“Yeah—and—” Cory’s words were lost abruptly in a crackling roar that reverberated thunderously through the Pit. Tull’s explosion. A dull red flash, then silence. Another instant—and the veil of murk before them was ripped to shreds by a lurid flare which lashed up and up endlessly into the sky, like a mighty arm of flame reaching into space. In its wake came a second detonation, father of the flare—an indescribable b-r-oooommm like nothing the three had ever heard. The floor of the Pit rocked drunkenly, and a wave of vertigo swept over the crouching men.
“It set off a volcano!” Cory cried, his words a thin whisper in the tumult—words left hanging in midair as a cyclonic blast of sulphur-laden smoke flung him and his companions bodily against the wall. The perilous rocking of the floor continued, in tempo with the belching of the new-born volcano. And now a shower of glowing sparks began to fall in a stinging hail.
Alan Sarett struggled painfully to his feet, his battered body numbed with shock. A few feet away Cory and Parker crawled erect, neither seriously injured.
Parker’s mouth twisted in his onesided grin. “Plenty to interest the Jovians,” he shouted above the noise. “More than we figured on. Now if Tull—” He stopped short.
“Yeah,” Cory concluded, “if Tull pulled through and we could get out of here in a hurry, there wouldn’t be much chance of pursuit. But it’s a miracle if he escaped.”
“Then miracles still happen!” Alan cried. “Here he comes!”
Outlined against a background of crimson flame, a massive figure strode ponderously toward them. Almost as tall as the Jovians, he looked like a crudely drawn caricature of a man with a paper-white skin. Powerful arms, dangling from a tremendous chest, swung pendulously at his sides. Physically he suggested the brute—but his mighty cranium with its high, jutting forehead belied the testimony of his body.
“Not good—this ’ruption,” he said jerkily in a cavernous bass. “It break plans. We get out—quick! This place not last long.”
Instantly Parker sprang to his side. “Yeah—so let’s pyramid.”
Easily Tull swung the comparatively puny form of the six-foot-three Terrestrial to his shoulders. As he straightened, a particularly violent upheaval almost hurled him from his perch, but Tull’s fingers about his ankles saved him.
During a brief lull in the volcanic disturbance, the Uranian rumbled, “Now you, Cory.” And the lanky Space-master joined Parker on Tull’s broad shoulders. Giant fingers closed rigidly on Parker’s ankles while Jon Cory stepped into the other’s cupped hands—and in an instant he was teetering dizzily six feet below freedom. Reaching out, he steadied himself against the sloping wall. Now he was faced with the difficult task of turning about, in order to catch Alan Sarett. Somehow he managed it, and stood with shoulders braced against the smooth expanse.
“Hurry!” he snapped. “I can’t hold this forever!”
Alan Sarett stood before the Uranian with set face. His part in this little gymnastic exhibition was the most dangerous. He looked upward through the mist. Cory’s shoulders seemed perilously small, and he was rocking back and forth. Alan’s teeth clenched as he felt fingers of steel grasp his arms. A breathless upward rush—and Cory’s long arms wrapped themselves about him in a desperate embrace. An instant they tottered on the brink of collapse while Jon Cory strove mightily to hold a weight that, in Jupiter’s gravity, was tremendous. And all grips held!
“One more step,” Cory grunted into Sarett’s ear, “and you’re out!”
ALAN nodded jerkily, carefully mounting to Cory’s shoulders. Directly above him was the lip of this damned Pit—almost within arm’s reach—and he could reach it if he could stand up. Cory gripped his ankles now, and he straightened. He balanced himself, pressing against the wall. His hands curved eagerly around the edge.
He could reach it! But it was smooth! How could he expect to pull himself out with so little to support him! The ghost of a doubt floated in his mind—then Parker’s deep voice came up to him: “Make it, boy! Remember—Brodeur!” And with a mighty surge of strength through muscles that cracked with effort, Sarett pulled himself up—and over—out of the Pit!
With legs spread wide he peered about him. He saw no one. A half mile away where the Jovians entered and left the Pit, there would be a handful of guards and a few ITL men—but they wouldn’t molest him. He started toward the landing field.
