The Metal Moon Read online

  CHAPTER III

  The Coming of the Teardrops

  Governor Nikkia was like the majority of the First Race. Although he wasnot large of stature, his powerful muscles bulged impressively under hisclothing. The two relatively slender Earthmen, naked save for theirtrunks, looked almost ridiculously puny. Lents' portly figure was moreimpressive, but the big scientist had all he could do to carry hisweight, so uncomfortably augmented by Jupiter's great mass. Theunaccustomed thickness of the atmosphere, too, made the Earthmenuncomfortable. The heat was excessive, for although the outer cloudmasses had been determined by photometric telescopic examination to benear the freezing point of hydrogen, Jupiter's enormous store ofinternal heat made its surface temperature average around 100 degreesFahrenheit. The humidity was high, and the explorers from Earth weredistressed.

  Nikkia was a good host, however. He ordered out one of the governmentcars, luxurious conveyances supported by gravity repulsion buttons, andpersonally accompanied his guests on a tour of inspection through themurky fog. They rode interminably over wet, domed roofs, down throughgloomy arcades. Thunder rumbled incessantly, and occasionally there camea lurid glow of lightning.

  For a city of Rubio's extent, they saw very few people. Occasionallythey saw the erect, confident figure of a member of the First Race,tending some mighty engine whose purpose they could only guess. Theinhabitants preferred to stay indoors, if they could not afford to dallyin The Pleasure Bubble.

  Nikkia listened with interest to the voyagers' account of their journeythrough space. But he did not respond with much enthusiasm to thesuggestion that interplanetary commerce be resumed.

  "We are comfortable," he said good-naturedly. "Besides, I'm not surethat the Mugs could build ships suitable for such long trips. They'regetting lazier every day!" He shook his head regretfully.

  "What do you expect?" Sine blurted. "You treat them like slaves, ruintheir lives, and then you're surprised because they lack ambition!"

  Nikkia looked at him in mild astonishment. "But they have to be kept intheir place! If we gave them free hand they'd soon run us out. Why, notfifty years ago----"

  He told again of that uprising that had resulted in the breaking of theSecond Race's pretension. "We have to control 'em," he ended smugly.

  The Earthmen were baffled by the bland indifference of the Jovians totheir mother planet. They met many of the First Race in the next fewdays, but none seemed interested but the so-called Mugs, the SecondRace, and their interest was wistful akin to nostalgia.

  But the three scientists were to learn that the First Race were goodfighting men, regardless of their short-comings in other lines.

  * * * * *

  The glowing "teardrops" appeared a little over a week later. They wereso called because of their shape, but the Jovians knew as little abouttheir nature as did their guests. They appeared early one murky morning,as Kass, Sine and Lents sat at breakfast with Governor Nikkia. Theservants, comely, characterless specimens of the Second Race who heldthemselves snobbishly above their fellows, came panic-stricken;

  "Your Supremacy!" called one, making a low obeisance. "There are strangelights hanging over the palace!"

  Nikkia brushed the slight fellow aside, dashed up a stairway to aterrace on the roof, closely followed by his guests. In a few momentsthey were all soaked by the warm downpour as they stood on the terrace,like an island in a sea of brown fog.

  There were three of them, roughly egg-shaped, but with an elongatedtail. More like tadpoles, save that the tail was rigid and emitted afiery streak. Obviously they were propelled by a new adaptation of theold rocket principle. They swam back and forth slowly, as if questingfor something, leisurely selecting their victims. The strangest thingabout them, however, was the light. A brilliant red, almost pink, likethe glow of a neon tube, it penetrated the fog. Its pulsations evenpenetrated brain and body, so that the watchers became unpleasantlyconscious of it.

  Nikkia, watching tensely, turned suddenly on his guests;

  "Damned funny! Barely you show up, and now this! I don't like it. Arethey from the Earth?"

  Lents swelled in slow and ponderous anger.

  "Do you think, sir, that we are of the sort to abuse your hospitality byspying on you? We don't know any more about those things than you do!"

  "Damned funny!" Nikkia repeated to himself. "Wonder if there's any of_them_ left?"

