Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Young Mel Hawks was rather magnificent at that moment, with the glare of illuminators lending a theatrical gauntness to his stern, youthful face. In him was apparent that dynamic resourcefulness which makes those few human individuals of Earth the leaders of a solar system.

  No one from among the unkempt score who composed the crew of the Traveller challenged him now. Their eyeballs only glistened as they looked at him with new vision. Except for the sounds made by the air-purifiers, nothing was audible save that endless, sibilant scream of the wind, blood-chilling in its significance.

  At last Hawks grinned faintly. “Sorry, fellas,” he said. “And now if you’ll take Sabakko to the brig and patch him up and fasten him securely before he gets his senses back and raises hob, I’ll go up to my cabin and change clothes.”

  SABAKKO, mighty Jovian native, regained consciousness in a red rage. He remembered the pistol pointing toward him. In consequence had he been less effectively restrained, he would have added massacre to his justified crime of murder. But the walls of the tiny brig were stout and the massive chains that girded his arms and legs, waist and shoulders, were proof against even the most violent efforts of his tremendous physique.

  Presently Mel Hawks, equipped with a respirator-mask and clad in an asbestotex attire, opened the door of the brig. The act was curiously like striking the percussion cap of a bomb insofar as the swiftness and violence of the results went. With a roar of fury, Sabakko threw himself against the chains that held him. The stout links creaked and snarled, as in one burst of violence after another, Sabakko sought to inflict vengeance upon the only human being in sight.

  But the youth had learned a few things during his brief sojourn on Jupiter. Among those things was a fair knowledge of how Earthmen managed the mighty natives, inducing them, by deft diplomatic manipulations, to seldom show their darker natures and to work docilely, if clumsily, for the meager pay of food and a few trinkets.

  Mel used that knowledge now. He approached the bestial monster, a smile curving his lips behind the transparent front of his respirator.

  When he spoke, the crooning tones of his voice were softened further by the muffing effect of the mask.

  “Sorry, Old Boy,” he said. “Sorry they were mean to you and tried to kill you. I don’t blame you for getting sore. But I’m the chap who saved your life, you know. I struck up the pistol, you remember. If I hadn’t, you’d be dead now.”

  Mel wouldn’t have bragged that way to a man; but Sabakko was only a simple Jovian and the technique required to win him was necessarily different.

  Sabakko betrayed no immediate signs of subsiding. He roared, and his huge horny hands, that could have squeezed the life from a terrestrial lion, clenched and unclenched suggestively.

  But Mel was undaunted. “We’re going away from here, you and I,” he breathed. “We’re going back to Sadra where you joined our expedition. I won’t have you abused by anyone. I’m the man who saved your life. Remember?”

  So it went. A minute of gentle, sympathetic talk was all that was required to win Sabakko’s fierce (if fleeting) loyalty. His monstrous muscles relaxed; his horn-lidded eyes softened; his shaggy ears flapped contritely.

  Conscious of the soothing effect the act would have on his huge servitor, Hawks unlocked the chains which held Sabakko.

  The pair left the brig. They shuffled down a now intentionally deserted passage which traversed the tractor-like vehicle that had brought the tenderfoot expedition to this ungodly spot. They paused before an airlock. Resting beside it were two supply-packs, one large and one small. Mel strapped the latter to his shoulders and indicated that Sabakko was to do the same with the other. When these preparations were completed, the Earthman worked the levers of the airlock. The pair entered the narrow compartment. When its outer exit opened, the scalding wind struck them like the blow of a hammer. One step more and they were ankle-deep in the red muck of Jupiter.

  FROM the ports of the Traveller twenty men watched them until their figures vanished into the obscurity of streaming, blast-driven rain. In the hearts of those men there was no expectation of succor. They were doomed to perish in this awful region. No human messenger could ever cross a hundred and twenty miles of Jupiter’s surface on foot. That the strange, fickle, gentle, explosive Sabakko could harbor so fixed a purpose for the necessary length of time seemed just as impossible.

