Ray Cummings Read online

  He seemed to have almost his full strength at once. He was slumped by a tree trunk which loomed beside him. A giant man clung to him by the arm—had evidently dragged—him here. The man leaned down.

  "You right, now? All right?"

  Broken, guttural English. A giant Mercurian. Jimmy became suddenly aware that this was a familiar locality. He saw the dim outlines of a nearby log cabin, dark in the starlight. This was our cabin, which he had left only about twelve hours before. He saw figures prowling outside it now.

  Jimmy did not answer. With all his force he wrenched from his captor and tried to run. But his strength suddenly drained from him. He stumbled and fell in the snow. A flash stung his arm and burned his sleeve; and as the giant leaped on him and pulled him erect, a portion of burned fabric fell unheeded to the ground beside the stump. It was the cloth which I came upon a few moments later.

  Another figure gripped Jimmy. A voice, in better English, said softly, “Do not try that.” And then, “They come, Dorrek—Roc no need this fellow."

  They had brought Jimmy out to revive him in the cold air, perhaps thinking they might need him to show them further details of the cabin. They hurried him now toward the nearby forest. Jimmy saw, behind him, a following group. He saw the silver ball resting in the shadows of the forest nearby. He was led into it, flung down on the floor of the same room where he had been before. The giant sat watchfully at his elbow.

  Then there were shots outside, in the distance. A flurry of footsteps in the vehicle; excited voices. Arriving figures.

  Rowena and Tama were flung down beside Jimmy. Roc's voice said:

  "Guard them, Dorrek ... If anyone of you causes trouble, Dorrek will kill you."

  The lenses of the windows and the door were slamming. The vehicle lifted, quivered. Outside the window, the forest trees were sliding downward. Then only starlight. The ball was making upward, leaving the Earth.

  "Jimmy—you!"

  The girls clung to Jimmy. The giant seemed to ignore their whispering. Tama had been caught by Roc while she was still asleep, but the slight noise had awakened Rowena. She had seized a long dressing gown and gone into the living room. Roc and his men had pounced upon her.

  To Rowena's easy capture, Guy, Toh and I undoubtedly owed our lives. Had there been a commotion Roc would probably have killed us in our beds, but with the girls captured, he retreated at once.

  "I told him where you were,” Jimmy whispered. “I was drugged—paralyzed—I couldn't keep from telling."

  Tama knew the drug. It was foolproof. She named it in her native language. Roc had thrown a cloak over her wings. She was shivering, but presently, with the friction-heat of the rapid ascent, the room began to warm.

  "We're headed for Mercury,” whispered Jimmy.

  The giant abruptly leaned toward Rowena, plucked at her gown.

  "You—the Rowena girl?"

  There was light enough to see his face. A great bloated, flabby—jowled, hairless face of pallid gray skin. A wide flat nose with a bridge suggesting that it had been broken. He was grinning with a leer meant to be ingratiating.

  Rowena flung off his hand. Jimmy muttered an oath, but Tama gripped him.

  "Wait! He is a Cold Country native; perhaps a leader."

  "You—the Rowena girl?"

  "Yes,” said Rowena calmly. “That's my name."

  "I like you. I, Dorrek, master of the army when we capture Light Country. Soon now. And I like you. Big woman—beautiful. My woman soon—"

  His gaze devoured Rowena's figure. Jimmy was tense, but a movement of Tama's directed his attention across the room. Behind the squatting giant, a heavy-set gray woman was standing. Her gray wings were folded behind her. She stood against the wall; the light fell upon her wide, flabby, gray face to illumine it plainly. It was contorted now with hate. The venom of a woman's jealous hate.

  And all in an instant Jimmy realized that in her hand as it came up from the folds of her drab-colored robe, a long glittering knife was clutched.

  The woman moved suddenly forward, uttered a piercing hysterical scream and with waving knife blade leaped at Rowena.

  CHAPTER IV

  ENDLESS VOID

  I SAT BESIDE Guy in one of the deck corridor chairs of the Bolton Cube. A bull's-eye window was at hand. Earthlight and starlight, and mingled moonlight fell upon us—the great firmament out there blazing with a glory wondrous, amazing. The Earth hung fairly below our window. Tremendous, reddish-yellow ball, etched with the tracery of its land and water, mottled with cloud areas, white with its polar snowcaps.