  "Your Supremacy!" a servant interrupted. "Call from the war office!" Hewas carrying a drum-like contrivance, carried on a stand, and set itdown in front of the governor.

  "Well?" Nikkia snapped impatiently.

  The screen which formed the drumhead glowed into life. A Jovian officer,looking exceedingly efficient and warlike in his armor uniform, stood atsalute, which Nikkia returned impatiently.

  "Who are those flyers, Sonta?" the governor snapped.

  "I don't know, Your Supremacy," the officer growled. "They fail toanswer our challenge, and none of the men have seen anything like them."

  "Then why don't you turn the heat on them?"

  "We have. Our heat-rays have no effect on them. That pinkish light is areflector wave of some sort. Several of our beam projectors were burntup by the kick-back."

  "Ram 'em then! Ram 'em! Sacred Ganymede! Is our Defense Servicedegenerating into a crew of Mugs?"

  * * * * *

  The officer's image on the screen was seen to flush, to draw itself upresentfully.

  "We have sent ships up to ram them, Your Supremacy. Three of them havebeen destroyed."

  "I was watching. I saw nothing."

  "The visibility is worse than usual. They are half a mile high. Our ownships are invisible at a hundred yards. It's that cursed light."

  Nikkia shut him off peremptorily.

  "Never mind the conversation, Sonta. Get out every available defensecraft. Box those teardrops. Ram them. Destroy them--I don't care how!"

  The screen was suddenly dark, and Nikkia gazed angrily up at themysterious glowing craft overhead. So far they had done no damage exceptto the city's fighting ships.

  "Listen!" Sine exclaimed. His body glistened like wet bronze as he stoodin the half darkness and strained to catch some sound over the steadypatter of rain. "Lents, quit puffing!"

  From high overhead, some sounds were coming to them. A steady, droningrush, like the sustained exhaust of rockets. That must be from thevisitors, for the official ships were equipped with the gravity buttons.Now and again one of the glowing teardrops would be thrown violentlyfrom its course, evidently the effect of impingement of the gravitybeam. But not one was disabled. The defense ships were not faring sowell. Every little while there would be a fog-muffled crash as one ofthem crashed, throwing a stone roof into the street. But none fell nearthe governor's palace.

  It was uncanny. No sound save that low, sibilant roar, and an occasionalcrash out there somewhere in the darkness. The mysterious attackingships so plainly visible and so immune, and the defensive fightingcraft, flying in silence and invisibility--crashing anonymously.

  Nikkia had dropped his air of assurance and calm superiority. He wasfrankly worried, and still a little suspicious of his guests. Thisattack--it did seem rather a coincidence. What would Sonta have toreport now?

  He twisted a dial on the side of the communication drum. A juniorofficer appeared on the screen.

  "What the devil?" the governor exploded. "Where is Sonta? I'll have himbroken for this! Lieutenant, call Colonel Sonta at once!"

  "Your Supremacy," the lieutenant said respectfully, "Colonel Sonta wentup in one of the guard ships, and it has been reported crashed south ofthe catalyst plants."

  For a second Nikkia stared at the screen, then snapped the switchwordlessly.

  The attackers seemed to have broken down the capital's defenses. Hereand there, through the thick, greasy fog, a lurid red glow would takelife. That was the fog-diffused reflection of a heat-beam, probing thesky for the "teardrops." After a little while the g
low would flare upand as suddenly die down, followed by utter blackness. Another heat-beamout of commission.

  Nikkia was frantically polling all of the city's defense commanders.They reported failure with monotonous regularity. The electronic barragewall around the city had been passed easily--the equipment wrecked. Aproton bombardment had yielded exactly nothing--He snapped the switch,peered eagerly at the mist curtain overhead--there was a series of heavyconcussions. The glowing visitors were being bombarded from above. Thescreen glowed again....

  "... but the bombs are all detonated long before they get in effectiverange of...."

  Close by a vague shape--a darker shadow in the muggy air, suddenlymaterialized. It was falling swiftly--a familiar cylindrical shape withrounded ends--one of the Jovian guard ships. It struck scarcely ahundred yards from the palace--struck with a jarring burst of sound likerending metal. Then utter silence again, and darkness. No cry of woundedman. No man could survive that fall and live.