  Mel Hawks, however, was not entirely without hope. He had dauntless courage; he had a map, a compass, and sketchy food supplies. And, like many another intrepid pioneer, he was inspired by a fairly definite plan. His respirator contained chemicals which, for an indefinite period, could filter the poisonous volcanic gases from the dense Jovian air he breathed. Sabakko, who carried most of the supplies, had no need for such a protection, for as far as his native lungs were concerned, the natural atmosphere around him was just as wholesome as the filtered air aboard the Traveller.

  Young Hawks’ plan revolved around two facts: First, that to the east there moved a vast lava stream, flowing from a gigantic crater; second, that contained in a small folder over his heart was a photograph depicting a group of humans and Jovians who composed almost the total population of Sadra. The picture was Mel’s trump card. That this was so was at once pathetic, humorous, and a little stunning. When the time came, he would play this trump.

  Guided by his compass, he started east, toward far-off Sadra. Behind him, plodding steadily and without concern through the blurred dusk of the eternal storm, was Sabakko.

  The first half-mile seemed fairly easy to the stout young physique of the Earthman. He crossed the pitted red soil where he and his companions had discovered a rich deposit of radioactive ore—a deposit which would make them all wealthy, if they happened to survive and put in their claim. Thence he led the way into a gloomy gorge.

  All the while, the gravity of Jupiter was doing its strength-sapping work upon him. Nor was this all that was burning up his vitality. Ponderous thunder roared overhead, to the accompaniment of dazzling flares of lightning. Both, by their constant, tense monotony, frazzled his nerves and weakened his morale. The wind was not so strong here in the gorge, but out of the dim murk around him, long, spiny tendrils belonging to forms of life that were neither animal nor quite plant, groped toward him hungrily.

  Once a tentacle encircled his body, and his adventure would have reached an abortive end then and there, had it not been for Sabakko, who leaped into action with cold fury, tearing the rooted devil apart with horny fingers.

  There must have been a vast difference between the attitudes of the man and the Jovian toward their present experiences. Sabakko had returned to his native habitat. Comparatively, at least, his surroundings could have held few terrors for him. In fact, he seemed more than a bit puzzled at his human companion’s weakness.

  Two hours went by, and though pitifully little of the distance to Sadra had been consumed, Mel was almost spent. The pull of Jupiter, and the rock-strewn muck of the terrain were responsible.

  “I guess—I guess you’ll have to carry me for a while, old chap,” he mumbled hazily. “My feet—hurt.”

  Sabakko, still fired by a scarcely diminished devotion, obeyed with a low whine of disturbed concern.

  “You save life, Mel,” he said in his uncertain English. "I do.”

  More hours went by. Ridges of uneroded rock and jungles of spiny, low-growing life which had no counterpart on Earth, were traversed. Sometimes Hawks walked, and sometimes he was carried. Once Sabakko swam a raging torrent of almost boiling water, his human friend clinging to his broad, shaggy back. At irregular intervals, the pair rested and ate, Mel feeding himself by thrusting the food pellets through the exhaust vent of his mask.

  The terrestrial’s consciousness had become vague and shadowy. His sensory impressions were dim and jangled—but he still could feel the wind around him and the faint seismic shocks that disturbed the crust of this primitive giant of the Solar System. He knew when the five-hour night of Jupiter had come—bringing
with it darkness that was as dense as the ink of a squid ejected into clear water, but his red fog-lamp could pierce it a little and the lightnings helped too, by their fitful, magnificent flares; and so he and the Jovian kept on, as they had during the wan ghost of day.

  DIM though his mind was, Mel clung to his plan with a dogged persistence, for to let it slip from an uppermost position in his consciousness during his quasi-delirium could lead only to certain failure and death.

