Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Steve read determination in Claire’s features, and something else perhaps. It wasn’t hard to guess what the boy meant to do. If that feed pipette were broken—and a fierce jerk would do that—Claire would suffocate in a few moments.

  Old Steve did not hesitate. With an oath, he flung himself at his companion. “You damned fool!” he hissed. His fingers sought to clutch the youth’s wrists. Securing a hold, he attempted to tear Claire’s hands away from the pipette.

  But for the moment, Claire seemed to possess demoniac strength, in spite of his weakened condition. They struggled silently. The boy’s teeth were bared in a sort of frozen snarl. The flexible pipette of segmented metal was giving.

  A laugh coming through their phones suddenly arrested their attention. It was a thick, rasping sort of laugh, filled with a horrible, morbid mirth. Then a voice spoke: “Misunderstandings will occur among the best of friends,” it chuckled maliciously. The cracked, dry hoarseness of it made it almost unrecognizable, yet they knew it to be Garth Jubiston’s voice.

  Still clutching at each other, the two men looked about. Gliding slowly toward them over a nearby mountain peak, was the small space-boat which had been stolen from the hangar. Its duralumin hull glistened brilliantly in the sunshine.

  This new development seemed to have steadied Claire. He tore himself free from Steve’s grasp. Automatically, his hand leaped to the holster at his belt, seeking the long-barreled pistol which was loaded with explosive Corlissite projectiles.

  “Don’t fire, Claire Melconne,” Garth Jubiston warned. “Your father is aboard this vessel. You would not wish to kill him.”

  The boy’s pistol arm hesitated, then dropped.

  “I thought that I would find you two around here somewhere if I returned,” Garth continued. For the moment, his speech seemed quite coherent. “While I guided the ships to their new hangar, my friends, I overlooked you. But my minions are going to capture you for me now. First, however, I’ll talk. Don’t move. You are completely surrounded.” Garth had begun to laugh again. It seemed that he would never stop. However, this induced a violent fit of coughing. When Garth was able to talk again, his voice was weaker. He gasped for air.

  “I’m going to feed you to the mold,” he hissed through his teeth. “I’m going to watch you suffer—both of you. And I’ve got the professor here. He brought me to this hell-hole. It will be great fun to watch the mold chew away your skins!” Again Garth laughed.

  Then his jangled mind started off on a new track. “You wonder what I’ve been doing since I left you,” he went on. “I followed a plant-man to the tunnel which leads to the Crystal Mountain. There is their world. What is the Crystal Mountain? You’ll see before you die. It is the most marvelous place on the moon! At first the plant-men wanted to kill me, but I awed them with my pistol, and I became their god. Their language consists of light signals. I determined to learn it. From the odds and ends I carried with me, I devised a simple apparatus to produce such signals. The language itself is simple. I have practically mastered it now, and I can give my divine commands quite easily. I’m going to tell them to capture you now. You may resist if you like. Watch!”

  “You’re acting like a damned fool, Garth,” Steve said quietly.

  Again came that dry, cackling laugh. “Go ahead and plead for mercy!” Garth Jubiston fairly shrieked. “Go ahead!” He moaned slightly.

  A look of pity softened old Steve’s hard features for a fleeting instant, then his face grew grim. This was not the Garth Jubiston of old. It was just an enemy, a maniac possessing some of Garth’s skill, and doubtless still able to be diabolically clever.

  Dragging Claire with him, Steve darted into the questionable protection of an area of dense shade. Would the boy crack too, when the grey mold had eaten a little deeper into his flesh, and had gotten into his blood-stream? There were no definite signs yet, but Steve was sure the symptoms would appear within an hour or two, if they weren’t already dead by then.

  Old Steve had no weapon. When he had started out on his jaunt, he had not thought it necessary to arm himself. Except for the plant-man of several months before, no living creature that could offer a menace to the Earthmen had been seen; therefore, a pistol had seemed superfluous. When he had returned to the laboratory, the meagre arsenal of guns and ammunition had been stripped.

  Several flashes of light, some green, some red, flickered from the nose of the space-boat above.

