The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  “The birds resemble pterodactyls, prehistoric flying reptiles. Scientists are going to investigate in an effort to classify the creatures. They consider it possible that these birds may have escaped from some corner of the globe which has thus far escaped exploration.”

  “So they’re still around!” I breathed glancing at Lucy’s drawn white face. “Wonder what in heck they’re looking for? We’ve got to keep our eyes peeled.”

  She nodded slowly, but whatever she was going to say was cut short by the newscaster’s next words.

  “As already announced in earlier bulletins, a new criminal organization has been uncovered in this country. Further investigation has shown that radio devices, at first suspected to be the criminals’ means of learning guarded commercial secrets, are not responsible! In rooms especially guarded and spotted with radio detectors, secrets have still been learned. Meanwhile, the investigation is continuing.”

  I switched the set off. “More I think of this, the more I think you’re right, Lucy,” I muttered. “About the crooks being responsible, I mean. Is it possible that the great secret your dad found is this very one the criminals are using?”

  “Possibly,” Lucy frowned. “But I still can’t see why you’re sticking your neck out! Haven’t we had enough grief already?”

  CHAPTER IV

  Space Ship Return

  Altogether it was tough going thereafter. Nothing seemed to get things going, and my efforts to get Inspector Davison to let us return to town were unavailing.

  All I could obtain was permission to go with a plainclothes escort into town, so that I could keep in touch with my legal affairs. This enabled me to become more friendly with Inspector Davison, also. But Davison still withheld permission for Lucy and me to leave the Coratti residence.

  “Can’t be done, Fowley,” he said seriously, as I tackled him in his city office. “This case is unique, and you know enough of the law yourself to realize that suspects in a murder which involves scientific implications must be confined to the scene of the murder for a period of six months.

  “If nothing happens by then and no culprit is found—if the rocket ship does not return to Earth, that is—you are automatically adjudged innocent, and your wife too. But by then you may have gotten your own space machine finished, and we can do something.”

  I nodded resignedly. “Well, there it is. Have you got any leads yet?”

  “Not many,” he sighed. “It’s so complex. Your wife is attacked by giant birds; you and my men are attacked by a person with scientific weapons—weapon, anyway. Now I’m inclined to think that there may be a connection between the mystery at the residence and the crime ring that is operating at the moment.”

  “So am I,” I said slowly. “I believe that it might be the secret Dr. Coratti discovered, and which was stolen from him after his death.”

  “You do?” Davison looked at me keenly. “Do you believe Dr. Corattí died from heart failure?”

  “That’s what the medico said,” I answered him steadily.

  “Hm-m—If this is Corattí’s secret—this power to look into secret meetings through solid walls—how is it that while they were about it, the criminals only stole that secret, yet left behind the plans for a spaceship—plans which you are now using?”

  “Plenty of reasons for that,” I said. “The art of probing through walls may not have been in a written plan, nor might the plan have been in the laboratory safe, if there even was such a plan. Again, the criminals did not need the constructional designs of a spaceship. They had one already designed—and used it!”

  “Hm-m—I see your point. Well, guess the only answer is to fly to the moon, after all. Any progress yet?”

  I nodded. “I sent in the plans a week ago—and got the first consignment by freight yesterday. I’m going to spend the weekend putting parts together.”

  “Good! Sooner you finish the job, the better I’ll like it.”

  I left him soon after that. When I got back to the country house Lucy had nothing of moment to report, but at dinner she rather surprised me.

  “You mean to go ahead with this insane idea of building a second rocket ship, I suppose?”

  “Naturally. One consignment’s here already, isn’t it?”

  “Two!” she retorted. “Some electrical machinery was delivered this afternoon. I had the men throw the crates in the hangar.”

  “For the daughter of the man who invented space travel, that was damned considerate of you,” I commented dryly.

  “It isn’t that—it’s just that I think you’re making a fool of yourself. Then there’s the money involved. And even if you finish the darned ship and get to the moon, how do you know what to look for?”