  Otherwise Mel’s thoughts rambled erratically. He pictured in his mind the vast crystal structure that covered Sadra, protecting it from the poisonous, violent atmosphere of Jupiter. He dreamed of Earth, of its green freshness and serenity, and of the girl he hoped to marry. Those dreams assumed in his weary brain a gentle vividness which, in some moments, made him wonder if it were not they that were truly real, instead of the mad monotony of the hell around him. He thought of Marlin, smooth, soft, and experienced, who had been engineer of the Traveller; and those thoughts aroused in him a kind of unholy satisfaction in the knowledge that Marlin was dead. Sabakko could never be legally punished for ridding Earth’s great colonial empire of so great a scoundrel. There were witnesses who could testify— But there was no need to consider such matters yet. Not until, and if—a big if—the message had been delivered to Sadra, would there be any purpose in so doing.

  Thus two Jovian days, totaling less than twenty hours, dragged their tedious course away. Not quite twenty miles had been covered—about a sixth of the total distance to Sadra.

  At last Sabakko’s loyalty was waning. He had grown sullen and resentful; he bore his master, when it was necessary, with a truculent carelessness. His gaze wandered constantly through the blur of wind and rain and volcanic murk, searching crag and gully for signs that a compelling instinct demanded that he find.

  Mel Hawks knew what was the matter. The primitive soul of his mighty servitor was yielding to the pull of his native haunts. No devotion to any man could ever smother that yearning attraction for long. Sabakko wanted his own kind; he wanted a mate.

  Hawks knew that the breaking point was not far off, but he did not scold. He only talked ramblingly of Sadra, where Sabakko had spent considerable time. Meanwhile, with bloodshot eyes, he scanned the coiling mists ahead. At last his vigil was rewarded. A brightening red glow was stabbing through the mists.

  HE WAS on foot then, and he quickened his stumbling pace, Sabakko moving in his wake.

  The glow brightened until it was like an immense ruddy dawn. The ground was hot and dry now, and in it there was a constant, rumbling vibration that was like the turning of giant iron wheels. Cindery volcanic dust sifted down from above.

  Mel’s remaining strength was quickly sapped by his swift advance. His heart was pounding and his breath came in swift, short gasps. But in a matter of minutes, the cause of the fiery reflection in the sky was in sight, identifiably visible: a vast glowing river of molten lava, filling the dense atmosphere with a roaring, hissing tumult of sound! Cakes and chunks of pumice-like rock floated in it, being less dense than their supporting medium. They had broken from the shore of this infernal stream, undermined by the action of its hot current.

  The magnificent spectacle, and the hope it gave him, almost made Mel Hawks forget Sabakko. With what seemed his last energy, he surged onward; but after half a dozen steps, he sank to the ground. His magnificent physique had done its best.

  Still, somehow, he managed to turn his head and call feebly through his mask: “Sabakko— Come— I have something to show you. Merroah. Remember Merroah? In Sadra, Sabakko. In Sadra—”

  He couldn’t see the Jovian, for there was a strange, sickening darkness misting his vision—but after a minute he heard an irritable grumble at his side. What he had said had evidently interested his Jovian companion a little—enough to postpone his desertion.

  Mel groped into the breast-pouch of the asbestotex suit he wore. Presently, from a little folder, he removed a photograph, and handed it to Sabakko. It was a group picture—fifty men, fifty natives—the populace of Sadra. Merroah was somewhere on that picture.

  He repeated Merroah’s name in the hope that doing so would resurrect from Sabakko’s primitive memory, recollections of a past love.

  He could just see the huge, hunching figure of the Jovian, clutching in horny fingers the little printed rectangle and studying it intently. After a moment Sabakko began to coo and babble in ecstasy: “Merroah!”

  Mel refreshed himself with a brief rest. “She’s in Sadra,” he said at last. “We can get there easily now. All you have to do is carry me down to the edge of the lava flow. There you can jump aboard one of the floating masses of pumice—the biggest one you can find. The stream moves about five miles an hour. It passes within a mile of Sadra. There are guards watching it always for signs of its becoming dangerous. I have a flare in my pack. We can signal the guards with it.”

  Sabakko seemed momentarily stunned. Then, without comment except for an impatient whine, he picked up Hawks and rushed lithely toward the brink of the hellish stream. There he paused warily, his great feet, protected by asbestotex sandals, spread wide apart. After some minutes, a huge raft-like mass of pumice came along the flow.