Thick underbrush—the pale yellow, fleshy growth that covered all of temperate Jupiter—blocked his path. Alan moved through it with a slow, sliding shuffle. And even that dragging pace required tremendous effort, for the great gravity strove mightily to draw him flat against the surface, like a needle on the tip of a magnet. Volubly he cursed the entire planet. It would take an age to reach the supply ship at this rate—and down there in the Pit Cory and Parker and Tull might even now be sinking into a pool of lava. For the intermittent roar of the eruption had not abated in the slightest degree.
On he plodded, heart pounding, legs aching under a strain that was almost beyond endurance. Breathing was as difficult here as in the sulphurous air of the Pit; scoria and ashes from the volcano formed a cloud that cloaked everything with hot, stinging dust. But Sarett moved steadily onward, his shoulders hunched forward, his hands clenched hard at his sides.
The ship had landed little more than a quarter mile away, but the distance seemed endless to Alan. Yet he made it. Almost exhausted, he halted at last at the edge of the rocket-blasted clearing; leaned against an outcropping rock, resting, searching for a sign of life. He knew there were always men stationed about the ITL building on the opposite edge of the field, but he hoped they would be inside. He saw no one.
Abruptly he sank to his knees and hands and left the shelter of the leathery underbrush. In that position there was less chance of his being seen. Slowly he crept across the blackened clearing toward the spherical supply ship.
He was less than twenty feet from the craft when he heard a heavy hollow rumble like the pounding of many giant feet. He straightened up, glanced in the direction of the Pit—and saw a horde of sluurs sweeping over the undergrowth, fleeing from the horrors of the eruption. Their many-jointed legs carried them over the ground with amazing speed despite their vast bulk. They had almost reached the clearing. Now they saw the Terrestrial and a discordant chorus burst from their slits of mouths.
Dread swept over Alan Sarett. If they reached the space ship before he did, they’d stamp him into the ground! And the three in the Pit—they’d bum in a lake of lava! The blood drained from his face. His lips drew taut over clenched teeth.
Quickly he rose . . . and with greater strength than he knew he possessed, with a sudden, superhuman effort that centered all his power in his whitely corded legs, he ran to the supply ship, leaped inside, and slid shut the ponderous airlock! Then he sank into an exhausted, sweating, inert heap just inside the door.
Moments later he staggered erect. There might be men of the ITL within this craft. He listened. There was no sound save his own harsh breathing and the muffled roar from the Pit. He crossed the vacuum chamber to the inner wall of the ship. He closed the second door behind him. Stealthily he slid along the metal corridor to where he knew the control room must be. The door was closed; it slid slowly aside as he pressed against it. He peered through the crack—then flung the door wide. There was no one in the room. The ship was probably deserted; he knew from experience that space-men usually left their crafts for an hour or two immediately after landing, in order to stretch their legs on solid ground.
Eagerly Alan’s fingers gripped a control lever, his eyes glancing automatically over the familiar array of knobs and dials and pointers. As he pressed a button that started an air purifier to clearing the atmosphere of its sulphur stench, and closed a switch that set in motion a gyro-gravitator, imparting to the craft an artificial gravity, elation surged through him at the feeling of power that was his with the controls of a space ship again in his hands.
THE lever moved down a single notch, and in
to the rocket chambers flowed vaporized fuel; a second notch, and the craft trembled with the slow release of power; a third, and she rose gently into the air. Sarett switched on the bank of screens which curved before him, each of its five facets presenting a different view of his surroundings. Below him he saw the Jovian horde scattering wildly to escape the deluge of fire from the rocket vents; he saw another sluur rushing from the ITL building, carrying a Terrestrial official in its tentacles, the latter waving frantic objections. Alan grinned and sent the ship darting upward with another notch of power—upward and northward where the light of the Pit crimsoned the smoky yellow sky.
