The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04 Read online

  "Captain, will you take a look at this?" He was holding up the dead creature's funnel-shaped mouth, spreading it wide apart with his hands. Instead of true teeth, the entire inner mouth was composed of a sort of flexible horny growth which probably served for mastication when and if necessary. But the extraordinary thing was that every available crevice was veined with a gray, spongy mass.

  "That," said Kranz, "is spongy platinum!"

  "And say!" someone chimed in impressively. "The whole Satellite must be rank with platinum if there's enough to impregnate the system of any animal life."

  Excitement over a possible bonanza discovery stirred them momentarily. Then Duval's ringing voice held them all again.

  "Ah! But more important, I believe, it is that we have here the explanation of the breath of fire! One may read in any textbook of chemistry elementary that when hydrogen or coal gas is made to pass over spongy platinum, it makes of fire, is it no? Well! One may also read that anerobic bacteria, acting upon matter of decomposition in swamps, generate methane, which is one of the constituents-as is hydrogen-of coal gas. Now! All the world knows we have in our digestive tracts many bacteria. Surely, Monsieur Cacus, within, contains anerobic bacteria which act on the decaying matter animal and vegetable, of which a decomposition product must be gas similar to coal gas. Thus the breath of fire!" Duval finished with a flourish.

  Everyone agreed: the Frenchman had something there. But how to turn it to advantage? Strike screwed his face up thoughtfully.

  "Spongy platinum, then," he groped hesitantly, "is a catalyst —"

  Instantly Gerry took him up.

  "Of course! A catalyst! And there are several things which, in combination with it, kill its action as a catalytic agent. The halogens, for instance-bromine, flourine. Or hydrogen cyanide — '

  Everyone looked at everyone else, eager to advance Gerry's idea, uncertain just how to go about it.

  "That's smart brain-work, Gerry," said Strike, "but our supplies might as well be on Sirius for all the good they can do us. Where'll we get any of the things you mentioned?"

  "If it pleases you, mademoiselle — " It was Duval again, and hopes soared at the confidence in his voice. "I, Duval, can perhaps solve this problem. You see these blossoms, so tiny, so unimportant?" He toed one of the little groups of close-clinging growths with the colorless, star-shaped blooms. "They are found, I believe, in one species or another, on all the satellites of Jupiter. We know them well. They are related, one might say, to the night-shade of Earth, because they have poison within them. It is, as you have said it, hydrogen cyanide."

  Without the necessity of a single command, the crew went to work. Three of them got furiously busy picking great handfuls of the plants which offered them salvation. Another ran back to the prow of The Ark, from which the man in the pilot house had dropped the important instruments, and had him toss out a space-suit helmet; it would make a perfect pot for boiling.

  The little remaining drinking water left in the pilot house was also lowered. A pair of low-power heat beams was arranged under a tripod made of three of the useless hypo rifles. In a very few minutes the mixture was bubbling merrily-it came to a boil quickly in the absence of much pressure-brewing a vengeful hell-broth for the Cacus.

  By the time it cooled to a scummy liquid with a brown substance deposited from the solution, the whole party was laboring for breath, with the exception of Gerry and Duval, who hadn't been in their space-suits as long as the others.

  Gerry peered around the row of blue-lipped faces; what she had to do now was hard. Someone had to be chosen to try conclusions with the Cacus; someone had to risk his life, perhaps lose it, in a desperate effort to introduce the HCN into the monster's mouth.

  True, it had to be done at close range; so why not try the paralysis ray? But Gerry had come to distrust the ray machine, which was the cause of all the trouble. Perhaps it didn't have the proper power even at close range. If a life had to be lost, it would simply be thrown away if the paralysis ray failed to work. But it might do some good if lost while putting into effect Duval's textbook chemistry.

  The crew would never under any circumstances allow Gerry to try it, so she was forced to call for volunteers. To the last member, they all stepped forward.

  But Tommy Strike stepped farthest, taking the bowl of deadly juice from Gerry's hands.

  "My job," be said briefly. "I'm sort of responsible for this mess. It's up to me to straighten things out."

