And so a new civilization of peace and brotherhood was built up with the knowledge that at the head of it, outside the boundaries of the knowledge of science, was a Great Father Spirit; a Father Spirit to whom all men owed their existence, directly or indirectly; a great life force that had guided the evolutionary process of which all men were the children. From this the conception of brotherhood had grown and developed. It was not mere toleration; it was a community and a society with mutual love and respect. There were neither rich nor poor, for each man gave according to his ability and took according to his needs. No man was ever in want. There was no hunger, no thirst, no poverty, and as far as lay within the bounds of their medical science, there was no disease.
The whites, themselves partially spiritually inclined, recognized that the reds were their superiors in that respect, and the priesthood, and the care of spiritual things, remained in the hands of the inscrutable esthetics. The whites also recognized that if anything needed tenacity, stamina, strength and sheer, solid, animal courage, then it lay in the field of the blacks. The black races made the best soldiers, the best sailors, the best airmen. They won all athletic and sporting events whenever inter-planetary games were held. They could out-box, out-wrestle, out-run, out-leap any of their contemporaries. If there were unclimbable mountains to be climbed, it was the black race who climbed them. If there were new swimming records to be set up, it was the black race that established them. If there were feats of endurance to be undertaken, in the name of the empire, it was the black race who undertook them and carried them off with great success.
But when it came to technology, then it was the turn of the greens. If a problem in science or mathematics needed to be solved, then it was to the greens that the whole population turned. If a new alloy was needed for a revolutionary type of space engine, it would be a green metallurgist who could discover the alloy. If a problem seemed insoluble to red or black minds, then a green mind could crack it open as surely as a hammer cracks a nut.
If it was a problem in design, if it was a problem in nuclear physics, then all the citizens of the empire could be quite certain that the green minds could deal with it —if it had a solution they would find it.
If it hadn't a solution, they would find the way round it, and so the beginnings of harmony were sown. For the whites realized that in each of the separate fields of physical prowess, of technology and spiritual development, they were inferior to their other associate races, so the three associate races in turn respected the whites for their ability in the other fields. The whites were more athletic than the reds or the greens, although far behind the blacks.
The whites knew more of spiritual matters than the blacks or the greens, though they were far behind the reds.
The whites knew less technology than the greens, although they were ahead in other ways.
It was more than respect; it was downright admiration. The three colored races admired the whites for their depths of understanding in all fields. The whites admired the reds for their spiritual knowledge, admired the blacks for their physical culture, and admired the greens for their technological, mathematical minds—the seeds of harmony were beginning to grow.
Admiration and respect grew until a close bond of affinity and affection was forged, and at last the race emerged as a kind of corporate gestalt whole, in which each regarded his fellow beings as equally essential with himself. They knew that if they were to continue progressing, none of them could manage without the other. The blacks, the greens and the reds were the wood, the metal and the stone of which their society was built. The whites were the amalgam, the cement, that held the components together.
Three of the finest examples of the colored races were Pythol, the champion athlete of the blacks, Rashak, the most technologically intelligent of the greens, Tandos, the psychic esthetic high priest of the red cult. These three stood by the launching ramp with Valstar, the white brother of the kidnapped Princess Astra.
A great murmur of anticipation rose from the waiting, watching crowd. It was a vast crowd lining the four sides of the launching field, safely protected by the barrier. The murmuring turned to a roar, and the roar to a great cheer. White, red, black and green mingled in a colorful sea of faces, waving hands, waving hats, waving scarves, gesturing with flags, shouting and cheering, expressing as sound the hope that was in every breast, in every heart, mind and soul: that this expedition to save the Princess would be successful.
The new green weapon was a top secret, known only to half a dozen other green scientists besides its inventor.
No one doubted the loyalty or integrity of his fellows, yet walls have ears, and the fewer the number of those who shared the secret of the devastating new invention, the less chance there was that the asteroid man would learn of the danger that threatened him in time to prepare a shield or an antidote against it.