  Close on the heels of the signals, three bizarre figures charged out of the maw of a nearby cleft. The giant plant-men came toward their prey in long, swinging strides. Sand and rock fragments were scattered by their oval hoofs, as their great, horny bodies bobbed eccentrically along. They bore no artificial weapons, yet they were fearsome enough with their long, green tendrils, coiling and uncoiling about them menacingly. The two globes, which were supported above each of their bodies by a forked stalk, swayed like the hooded heads of cobras that are preparing to strike. From one of each of those pairs of globes came excited pulsations of baneful light, some green, some red, and from the window at the nose of the space-boat there were answering signals.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Recovery of the Space-Boat

  Flight for the two men would have been useless, since these lunar creatures could cover the ground so much more rapidly than they. Claire and Steve stood their ground. Leaning weakly on the shoulder of his massive companion, the boy levelled his pistol. There were three silent flashes from the muzzle of the small weapon, followed immediately by three more among the ranks of the plant-men. The great awkward forms, ripped to fragments by the force of the explosions, crumpled grotesquely among the ash and rocks. Their sticky, chlorophylous body fluid, suddenly exposed to the almost pressure-less vacuum of the moon, seethed and bubbled as it rapidly evaporated.

  “Good work, kid,” old Steve muttered.

  They wheeled about. Two other plant-men were rushing at them from behind. Claire fired again, but a thin veil seemed to be obscuring his vision, and his aim was not as good as it had been before. A second shot dropped one of the attackers, yet by this time the remaining one was so close upon them that to fire again would mean that they, too, would be killed by the force of the explosion.

  Old Steve sprang boldly at their huge adversary, striking out at it with his metal-gauntleted fists. But it was a futile gesture. A half-dozen of the plant-man’s tentacles grasped him about the middle, and hoisted him from the ground. Steve could do nothing but writhe and kick furiously. The monster quickly caught Claire Melconne, tore the weapon from his grasp, and hurled it far to one side.

  They heard again Garth’s rattling, malicious laugh. “You tried to resist my people!” he screamed. “You tried to resist me! But the plant-man will have his pay for his fallen comrades. I shall tell him to take his revenge. But be assured that he will not kill you. Your time is not yet!”

  With pulsating surges of changing color from the nose of the space-boat, his command was given. The plant-man flashed a short acknowledgment.

  His tendrils tightened slowly about his two captives. Gradually, a crushing force was brought to bear. Steve fought the constricting coils, clawing, tearing at them. He got a hand under one of the looping, green, vine-like members; his powerful muscles surged mightily. His battered face reddened with the effort, yet he accomplished nothing. This eighteen-foot lunar giant was many times stronger than he. His breath was nearly gone, and little sparks of darkness danced before his vision. Above him, on the forked stalk, wavered the two globes, the left one, an eye, the right one, a signaling organ. There was a menacing, vengeful glint in the opalescent depths of the left globe.

  Claire was fighting too—weakly. The kid was all pluck, but he’d had a bad start. Old Steve heard his faint, choking cry; then the boy went limp.

  Garth Jubiston spoke again: “Pleasant, isn’t it?” he asked sarcastically. “You people of Earth may be great upon your own world, but you are nothing to us plant-men. We have skill; we have metals. We shal
l build a great space-fleet, and conquer your world!” Garth’s voice rose to a rasping scream. “No, that cannot be! I must die!—by the grey mold. It is my duty! I—”

  Something attracted the madman’s attention; for his train of thought stopped abruptly, and he began to curse.

  Steve’s dimming vision saw the space-boat swing erratically from its course, and go wobbling away from them across the sky. It was losing altitude. Presently it dropped behind a jutting crater wall.

  Tortured though he was, old Steve was exultant. Garth had suffered a mishap of some kind; and he felt that it was not necessarily an accidental one. He knew that Professor Melconne was aboard the vessel. Melconne could be depended upon to take every chance that was offered.

