The Stone From the Green Star

by Jack Williamson

  “They have gone,” Dick reported. “For a while, at least.”

  “And it’s time, too, for us to leave,” Midos Ken said.

  “Where?” Dick demanded, his aged voice eager with sudden hope. “You mean we can still go on?”

  “Of course. I had not counted on being able to enter the cones of light with the Ahrora, in any event. I had hoped to get closer, of course, before we landed. But we are ready to go on afoot. I had imagined that they might be able to stop our generators—but I did not know their ray would be effective at so great a distance.”

  Half an hour later they opened the massive door of the flier and stepped out upon the desolate mountain side. Since the rosy electronic screens that nimbused them held in the heat, they had no need for heavy garments; they wore only the light, sleeveless slips. Each of them was armed with one of the little tubes that projected the bar of blackness. Dick carried his atomic pistol—the weapon with which he had blown one of the monsters to fragments, only to see it reassemble itself. Thon and Midos Ken carried other weapons and instruments. Upon Don Galeen’s broad shoulders, in addition to his weapons, he carried enough synthetic food to ration them for several days.

  The Ahrora was locked. The electronic screen was still in effect to protect it from the Things of Frozen Flame. Midos Ken had scientific traps set about it to protect it from Garo Nark, in case that worthy should still be able to molest it—though since they had seen Nark’s fliers captured and carried away by the vampire-beings, the latter precaution seemed superfluous.

  In single file, they started up the long, rugged mountain slope, among colossal fields of boulders that gleamed with pale green light, over shimmering banks of snow. Don Galeen, mighty adventurer of many planets, broke the trail, tramping effortlessly along in the lead. Dick brought up the rear, feeling faintly envious of the rugged giant ahead. A few days ago he himself had been such a man; now he was a shrunken shell. But—and his heart leapt at the thought—if they won, his youth would be restored.

  In a few minutes the little red cylinder of the Ahrora was out of sight—lost in the waste of dark, faintly gleaming boulders behind them.

  For weary hours they climbed—struggling up perpendicular cliffs, picking a way across vast flat fields of broken, volcanic lavas—blade rock that dimly fluoresced with green. They were leaping yawning cracks that seemed to reach down in endless green abysses, and tramping across wide fields of snow, shining and green, that masked unexpected pitfalls.

  When possible, they kept to canyons and ravines, for the sake of cover. Twice they saw one of the vampire-things, wheeling high, as if to watch the Ahrora.

  Each time they crouched in the shadow of a convenient cliff or boulder, and waited until the strange scout had returned beyond the line of peaks that rose before them.

  When they first stopped to rest, they had covered half of the score of miles from the flier to the top of the range. They were exhausted by the hours of effort—all except Don Galeen, who seemed never to tire—but it seemed to Dick, when he looked about, that the slightly luminous peaks outlined against the black sky ahead were as far away as ever, and that it was a mere stone’s throw behind them to the edge of the shimmering, barren expanse of the desert of green snow.

  DON Galeen picked out a wide cave beneath a jutting rock, in which they stopped. They ate heartily of the synthetic food he carried, and drank water obtained by melting snow over a little atomic stove—aside from its fluorescence, the green snow was no different from any other frozen water. Then they slept, Dick, Thon, and Don Galeen taking turns in standing guard at the mouth of the cavern.

  Rested and refreshed, the next “day” they went on with renewed vigor. Hours of toil led them across the last snow-covered lava bed. They climbed the last boulder-strewn slope, and stood upon the summit of the range.

  A few hundred feet below them, and a mile away, was the city of cones. City of the Things of Frozen Flame!

  It is hard to imagine it.

  The weird city stood upon a rugged plateau, pitted and cracked—evidently covered with lava hurled from a dead volcano. Black rock, rough and broken, was seamed with a thousand fissures. It gleamed with soft, green luminescence. Here and there upon it were patches of shining snow.

  Scattered across it for a distance of many miles were the cones. Cones of intense, cold blue light, of frozen, solid light! They looked substantial as cones of azure crystal, as cones of sapphire!