  I smiled grimly. “I’m going to look for weeds.”

  “Weeds!” Her blue eyes sharpened.

  “Like those in the laboratory,” I went on slowly. “Beryl’s last words to me were something about weeds. We know they came from the moon—and since the crooks went there too, it all adds up. They went to the moon to get the weeds! What the weeds signify, I can find out when I reach there. Understand?”

  That same evening I unpacked the crates, and during the next two days—Saturday and Sunday—I worked eighteen hours apiece, welding the plates together with the laboratory’s equipment, gradually getting some sort of shape into the cylindrical object in the hangar cradle.

  It was not difficult. The engineers had returned the sectional plans for me to work with. Hardest part was working alone: Lucy did not raise a finger to help me.

  But on that Sunday evening, when I was just about all in, Lucy came into the hangar slowly and estimated my progress. I saw her mouth tighten a little.

  “Well, don’t you like it?” I asked her bluntly.

  “Seems I’ve no say in the matter!”

  But nonetheless she went around the section of work I had completed, surveyed the electrical engines, then her gaze wandered to the shelves of chemicals. I thought nothing of that—then. At last she shrugged.

  “At least it keeps you out of the house,” she said sourly. “We’re all washed up, Curt, and when we get out of this mess I’m seeing my lawyer about a divorce.”

  “Because I’m trying to find out who killed your father and sister, eh?” I asked bitterly. “Hell, that’s gratitude for you!”

  “You’re not trying to solve anything!” she blazed back at me. “You are only trying to pin something on me to satisfy your infernal distrust! I never thought you could be such a beast!” And the venom with which she said it made me jump for a moment.

  Then she was gone, leaving me scratching my head. I’m telling you, the man who sticks his head out nowadays is a sucker.

  * * * *

  When I went into the house an hour later, dog-tired, I found Lucy had gone to bed. I moodily ate the cold supper Butson had left for me, then went upstairs myself. During the day Lucy had seen fit to widen the gap between our twin beds, so that O was now several feet from her. She was sleeping deeply, or else simulating it to avoid conversation.

  I got to bed in sullen fury, but I couldn’t keep up the bitterness for long, for my hard work had made me like lead. I must have gone to sleep almost instantly, to be literally shot out of slumber some hours later by something damned close to pandemonium.

  I awoke to the roaring and exploding of a giant gun—or so it seemed at first. Then I saw wild and wavering lights flashing through the window. I stumbled out of bed half blind and stared outside. There was no moon, but I was in time to see a monstrous vessel at the end of its journey, cushioning down to the ground on its underjets.

  The rocket ship had returned!

  “Lucy!” I shouted hoarsely, swinging around and slamming on the light. “Lucy, the rocket’s—”

  I stopped dead. Her bed was empty and her clothes had vanished. Confused, I went back to the window, stared out as I scrambled into my pants.

  Suddenly I wondered why there was not more action from the boys around the grounds. The
re was only a momentary blaze of revolvers and then a surprising silence. I frowned, cursed the fact my pants legs were twisted and were holding me up. Savagely I straightened them, grabbed my coat and dashed downstairs. I heard Butson and his wife shouting inquiry as I went.

  I raced into the grounds and then brought up sharp, falling back before a sudden monstrous concussion. It hit me like an earthquake, and my dazzled eyes beheld the whole mass of the hangar laboratory going sky-high in one terrible explosion. Flat to the earth I went, my ears ringing; I got up finally to behold a devastating, crackling blaze roaring into the sky, and silhouetted against it were four figures—three men, and a girl, undoubtedly Lucy.

  “…mercury fulminate!” she was shouting. “I blew it up, I tell you! I—”

  “Step on it!” one of the men shouted, and Lucy started to heave forward with them around her.