In an instant he was high above the great abyss, skillful manipulation of the controls holding the sphere almost stationary in midair. Anxiety gripped him at what he saw, and he began sinking rapidly. The prison pit was a wide, wide hollow brimming with smoke and flame. Liquid lava, an angry, lurid red, bubbled and surged and swept about everywhere like whirlpools of hell, spouting coiling clouds of yellow-white smoke. Here and there a darker spot was silhouetted against the crimson, an island of solidity in a flaming sea—but they were pitifully few. A sudden qualm of conscience stabbed him when he thought that in part he was responsible for this—but memory of Max Brodeur and of the tortures he had experienced down there froze his face into stem implacability.
Heading toward a vaguely familiar strip of land under the southern wall, he sank lower and lower. And suddenly he saw a group of human figures frantically waving, among them the giant, Tull.
With all his skill he lowered the ship to a surface that bucked and swayed like the liquid mass beneath it. As he switched off power, he pulled back a lever which opened both portals of the airlock. His eyes turned mechanically toward the screens for a final glance about, and he gasped. Not only were Cory, Parker, and Tull pushing toward the ship; behind them came a score of other convicts!
Furiously Sarett rushed from the room. Those maddened creatures—many of them the scum of the System—if they took possession of the space ship, it would mean disaster! He reached the entrance; Tull was already there.
The Uranian stood with his back to the airlock, crouching like a boxer. Now Cory and Parker joined him. The oncoming horde hesitated before the menacing three, and came to a straggling halt.
“No pass,” Tull rumbled ominously. “Ship too small. You stay here!”
A howl rose from terror-parched throats, and a burly brute with the thick body and bestial face of a Venerian halfcaste roared a foul curse.
“C’mon, yuh crimp,” she snarled. “They can’t stop us!”
At that instant a great slab of the obsidian floor broke away with a sickening lurch and vanished into the boiling lava almost at their feet. The mob swept forward in a wild surge of animal terror.
Tull met them with a sweeping, crushing attack of his incredibly long arms, hurling the leaders backward upon those behind them.
“Inside, Cory, Parker!” the giant roared. “Quick!” He sent them reeling toward the supply ship, and they dragged themselves hastily into the airlock.
“Come on, Tull!” Sarett shouted. “We’ve got to go!”
Tull, holding the convicts back like the frothing beasts they resembled, roared over his shoulder:
“You go! Me hold these. Go—get Brodeur!”
Even as the three Terrestrials shouted frantic protest, a single athletic figure darted suddenly from the mass, straining like a sprinter, and leaped, as Sarett had done, into the airlock!
Tull took a step after him, then as a triumphant howl rose from the mob, he swung furiously about. Parker struck viciously at the intruder; then their bodies crashed together and they clinched in a mighty struggle. Cory and Sarett, seeing a churning wall of redly glowing magma rolling toward them, hastened to the control room. Seconds counted now!
For an endless moment everything seemed to pause in stunned paralysis—then with an awful roar the entire strip of obsidian broke away from the wall! The space ship reeled sickeningly, rolling Parker and his combatant back into the corridor—and at that instant the airlock clanged shut, and the craft leaped toward the safety of the sky!
In the control room Alan thought he heard a chorus of screams blend into one spine-chilling sound that swiftly faded into silence. “God!” he said—and it was not a curse.
Cory spoke softly. “It’s tough to leave Tull like that, Sarett, but it’d be a damn’ sight worse to let him kick in for nothing!”
ALAN SARETT stood motionless at the control bank of the supply-ship Minerva staring into the telescreens. His eyes followed the green disc of Jupiter, watching it shrink into a blur of light, till it joined the stars as a point of radiance in the black mosaic of space. At last he faced the center of the room.
Lief Parker, grinning his one-sided grin, gestured toward a motionless figure on the floor, then slowly caressed his knuckles.
“Well,” he demanded, “what’ll we do with this egg? Smash his shell, or put ’im in cold storage?” He eyed a metal-screened porthole thoughtfully. “He’ll be—safe—out there!”
Cory shook his head. “Why do anything with him? At least, let’s give him a chance to talk. Hell—you can’t blame him for trying to blast out of that damned Pit! We’d’ve done the same thing.”
Sarett nodded. “You’re right, Cory. The four of us were in the same tight spot—and he took the only way out. If he’s the right kind, and plays a square game, I say he should have his chance.”