  They were colossal.

  Two thousand feet through they were at the base—and more. And they were over five thousand feet in height—a mile. They were huger than any buildings ever erected on earth.

  Hundreds of the vampire-things stood upon the vast, volcanic plateau—some of them tens of miles away.

  They were scattered irregularly. The surface of the ground had not been smoothed among them. There were no paved streets. The twisted flows of lava were rugged as they had always been. The cones of blue seemed to have been dropped on unbroken wilderness. The Things of Frozen Flame were not confined to the surface of their planet as men are.

  The four flung themselves flat when they reached the summit of the range, and watched.

  Scores, hundreds, of the vampire-things they saw. Winged green worms, with glistening iridescent wings, and evil scarlet eyes. Alien things with the queer unreality of frozen fire.

  They glided out of the smooth sides of the cones of cobalt light. They flashed across from cone to cone. They vanished upward in the air, or off toward the horizon. They detached writhing things of frozen purple light from their bodies, and sent them flashing off on unguessable errands.

  It is almost beyond imagination, that city of an alien race upon an alien star. Its weird beings were intelligent—in their dreadful way. Considered from absolute standards, their advancement may have been equal to that of man. They were so different from humanity, from anything that ever lived on the earth, that they are almost beyond conception.

  They had no machines—but what need had they for machines when they could dart through space as swiftly as an airplane, or separate matter from their bodies which assumed any shape they desired?

  They had no industry—at least, no industry as we know it. They had no need to make machines, or to find fuel to feed them. Evidently they did not toil as men do to feed themselves. It was only later that the four found out how they fed themselves—now the act of incredible vampirism upon Dick was the only clue.

  For an hour the four lay there, watching.

  Then Thon produced a little red needle swung in a crystal case—the detector of the emanations from the catalyst of life. She balanced in on her palm. The tiny scarlet needle wavered—then pointed straight at the base of a blue cone that stood before them, on a little knoll that rose slightly from the surface of the plateau, not two miles away.

  “The substance we seek is in that cone!” she said. “In sight—at last!”

  “We are ready to go down and play our hand,” said Midos Ken, “to win or lose!”

  They rose from their places of concealment, left the summit of the range, and advanced briskly down the easy slope to the level of the lava plateau.

  Dick’s heart was beating high, almost in his mouth. They were in plain sight now, there was no use to try to conceal their advance any longer. It all depended upon the science of Midos Ken, and the skill of lovely Thon Ahrora, and the courage and strength of Don Galeen—pitted against the alien forces of this world!

  The treasure was near. The wonderful substance that held the secret of life! Immortal youth of all humanity! Restoration of his own lost vitality! So near, yet guarded so strangely and so well!

  They plunged down the rocky slope almost at a run, toward the colossal, towering cone of intense blue light at which the little red needle pointed. They must pass another cone, which stood nearer, to reach the one on the little hill.

  They had gone a score of yards. Nothing had happened. But several of the glittering entities of cold light were in view, glidi
ng from one cobalt cone to another.

  “Look out!” Dick cried suddenly.

  An arrow of frozen purple light came flashing at them from the nearest cone. It struck Don Galeen, recoiled from the haze of roseate radiance about him, and fell on the rocks like a writhing snake. And a dozen more sped after it, until the air about them was filled with twisting ropes of fire.

  They were discovered!

  Then a score of the beings of cold fire came into view, gliding swiftly toward them from a far-off cone of chill azure light. They had long, thin, worm-like bodies of glistening green, semitransparent, wings like frost of rainbow mist, and eyes of frozen scarlet.

  Swiftly, they flashed toward the four. As they came, Dick saw that they had what seemed to be black protuberances upon their backs, like those which had swarmed out to meet the Ahrora. Nearer they came. He saw what the black things were. And he gasped.

  They were men!

  Men, clothed in heavy garments, were mounted upon the glistening green worms, riding them astride.

