“He thanked us for putting it beyond his power to obey—”
He broke off to ask the Aerthon another question, then gasped.
“Dear Mother of Life!” he ejaculated. “The Things are from the dark side of the Moun, Aerth’s satellite!”
The Aerthon nodded.
“Avitchi!” he exclaimed, and added another word: “Hell!”
“We knew not his language—that is, none save Mor Ag, but we all caught his meaning. He referred to the abode of evil, as it was understood on Aerth.
* * * *
We would have questioned the Aerthon farther through the medium of Mor Ag, for we all were intensely curious, but just then that occurred which put an end to questioning, and served likewise to hasten our departure from this sorely afflicted planet.
A crackling, sizzling hiss of lightning and a terrific crash of thunder—the world, so far as we were immediately concerned, all one blinding glare of violet-tinted light—and the great Aethir-Torp rocked under the impact.
“Aho!” shouted Hul Jok. “What now?” And he dashed to one of the lookout openings just as another levin-bolt struck.
We joined him, and one glance was enough. All about us and above us were swarming great iridescent globes, and it was from these that there now came incessant streaks and flashes of lightning—powerful electric currents.
Our commander leapt into the conning tower, the others of us sprang each to his station at one of the Ak-Blastors, of which our craft mounted six, and we promptly left the ground.
In a manner of speaking, we had little to fear, for the metal Berulion, of which Aethir-Torps are built, could in no wise be harmed by lightning, nor could we who were inside be shocked thereby. But some part of the controlling mechanism might have been seriously disarranged by the jarring concussions, and, besides, it was no part of our natures to submit tamely to attacks from any source.
With a swoosh we shot into air and Hul Jok headed the sharp-pointed nose of our great fighting cylinder straight into the thick of the shining globes that swooped and floated and swirled about and above us. Their thin walls gave them no protection against our impact, and we shattered them as easily as breaking the shells of eggs.
With the Ak-Blastors we could and did shatter some of the globes which we failed to ram, but the vibrations of disintegration from these had no more effect upon the occupants of the globes than had the little hand Blasters previously—and Hul Jok fairly stamped in rage.
“Ron Ti,” he exclaimed wrathfully, “your science is but a fraudulent thing! We mount your improved model Blastors, purported to slay aught living, disintegrate anyone, and now—”
His anger well-nigh choked him.
“Content you,” soothed Ron. “If we come again to Aerth—”
“If we come again to Aerth,” Hul Jok asserted grimly, “Aerth will be cleaned, or I return no more to Venhez! But,” he went on, imperatively, “you must find that which will destroy these Lunarions. We shattered and rammed their foolish globes, from which they play with the powers of thunder and lightning, but them we might not harm. They did but float, insolent, safely down to Aerth!”
“We have one Lunarion upon whom to experiment,” suggested Vir Dax meaningly.
“Ay,” snapped Hul Jok. “And I look to you and lion Ti to produce results! See to it that you fail not!”
I have known the giant commander since we were children together, but never had I seen him in such mood. He seemed beside himself with what, in a lesser man, I should have classed as humiliation, but I realized, as did the others that it was merely that in him the dignity of the Looped Cross had been proffered insult, amounting well-nigh to defeat, and that to him the Looped Cross, emblem of our planet, was a sacred symbol, his sole object of adoration; and his high, fierce spirit was sore, smarting grievously, and could in no wise be appeased until, as he himself had phrased it, “Aerth was clean!”
* * * *
We had formally made report to the Supreme Council and had handed over to them, for disposal, both the Aerthon and the Lunarion we had brought back with us. And the Supreme Council, in their wisdom, had commanded Mor Ag and Vir Dax to examine and question the Lunarion, with me to make records of aught he might say—but he would say naught, seemingly taking fiendish delight in baffling us.
The Aerthon, whose name was Jon, had told Mor Ag, while we were on our homeward flight, all that was to be known as to the conditions on Aerth. Here is no space to record it all, but briefly it was as follows: Centuries ago, the Aerthons, divided into nations, warred. A mighty empire, hoping to dominate the planet, attacked a little country as a commencement. Another and larger nation hastened to the rescue of its tiny neighbor. A great island kingdom was drawn into the fray. A powerful republic overseas took hand in the matter; so, ended the strife.
