“Mercurian menace,” Quade groaned. “That baboon would be melodramatic on his death-bed. All right—to the space port, then.” As the taxi started he called, “How long were we down below?”
“Pretty long. Seemed like a century. A half hour, I guess. Von Zorn’s speech kicked open the emergency circuit, so everybody on the Moon must have listened in.”
“Radio?” McColm rasped. “Where’d they get the power?”
“Emergency batteries, of course,” Quade said.
THEY sped through a stricken city.
The panic was on! All Hollywood on the Moon was fleeing for the space ships and safety. Occasionally a wildeyed man sprang (into the taxi’s path to flag a ride, but the expert driver tooled his car around without losing speed. Three times they heard distant explosions and saw momentary flares of sparks against the backdrop of starry darkness. Prometheans were multiplying.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t all managed to get loose at the same time,” Quade muttered. “It was so damned quick. They had control before we knew there was any danger.” With decreased gravity pedestrians bounced about dike rubber balls. Luckily the street was level, but whenever the car hit a bump it rose for some distance, with the motor roaring and the wheels spinning madly. The space port was a shrieking bedlam of milling humanity in the fitful light of automobile lamps and improvised flares. Quade smiled grimly as he watched some of Nine Planets’ ruggedest he-men battling past frenzied women to get passage on the ships.
Occasionally Prometheans scurried about, kicked at and abused almost pathetic in their apparent lonely helplessness. But the stars, who had not long past displayed them proudly at social events, now screamed and ran at the very sight of a Mercurian.
Presently the outgoing ship was jammed full of humanity, and the airlock closed. Attendants shoved the crowd back to safety and signaled the okay to take off. Nothing happened. Minutes passed. A chill wave of apprehension passed over the crowd. Then the lock swung ponderously open and the ship’s commander stood in the opening. He held in both hands, swollen, sparkling Promethean.
“All the juice is gone from the storage batteries,” he called. “Can’t generate a spark in the rocket chambers. And it’ll take hours to build up enough current to energize the gravity plates.”
The same condition was found to exist on four other space ships. That left only a few, not nearly enough to evacuate a quarter of the Moon’s inhabitants. But these took off and sped toward Earth, sending frantic radio signals for aid. The Moon’s emergency radio equipment had gone dead when a Promethean found it, and signals broadcast from New York and Loudon to the relay ships beyond the Heaviside layer brought little hope. All spacecraft within a wide radius had been ordered to converge on the Moon at top speed. But the distances were those of interplanetary space, and it would take time for the nearest vessel to arrive.
And time was important, terribly so!
Without power the air rectifiers were failing, the gigantic heating plates and coils died, and the beams holding down the artificial atmosphere were useless. In three or four hours the Moon would be literally a dead world.
The air was cold, rapidly getting colder. A knifing wind blew coldly from the Great Rim—a wind on the Moon, where none had blown for illimitable eons! Already the trapped atmosphere was moving out from the gigantic crater that held Hollywood on the Moon. With neither gravity nor force beams to hold it, the air was seeping over the Rim, diffusing to all parts of the surface, and dissipating in the vacuum of space.
Panic came swiftly to those caught in the death-trap. The most glamorous and beautiful city in the System now—And in four hours, it would be—a morgue!
CHAPTER IV
The Ark Arrives
GERRY CARLYLE paced the control room of the Ark and watched her chief pilot, Michaels, as he sat with lined, strong face intent on the instruments. The girl’s stubborn chin was set her silken blond hair tousled.
“Pep it up, Michaels, can’t you?” she burst out. “It’s been an hour or more since the last signal came in from the Moon.”
“The refugee ships are still sending messages,” he grunted.
“What of it? For all we know the Moon may be dead right now. I wish I’d radioed Von Zorn or Quade when I first got the dope on that Martian spore!”
“What was that?”
Gerry halted and frowned at the pilot. “I ran across it long ago in a Martian volcanic area. It’s microscopic, but it resembles these—these Prometheans. It absorbed energy directly from the volcanic activity. I saw them grow, Michaels, and reproduce. It’s no wonder the signals from the Moon have stopped!” The girl hurried away as a thought struck her. The radio transmitter was in a nearby cabin, and quickly she adjusted it for sending. Not for the first time she wished her lieutenant and fiance, Tommy Strike, were along, but Strike had gone fishing for mariloca in the Martian canali, and she couldn’t spare the time to pick him up.