  One flashed forward, ahead of the others. It stopped, hanging in the air a dozen yards before them. Its body of green, semitransparent substance was thick as a barrel, many yards long. A huge man, a giant, was riding astride on it.

  Dick made out his heavy features through a transparent mask that protected his face.

  The strange rider was Garo Nark, Lord of the Dark Star!

  He bowed mockingly, with an ironic salutation.

  “Welcome, friends. I trust, fair Thon Ahrora, that you have repented of the hasty act that ended our last interview—that you have come to be my bride. And I trust that you, Midos Ken, wise man that you are, have come to see the way of wisdom—that you are willing to help me to find the secret of life.”

  For a long time silence only answered him. The four were dazed. More incredible even than the vampire things was the fact that Garo Nark should seem to have mastered them.

  “You are amazed—even you, greatest scientists of the universe?” Nark asked, jeeringly. “These things are my friends. They carried off my ships, as you doubtless saw. But they could not open them to get us out. We came to a deadlock—they could not reach us; we could not get away. So we established communication. A sort of picture-writing—which they developed by means of their own until it is almost telepathy.

  “I told them of you. I told them you had come to steal the thing that is the very food of life to them. The stone in the cone of blue fire yonder.”

  He jerked his thumb at the cone at which the red needle pointed.

  “I offered to use my knowledge to fight you, in return for my freedom. They are intelligent—strange as they are. They accepted. Now they regard me as a powerful friend.

  “So I give you four fools one last chance to surrender. If Thon will come to me—if you will help me get away with the stone of life—I will save your lives. If not—I will use all my own science, and all the alien power of this planet, to crush you!”

  Midos Ken held up a solemn hand.

  “Garo Nark, you already know our answer,” he said.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Catalyst of Life

  AS one, the four stepped forward, over the glistening, green-black lava, toward Garo Nark. All fingered their weapons.

  Black rage flamed on the evil face of the giant who sat upon his monstrous steed. He was a man on a winged worm, on a dragon of cold fire. He flung out a heavily wrapped arm, in a signal to the weirdly mounted men behind him.

  “Fools, you die!” he shouted. “You may defy me. You may defy the masters of the Green Star. But together, we can beat you!”

  The men upon their flying vampire-steeds wheeled closer. In their hands the men raised long tubes of black crystal, like the El-ray projectors. Garo Nark’s weird mount wheeled, carried him back to join them.

  At a gestured signal from him, they leveled the weapons.

  Rays of cold fire stabbed from them.

  Beams of frozen light they were—cold as the azure cones of that alien city—icy blue beams that flickered about the four in a glacial aurora.

  It was a projected ray of cold—a ray that absorbed all heat from objects it touched, that lowered their temperature to the absolute zero. A weird and amazing weapon, the joint product of the science of the Dark Star and of the unearthly arts of the beings of the Green Star.

  The very air before those chill blue rays was cooled to the point of condensation. It fell in frozen mist—in tiny hard particles, that glittered like frost of sapphire in the cold blue of the rays.

  Boulders, that the icy, azure rays fell upon, cracked and split—splintered explosively by the terrific, contracting force of cold.

  Even the roseate nimbuses of electronic armor about the four were not completely proof against it. Dick felt those glacial rays of icy blue bite through his body. He trembled, shuddered with cold. His teeth chattered.

  Midos Ken, shivering and almost helpless with the sudden, unexpected chill, fumbled futilely with a weapon he held in his hand.

  Strange horror came with those frozen blue rays. Dick felt a sudden return of the nightmare paralysis that had gripped them all when they had landed—from which Don Galeen had saved them with his tian, until Midos Ken could prepare his protective injections.

  Bitter cold pierced him numbingly. He felt again that appalling, vertiginous sensation of endlessly falling through a limitless blue abyss. And he fancied weird worm-shapes swarming about him in the void, clinging to him, sucking away the substance of his life—as that unthinkable vampire of cold flame had taken his youth from him a few days before.