  “Lucy!” I shrieked, leaping up and racing across to them. “Lucy, what’s happened? What’s—”

  I got no further than that, for a mist shot suddenly from the air from the nearest man. Part of it missed me, but its inhalation brought me crashing to the ground, there to lie perfectly conscious but unable to move my muscles properly. It was a ghastly sensation chained there to the earth, with my nerves jumping like hell and my eyes following Lucy as she went into the darkness with the men.

  Was she going deliberately—or being forced? That was what got me. She had admitted blowing up the hangar with mercury fulminate—and with it my half-made spaceship. Then it was I recalled her visit to the hangar and her glance around the shelves. So she had planned to do this thing—planned it to upset my efforts!

  I made a mighty effort to break the paralytic spell and failed again. Then I lay still and watched with frozen horror as, through the light of the fire, I saw monstrous antlike birds sweeping down with demoniacal speed, giant wings spread. They missed me—or else took me for dead, just as they ignored the plainclothes men scattered prone about the grounds, obviously victims of the killer’s paralyzing guns.

  I saw the birds settle finally at the ship’s open airlock. Their wings folded like giant capes as they waddled inside the ship. Six of them went in one after the other, and came out again with their mighty beaks filled with dead leaves! No—not leaves; weeds! Limp masses of moon-weed! There was definite intelligent purpose in the way they worked.

  They gathered up all the weeds they could from inside the ship—and there seemed to be a bushel of them; then they took them over and dropped them in the blaze of the laboratory fire, which was dying down into a smoldering glare.

  Evidently satisfied, the birds took to the air again and swept out of sight. I did not need to guess they were following Lucy once more. That settled it for me: I had to break free! I strained and sweated and struggled, and at last felt life coming back into my limbs. I had missed the full impact, anyway.

  I got to my feet at last, stumbled to the ship and stared inside it. Firelight through the portholes showed that no weeds remained, but the floor was slippery with crushed sap.

  Why the systematic destruction of the weeds? I could not stop to think it out then. Right now Lucy was my sole concern.

  Off I went again, stumbling through the undergrowth of the estate, following the direction the birds had taken. I lost sight of them very rapidly but I went on just the same, until I found the trail ended beyond the boundaries of the estate and I was out on the river towpath.

  I did not call for fear of giving my presence away, and I’d no wish for a second shot of that paralyzing fluid. Instead I struck matches and peered at the yellow mud on the towpath. A recollection of Lucy’s stained boots on the night of Beryl’s murder returned to me. Lucy had spoken the truth then.

  There were clear imprints of men’s boots and Lucy’s shoes. Sick with anxiety for what might happen, though the lunar birds were still not in sight, I tracked the footprints until they brought me to a high bank of the river, and beyond it an old boathouse used only in the summertime. There was no sound beyond gurgling water.

  I hesitated, then went down to the boathouse. Once I got to it, I froze into attention at the sound of a voice kept pretty low but nonetheless audible.

  “Whether you die or not is of no consequence to us, so get that straight, sweetheart! We can easily chuck you in the river when we’re through, if you don’t come across. If you’re sensible you’ll speak.”

  My skin prickled with mounting anger. Yet I had a vague relief too. Lucy was not associated with these mystery men, then: it had only looked that way. Probably they’d had a gun in her back to stop her calling out. Else she’d purposely kept quiet to save anything happening to me.

  I crept closer, but I could not get all the conversation because of the noise the river water was making.

  “…because of ants…” I heard that clearly and puzzled over it.

  “And what did we get?” the voice went on bitterly. “We got a collection of damned weeds! Sure, they’ll be useful, but it wasn’t what we wanted. Your father had a different secret besides weeds. He knew how to learn secrets without using radio means. We went to the moon to get it and found we’d been tricked, see? We found weeds instead.

  “We tapped the wires, heard your sister telling your husband over the phone that she’d found the secret we were looking for—only when we got it from her, it proved to be the wrong secret. But you know the secret we want—so we came back to get it. And you’d better act quick! You know as well as we do that those damned Selenites are here on Earth to avenge the theft of their secrets. So—spill it!”