  Gerry's eyes misted. She had no right to refuse him. Someone had to go and Strike, as co-captain, had authority to choose himself. And rigid discipline of the Carlyle expeditions insisted on no needless sacrifice of life or limb. Strike would go alone. Gerry needed all her iron control at that moment.

  Strike opened one of the meta-glass gas bombs to allow the gas to disperse, then filled it with most of the poison solution, saving a little for a second try in case he failed. With a crooked grin be waved salute and started toward The Ark. Deftly, and before anyone had the slightest inkling of what was happening, Duval slipped up behind Strike, tripped him, and threw him easily to the ground. He caught the meta-glass ball as it floated downward.

  Gerry yelled at him.

  "Duval! Stop it! You've done enough already, besides, you're not properly one of us at all. Put that down!"

  Duval's smile gleamed brightly. "But I have just made a flight impossible from Ganymede to Satellite Five in a scrap heap. Today is my day of luck! I cannot fail!"

  "Duval! Come back! We want no quixotic foolishness. If you understood our discipline you'd realize we just don't do things that way."

  And Duval of the empty life, whose passing none would mourn, who burned to do heroic things in the grand manner, said soberly:

  "And if you, mademoiselle, but understood the French, you would realize that we Gascons do things this way."

  And he was gone, running rapidly toward The Ark. Strike floundered finally to his feet, snarling. He seized the paralysis ray model and set out after Duval as fast as he could go. In a flash the entire crew made a concerted rush in the same direction. Only Gerry's savage commands halted them reluctantly.

  Duval reached the port, peered cautiously in, then vanish inside. Strike followed him less than a half minute later. Then nothing. The watchers outside listened intently at their helmet earphones, but no word came from either Duval or Strike They got in touch with those still trapped in the ship, but the latter reported nothing. That was natural, as the lethal game being played between Duval, Strike, and the Cacus was taking place along nearly airless passages where sound would not carry well.

  Presently the listeners were shocked to hear a high-pitched squeal like that of a wounded horse coming faintly through the earphones. It was nothing human: it must have been picked up by someone's helmet mike at a point very close to the screamer. At that, all restraint was flung aside and the crew, with Gerry in the lead, pounded pell-mell over the solid terrain and recklessly into The Ark.

  They burst in gasping on a climax of terrible ferocity. It was so swift, so savagely sudden, that it was all over before they could throw their feeble powers into the balance.

  The Cacus had evidently been prowling down a side passage, and Duval had attracted its attention, then ducked around a corner into the main corridor; when they met, it would be at close quarters where there was no chance for the Frenchman to miss. As the crew tumbled in, Duval was crouching by the passage corner and had just finished yammering at Tommy Strike to stay back and not be a fool. Strike had apparently started in the wrong direction and had just located the real theater of action; he was running purposely along the corridor to back up Duval's play.

  And then everything happened at once, like a badly-rehearsed bit of stage continuity in which the actors rush through their parts almost simultaneously.

  The Cacus, tail curled up and running on its six legs, skidded furiously into the main corridor of The Ark. At once it spied Duval and emitted another of those hideous shrilling sound
s. Duval's arm went back, whipped forward. A glittering arc made a line straight for the ugly, horn-like snout of the beast. Strike, off to one side and several feet behind Duval, dropped to his knees and fumbled with the ray-box. A terrific blast of flame belched out from the Cacus to envelop head and shoulders of the doughty Frenchman.

  For a moment it appeared that the fiery stream had caught the container of HCN and demolished it. But no-the Frenchman had been the quicker; he had scored a bull's-eye. By the time the Cacus turned to annihilate Strike, the hydrogen cyanide had entered into combination with the spongy platinum, and nothing but a burst of gas came forth. From that moment the monster was through. Strike brought the miniature paralysis ray to bear, and instantly the Cacus collapsed in a twitching mound of nauseous flesh.

  Cathode guns were brought from the arsenal, and the Cacus was ruthlessly blasted out of existence. Then Gerry and Strike hurried to Duval's side. The Frenchman was terribly burned, his face a blackened, blinded travesty of a man. The spark of life was almost extinguished. But as the two knelt beside him, Duval's cracked lips managed a feeble grin.

