cryptically reminding me that Rod Shipkey's broadcast tonight would be of interest to me. Very intriguing."
Lunde's checks became shiny red apples. "Er-I must apologize for the melodramatic manner in which your attention was solicited. My assistant's idea, really. Trevelyan is invaluable. Ambitious lad. He felt a woman in your position could not be reached under ordinary circumstances. But my daughter-in-law works for Mr. Shipkey, and, well, we got wind of tonight's broadcast. I'd rather not explain the purpose of my visit until after you've heard Mr. Shipkey, if you please. He's on now."
Strike moved across the room to the television set, careful to keep out of range of Lunde's funny box. He snapped the switch just in time to catch the program highlight.
The image of Rod Shipkey appeared. He spoke with the easy smoothness that characterized this veteran explorer and newsman's delivery.
"...and now for our 'Five-Star Believe-This-If-You-Can of Space.' Around the largest of our planets, Jupiter, a whole host of satellites of varying sizes are slung in their orbits, tied by the invisible cord of gravity. The closest of these-paradoxically known as Satellite Five because it wasn't discovered until after some of the larger ones-is a tiny bit of rock less than two hundred miles in diameter. It circles its primary some 112,600 miles away, hurtling like a cannon-ball around Jupiter in less than twelve hours. Incredible to think there might be anything on that barren and useless ball of stone dangerous or even interesting to Man, lord of the Universe.
"And yet-believe this if you can!-on Satellite Five there is a strange form of life which has defied all efforts to kill or catalogue it. No man has ever set foot on Satellite Five and returned alive!"
"There are three authenticated records of space-masters who, either by choice or force of circumstance, landed their craft on Five. None has ever been heard from again. One of these cases was an expedition especially equipped to take care of itself under any conditions. It was the spaceship and crew of Jan Ebers, famous Dutch hunter of extraterrestrial life-forms, one of the earliest pioneers in that romantic and dangerous business now epitomized by the greatest of them all-our own Gerry Carlyle.
"What this strange creature, so inimical, may be, we can only conjecture, aided by fragmentary notes of space fairers who passed briefly in proximity to Satellite Five, and by telescopic observations from Io, the next Jovian satellite outward. These give us a curious picture. Four things we can say about it. The thing is somewhat saurian or wormlike in appearance, low on the evolutionary scale. It seems to be of a sluggish nature, which would be natural considering what a limited supply of energy-building food elements there must be on Five. Not more than one has ever been seen at a given time. And-believe this if you can! The monster breathes fire! Literally!"
Gerry and Strike exchanged tolerant smiles. They had seen a lot of incredible things, but a fire-breathing monster would require a good deal of seeing to believe.
"...have precedent for this phenomena," Shipkey was saying, "in classic mythology. Cacus, from Vergil's Aeneid, spouted fire... Here an attendant stepped into view with an artist's conception of Cacus, the half-man, half-beast slain by Hercules.
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, time's a-flyin'. Which is just as well, for there's not much more we can say about our mysterious fire-demon, the Cacus. Safe it is to say that Man, with his insatiable curiosity, will not long let this remain a mystery. Someone with courage and the proper facilities will dare death once again, and tear out the black heart of the secret that shrouds Satellite Five. Indeed, it's a surprise to me that the inimitable Carlyle has not already done so. Can it possibly be that at last there's something in the Universe that blonde dare-devil hesitates to tackle? Believe that, ladies and gentlemen, if you can!"
The too-handsome announcer with his too-suave voice slipped deftly into focus, saying dulcetly, "This is WZQZ, bringing you Rod Shipkey with the compliments of Tootsie-Tonic, that gentle -- ' The screen went dead.
Strike looked across at Gerry in surprise.
"I bought one of those gadgets yesterday that automatically turns off the radio when the commercials begin," she explained. "All right, Professor Lunde. We've played ball with you. We've granted you an interview, listened to Shipkey. Now let's have a look at a brass tack or two."
Lunde hitched himself forward earnestly.
"I have invented a weapon, Miss Carlyle, that will render the monster on Satellite Five helpless!" be proclaimed dramatically. "A paralysis ray!"
Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before.
"What's the principle?" she asked.
Lunde removed his glasses and used them to tap his fingers and gesture with as he broke into a classroom lecture.
"The transmission of a nerve impulse along the nerve fiber is provided by local electrical currents within the fiber itself. But the transmission of a state of activity from one nerve fiber to another, as happens in the brain when sense organs are stimulated, or from a nerve fiber to a muscle fiber, as happens in voluntary movement, means transmission of excitation from one cell to another.
"Passage over the junction point between cells is effected by a chemical transmitter, acetylcholine. Every voluntary or involuntary movement is accompanied by the production of minute amounts of acetylcholine at the ends of nerve fibers, and it is through this chemical agent that the muscle is set i
nto action."
Tommy Strike stirred.
"Old stuff, Doc. Sir Henry Dale and Professor Otto Loewi won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine for that discovery sixty-seventy years ago. Nineteen-thirty-six, wasn't it?"
Lunde seemed vaguely annoyed by this display of erudition.
"Well!" Professor Lunde was resuming. "The acetylcholine is very unstable, and breaks down into other chemicals as soon as its function is completed. There is a disease known as myasthenia gravis, characterized by muscle weakness, in which there is too-rapid destruction of acetylcholine. Now, if a device could be built which would decompose acetylcholine as fast as it is produced within the body-you see? The muscles would be unable to receive nerve impulses, unable to act. Paralysis!"
Lunde now exposed the interior of the leaden-colored box which had caused Strike such distress earlier. The interior showed a bewildering array of tubes and coils, all in miniature; there was also a portable power unit attached. The lens was shutterlike, similar to a camera lens. It appeared extremely simple to operate.
"This, in effect," went on Professor Lunde in lecture style, "produces a neutron stream. We decided against a stream of electrons, because they lack sufficient momentum; protons, too, can be deflected. But neutrons react with atoms at low energies. And the penetrating neutron blast destroys the acetylcholine by adding to its atomic structure, thus making it so extremely unstable that it breaks itself up at once. It does not harm blood or lymph or bodily tissues because they are essentially stable combinations, whereas acetylcholine is not."
"Say! That makes sense! And I can testify the blasted outfit sure works! That means we can take a crack at this Cacus jigger on Satellite Five and show Shipkey up for a dope! How about it, Gerry? Let's go!"
Gerry shook her head.
"Impossible, Tommy, and you know it. I have lecture commitments three weeks ahead, conferences with Kent on the autobiography, business appointments, a hundred and one things to do. No, the Jupiter trip'll have to wait. Sorry, Tommy. . . ." Then Gerry's voice turned poisonously sweet. "Besides, I have to run up to Hollywood on the Moon day after tomorrow. Special occasion at the Silver Spacesuit. Henri, the maitre d'hotel, is naming a sandwich after me. A double-decker: hardboiled egg and ham!"