Rashak had been its chief instigator. He had fathered the invention. He understood it far better than any of the others, but it needed more than sheer intelligence to apply the weapon to the enemy.
It needed the broad understanding of a white mind like Valstar's. It needed strength and courage and ability like Pythol's; and in the long, lonely months of waiting and searching, Tandos would be able to keep up the spirits and courage of the expedition with prayer and with meditation.
They moved, four tiny specks, like flies crawling across a watch glass, across the center of that great field. They reached their waiting ship, the great disc-like ship climbed up the ramp and pulled it up behind them. The great portal of the ship closed. They felt alone isolated, cut off from their fellow Altairians. A green, a black face, a red face and a white face looked into each other's eyes. They were somehow symbolic. They were the representatives of the empire. Their loyalty and affection to each other were symbolic of the bonds that held the empire together. Their supreme loyalty to the lost princess was a symbol of the empire's loyalty to its constitutional monarchy.
At all costs, Astra, if she was still alive, must be brought back, as must her noble father, from the clutches of the foul, unnameable, evil thing, from somewhere in the distant out-worlds. The thing with the superior technology, and yet with no soul. The evil, hideous thing that controlled an asteroid. The thing that was more terrible than a nova, stronger than gravity. A thing that seemed to control destiny itself…
With a roar and a flash, the great ship took off with a great thrust of power. Tandos, Rashak, Pythol and Valstar were winging away into the blue-black, unknown mysteries of space, winging away on their mission of rescue and revenge.
CHAPTER X
Greg struggled desperately in the toils of the net as the revolting thing came closer. It hadn't been so bad, he reflected, the first time he had seen one. Then he hadn't been pinned helplessly in a net, waiting its arrival. He had known that he could fight or run, that he could escape from the foul, hideous caricature of humanity. Now there was no escape. He was as helpless as a fly in a spider's web, and this was worse than any spider. It lumbered and lurched as it walked. Blemished eyes regarded him with evil satisfaction. The raking talon claws reached out to grasp him. He wanted to be violently sick. There was a horrible odor from the thing, a stench of graveyard mould, a fetid decay, as though its evil body were corrupting even while the creature lived. It made him think of a zombie. It looked by every law in the universe as though the thing ought to be dead, only it wasn't dead. It was walking closer and closer, the great mouth opened like the caverns of hell itself. Greg got a reek of its foul breath. He tried desperately to get the axe into position, but the net seemed almost alive and foiled his every effort. It was too thin for the axe blade to bite into; it was too tough for his fingers to snap. It seemed to be drawing ever tighter and tighter as if he were in the grip of some hideous snake. He swore savagely, and as he swore the creature laughed and came closer. It waved the knife in front of his face, as though it enjoyed its ghastly anticipation.
"Oh, get it over with," said Greg, and spat derisi
vely on the floor. The creature was in no hurry; it waved the knife slowly up and down in front of his eyes. He could see its razor-keen edge. He could almost imagine its keen, death-dealing bite, and then he knew that this creature would not kill swiftly. He thought of ancient legends of Chinese tortures and the death of a thousand cuts. He wished that the net would break. He longed for just one chance. One quick blow with that axe, and he knew he could drop the thing in a sprawling heap at his feet. The creature knew that as well; he could see it written in the blemished eyes, the creature was enjoying the game of cat and mouse. It wasn't a tiny helpless fly that it had caught in its net. It was a wasp, a deadly, dangerous, angry wasp—even if a helpless one. The spider was going to win because the wasp was trapped and couldn't use its sting. Greg couldn't use his axe. The spider was going to win, but he was a careful spider. He wasn't coming any closer than he could help until he was sure that the sting was safely trapped in another direction. Yet, looking at it, Greg realized again how fantastically strong it was. He knew that without that axe in his hand, the creature could take him and squeeze the life from him as if he were a rag doll. It could fling him from one end of the corridor to the other. Despite the awful odor of corruption and decay, the thing was fiendishly powerful. It did just occur to him that it wasn't the result of natural evolution; no planet anywhere in the universe, anywhere in the cosmos, could have spawned a thing like this. This was life gone wrong; it was a horrible hybrid between life and death. It was somehow artificial. It was something which the vile hand of an insane human being had interfered with. He thought of the age-old legend of Frankenstein and the monster—a creature concocted from the bodies of the dead and then powered with a strange, unnatural life. Was this something similar? Had the mad scientist who controlled this asteroid been experimenting with a weird biological process of his own? Had he found the way to produce these sub-men, these things that the girl had called the servants of the master?
