Secret of the Ninth Planet

by Donald A. Wollheim

  “It's the nose of a message missile—dropped from a guided missile,” Burl announced. “And—look!” He dramatically pointed the beam of his flashlight upon its side.

  There, written in black, heat-resistant paint, were the words: To the Denning Andes Expedition, from U.S. Air Force Base, California Region. By Guided Missile Post by Moon Base control, Ptolomaeus Crater. Official. Open Without Delay.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Valley of Stolen Sunlight

  FOR A moment all three were silent with amazement. “From California—and Moon Base—for us?” gasped Burl, finally. “But why? What can they want of us?”

  His father frowned. “Only way to find out is to open it and see.” He squatted down to study the cylinder closer. Burl pointed a finger at the nose.

  “Looks like a crack there. Maybe it unscrews. Let's lift it.”

  It was not as heavy as it had appeared, for, like all rocket missiles, it was made of the light but tough alloys that were necessary to conserve weight-lift costs and fuel reserves. They stood it upright and tried to turn the top. After a little resistance, it unscrewed slowly. Inside, they found a rolled document bearing the seal of the United States Air Force.

  Burl took it out, and unfolded it with unsteady hands. His father read over his shoulder.

  Gonzales poked at the empty cylinder, impatiently. Finally, he burst out, “What does it say? What do they want?”

  Burl turned to him. “It's unbelievable! It's—it's just so darned surprising! The dimness of the days, the drop in temperature—it wasn't just around here! It was all over the world!”

  Quickly, he went on to tell the Peruvian what they had just learned. The communication was from the U.S. Space Commission and it had been directed on its flight from California by the Moon Base, because only from the satellite could the exact location of the Dennings be spotted. It seemed that the Dennings were the only scientifically trained personnel close to the point on Earth where the disturbance originated. This also accounted for the blanketing of radio waves in their vicinity. Several airplanes had tried to locate them, but strange disturbances in the ether and atmosphere had made it impossible to establish contact. Also, the back reaches of the Andes were poorly mapped and treacherous in air currents, even in normal times.

  “During the last week, a certain fraction of the Sun's light and energy reaching the Earth has been diverted. It has been bent or focused in much the same way that a lens bends light rays—and the point to which it has been directed is a spot only seven miles from here! Over that last mountain range,” said Burl, pointing.

  Gonzales followed his finger. “Just over the mountains lies the source of the trouble,” said Burl excitedly. “And we're the nearest to it. They want us to go over there, see what it is, stop it, or report back. It took the telescopes in Moon Base to locate us and to track the center of the trouble!”

  Mark Denning pursed his lips. “We'll have to start tomorrow, and we'll have to go fast. A loss of light and heat, however slight, could have very serious effects on life if continued too long. We can make it by tomorrow night, if we start early and leave the Indians and pack animals behind.”

  The other two nodded. Mark looked at them in the half-light of the Moon. “You'll have to stay with the equipment, Pedro, otherwise the Indians might abandon it. Burl and I will start out at dawn.”

  Gonzales agreed and the three made their way back to the camp. At the first sign of light breaking in the morning horizon, Burl and his father started off. They carried only enough equipment for survival, plus the additional items that might be needed for the emergency ahead.

  The trek over the mountains was a hard one, the path narrow, steep, sometimes nonexistent. There were few signs of Indians or animals, and it was plain that few ever traveled over this range. The air was cold and thin, vegetation sparse and hardy. All around them was the cold blue of the sky—a shade darker than usual—and the gaunt peaks of ancient mountains. The Inca kings may have claimed the land here, but even their hardy legions had never conquered these lonely and hostile sky domains.

  Panting and weary with hours of climbing, Burl and his father made a quick lunch in a sheltered jumble of rock near the top. Then, shouldering their packs again, they trudged on. At last they reached a point where the view of the other side spread out before them—a breathtakingly clear vision of the little valley below.

  As they looked down, the air seemed to shimmer and vibrate. Burl rubbed his eyes. “It hurts,” he said.

  His father squinted. “There's a powerful vibrational effect. It may be a very dangerous concentration of the invisible rays of the Sun as well as of light.”

  Once Burl had gotten used to the odd visual effect, which was like gazing into the twisting heat rays rising from an overheated oven, he saw that there was a small flat region between the mountains. And in the center of this valley was a large black structure of some sort. The twisting effect of the light around it made it impossible to tell more.

  “That's it,” said Burl. His father nodded, shifted the pack to ease his shoulders, unstrapped the hunting rifle slung over his back, and carefully checked its loads.

  Burl saw what his father was doing and suddenly understood the danger. What could be doing a thing like this? What but something not of this Earth? Something of distant space, of a science beyond that of man—and unfriendly besides. Now, for the first time, Burl realized what he had not had time to before—this was an enemy he and his father were facing—an enemy of all mankind—and utterly unknown.

  He gulped, gripped his rifle, and followed his father down the sliding rocky trail.