  "Mademoiselle," he whispered, "will have to collect that wager I have won from the good Bullwer. We made the flight. He has lost a week's pay, that one." Something like a laugh bubbled up from his seared chest.

  Gerry groaned in anguish.

  "Duval! Oh, you magnificent fool, Duval! Why did you do it? Because of me, you must die. That's wrong —"

  "Death?" Duval somehow managed a shrug. "Death, yes. But what a death of the most heroic!" And with supreme courtesy to the last, Duval carefully rolled over to face the wall, that a woman might not have to suffer the unpleasant sight of a dying man.

  Somberly, Strike helped Gerry to her feet, and she clung to him tightly. For a while they said no word. All about them throughout the ship came the noises of normal life being resumed. The entrance port clanged shut. Voices rang out. Distantly a generator began to hum. Bulkheads rumbled open again. Oxygen hissed into the airless passages. Feet drummed faintly.

  Then Gerry Carlyle gave Louis Duval his epitaph.

  "There lies," she said, "a very gallant gentleman."

  ENERGY EATERS

  Chapter XIV.

  Storm Over Gerry

  NOBODY knows exactly what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body. Science, with a view to solving that bewhiskered problem, had been eagerly watching the feud between Nine Planets Films, Inc. and Gerry Carlyle, the Catch-'em-Alive woman. But so far honors had been about even, though Gerry's hot temper had become even fierier under the strain, and Von Zorn, president of the great motion picture company, had been under a doctor's care for some time.

  At the moment he was sitting behind his gleaming glass desk and twitching slightly as he glared at Anthony Quade, ace director and trouble-shooter extraordinary for Nine Planets.

  "Look," he said in a deceptively soft voice, "I don't ask for much, Mr. Quade. Just a little cooperation from my staff. All I want is a signature, two short words on this contract. That's not too much to expect from a billion dollar organization with the cream of the System's technical and promotional brains, is it?"

  Quade settled his large, big-boned body more comfortably in the chrome and leather chair and blinked sleepily. Von Zorn changed his tone and his voice quavered slightly as he went on.

  "I'm a sick man, Tony. I can't stand this continual worry. Somehow I don't think I have long to live. My heart. And all I ask you to do is get a signature on this contract."

  "A great act, Chief," Quade said approvingly. "But I've heard it a few dozen times before. I think I'm allergic to your heart. Every time you get angry I find myself dodging Whip's on Venus or shooting energy-storms on Mars. I need a vacation."

  "Afraid?" Von Zorn asked tauntingly.

  "Sure," Quade said. "I've fought haywire robots from Pluto; I've handled the worst temperaments on the Moon; I've even brought you pix of the Martian Inferno. But I positively won't risk my life with that — that Roman candle in skirts."

  "Think of the box office."

  "I know. It's worth millions to have Gerry Carlyle tied up in a contract so she won't go off and bring back a cargo of Martian monsters for the London Zoo every time we shoot a Mars epic with robots. I don't like it any better than you do, Chief. That dame scoops us every time — and the public won't look at our robots when they can see the real thing. I can see myself asking Gerry Carlyle to sign that contract."

  Von Zorn hesitated. "Tony, I'd ask her myself. Only —"

  "Only what?"

  "She won't sign."

  Quade nodded, frowning. "We've got nothing she wants. You can offer her a fortune and she'd still say no. The only — wait a minute!"

  Von Zorn tensed. "Got an idea?"

  "Maybe. Gerry Carlyle will sell her soul for one thing — a new monster. Something nobody's ever captured or even seen before. Jumping Jupiter, I've got it! If she'll make a flicker for us, we'll give her the beast for her Zoo." Von Zorn said, "And just where do we get this beast?"

  "Just leave that to me. I've plenty of technical resources in the labs."

  "If you're thinking of a synthetic monster —"

  "What I'm thinking of will surprise you," Quade said mysteriously. "Give me thirty days, and I'll get you a beast that'll make Gerry Carlyle turn green. Chief, she'll be begging you to let her sign that contract."