  To one side hovered the gleaming, sharply black and white Moon-disk and everywhere the stars blazed like points of fire in the dead black void of space. The sun was overhead. From this side of the deck we could not see it.

  "How far out are we?” Guy asked. I had been to the dome-peak and just returned.

  "About four hundred thousand miles."

  "Has Grenfell's telescope lost sight of the silver ball?"

  "Yes."

  We had been on the voyage some ten hours. It was now, by Earth Eastern Standard Time, which we were maintaining on the Cube, about 3 p.m. on the afternoon of March 16th. The Mercurian vehicle had departed some four hours in advance of us and now it was beyond our sight.

  "But Grenfell is sure we have been making as good speed as the ball,” I added. “And he hopes to do better. We'll overhaul it in a day or two."

  "If it heads directly for Mercury,” said Guy. “But we're following it blind."

  Through the window there was no movement apparent. The Earth and Moon were dwindling, but very slowly. The sun was growing larger. Our velocity was now only a million miles in about nine hours. More than a month to reach the sun at this rate, and something like twenty-six-thousand years to the nearest star!

  For an hour Guy and I talked that afternoon on the deck of the Bolton Cube. We would overtake the Mercurian vehicle. And then what? There was a gun mounted at a pressure port on the deck of the Cube. But with Tama, Rowena and Jimmy in the ball, we could not attack it.

  On the other band, if Roc had the necessary weapons, he was free to attack us. Guy felt, however, that Roc had no long-range weapons.

  "It won't be armed,” Guy insisted. “They'll have hand weapons—but that's about all. That ball was only a tender for Croat's ship."

  A day passed. Anxious hours, seemingly interminable. Our almost vibrationless little square metal house seemed hanging in the void. Everything remained almost the same. The Earth was still full-round, but smaller, with a silvery aspect mingling now with its yellow-red sheen; the moon, behind it, a tiny white sphere. Both were level with our side windows, with the sun and Mercury on the other side. Grenfell kept us in this position so that his telescope might most readily seek the Mercurian vehicle in advance of us.

  The sun seemed a trifle larger now. The crescent Mercury could be seen only through the telescope. And far to one side, the blazing point of light which was Venus showed in the telescope as a glorious half-moon.

  Then at last we were rewarded. Five p.m. of March 17th, thirty-six hours after leaving the Earth. A shout from Toh resounded through the Cube.

  "They have picked it up! It is visible—a dot against the Sun-disk! Jack, come up here! Guy—oh, Guy—the thing is in advance of us, but not so far."

  We jammed into the little dome-room. Our velocity was now some five hundred thousand miles an hour. It had reached and passed the maximum of which apparently the Mercurian vehicle was capable. The ball showed as a tiny black dot against the flaming gaseous envelope of the sun's surface.

  I faced Dr. Grenfell. “Can I see you a moment alone?” He gazed up at me from beneath his raised bushy brows. “Alone? We've no secrets here, Jack. What—"

  But he left Baker at the telescope and accompanied me down the inclined ladder into the third and upper tier of the Cube. A small central room, with table and chairs, surrounded by a number of cubbies-control and instrument rooms. Guy had followed us, with Toh besi
de him.

  I had a plan: wild, suicidal. All day the details of it had been obsessing me: I had been waiting for the sighting of the silver ball as the time to tell it to Grenfell. He listened quietly, hearing me through with only an occasional question. He sat low in his chair, his thick shoulders hunched, his eyes peering up at me; and only his thick fingers toying restlessly with the black ribbon of his seldom-used eye glasses betrayed his emotions.

  Guy sat speechless, turning grim and white, regarding me with an eagerness almost pathetic. Only once, he spoke.

  "Jack! I'm going with you! Dr. Grenfell, if he goes, I'm going."

  And Toh protested the same.

  We ignored them. When I finished, there was a tense silence.

  Then Dr. Grenfell said, “That's all, Jack?"

  "Yes ... Wait, Guy—” I gripped his arm. “Take it easy! Let's talk this out. Dr. Grenfell—"

  He interrupted me with his slow quiet voice. “I think you could get there. The way you reason it, the thing is rational. But Jack, you could not do anything."