But rather than ending warfare, it did but give fresh incentive to inventions of deadly devices. Somebody found that the element—metal—gold, had strange qualities, previously unguessed. Another discovered that gold could be produced by artificial means, synthetically, to use Aerthly terminology. But the producing was by drawing it from out the storehouse of the universe, the primordial Aethir, wherein, dormant, are all things objective and subjective. And the drain on the Aethir opened strange doors in space, which heretofor, by fiat of the Great Wisdom, had been fast sealed.
Scientists of a great race, Mongulions, made too free use of the Aethir, hoping in their turn to subjugate the races of the West. Because of the vibrations set up in their labors, they made easy passage from Aerth to Moun. And on the dark side of the Moun dwelt a race of fiends, soulless, beyond the pale of the Infinite Mercy, who moved about to keep the Moun’s bulk always between them and the hated light of the Sun. These had ever hated Aerth and its dwellers, for once they had inhabited that fair planet, until they became too wicked, and they, and the Moun, broken from its parent Aerth by Almighty wrath, had been set apart in the sea of space. The Moun, although circling ever about its parent planet, revolved never on an axis, so had one side turned ever toward Aerth; and these Lords of the Dark Face, in their eon-old hate, saw chance, at long last, to regain their lost world, upon which they looked with envy when the lunar phases brought them during the dark of the Moun to the side facing Aerth. In their Selenion globes they invaded Aerth, availing themselves of the openings the Mongulions had unwittingly established.
Aided by these unholy powers of evil, the Mongulions had dominated, even as they had planned, all other races, reduced them to conditions of abject servitude, and were, in turn, subjugated by the Lords of the Dark Pace, through sheer will-energy alone.
So, reduced to conditions wherein they were less than beasts, the Aerthons had remained, prey to their fiendish conquerors, subjected to such treatments as even now, while I write, sicken my soul within me to think of, and are unfit to describe—for why afflict clean minds with unnecessary corruptions?
Only those who have heard that Aerthon’s story can conceive of what had, for ages, taken place in the ghastly orgies of the Lunarions—and we who did hear will never again be quite the same as we were before our ears were thus polluted.
So utterly abhorrent were conditions on Aerth that our Supreme Council decreed that such must be abolished at any cost. Not the planet, but the state of affairs prevailing. For they feared that the very Aethir would become putrescent, and moral degeneracy reach eventually to every planet of the Universal Chain!
But that, again, involved every planet in the matter. So they, the council, sent out invitation to all other planets for conference. Then came delegates from them all. They talked, discussed, debated, consulted—and that was all.
Hul Jok, the practical, violated interplanetary etiquette, finally.
“Talk!” he shouted, rising from where he sat with the other Venhezians. “What does talk do? We’re no nearer than when we started. Since none can offer helpful suggestion, hear me! I am War Prince of Venhez, not a sage, but I say that Ron Ti, if allowed sufficient time, can
find that which will slay these Lunarions—all of their evil brood, and that is what is needed! Leave this matter to us of Venhez!”
A gravely genial delegate from Jopitar rose in his place.
“Oh, you of Venhez,” he said in his stately, courtly speech, “your War Prince has spoken well! Since Ron Ti is acknowledged greatest of inventors on any world, he has but to demand, and if we of Jopitar can place aught at his disposal to further his investigations, he has but to communicate with us, and what we have is at his disposal!”
One by one, delegates from all the planets confirmed the Jopitarian’s proffer, repeating it for those whom they represented. And one delegate, a huge, red-hued, blue-eyed being, went even farther, for, springing to his feet, he thundered:
“But if there is to be actual affray, we of Mharz demand that we participate!”
Hul Jok strode forward and slapped the Mharzion on the shoulder.
“Aho!” he laughed. “One after my own heart! Brother, it is in my mind that crafts and fighters from all the planets will be needed before this matter is ended!”