  As they drew nearer the base of the mountain, the effects of the strange vibrations grew more pronounced. Burl avoided looking directly ahead, keeping his eyes on the ground before his feet, yet even so, he could not help noticing how the stones around them seemed to shimmer in the invisible waves. From the base of the valley the sky now seemed streaked with black and gray rings, as if they were reaching the center of some atmospheric whirlpool. Out of the mountains, after hours of arduous scrambling, they started across the barren rocky plain.

  Before them rose a vast circular structure several stories high, ominously black and without any sign of windows or doors. Above the building protruded two great projections ending in huge, shining discs. One of the monstrous cuplike discs was facing the Sun, the other pointed in the opposite direction.

  As the two men came nearer and nearer, the strangeness in the air increased. They felt they were being penetrated through and through with invisible lances, with tiny prickles of heat. “Radiation?” queried Burl softly, afraid of the answer. His father trudged grimly on for a moment, and then put down his pack. He took out a Geiger counter and activated it.

  He shook his head. “No radioactivity,” he said. “Whatever this is, it isn't that.”

  They reached the wall of the building. Oddly, here they seemed sheltered from the unusual vibrations. Burl realized that the source was above them, probably the two mighty discs raised high in the sky.

  The Dennings surveyed the building, but found no entrance. It must have been a quarter of a mile around its walls, but there was no sign of a door or entry. The wall was of a rocklike substance, but it was not like any rock or plastic Burl had ever seen.

  “We've got to get in,” said Burl as they returned to the starting point, “but how?”

  His father smiled. “This way.” He opened his pack and took two cans of blasting powder from it. “I thought these would come in handy. Lucky we had some left over from the blasting we did last week.”

  He set both cans at the base of the high wall, wired them together, and ran the wire as far as it reached. When the two men were a safe distance away, Mark sparked off the explosive.

  There was a thunderous roar: rocks and dirt showered around them, and bits of black powdery stuff. When the smoke cleared, Burl and his father leaped to their feet, rifles in hand.

  T
here was a crack in the side of the wall where the explosive had gone off. And the rip was large enough to get through!

  Without a word, they charged across the ground, still smoking from the concussion, and squeezed through the mysterious walls of the enigmatic building.

  The walls were thin, thin but hard, as befit masters of atomic engineering. Inside, they found a roomless building—one single chamber within the frame of the outer walls.

  A dim, bluish light emanated from the curving ceiling. On the uncleared rocky ground which was the floor of the building were a number of huge machines.

  They were spherical glassy inventions, many times the height of a man, connected by strings of thick metal bars and rows of smaller globes, none of which was familiar. There was a steady humming noise, and above, the two giant, metal masts penetrating the ceiling rotated slowly. Doubtless, the great Sun-trapping discs were affixed to the top of these masts.

  There was no living thing in sight.

  Burl and his father stood silently, half crouched, with rifles at the ready, but nothing moved to challenge them. There was only the humming of the Sun transmitters.

  Burl called out, but there was no answer. They advanced cautiously, fearing a trap. The place did not have the look of living things about it. “An automatic station,” said Mark under his breath. “I think it's strictly automatic.”

  It gradually became evident that Mark was right. Everything was automatic. Whoever had built this structure to divert the rays of the Sun had simply set it down, put it in motion, and left. There was no evidence of any provisions for a garrison or a director.

  They studied the machines but could make nothing of them. They found what looked like controls, but although they pushed and pulled the levers and knobs, the humming did not cease. It seemed as if the controls were either dummies or had to be specially motivated.

  “What do we do now?” asked Burl, after they had tried pulling all the levers on one particular switchboard without any results. “Do you have enough powder left to blow up the machinery?”

  His father shook his head. “I had only those two cans with me. We could try shooting into the machinery.” Leveling his rifle, he fired at a glassy globe perched upon the central sphere. The bullet pinged off it, and they saw that it had failed even to dent the glistening surface.

  “It won't work,” said the elder Denning, after several more shots had produced the same result and the concussion reverberating from the enclosed walls had nearly deafened them.

  They continued to hunt for a clue, but found none. Dejected, Burl kicked a loose pebble and watched it rattle against a column near the main control board. A small metallic ball rested on top of the column, apparently unattached. A replacement part, he thought to himself, wandering over to it. It was about the level of his head.

  With the thought that if he examined it he might learn something of the nature of the working machines, he reached out with both hands to pick it up.

  As his hands touched the metallic ball, there was a sudden terrible flash of power. He felt himself grasped by forces beyond his control, paralyzed momentarily like one who has laid hold of an electrically charged wire. He opened his mouth to scream in agony, but he could say nothing. A great force surged through his body, radiating, charging every cell and atom of his being. He felt as if he were being lifted from the floor. Then the globe seemed to dissolve in his hands. It became a glare of light, grew misty, and then vanished.

  For a moment he stood there on tiptoe, arced with the potent violence of the force, glowing from within with energies, and then he felt as if the supercharge were dissolving itself, slipping into him, sliding into the ground, then disappearing.

  He stood before the column, swaying, but still conscious and alive. His hands were still raised, but there was no ball between them, neither of metal nor of power.

  He let them fall to his side and took a step. He was whole, he was sound, he was unharmed. He heard his father's footsteps running to him, and murmured weakly, “I'm all right.”