  Then Midos Ken, forcing his hands to move, produced an object from his pocket. A black tube or bulb of crystal. It was, Dick knew, one of the ether-exhausting bombs, which brought complete darkness. He dashed it against the glistening volcanic rocks upon which they stood; it shattered.

  Instantly, utter blackness enshrouded them. It was a pall of ebony opacity, inconceivably black. No faintest ray of light came through it. It was like a fluid of blackness poured about them.

  It stopped the cold blue rays, and grateful warmth came tingling to Dick’s body again.

  “Dick, dear,” Thon’s soft voice came to him through that wall of utter midnight, “where are you?”

  He moved toward the voice. Gentle fingers reached out, touched his shoulder, caught his hand and drew him toward the others.

  “We must all hold hands,” she said. “It is the only way to keep together.”

  “I’m an old man!” Dick thought angrily. “I can’t take care of myself! She has to look after me!”

  No sound came to them from their enemies.

  “I have used an ether-exhausting bomb,” Midos Ken said. “It seems to paralyze the monsters. Their nerve-currents, you know, are a sort of etheric wave, which can reach through empty space to control those shapes of purple light they send away from their bodies. We were able to pick up those waves, in the Ahrora, and study them. My bomb has exhausted the ether, and stopped the waves.”

  “Then they are helpless!” Dick cried.

  “Those outside the cones of blue light are helpless. But the object we seek is inside one of the cones. And if my theories of those cones are correct, the ether-exhausting force did not extend there. We will still have to fight any of the things that happened to be inside the cone that we must enter.”

  Again they went forward. Midos Ken was in the lead, picking a way through the absolute darkness with the aid of his marvelous hearing. By listening to the reflected sounds, or echoes, he could guide them surely forward, avoiding the boulders that scattered the rugged boulder field. Don Galeen came behind him. And then Thon, leading Dick by the hand.

  They had to travel nearly two miles through that utter midnight, to reach the cone. Dick had no way of measuring the time that passed. But it seemed to him that they spent ages stumbling forward in the darkness.

  Then abruptly Midos Ken stopped them with a low word.

  “We have reached the
edge of the cone,” he whispered. “The darkness ends in a sheer wall. Beyond is frozen blue light, with the monsters floating in it—the Things of Frozen Flame!

  “I walked into it, felt the cold of it before I could draw back. Step forward, one of you, and see if I am not right.”

  Dick stepped quickly forward, Thon’s hand still clasped with his.

  Indeed, he stepped out of the rayless blackness, into a vast space filled with cold blue light. A cone of chill, azure radiance. He could see the curved opposite side—a wall of utter darkness—half a mile across it. And the point, a mile above.

  It was a hollow cone of light, as if a dead-black liquid had been poured over a transparent cone of glass, in which a blue light was shining.

  Its floor was of rough, black volcanic lava, burned, cracked and twisted, scattered with huge, fire-glazed boulders and broken with the yawning black holes of lifeless fumaroles.

  The Things of Frozen Flame, apparently, lived wholly above the ground. They had no need, it seems, to smooth its surface, to make floors or roads.

  Dick saw a score of them, floating in the chill blue light, a thousand feet above the rock floor of the cone—long, worm-like bodies, glittering, green, semitransparent, with frail, prismatically glistening wings, and huge eyes, scarlet and malignant.

  STRANGE sensations came upon him when he stepped through that wall of blackness into the cone. He felt bitter, numbing cold biting into his body. He felt a reeling, dizzy sensation of falling, so that he could hardly stand erect.

  This vast space of chill blue light, with the writhing, worm-like monsters of icy fire floating in it, was, he knew, connected with the hideous dreams he had experienced-dreams of dizzy, endless falling among writhing, clinging things that sucked out his life.

  “Here is the detector,” came Thon’s low voice through the black wall of the cone. “Look at the red needle that points to the thing we are after.”

  Her white hand, clad in rosy flame, appeared through the gloom. Grasped in it was the tiny, compass-like device, with the scarlet needle. He balanced it upon his hand. The needle pointed toward the center of the cone.