  "Except yield myself up. But I don't think they'll kill me, and just being there with Rowena—Dr. Grenfell, she's my wife, don't you realize that? She—"

  His gesture checked my outburst. “You could not take any weapons, or it would result only in arming our enemy."

  "I know it. I don't want any. One, perhaps—a little revolver or a knife which I might hide. I just want to be there. It's when they land on Mercury—instead of Jimmy alone, it will be Jimmy and me to try and guard the girls and find some way of escape. Well succeed, I'm sure.” I tried to be calm. “Dr. Grenfell, you can spare me?"

  "Yes, I can spare you. But it may be suicide.” He gazed down at his eyeglass ribbon; and then he looked up with sudden decision.

  "I can imagine your emotion, Jack. I won't keep you, won't try to influence your going,” Guy insisted. “Two of us—” He stopped Toh from speaking. “You keep out of this. They'd kill you the moment they got hold of you, and you know it."

  Grenfell shook his bead at them both. “I won't spare more than one of you."

  "But, Dr. Grenfell—” Guy began.

  "And you, most emphatically, I cannot spare. When we reach Mercury, trying to plan what to do, whom do you think we'll depend on most? You, Guy! Isn't that obvious? There will be only eight of us here on the Cube, and of us all, only you and Toh have been to Mercury before. You think I'm going to let you try this mad thing? Lose you and your knowledge of Mercury? I'm not!"

  He leaned forward with his hands on Guy's shoulders. Get it out of your head. The very thing you want, the safety of Tama, would be jeopardized ... Jack, if you insist on trying it, well start your preparations now. Toh, please—you're only a lad. I won't let you try this mad thing ... Your Moon-suit, Jack; we'll get it ready, test it out in the air lock. We'll overtake Roc's vehicle presently."

  So it was decided that, I alone, was to undertake the adventure, fantastic, suicidal attempt! I prepared for it with outward calmness. But he who says he is incapable of fear is a liar.

  Our vehicle was a cube fifty feet in each of its three dimensions. Outwardly it suggested a great sugar-lump, ornate with little windows, a doorway, a bulge around the middle which was the enclosed balcony deck. On top there was an observatory dome set like a tiny conical hat.

  The Cube inside was a maze of softly blue-lit apartments of metallic walls, floors and ceilings, draped and furnished into a fair semblance of comfort. There were three tiers, and a balcony deck surrounded the four vertical sides of the middle tier. Of these four deck-lengths of the balcony, one was different from the others. D-face, it was termed. Along this fifty-foot length there were pressure ports—air locks projecting outward from the deck. Our single long-range gun was mounted at one of them. Others were for the firing of hand weapons, so that from the normal air pressure of the deck a bullet might be fired into the vacuum of space.

  Grenfell added, “I've had the telescope on them. Not a show of anything at the windows. They must be avoiding each window as it turns toward us."

  On the deck, three of our men were waiting to launch me off. Gibbons was in the dome at our telescope; Baker was in the main control room. They had all been alert as we overhauled the ball. Roc might have been able to fire upon us. D-Face was kept now fronting the ball, and one of our men stood alert at the long-range gun. Roc's shot, had it come, would have been promptly answered. I thanked God that such a thing had not been necessary.

  Guy touched me. “Well, good-bye—good luck!"

  They all chorused it as, with hands that shook in spite of myself, I bolted on the helmet, started my tiny motors, felt the suit bloating with its interior pressure. Through my visor pane I could see Grenfell's face as he stared at me. His lips framed, “Good luck!"

  Someone pushed me into the pressure lock. The door slid closed after me. I sat awkwardly on the floor in the center of the little metal room. Through the transparent slide I could see the men's faces peering; and beyond the outer slide, which was also closed, was a vista of stars and the round gleaming shape of Roc's vehicle.

  The exhaust pumps were sucking the air from the lock. Currents plucking at me.

  A few minutes later I was in a vacuum. I stood up, swaying unsteadily. There was a glimpse of Guy's white, anxious face. I turned away from it, faced the outer door panel.