When Gerry, after studying the notebook sent her by stratosphere from the London Zoo, had noticed the possible danger, she had immediately manned the Ark with a skeleton crew and pointed its nose toward the Moon. She had thought of televising Von Zorn or Quade and warning them, but Hesitated.
For that the Prometheans actually were dangerous was only a theory on Gerry’s part, and the possibility of Von Zorn’s ridiculing her wasn’t pleasant. Moreover, the president of Nine Planets would never believe the girl, would think it only a trick on her part to gain possession of the Mercurians.
So Gerry went off to investigate firsthand. And, almost at her destination, she received the first warning broadcast from Von Zorn. After that events moved thick and fast.
Gerry kicked over a switch and leaned close to the transmitter.
“Calling Hollywood on. the Moon! Calling Hollywood on the Moon!”
No answer. But Gerry had expected none. She went on, “Message for Anthony Quade! Carlyle of the Ark calling Anthony Quade of Nine Planets Films! Please relay this message to Quade. Message follows. Quote. Meet me at the Central Space port in twenty minutes. Bring Prometheans for experimental purposes. Signed, Gerry Carlyle. Unquote.”
She repeated the message several times, and then went back to pace the control room. It seemed an eternity before Michaels lowered the ship on a cleared space, faintly illuminated by car headlights.
He pointed through a porthole.
“Look at that mob! You’re not going out there, Miss Carlyle?”
“I am,” Gerry said grimly, buckling on a gun-belt. “So are you.” She handed a rifle to the pilot and led the way.
As the space port swung open a surging flood of humanity, terrified, shouting, screaming, pressed forward.
“Let us in! Let us in!”
“Ten thousand dollars for a passage!” Gerry stepped back involuntarily. Then her stubborn chin jutted. She drew the gun, waved it menacingly. Her voice cracked out, cold and incisive. “Get back! All of you!”
MICHAELS, behind her, lifted the rifle. The; mob hesitated, and a man shoved his way through, a Promethean under either arm. Gerry recognized him. “Quade! Here!” she cried.
He broke into a stumbling run. The crowd broke and surged forward. Quade reached the space port a few steps before the first of the mob. Gerry hauled him into the ship, planted a capable fist on the nose of a man trying to scramble aboard, and dodged inside. Michaels slammed the port, locked it.
“Lift the ship,” Gerry snapped. The pilot hurried to obey. Quade stood silent, looking embarrassed. His face was grimy, and a long cut ran from forehead to chin where a flying splinter of glass had grazed him.
“In here,” Gerry said, and led the way to her laboratory. Once there she stood arms akimbo and glared at Quade.
His attempt to smile was not notably successful. “Okay,” he said. “Go ahead. Pour it on.”
“Not at all,” Gerry observed sweetly. “I’ve run into incompetence before.” Quade made a hopeless gesture. “I’ve got a comet by the tail. Damn it, Miss
Carlyle, I’m responsible for all this. So far nobody’s been seriously injured, but in a few more hours the whole-Moon will be dead. Unless—”
“Now you listen to me,” Gerry said, the stubborn set of her chin presaging trouble. “I haven’t got the resources of Nine Planets Films behind me. When I want a new monster, I have to go out and fight for it. My men have to risk death every time they follow me. That takes something, Tony Quade. Anybody with a few billion dollars can use robots to collect specimens—”
The man winced.
“Oh. You guessed that.”
“Sure. Robots are the backbone of Nine Planets, aren’t they? Give me that animated firework.” She snatched a Promethean and reached for a magnifying lens. “No, I haven’t your resources. I can’t pick the finest brains in the System when I want to know something. But my knowledge is practical, Quade, and I got it from knocking around the planets for years.”
“We’ve shut off all the power,” Quade said hopelessly. “McColm—he’s the head of the labs—is superintending that. But once we turn it on again, the Prometheans will suck the electricity. There must be hundreds of them now.”
“This creature has a positive and a negative pole,” Gerry Carlyle told him. “And there’s a device to seal over the poles when they move around. That’s natural, since they came from a highly metallic world.”
“Yeah,” Quade said. “That’s why we couldn’t short circuit them.”
Suddenly Gerry smiled, but not pleasantly. “I can short circuit them,” she observed. “I can clean up the Moon for you in a jiffy.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes. I can destroy every Promethean here. Except one. I want one left alive.”
Quade didn’t answer. Gerry took a paper from her pocket and laid it on a table. “Here’s a pen,” she said. “I can write contracts too.”