* * * *
It seems cruel, I know, but what else was there to do? From then on, that captive Lunarion was subjected to strange, some of them frightful, tests. Poisons and acids Vir Dax found had no effect upon him. Cutting instruments hurt, but failed to injure permanently. Already we knew that the Blastors—deadliest weapons known to any planet—were ineffective.
Ron Ti was at his wits’ end! Two of our Venhezian years passed, and all to no progress. Then a girl solved for him the one problem he was beginning to despair of ever solving for himself.
He had a love—who of all Venhez has not?—and she, entering fully into his ideals and ambitions with that sweetly sympathetic understanding none but a maid of Venhez can bestow, had free access at all times to his workshop, wherein he toiled and studied for planetary benefit.
And she, one day seeing his distress at bafflement in his researches, saying naught, withdrew, returning shortly bearing in her arms her chief treasure, an instrument of many strings from which she proceeded to draw sweet strains of music, hoping thus to soothe his perturbed mind.
There came a wondrously sweet strain recurring in her melody, and the first time it sounded, the Lunarion winced. Repetition of that strain made him howl! And realization came to Ron Ti in one blinding flash of light-like clarity.
“Harmony!” he shouted, rejoicing. “The blob-thing is discordant in its essential nature!”
Never a maid of all Venhez was so proud just then as that love-girl of Ron Ti’s. She had, at least, produced some sort of impression on the fiend, made it suffer grievously. So over and over she played that selfsame strain, and, ere many minutes had passed, the Lunarion fell prone, writhing in anguish, howling like a thing demented.
“Enough, Alu Rai,” Ron bade her after watching the captive’s misery for a space. “You have rendered the universe a service! Now depart, for I would think. Herein lies the secret of the weapon which will purge an afflicted world of its woe!”
* * * *
It was a mighty fleet which started for Aerth on that never-to-be-forgotten expedition of rescue and reprisal. Practically speaking, all the craft were of similar appearance, for the Aethir-Torps had long been conceded to be the most efficient type for inter-spatial voyaging. Even the Aerthons had used them before they were subjugated, and Jon the Aerthon stated that the Lunarions themselves had a large fleet of them housed away in readiness against the day when they might desire to win other worlds. But, he likewise told us, until the Lunarions had exhausted Aerth’s resources, they would remain there, and for Aerthly voyaging in air, their Selenion globes were more satisfactory to them, moved by will-force as they were, than the great Aethir-Torps which were managed by purely mechanical methods.
Naturally, the Aethir-Torps from the different planets varied slightly, as, for example, those of Venhez had the conning towers cylindrical in shape, and placed midway from nose to stern; the noses sharply pointed, sterns tapering to half the size of the greatest diameter—that of the waist of the craft; our Ak-Blastors were long, slender, copper-plated. The Aethir-Torps from Mharz were lurid red in color; blunt of nose; rounded as to sterns; with short, thick Ak-Blastors ; and their conning towers were well forward of the middle; octagonal in shape. But why amplify? Surely the Aethir-Torps of each planet are familiar to the dwellers of all the other planets.
And, of course, each craft bore the symbol of its home-world. The Mharzions bore the Looped Dart in gold, even as we of Venhez painted upon the nose of ours the Looped Cross—but the symbols of the worlds are too well known to require description.
Ron Ti and Hul Jok had full authority over the entire squadron, although the war-commanders from all the worlds fully understood the carefully laid plans of aggression. And all the Aethir-Torps, in addition to the Ak-Blastors, now mounted before their conning towers a new device consisting of a large tube, much like an enormous houtar terminating at the snout-end in five smaller tubes.
* * * *
It was black night when Aerth was reached. And it was not until the sickly, wan daylight broke that actual operations commenced.
Spreading out, we quartered the air until the great oval flat showed plain. It was our good luck that it was our own craft which was the first, to come above it, and, as we identified it, Hul Jok’s eyes glowed in wrathful joy—if such emotion may be thus contradictorily described. He caught Ron Ti’s eye and nodded.