Parker grunted morosely. “Majority rules, o’ course—though I still think I’m right. But, since you insist, let’s wake him up an’ let ’im broadcast.”
Minutes later the stranger opened his eyes. The three Space-masters stood over him, motionless, silent, faces expressionless. He arose slowly, his keen gaze shifting from one to the other. He surveyed them narrowly, a hint of hostility creeping into the set of his mouth to be banished instantly. Then he smiled, a smile that went no deeper than his lips. And his voice as he spoke bore a hint of arrogance.
“I certainly appreciate your reception,” he said. “Nice of you to pull me out of that mess back there. If you had come a minute later, I would be a cinder.” He paused, inspecting the three with an air that bordered on insolence.
“Switch off the funny stuff,” Parker growled, “or you’ll be breathin’ some damned thin air outside that porthole! C’mon—let’s have some dope about yourself!”
The other met Parker’s truculent glare with a look of unperturbed calm, then shrugged. “Very well,” he agreed. “My name is Jones—Walter Jones. Second-class space pilot just out of training school. Got caught doing a little private smuggling—and Max Brodeur had me sent to the Pit! And who are you?”
Sarett answered. “We were ITL Space-masters, each in command of a cruiser.” He introduced himself, Cory, Parker. “Each of us, working alone, discovered that Max Brodeur, big boss of the ITL, crusader against unfair exploitation of the System’s weaker races—that Max Brodeur, the damned racketeer, is the power behind the Uranian slave traffic, and the contraband working of the Mercutian radium mines!”
He smiled grimly. “We made the mistake of trying to do something about it—and we wound up in—hell!”
The other’s eyes widened. “Brodeur—behind that! Why that seems impossible—”
“But it isn’t!” Parker snapped. “And now we’re out to get him! An’ we’ll be gettin’ him, see? An’ he’ll pay plenty!”
Cory eyed Jones quizzically. “You said Brodeur had you sent to the Pit. Maybe you’d want to join us—”
“No maybe about it!” Jones exclaimed. “Brodeur was responsible for my spell in that sulphur-hole—and I’d like nothing better than to see him get what he deserves. If I may join you, I think I can be of some help, for I know Venus. I received my pilot training in the school in Terra City where Brodeur has his headquarters.”
After a few minutes further discussion, Walter Jones became the fourth member of the little party. Big Lief Parker, distrustful to the last, mad
e one final statement:
“Get this, Jones, an’ get it good! If we catch you in anythin’ shady—it’ll be the last thing you’ll ever do—anywhere!”
Jones smiled thinly. “You won’t catch me in anything shady, Parker. Of that you may be certain.”
An hour later, minus the grime and gore of their fight in the Pit, and clad in ITL uniforms found in the ship’s supplies, Sarett, Cory, and Parker leaned over the space-chart, studying their position in the heavens. Jones was at the controls a few feet away.
“Doesn’t look promising, does it?” Cory remarked.
Parker scowled and pointed toward the space chart. “Promising? There’s Jupiter—about four hundred and eighty million miles from the sun. And over here’s Venus, sixty-seven million miles from the other side of the sun.
That means we have to cover close to five hundred an’ fifty million miles of space! An’ there’s not enough fuel in this little tank to take us a quarter the distance!”
“And we can’t stop at any supply base for more fuel,” Cory added.
PARKER grunted disdainfully. “An’ even if we had enough fuel, it would take a crazy amount of time to make it at the rate we’re goin’. There’s only one thing to do—we’ll have to get a bigger, faster boat.”
“And I can tell you how we can do it,” Sarett said slowly. He paused thoughtfully while Cory and Parker waited. Jones looked up from the controls.
“It’s simple,” Alan continued, “and it’s feasible, too. Look.” His finger traced a line across the space chart. “Here’s the course of the Mars-Ganymede passenger-cruiser, Vulcan. I used to have that run—I know her schedule.” His finger paused in its movement. “She’s due to pass this point in another six hours. We’re just about here—and we can easily be there before them, right in their course. Once there, we set off an automatic radio SOS. They’ll have to stop and investigate—interplanetary law. And when they do, we’ll take over the ship.”
Forgotten Fiction Page 49