“What’s the squeeze?”
THE girl’s eyes blazed dangerously.
“The squeeze—as you inelegantly term it—is simply my fee for saving the moon. I want one surviving Promethean for the London Zoo. And I want your assurance that you won’t import any more from Mercury.”
“But Von Zorn—”
Gerry said angrily, “I could make this a lot harder for you if I wanted to. I’ll give you sixty seconds to sign that agreement.”
Quade scowled but signed. He dropped the pen and said grimly, “What now?”
“I’ll need a large cleared space. Where—”
“The Plaza.”
“Okay. Show Michaels how to get there.”
Without a word Quade went out. Presently the Ark grounded. Gerry was at a porthole in a jiffy. Looking out over the broad, parklike expanse, she nodded with satisfaction.
“Plenty of room. That’ll help.”
Gerry had an idea of how she could destroy the Mercurians. It was simple enough. More than one scientist on the Moon had already had a similar inspiration, but unfortunately power was needed to carry it out. And the only power available was in Gerry’s Ark. It would be hours before any other ship arrived.
The girl locked the Prometheans in one of the numerous cages around the room, smilingly patted the contract in her pocket, and set to work.
“The Prometheans must be highly sensitive to electricity,” she said to Quade, who had wandered in. “Or to any source of power. They’ll be coming around here pretty soon.”
“What’s your plan?” Quade asked.
“I’m a trapper by trade, so I’m using a trap. The most primitive of weapons. As soon as I can set up a portable power plant—”
This didn’t take long, for Gerry had capable assistants. Quade, at the girl’s suggestion, went outside the ship and went through the gathering crowd, organizing an emergency police staff. A large area was roped off, and the streets leading into the Plaza were cleared. And now, in the distance, the first of the Prometheans was seen arriving in a blaze of sparkling glory.
Quade, who was in conference with some of the studio staff, returned to inform Gerry of the arrival. She brushed a strand of blond hair from her eyes and murmured absently, “Not ready yet. Keep ’em away.”
She didn’t explain how, but nevertheless Quade went out and sent out a hurry call for a long wooden-handled shovel. Already the Prometheans were arriving in force. There was now no need for the ropes to’ keep the crowd back; the mob shrank away terrified from the blazing beauty of the creatures.
Faster they came, and faster. Men and women sought safety in flight. Only a few of the hardier men—many of them belonging to Quade’s personal staff, hand-picked and efficient—remained. But even, these could not withstand the onslaught for long.
Slowly Quade’s men were forced back to the Ark’s port. Under the impact of violent electric shocks gasping curses and groans went up. The space ship was the center of a flaming, whirling, incandescent glare of rainbow light. Flame-red, sun-yellow, eerie blue and green and violet, it was a fantastic spectacle of terrifying beauty.
Beauty that meant death!
CHAPTER V
Short Circuit
GERRY opened the port and said, “You can come in now.” She looked cool as a cucumber. Quade angrily suspected that she had spent a few minutes renewing her lipstick and touching up her hair while he and his men struggled against the Mercurians.
“Thanks a, lot,” he grunted, following the others into the ship. A Promethean wobbled in after him, but a sharp kick disillusioned the creature and sent it scooting into the night. Quade slammed the port.
“Come on,” Gerry said. “We’re all ready.” She led him down a sloping passage and opened a door. Quade saw a large circular room, carpeted, apparently, with grass.
“This compartment has a sliding floor,” she said. “Sometimes we set the Ark down over a monster, slide the floor back into position, replace the outer insulation, and we’ve got him safely.”
Quade was eyeing a portable power plant which had been set up near by. An iron plate lay flat on the ground, and Gerry pointed at this casually.
“The Prometheans have to unseal their poles when they feed,” she. explained. “See that grounded wire? It’s just a device for short circuting. I’ll show you—” She called to Michaels, and 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 girl 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 the narrow opening.
At Gerry’s command, Michaels enlarged the gap so the rest of the Prometheans could surge in. Quade made a frantic bound for safety, but the girl was ahead of him and blocked the passage. “Don’t just stand there!” he gritted. “One of those things is heading right for me!”
“Oh, 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 a violent 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 plunged 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 girl sank down into a chair and lit a cigarette. “Well?” she inquired. “What’s keeping you?” Quade flushed. “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 script-writers grinding out a story. Have a special premier at Froman’s Mercurian Theatre—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—”
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