Ron Ti, obeying, threw over a lever. A most dreadful and terrific din shook the air with its uproar. From afar to the northward came a similar bellowing howl. Then from the eastward the same sound readied our ears, being replied to, a moment or so later, by the signal from the distant west. And from the southward came the answering racket, and we knew that all Aerth’s surface was under surveillance of one or more of the Aethir-Torps comprising the Expeditionary Fleet.
Slowly, deliberately, we began circling above that infernal ovoid valley. But after that one hideous, bellowing howl, the tubelike arrangements before the conning towers changed their tones, and from them came the same wondrously sweet, heart-thrilling, soul-shaking strain of melody as that which Alu Rai, the love-maid of Ron Ti, had produced to the exquisite torment of our captive Lunarion.
Over and over the strains were played, and still nothing happened. The idea was Ron Ti’s, and I began to wonder if in some manner he had miscalculated. Suppose it did not affect all the Lunarions alike? In that case not only would the expedition be doomed to failure, but the name of Ron Ti would become subject for many a jest on many a world! And we of Venhez must, perforce, walk with bowed heads!
But Ron Ti was smiling, and Hul Jok’s fierce face bore an expression of confident, savage expectancy, and I—I waited, curious, hopeful still.
So swiftly that we could barely see it, an iridescent globe spun through the air, rising diagonally from the cliff-base, shooting straight at our Aethir-Torp. A touch of Ron’s hand, and the strain of music sounded even louder, clearer, sweeter.
The globe, when within a quarter of a mile, shot straight upward, discharged a terrific, blinding flash of chain-lightning against our craft, followed it by a second and even more intense discharge—and still the sweet strain of harmony was all our reply.
The globe swooped until it nearly touched us—and I slid forward the stud on the Ak-Blastor behind which I stood!
The Lunarion bubble was not more than a hundred feet away at that instant, and, like a bubble, it vanished incontinently. As ever, for all that we could shatter their Selenion Globes, those demoniacal Lunarions themselves we could not disintegrate, or so we deemed then, and I know that I said wrathful profanities in my impotent disappointment.
But Hul Jok grinned, and Ron Ti nodded reassuringly to me, saying consolingly:
“Wait!”
Well, I waited. What else could I do? But by this time the same game was going on all over the Aerth. Wherever the Lunarions had abode, the strains of melody were
driving them into a frenzy of madness, and they came swarming forth in their globes, hurling lightning-flashes at our Aethir-Torps, which might not thus be destroyed.
Yet, in a way, honors were even, for if they could not damage our Aethir-Torps, neither could we do aught but blow their globes into nothingness, while they themselves did but flee through the air back to their abodes, unharmed by the vibrations from the Ak-Blastors.
And in this manner, for three days and nights the futile warfare continued, and by morning of the fourth day I doubt if there was left to the Lunarions a single Selenion Globe. At least, for two days and nights more, we none of us saw any. Yet, during those two days and nights, we continually played that music over and over until all Aerth vibrated from the repetitional sound-waves.
But on the next morning following, we had clear proof that, the Lunarions had had all that they could endure of suffering. An Aethir-Torp, of a far different model than any we were acquainted with, shot into air with incredible speed, and catching a craft of Satorn unawares, rammed it in mid-air, completely wrecking it—only to be shattered into dust in its turn by the Ak-Blastors of a Markhurian Aethir-Torp. The crew of the ill-fated craft we could not save, but they were amply avenged ere long.
It happened that we witnessed this ramming, and Mor Ag shouted his surprise.
“But that Aethir-Torp, despite its speed, is of an age-old model,” he affirmed excitedly, and Hul Jok nodded agreement.
“Our Lady of Love grant that their Ak-Blastors be of equally antiquated model,” he chortled. “If they are, their vibrations are of too long and too slow wave-lengths to affect the modern Berulion metal of which we now build our fighting craft!”
And so it later proved to be.
* * * *
We could very easily have shattered their old-model crafts, taking our own good time therefore, but to what avail? It would leave us the same old problem. The Lunarions, with their levitational powers, would descend safely to the ground, and would still inhabit Aerth, overrunning it like the evil vermin that they were.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 4: Nictzin Dyalhis Page 22