  A lot of things fitted into place in my mind at hearing those words. I edged closer and suddenly caught the pale yellow of a light streaming down a cracked board. I glued my eye to it, and I got a bad shock at what I saw.

  The three men were standing in the light of a candle stump—all men whom I could not recognize with their stubbly merciless faces. They looked what they were—space-traveling renegades, with the appalling strain of the void still reflected on their ugly features. In the center of them was Lucy, bound with boat rope to a rickety chair. I could see her as she struggled vainly to free herself, looking up with terrified eyes.

  “Well?” demanded the speaker savagely; and I noticed he was smoking. He waited a second or two, then blew the ash from his cigarette and eyed the glowing end thoughtfully. “You got nice eyes—” he murmured significantly.

  “How can I speak when I don’t know anything!” Lucy screamed frantically. “I’ve told you over and over! I don’t know the secret you want! I—”

  For answer the speaker caught her thick hair and forced her head back-ward. I saw his cigarette come close.

  “You asked for it,” he muttered.

  Realizing what he meant, I drew back my fist and drove it with blind fury into the rotten boarding. Then, just as my blow fell and sent blazing pain through my knuckles, I heard the whirring of mighty wings and the stench of reptilian flesh.

  Like so many projectiles, three Selenite birds swept suddenly from the heights and slammed with terrific force clean into the roof of the place. I never saw anything like it. Armor-plated, sword-beaked, they went through like bullets.

  From inside the boathouse came a desperate scream, and I distinctly saw one of the men go down with a mighty beak impaled right through his body. The candle vanished; mad commotion broke out. I made use of it and slammed my shoulder again and again into the rotten woodwork. It gave at last. I stumbled into the midst of slashing beaks and leathery wings. A pincered foreleg just missed me as I groped my way along.

  I found Lucy at last, struggling to get free. My penknife finished the job; and hanging onto her tightly, I yanked her free of the melée, half dragged her up the bank to safety. Back to us floated the sound of men dying horribly under the onslaught of the appalling moon-birds.

  “Lucy, you all right?” I gripped her tightly, anxiously.

  “Yes—yes, I’m all right. Only bruises. Thank God you came when you did—”

  �
�That secret,” I broke in, as I hurried her away through the dark from the hellish spot. “What did they want?”

  “I don’t know,” she panted. “I told them that, but they wouldn’t believe it I think that man was going to blind me with his cigarette… They’re fiends Curt—desperate fiends, blind to everything because the thing they wanted is still beyond them. I guess they chose the boathouse as the safest, nearest place to get to work on me.”

  “Guess they won’t anymore,” I said grimly. “The birds got ’em for keeps. But Lucy, what is—”

  I stopped suddenly. Reaction to the ordeal had caught up with her, and she slumped to the ground and lay motionless. I picked her up and staggered through mud and field back to the house. I was met by the recovered plainclothes men.

  “What happened?” Lewis demanded. “What’s been going on?”

  I told him in sections as I carried Lucy into the house and up to her room. He stood scratching his head and he gazed at her limp figure.

  “Can you beat it? We wait all this time for the rocket to come back, then the guys in it put us to sleep with paralyzing guns. Same way as that other guy did. What the hell was your wife doing down there at the hangar fully dressed, just when those men came?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, so long as I’ve got her out of their clutches!” I retorted. “But I’ve got one or two ideas to talk over with the inspector. Get him on the phone, will you—and tell him to have some men take a look at the boathouse too. The Butsons are around the house somewhere—send them up here. I’ve got o bring my wife around.”

  “Okay.”

  In ten minutes, with the Butsons’ help, I’d made Lucy as comfortable as possible, patched up her bruises.” A little brandy accomplished the rest.

  CHAPTER V

  Ultrasonics

  Lucy was completely conscious by the time Inspector Davison arrived. He nodded to me, then looked at her with a frown.

  “What’s all this?” he demanded. “My men outside said something about an attack, a fire—”

  I gave him the details as quickly as I could, as Lucy lay there listening.