  And he was. He could see no sign of damage. “I must have absorbed an awful lot of that energy—or whatever it was,” he said.

  After resting a moment, he decided to try the useless controls again. Going over to one small board, he idly shoved a lever. This time he felt resistance. The lever was activated. There was a slight change in the radiance of one globe.

  “Dad!” Burl shouted. “It works! It works for me now!”

  Mark Denning watched as Burl turned dials and levers and got responses. “You must have been charged in a special way,” he said excitedly. “That's how they lock their devices. They will only respond to a person carrying that special energy charge, whatever it was. Come on, let's get to the main control, before the effect goes away—if it does.”

  The two dashed to the panel which, they guessed, activated the main Sun transmitter. Burl grabbed the instruments and threw them back to what seemed to be the zero positions.

  The humming rose in intensity, then quieted down and finally stopped. There was a series of clicks, and one by one, the various globes, condensers and glowing machines died out. Above them came a whirring noise, and Burl looked up to see the masts withdrawing into the building, their discs presumably left flat and directionless.

  It felt different. Suddenly they knew that the vibrations which had been so heavy in the air about them were gone. There was silence everywhere, the natural silence of an empty, lifeless building in an uninhabited valley.

  Burl and his father made their way to the break in the wall and climbed through it.

  Outside, the Sun shone down brighter than it had before. The sky was the calm serene blue of a cloudless day. Burl knew that at that same moment, all over the world, the sky was clearer and the Sun warmer.

  But for how long? Behind them the building still stood—and its inventors were still to be found.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Secret of A-G 17

  THE DENNINGS did not have much time to speculate on the mystery of the Sun-stealers. For just as they were discussing what should be their next course of action, the problem was solved for them. There was a roaring in the air, then a humming, and in a matter of a few more seconds, six rocket helicopters popped into sight, hovered over the valley on streaming jets, and settled down.

  “They're U.S. planes!” gasped Burl, jumping to his feet and going to meet them. “It must mean that they know we stopped the machines.”

  “Obviously,” said his father, striding with him to greet the helmeted man who was now stepping out of the lead machine. By this time the last of the squad had landed, and the khaki-clad soldiers in them were already disembarking. “I imagine that all over the world the sky turned a little brighter. It must have been apparent at once.”

  The leader of the 'copter men reached them. He was a tall, bronzed man, wearing the service coveralls and markings of a captain of the Air Force. He stretched out his hand. “You must be the Dennings. I'm Captain Saunders. I've been asked to bring you back with me right away so that we can get a complete report on this affair. How fast can you get ready?”

  “Why,” said Burl, “we're ready right now. As soon as we can dump our packs aboard. But, gee, you mean go back—where?”

  Saunders smiled grimly. “To California. We just left there. I have been given urgent orders to waste no time. So will you oblige?”

  The two Dennings looked at each other. This was important, all right. They realized that these planes had flown on fast rockets the instant the sky had cleared. Possibly there was still a crisis—one they had not heard of.

  They did not pause to ask further questions. Mark Denning asked the captain to dispatch one of his 'copters to the camp beyond the mountains to tell Gonzales to load up and start back for Lima. This order given, the two Dennings climbed into the rocket 'copter, and Saunders took the controls.

  With a whoosh, the squat craft lifted on its rockets, its jet-driven fan carried
it up, folded, and the rocket engine took over. On upward into the stratosphere they hurtled, across the Western Hemisphere, across the face of jungle and isthmus, across the barren mountains of Mexico, and in a matter of less than half an hour, settled down in the wide open field of a U.S. Air Force base in southern California. It was all so swift, so sudden, that to Burl it seemed like a dream. There had been so many days in the field, in the peace and quiet of the high mountains of the Andes. There had been the slow hunting around age-worn ruins; the careful, deliberate sifting of tons of soil and sand for tiny shards; then this: the urgent message, the trek, the weird building, the strange, body-filling shock, and the control over the Sun-theft globes, followed by the swift transition over thousands of miles.

  Here he was in his home country—weeks sooner than he had expected—but not to return to his home and school. No, for he felt that somehow an adventure was beginning that could lead anywhere. Perhaps his adventure had actually ended, but he saw now that he would be questioned, probed, and asked to recount his story over and over.

  Burl and his father were met at the port by a group of officers and escorted rapidly to a room in a large building. Here there were half a dozen men in civilian clothes. One by one, these men were introduced, and as each one was named, Burl wondered more about what was to come.

  There was a general from Army Intelligence. There was a high member of the State Department. There were three noted astronomers—among them the surprisingly young Russell Clyde and the elderly and famous Dr. Merckmann. There was an aircraft manufacturer whose name graced a thousand planes, and an engineer who had contributed to the conquest of the Moon.

  The general, Walton Shrove, asked them to sit down. He was in charge of the affair. It turned out to be a careful questioning of their story. It was not a hounding of questions as in a police quizzing, or a baiting from newspapermen eager to get a scoop. Rather, their questions were deliberate and intelligent. They drew out the full account of what Burl and his father had seen in that valley, and of what the Sun-theft globes appeared to be like in operation. They concentrated deeply on the curious experience which had placed in Burl the charge that enabled him to control the machines.