The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04 Page 19

  Quade nodded slowly. "I think you're right. Sure! We'll use portable tanks and sprayers. I'll get Morgan."

  He did so, and issued hasty instructions.

  There was instant, orderly confusion. Portable tanks had to be filled. Hoses and spray-nozzles had to be prepared. But at last a skeleton crew of men was ready, Gerry and Quade at their head. A few were left to work on the engines, Morgan among them.

  "We'll be back as soon as we can," Quade said. "In the meantime, my orders still stand. If we're not back before the deadline, take off without us."

  Morgan shook his shaggy head.

  "We're getting awful close to the Sun, Chief."

  "I know," Quade shrugged. "I'm taking a few cameras with me, but I can't load up on bulky stuff. It'd slow us down too much. It looks like we'll get precious little for Von Zorn. And you won't get any monsters, either," he added to Gerry. She didn't say anything.

  They set out at a furious, but more hopeful pace.

  "We'll wear a trail to the tower pretty soon," Gerry said bitterly.

  "Uh-huh. I wonder if that will work?" Quade pondered. "Plain water doesn't sound like much of a weapon."

  Ten minutes later his words seemed justified. A creature like a gigantic spider, six feet high and a dozen in diameter, rushed down a slope toward them. Its mandibles clicked viciously.

  "The tanks," Gerry cried shrilly. "Try the water."

  "Use your guns," Quade's deeper voice drowned her out. "Fire, everybody."

  Pistols crashed loudly. At once the great spider was killed. But its body still raced forward, bowling over one man before it collapsed. Though its eyes had been smashed and it was blind, the mandibles still snapped in insensate fury, until it vanished from sight.

  "There was no time for anything but bullets then," Quade explained. "But it looks like your chance is right here. There comes a blue globe."

  One of the blue Proteans, only five feet in diameter, was rolling unsuspiciously toward them. On its surface-membrane a picture appeared — a picture of the spider that had just been killed.

  Nobody said anything. The Protean hesitated, grew larger, and began to roll purposefully toward the group.

  "Now." Gerry said.

  Quade pointed the nozzle of his tank-tube. He turned a valve. The nozzle hissed shrilly. They stared hopefully, expectantly.

  Chapter XXV.

  "Forget the Guns!"

  It began to snow. Ammonium oxalate was precipitated out of the cyanogen atmosphere. It drifted down on the Protean, who did not seem discouraged in the least degree.

  "Doesn't work," Quade groaned, and used his gun.

  The blue monster deflated. But several more appeared. Again Quade tried the water-tank, with equal failure. Bullets finally slew the comet creatures.

  "Well," Gerry said, as the last of them disappeared. "I don't know. Either I'm completely wrong, or else ammonium oxalate affects only real Proteans, not the dream-images. In that case we've got to find the real sleepers."

  "All right," Quade acceded. "We'll keep on toward the tower. Wed better not use the tanks again till we're absolutely ready. The sleepers may not have been warned, so we don't want to show our hand too soon. If your idea's right, we'll be okay. If it's wrong, we're eclipsed."

  Gerry said nothing, though she realized the truth of Quade's assertion. Doggedly the little group plodded on through the gray, gravelly soil. Several times they caught sight of additional Proteans. Once they viewed a Hyclops, in the distance, pursuing a group of fleeing red spheres.

  "Looks like the blue Proteans have captured Tommy," Gerry remarked. "They're using his dream-visions in their crazy chess game. Wonder what happened to the other men?"

  Quade was wondering, too, and it wasn't a pleasant thought.

  Gerry's thoughts were equally distressful. Tommy Strike was in serious trouble. She felt that her own rashness had been responsible for his present predicament. She kept seeing his face —

  Abruptly, she muttered something suspiciously like an oath and took deadly aim at a Protean that had materialized nearby. It exploded into tatters. She felt slightly better.

  Overhead the fires of the comet's coma seethed and churned. Beyond that white veil the Solar System moved in its accustomed orbits. Work was proceeding on the Ark. People were wandering through the London Zoo, gaping at Gerry's exhibits. Hollywood on the Moon was, as usual, buzzing with excitement. Everywhere television sets were discussing the comet, and the possible fate of the explorers who had vanished into its fires.