  It moved silently aside. The last swirl of rarified air in the lock pushed at me as it rushed out. I clutched the doorway, poised at the sill. At my feet a brink—a million million miles of black void and blazing worlds down there.

  Once before I had found myself in a situation similar to this—a human projectile in space, detached, a world of myself. Yet now, for all my anticipation, the shock of it numbed me. A vague amazement of thought,

  I did not fall. There was no sensation of falling. No movement. A suspension, as though with my body hanging poised in the void, my thoughts were also poised. A shock—but in a moment it passed, leaving only confusion.

  The heavens slowly, soundlessly shifted, and stopped. The earth hung level, unmoving. I turned my head. The fiery ball of the sun was steady to my right. A firmament of blazing, unmoving worlds. And I now was one of them. Subject now, not to human movement, but to the laws of celestial mechanics. The finding of my orbit would be the result of all the complicated forces now acting upon me. Perhaps I could take the open trajectory of a comet; or the closed ellipse of a planet, or become only a satellite, forever to revolve about one of these greater astronomical bodies near me.

  Time was lost with movement. I was a world which could exist a few years or hours or minutes, and then die, disintegrate. Poised in the infinity of Time and Space. Hung chained as a satellite to something.

  I shook myself free from the confusion. How long it lasted I cannot say. I lay helpless, floating weightless in a weightless void. I could kick and flounder but could not change my position. I had left the air lock with a carefully planned forward dive. It had carried me, like a log floating in water, a hundred feet or so away from the Cube. My outward velocity had retarded.

  Of all the myriad forces pulling at me, the attraction of the Cube was the greatest. Dr. Grenfell held D-face of the Cube with neutral gravity plates. The Cube's nearness checked me, held me. I sensed only the movement of my slow, outward dive; yet at that instant I was plunging forward with the Cube at half a million miles an hour!

  The Mercurian vehicle hung before me, seemingly unmoving, some ten miles away. I wondered if Rowena had seen me leap—if she could guess it was I.

  Then the heavens were shifting, slowly oscillating with pendulum swing as I picked up a rolling motion. I became aware that I was lagging behind the Cube, the beginning of a small velocity of my own—the making of an orbit. Soon, with these forces, I would be a satellite of the Cube with the lesser attraction of the Roc vehicle retarding me at each revolution.

  Again my jumbled thoughts clarified. The air lock door at D-face was closed. I could see Grenfell in the lock peering
out at me. I raised my bloated arm with our agreed upon signal that I was all right.

  He answered it, and vanished. Another countless interval of time went by. I knew that Grenfell was shifting the gravity plates in D-face so that their force would repulse me. It was presently apparent. I began moving away from the Cube. Moving free. Slowly at first. Then faster.

  The Cube visually began dwindling. The Roc vehicle grew larger.

  I fell free. The heavens shifted. Then the attraction of the silver ball caught me. I went around it in a great ellipse. And with a slow axial rotation I was turning end over end, so that now the Earth was over me and then the sun—my days, which now were minutes or seconds of human time—and my year was now once around this enlarging globe.

  I circled it several times in a narrowing spiral orbit, as steadily its bulk drew me closer. There were glimpses of the Cube, hovering watchful in the starry distance. I saw that my orbit was eccentric as I passed the side of the ball upon which Roc was using his power. Then I think he made all the ball neutral, for it drew me evenly inward each time I went around. I thought several times that at the small convex panes there were faces peering out at me.

  The whole process took many minutes, or hours. I went at last with a curving rush at the ball. Struck its smooth gleaming, convex side. Rebounded, with the impulse of the air pressure in my bloated garments; struck again. It seemed like a fall: I landed with hands and knees under me, and felt that I now had a little weight: I lay sprawled, sticking outward like a fly upon the side of the sphere!

  With the contact, blessed normality returned. Detached no longer, free of the abnormality of an independent existence, I was once again the inhabitant of the world.

  The sense of human time came back to me, with human movement. I sprawled on the sharply rounded metal surface. I was on its side, but it seemed like its top, with the windows set wrongly and all the globe under me.

  I lay for a moment. I seemed to weigh a few pounds. I began cautiously crawling away from the windows, and to my senses, the ball was slowly passing beneath me, so that always I remained on top.