  Grinning, Quade went out, leaving Von Zorn licking his lips at the prospect of a defeated and supplicant Gerry Carlyle.

  * * *

  It was bedlam. Newscasters swarmed in the office; photographers snapped their flashbulbs continually; questions and shouts filled the place with babble. Through it all the central figure posed gracefully against the massive desk, cool and unperturbed as an iceberg.

  She was dressed in mirror-polished high boots, riding pants, and polo shirt open at her tanned throat; these were the badges of her profession. For this was the New York office of Gerry Carlyle, grim huntress of fierce monsters on the inhospitable planets of the solar System, serene and gracious hostess now.

  But the occasion was one that tried to the utmost the steel control she placed on her fiery temper. For Gerry, according to the delighted newsmen, had been scooped — and how!

  "No two ways about it, Miss Carlyle," said one of the reporters. "This what's-his-name has really got something — a form of life nobody's ever seen before."

  "Seeing is believing," said Gerry sweetly.

  "Every newscast from the Moon, for the last six hours has had something about these jiggers. From Mercury, the guy says."

  Gerry quirked up an eyebrow. "I've scoured Mercury's twilight zone twice for life-forms; I've brought back the only living things ever seen by man on the surface of Mercury. I even went over the dark side once."

  "These animals come from Hotside."

  "That, to begin with, is a bare-faced lie," Gerry smiled. "D'you know what the temperature is on the sunward side of Mercury? No matter what kind of insulation he used in his spacesuit, a man's brains would boil in a split second."

  "Sure," said the reporter. "But this guy has the creatures, Miss Carlyle, and nobody has ever seen anything like 'em before, and he claims they're from Hotside."

  "Well, you're just wasting your time, boys, if you've come up, here to get my statement. I've already told you it's a hoax."

  "Professor Boleur looked 'em over. He says they're the McCoy," persisted the nervy reporter, defying the lightning.

  Gerry scowled at this, and more flashbulbs went off. Boleur's reputation was unimpeachable, impossible to ignore.

  Just then Gerry's secretary came in, looking apprehensive.

  "A telecall, Miss Carlyle. From-er-from the Moon."

  Electric tension filled the room. Gerry took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and closed it again. She said very softly, "If it's from Mr. Von Zorn, tell him I'm not in."

  "No, it's a Mr. Anthony Quade."

  "I've never heard of him," Gerry said witheringly,
and turned away. But a dozen eager voices informed her that Tony Quade was the man who had brought back the monsters from Mercury, and that he was one of the biggest figures in the film industry.

  "Really!" said Gerry scornfully, and strode into the televisor room, dark eyes narrowed dangerously. The reporters trailed her.

  Quade was visible on the screen, leaning negligently forward, puffing on a blackened briar. He opened his mouth to speak, but the woman gave him no chance.

  "You," she stated, "are Quade, Von Zorn's stooge. For months your unpleasant boss has been after me to make a picture for Nine Planets. Whatever this nonsense is about bringing back a monster from Hotside, its purpose is to trick me into signing a contract. The answer is — no! But definitely!" The cold, incisive words made Quade blink. Obviously he had underestimated this very capable young woman.

  He shrugged.

  "You're quite right, Miss Carlyle. Except that there's no trickery involved. It's a straight business proposition. As a rule I don't like to do business with women because they're apt to use their emotions instead of their brains, but — " Quade paused, eyeing Gerry blandly.

  The woman's lips tightened. For her, Catch-'em-Alive Carlyle, to be accused of feminine weaknesses, was insupportable.

  "Go ahead, Mr. Quade," she said. "I'm listening."

  Quade nodded slightly, and Von Zorn himself moved into focus. His small, simian face was twisted into a somewhat frightful smile. Between cupped hands he held what appeared, at first glance, to be a large ball of fur, perhaps a trifle larger than a porcupine. It was amorphous, settling itself constantly into new positions like a jellyfish.

  Von Zorn lifted one hand and literally poured the remarkable creature from one palm to the other. As he did so, a myriad pale orange and blue sparks flickered about the tips of the animal's furlike coat.