  The plant-man slackened his constricting grip somewhat, as he hurried forward in the direction of the place where the space-boat had evidently landed. Steve could breathe again; but after a minute the lunar monster found new means of tormenting his captives. He began to twist Steve’s arms, slowly, never quite to the point of dislocating the joints or fracturing the bones; yet the pain was maddening. Silently, Steve endured it, biting his lip to force back the outcry. Steve was thankful for one thing. Claire was unconscious, and the plant-man was not bothering to do him any further harm.

  What had happened to Garth and the space-boat? The question in Steve’s mind was answered presently, when his brother spoke: “Do you hear me, Earthmen?” he asked. “Yes, you are there, for I can detect your heavy breathing. I have had a little mishap. The good professor freed one hand, and tossed a piece of metal into the stabilizing mechanism. But the damage is slight; I shall have it repaired in a few minutes. Then I shall attend to the professor. I am trusting my henchman to bring you here.”

  A maddening fury was surging up within old Steve’s breast. Yet, by exerting a fierce effort, he managed to check the flood of hate that was trying to come to his lips. To voice it would have been worse than useless. That Garth had lost his reason through the ravages of some dread lunar disease, no longer was an adequate excuse for the man. Steve’s rage was beyond the power of excuses to lessen. God! If he could only get his hands on that skunk for a few seconds! His aching, pain-racked muscles and his throbbing brain fairly cried out for revenge.

  The plant-man came to a precipitous slope that slanted sharply down for a distance of several hundred feet. It was strewn with jagged volcanic rocks. With careful steps, the lunarian started to descend.

  Something seemed to snap in the old sailor’s mind. As he dangled from the plant-man’s grasp, his feet were about on a level with the mid-portions of the monster’s legs. Steve saw his chance, measured its slim possibilities and its great hazards, then took it. He swung his body inward, and grasped one of his captor’s legs firmly with his knees, at the same time struggling violently.

  It was over in a moment. Tripped and thrown off balance, the ungainly lunarian pitched forward, releasing his grasp on his two captives. As the monster rolled and tumbled down the slope, amid a shower of ash and rock fragments, Steve caught hold of a firmly embedded piece of hardened lava, and saved himself. He had the advantage of lightness, and vastly superior agility. The limp body of Claire Melconne had started, less precipitately, to follow the plant-man; but Steve darted to it, and caught him in time.

  “Now,” old Steve muttered, very softly to himself. His eyes fairly blazed in his glistening, sweat-streaked face. Brother or no brother, Garth Jubiston would pay, and pay dear.

  Tossing Claire to his shoulder, he descended the rocky slope. Picking out the crater behind which the flier had disappeared, he hurried forward. Garth couldn’t be more than a mile distant from him.

  But he’d have to hurry. He’d have to arrive before his brother could finish fixing the stabilizer. The task might already be completed. If it was, Garth would be leaving the ground in a second or two; then it would be too late for Steve to act, to gratify the dark thoughts in his mind.

  A grim smile creased the old sailor’s hard face. It did not detract any from the fiendishness of his expression; rather it added to it. If he could attract Garth’s attention to him by talking, he might delay the take-off of the flier for a few moments. Then—Steve’s metal-cased fingers crooked suggestively.

  He began to curse, to groan, to cry out for mercy, as though he were being unbearably tortured. The sounds he made were realistic enough, and they were all for Garth’s benefit.

  All through those histrionic evolutions, Steve’s terrible smile persisted. He advanced more like some huge, vengeful beast than a human being.

  His ruse was having its effect. He heard Garth Jubiston’s voice, cursing him, taunting him, laughing at him with that horrible, harsh laugh. In a way, the sound was pitiable, but there was no room in old Steve Jubiston’s heart for pity now. Irony! It was too bad Garth didn’t know that he, Steve, was hastening toward him with murder in his heart. But Garth was still clever, with the cunning of the maniac he had become.

  Panting and sweating with exertion, and because of his tumultuous emotions, Steve topped a rise in the ground. He peeped cautiously over the summit. The flier rested down there among the volcanic ash and debris. It seemed deserted. No, something moved out of the long ebony shadow it cast. Garth was walking unsteadily around the vessel, apparently making a tentative survey of its outer mechanisms.