The knife suddenly snaked out and hacked at something above Greg's head; he fell with a heavy thud to the floor of the corridor. The net had not released its prey, but it had been severed from its anchor threads. As he lay half-stunned, the creature took a lurching step forward and trod on his wrist. It seemed to weigh a thousand tons; he was aware of agonizing pain and felt a bone must snap at any second. The creature looked down at him as though it were enjoying itself hugely. The axe fell from nerveless fingers, and the creature removed its enormous foot. Greg could feel blood pulsing back to his hand. He flexed his fingers experimentally and was pleasantly surprised to find they still worked. "Must be tougher than I thought," he muttered to himself. The creature picked up the axe and, with a powerful stroke of its arm, embedded it in the wall. It gave a low guttural grunt.
"Helpless," it said, pointing to Greg. "Helpless now."
It picked up the net as a fisherman picks up a lobster pot and dragged him away down the corridor, dragged him away into the Stygian darkness.
How far they had traveled in that crude, jolting fashion Grey had no idea. He was conscious of lifts and escalators, of moving belts, and once he fancied he heard the whirring of distant powerful machinery. Once or twice the whole asteroid seemed to vibrate as it had done before. But it was a vibration caused by something distant and remote. The creature continued dragging him painfully along, step after step. Jolting and lurching, he half hoped the net would wear through with the friction of the dragging, but nothing of the kind happened.
It must have been far, far tougher than steel, that net, although as to the exact nature of its composition, he was totally ignorant. At last the creature paused in a dimly lit alcove. Set deep in the alcove was an enormous door, solid, thick, heat-resisting, studded with beryllium rivets. It was a door that looked as if it needed an atomic bomb to open it. The creature put its hand on the curiously misshapen handle and twisted effortlessly. The door swung open on silent, perfectly balanced hinges; swung open inward, away from them, obscuring the view of the chamber beyond. Through the crack a flood of brilliant green light issued; reaching around the chamber, it came bubbling out like green foam, like a cloud of incandescent steam. That light completely baffled Greg; he knew it was the same as the one the girl carried. But as to its source, it completely eluded him. The creature paused a moment, then slumped on all fours and crawled through the crack in the door. It left Greg in the pool of green light, still struggling furiously in the ever-contacting net. He heard a voice; not the creature's voice, but another voice. He stopped struggling and listened. It was a quiet, silky, honeyed voice, soft as thistledown and yet dripping with deadly venom. Every syllable was loaded with poison. It was one of the most cultured and refined voices he had ever heard. It spoke of tremendous intelligence; it also spoke of tremendous evil. The owner of that voice was bad, so bad that in comparison this ill-shapen, blemished thing was an angel from heaven. Greg had never heard a voice like it. It was so calm, so flat, so quiet, like the voice of an automaton. It had almost the soft quality of an expensive tape recorder, and yet it wasn't quite as artificial as a recording. It was a live voice; it came from a flesh-and-blood larynx. It came from a throat and chest. It came over a tongue and passed teeth that had grown by natural evolutionary process. Greg was overwhelmed by fear and curiosity at the same time. The voice was giving orders on a language he didn't understand. And the great creature backed away as it had backed in; backed out of the presence of that terrible and invisible voice, in much the same way that a thrashed dog, or slave of the past, would have backed away from the planter's whip. It came creeping back, looking awe-struck and helplessly terrified. It seized the sack with a great misshapen claw that was still trembling with fear. It dragged the net into the beam of light. The light of the room was so brilliant that for a few seconds Greg could see nothing except what was very close to him. He was aware that the light was streaming from somewhere above or behind the presence, the presence which the creature feared. Something sailed through the air, and he heard the honey silken voice laughing; a laugh that was quiet and refined, but a thousand times more terrible than the ghoulish cackles of the creatures that served it.