  Sabakko gathered himself together. His leap covered fifteen feet—an utter impossibility for a man here on Jupiter. He landed on a small mass of pumice and waited again until it drifted close to the large mass. Again he bounded, reaching the latter’s flat, eroded edge. Some moments of climbing brought him to its summit. There he set Mel down.

  The latter relaxed weakly, but at the same time he felt a fierce surge of exultation.

  “Good boy, Sabakko!” he muttered hoarsely. “We’ll be in Sadra in twenty hours. Just ride and rest. The lava’ll never break up a chunk of pumice as big as this one!”

  Apparently Sabakko didn’t even hear, for he was cooing and mumbling over the little picture.

  MEL’S mind wandered to many things: radium and actinium that spelled riches—succor for his friends out there on the Traveller—Dolores, far away in Chicago. So many dreams could come true now.

  Mel Hawks stared at the broad back of his Jovian companion. The gratitude he felt just then might have made him weep, if it hadn’t been for the doleful sounds issuing from the now lovelorn Sabakko.

  Mel Hawks chuckled instead.

  The End

  *********************************

  The Lotus-Engine,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Super Science Stories March 1940

  Short Story - 6971 words

  The power from the billion-year old sun

  engine had to go somewhere, but there

  was no way of telling where that somewhere

  was. And then the dreams came.

  "We've got it started, Milt! The sun-engine's running, after a billion years! Look! Darn it, Milt!..."

  My pal, old Russ Abfall, was dancing up and down there, in that dusty valley on the surface of Io, first large moon of the planet Jupiter. I could here his high, cracked voice through the helmet radio-phones of my space suit. His normally small eyes seemed very big, through the window of his own headgear, as he looked back at me along the cold, arid trail.

  And his thin face was red with excitement, and maybe a touch of scare, too. Russ is past sixty. He's been a hopeful space rover for better than forty years. But now he was acting as tickled as a kid.

  I didn't blame him, though I'm more phlegmatic than he is, and bigger—and red-headed and less than half his age. He used to say sometimes, that I—Milt Claire's my name, by the way—missed a lot of the pleasures of life by not letting my feelings go, enough.

  But I was plenty thrilled just then, too—and a bit uneasy and tense. I realized that we were confronted by a mystery that might easily prove dangerous.

  A big, ugly-looking machine was working once more there in that valley, after its creators, the humans of Io—large-chested, furry, and goblin-like—had been extinct for an inconceivable time—the victims of a wa
ter famine on their dying world.

  The thousands of reflecting mirrors of that solar motor, mounted on their slanted, circular frame, were collecting the feeble rays of the tiny, far-distant sun, and concentrating them on the blackened boiler at the center of the frame. The boiler was made like a squatting image of one of those last natives. It had a great beard, carved out of iron, ruby eyes, long goblin nose and ears, and a strange, mocking, secret grin on its lips—a grin that was sinister in itself.

  Steam, generated by focussed solar heat, was turning a turbine, flywheel, and dynamo, the last shaped like a gigantic pocket-watch. Condenser coils were cooling the spent steam, and returning the water efficiently to the boiler.

  It was all a most interesting spectacle—interesting, with a secretive threat in it somewhere....

  RUSS ABFALL and I had gone out there to Io in a rickety space ship, Sun Spot, three months back. Our hope had been to explore that almost untouched Jovian satellite, and maybe find a deposit of some rich metal. Free-lance space wanderers generally don't brave the rigors of near-dead worlds, except for the very human reason of making money. That was our idea, backed up by certain life-long dreams.

  Our luck had exceeded our wildest optimisms. No, we hadn't discovered a mine. Instead, we'd located a deserted, underground city. Its galleries and chambers had been dug out of the sullen, almost airless hills, by those final Ionians. In it was a treasure-trove of small, easily transportable relics. Bowls, beautiful vases, queer clocks. Odd, ornate lamps that didn't give light any more, because the radium salts in them had worn out with age. There was a fortune in the stuff, selling to museums on Earth, and to wealthy individuals making collections.