  Steve deposited Claire on the ground in the shelter of the rocks. The boy was muttering feebly. His consciousness was returning.

  Crouching down like some jungle cat, Steve waited for Garth to turn his back. It would be foolhardy to charge into the muzzle of a blazing automatic. The opportunity came. Soundlessly, he hurtled forward. His crooked fingers were almost upon their prey before the man became aware of his presence.

  Some moments later a voice checked the seething fury that possessed old Steve. It was Claire Melconne crying hoarsely from the ridge. “Steady, Steve, for God’s sake! Remember; he’s probably the only person who knows where we can get another supply of air. Maybe it’s too late already!” Claire was approaching with tottering steps.

  Steve dragged the limp form of his brother to the airlock of the space-boat. He entered the cabin with Claire. They found Professor Melconne firmly secured with metal cords to one of the vessel’s heavy duralumin ribs.

  CHAPTER V

  The Search for the Crystal Mountain

  When they had released the professor, he immediately closed the switches which put the radio of his space-suit into action. “Thank God you’re safe,” he cried. "It was almost too much to hope that you would be able to get here!” His thin old face was working with emotion. Briefly, they told him what had happened to them. His tone changed when he saw Garth. “You didn’t kill him, did you, Steve?” he questioned quietly; but his words were heavy with meaning.

  Steve shook his head. “I should have,” he said fiercely. “Say—where is this place called the Crystal Mountain, Mr. Melconne?”

  “I don’t know,” the professor replied ruefully. “I’ve been a captive in this space-boat since the attack. Most of the time, something opaque was wrapped around my helmet. I could feel the vessel climbing, descending, and zigzagging tortuously; but I couldn’t see.”

  “Which means?” Steve cut in.

  Professor Melconne completed the phrase: “That unless we can get the location from your brother, or find the way ourselves, we are doomed to smother within an hour. The ship’s oxygen is all but used up, and I can guess that your supply is not so large either.”

  “Maybe it’s better than to die by the grey mold, Dad,” Claire suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Melconne returned. "But it’s human nature to fight for your life. Garth sprinkled my skin with the spores a short time ago. The itching and burning is bad, but I’m not going to crack yet. Hang on, boy!”

  Still protected by their own armor, they removed the space-suit from Garth Jubiston, and placed him in a bunk. Part of the fabric of his clothing, rotten with the grey mold, crumbled in their fingers as they
sought to peel it from him. Presently, he lay there naked. There were large, irregular areas of a grey, silky substance scattered over his body—his arms, legs, torso and head. The stuff was like mole’s fur, except that when one touched it, it rubbed away, leaving hideous areas of raw, purulent flesh. Garth's skin was hot and feverish. He panted heavily, yet his half-open eyes were fixed and motionless, and seemed to see nothing. The whites were very bloodshot, and a fine, grey fuzz clung to the lids. There was fuzz, too, in his nostrils, and there was a large, red-rimmed patch of furry mold along his jaw-bone, beneath one ear. Some of the more hideous sores were bandaged with dirty, crumbling gauze from Garth’s first-aid kit, evidently. During his more lucid moments, he had tried to combat the disease.

  Steve was kneeling beside him. His cheeks had paled a trifle, but his face was still grim. Unmindful of the danger of contracting the plague, he had opened the vents in the forepart of his helmet, so that he could speak to his brother, who, he knew, was near death.

  “Garth,” he called softly. “Garth!” Gently he grasped the younger Jubiston’s emaciated shoulders, and shook them.

  Garth’s cloudy gaze wavered. In a foggy way, as though he were being aroused from a hashish dream, he began to be vaguely aware of his surroundings. His eyes turned toward Steve; remained there for a long moment—puzzled. There was no malice in them.

  “Why, Steve—old fellow. I’m sorry. Is it time for my watch? I shouldn’t have slept so long. Now—” A vague, fearful expression came to his features, doubtless due to the rasping, unnatural sound of his own voice.