  "Some kind of emanation--shields them from all known attack--" Nikkiaswore monotonously and regularly.

  The glowing ships now settled down to the real purpose of their attack.They began to course back and forth across the city, methodically. Likeburning meteors they disappeared over the horizon, to the city'sfarthest suburbs, back again, as if over a measured and marked course.

  And like burning, melting meteorites, they shed trails of sparks,blazing liquid. Wherever these fiery drops landed there ensuedimmediately a dry crackling, followed by the rattle of falling masonry.As none of the buildings were inflammable, there was no danger of fire.But wherever this incendiary trail fell, stone cracked and crumbled.

  "They are destroying us! Forty million people live here in Rubio. Theywill kill us all, women and children too!"

  "_Who_ are _they_?" Sine asked suddenly.

  * * * * *

  Nikkia looked at him bleakly. "Who? Why, the Mugs, of course! Those webanished. Those we thought we wiped out."

  "Oh, yeh." Sine's intonation was very dry. "They're giving you a dose ofyour own medicine."

  Nikkia did not reply. As if he apprehended, too late, that his statementmight have sounded like a plea for help, he shrugged his massiveshoulders with elaborate indifference, saying;

  "I and my wives are not afraid to die!"

  The Earthmen could no longer watch this ruthless destruction, however,regardless of the provocation.

  "You say that pink light is a protection against every _known_ mode ofattack?" Sine asked, turning sharply to the governor.

  "Yes. And that's sufficient, isn't it?"

  "Is it proof against _this_?" Sine jerked the little tube out of itsclip, directed it against a stone parapet that loomed grotesquelythrough the fog. A brilliant white beam leaped forth, cutting the foglike a bar of platinum. Then there was darkness, and the governor,examining the parapet, noted with growing hope that a stone pillar, afoot in diameter, had been cut off smoothly, cleanly.

  "The disintegrating ray!" he murmured. "I have read of that, in fiction.But here! Here it is!"

  Suddenly he was all energy.

  "Will you use this weapon against our enemies? I assure you that youwill be well rewarded. As much eka-iodine as your ship will carry! Myown ship is here, in the courtyard. It is swift, and powerful. You havealready learned the controls. Take it. Bring down those murderers!"

  The fiery meteor was coming toward them again, planting a swath of deatha hundred yards wide. There was really only one answer possible. Theterrestrial scientists, having come on a mission of peace and discovery,stepped forward in unison.

  "Give me the activator key!" Sine said crisply. "Lents, will you seethat the port gaskets are loose? Kass, I'd like to have you take thecontrols."

  "Right! Right!" They ran past the governor of the greatest planet in thesolar system, ignoring him, down the broad stairs, through halls ofweighty magnificence, and into the rain-sluiced courtyard.

  The governor's ship was waiting there. Not very large, but fine. Itspolished metal gleamed richly.

  "Quick, inside!" Sine threw open the manport valves. They were inside.The gravity buttons glowed with their peculiarly material lavenderlight, and the ship rose vertically with swift acceleration.

  From the sky the death trails left by the invaders were clearly visiblethrough the murk which obscured everything else--a pink, pulsatinglight. And the three glowing vessels were coming toward them.

  "Get above them, Kass!" Sine commanded. "When they pass under I'll letthem have it."

  Closer and closer they came, those blobs of light. The Earthmen couldsee nothing but the light--get no hint of their construction. But thatthere were men inside they never doubted. The glowing ships seemed toswell, to expand monstrously, and their throbbing emanations became morefurious. They seemed to hesitate as they were about to pass beneath.

  "They see us?" Lents rumbled, pulling at his toga nervously. The clothwas soaked, clinging to his fat body.

  "Close enough!" Sine decided, leaning out of a port, disintegrator raytube in his hand.

  At that instant the strange pink light seemed to encompass the wholeplanet. They were bathed in it. The fog was a sea of baleful pink. Sinestiffened into impotent rigidity. The ray tube fell from his numbedfingers. He felt himself floating, weightless, in a sea of red thatsmothered him deliciously. And swiftly even that consciousness wassucceeded by black oblivion.