Something landed quite near him with a wet, rather heavy splashing sound. The creature mumbled something and began prostrating itself on the floor and backing away, leaving the net-enmeshed Greg squatting helplessly in the beam of light. He turned his eyes away from the direct radiance, back toward the shambling creature that was now making its withdrawal. He saw what it was that had flown through the air. The voice had thrown the creature a piece of raw meat. The thing had it in his misshapen claws and was even now tearing and biting at it, as it backed out of its master's presence.
"A touching little display of devotion and gratitude, don't you think?" said the voice.
Greg looked at the light and with great difficulty tried to focus.
"You won't be able to see me unless I so desire," said the voice. "My rooms are designed that way." It was as deadly as a striking snake, that voice issuing from a shadowy form. "I have one or two questions I'd like to ask you first," it went on. "Then perhaps, if I feel inclined, I may enlighten your curiosity before I have you destroyed."
Greg's courage had returned. He was remembering that he was a Masterson, that he came of a family who feared no creature living or dead, let alone a disembodied voice working in shadows.
"That is, if you can destroy me," he answered quietly.
"I should have no difficulty in destroying you," said the voice. "I am well served here. I have but to raise a finger, and one of my many servants would despatch you as they would squash a fly."
"They'd probably eat me as well," said Greg. "They look pretty civilized!" The voice still showed no emotion, but Greg felt that he was annoyed and decided to keep on the same track.
"Where are you from?" demanded the voice.
"I'm a genie," said Greg. "I came out of a bottle."
"Very amusing," said the voice coldly. "Since you do not wish to tell me, I will tell you. Five sh
ips came up to investigate my world. There were five men in each ship. There are twenty-four corpses, or there were, till I disposed of them and the wreckage on the outside of my world. You bear a striking resemblance to the other bodies. I take it that you were the sole survivor of that crash."
"I might have been," said Greg; "then I might not. I might have popped up out of a rat-hole like you did."
"What a strange sense of humor you have," answered the voice. "Are all your people the same?"
"Oh, I'm quite serious by comparison with some of them," said Greg. "You'd be surprised."
"I am never surprised," answered the voice even more coldly. "That is one of the disadvantages of being omnipotent."
Greg decided that this insane creature lurking in the shadows was a megalomaniac with a paranoia as big as Mount Everest. That at least would help. Sometimes an insane opponent was less dangerous than a normal one, if you only knew how to play him. Greg wished that he majored in psychology instead of astro-physics and engineering.
"Oh, so you you're never surprised, aren't you?" he gibed mockingly.
"As I told you before, I am omnipotent. I know all things."
"Well, who's going to win the Derby next year?" ventured Greg. "I'll put a shilling on it for you."
"What is the Derby?" said the voice.
"I thought you knew all things," said Greg.
"I know all important things," said the voice. "I am not concerned with trifles."
"Well, the Derby's a horse race," said Greg. "It has a tradition that goes back for centuries—quite an event on my planet."
"I see," said the voice; "some sort of sport. Sport, the amusement of lesser minds." He laughed superciliously. "I was telling you how you got here, wasn't I?" it went on.
"You were," said Greg, "and I was telling you you were wrong."
"I'm never wrong," said the voice, and again Greg detected that slight trace of annoyance. "I was telling you that you were the sole survivor of those twenty-five men who crashed when I put out my attractor beam."
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