  Not far away were all these friendly, familiar things — shut out by an impalpable wall of alien matter. Light-years away. Gerry, Quade, and the others were imprisoned on the comet, while the galactic wanderer rushed on toward the disastrous proximity of the Sun. And slowly, slowly, the time of grace shortened.

  From the start, things had gone wrong. Perhaps, Gerry thought, it was her fault. But, then, nobody could have foreseen conditions on the comet. It was too far outside the ken of Earthmen. Gerry felt a touch of awe as she looked up at the weird sky, a realization of the vast, cosmic immensities that surround our Solar System. So much lay outside. So much was unknown, could never be understood by human minds!

  She shrugged and plodded on. It didn't matter. The business of the day was something entirely different. This was more familiar, dealing with weapons, pitting the skill and intelligence of Catch-'em-Alive Carlyle against her enemies.

  Quade's thoughts were rather similar. His keen brain was working, discarding possibilities, advancing theories, planning, plotting.

  When they came in sight of the black tower, the minds of all the group were attuned to highest intensity.

  Quade stopped.

  "We don't know the full power or capabilities of the Proteans," he said quietly. "So watch yourselves. They may have purely mental weapons. Keep alert, and in touch with me. The minute anything seems to be going wrong, let me know."

  They went down toward the monolith. It wasn't deserted now. Its base was hidden by thousands of the spheres, red and blue, united against a common foe. The Proteans waited, silent, alert, menacing…

  The tension increased almost to the breaking point. Step by step, crunching their heavy space boots through the gravel, the party advanced. The enemy made no move. Silently they waited at the base of the ebon monolith, under the white, churning skies of flame.

  Silence… Ominous, torturing silence.

  Quade's nerves were taut. He could feel the thrill of impending danger flooding through him, tugging at his mind, crying the nearness of peril. His hands swung loosely at his sides, never too far from the gun-butts. The rifle slung across his shoulder slapped his hips at each step. Gerry walked cautiously beside him. After them came the men, bizarre figures with the big watertank cylinders jutting above their helmeted heads.

  The nearest of the spheres was forty feet away. Thirty. Twenty-five…

  The slope was not so steep now. Crunch, crunch went the metal boots. Hoarse breathing whistled through the audiophones.

  "Chief," somebody whispered.

  "Steady," Quade said. "Steady, fellas!"

  Twenty feet separated the group from the Proteans. Fifteen… Ten…

  The interplanetary huntress and Quade strode confidently toward the massed ranks. He walked into a gap between two of the monsters. And they gave way.

  Hesitation would have been fatal. Gerry and Quade kept on, and a path was cleared for him as he moved. One by one, two by two, the Proteans shrank away.

  In his track came Gerry and the others. The tension was unendurable.

  "Chief," a voice said, "they're closing up behind us."

  "Let 'em," Quade snapped, and kept going.

  The wall of the tower loomed just ahead. Gerry and Quade stepped over the threshold, stood for a second in the queer pale illumination streaming from within. The floor was carpeted with Proteans, some tiny, others six feet and more in diameter. Gerry could not see Tommy Strike or the others.

  Another path of
Proteans opened across the floor of the tower chamber. Through that Gerry and Quade advanced, in grim, deadly silence.

  Forward they went, till they reached the center. There they paused.

  At their feet lay five motionless figures, Earthmen all, unconscious and silent in their space suits and helmets. In a single glance, Gerry saw that they breathed. But the strange spell of dream held them fettered.

  "Tommy!"

  Gerry sprang forward, knelt beside Strike. She put her palms flat on the transparent helmet, as though she could feel through it the flushed face of the man.

  As though, at a signal, the Proteans roused into activity. A stir of concerted movement rippled through the chamber. The spheres swayed, rocked. Suddenly they poured down on the Earthmen.

  Quade's gun snarled without hesitation. The men fired a single, continuous roar of bullets.

  But from the start it was hopeless. Like the fabled legions of Cadmus, the Proteans seemed to spring into existence from empty air. Strange dream-beings, given the attributes of matter and energy by the power of the black monolith. Dreams made real-living, dangerous, roused now to furious activity.

  Quade saw two of his men go down under the onslaught. He blew a blue monster to fragments, shattered a red one. Then he also fell under the attack of a giant. It rolled completely over him and was gone. It had vanished.

  White flakes drifted down against Quade's helmet.

  He sprang up, somewhat dazed by his fall. He stared around.

  The dream-legions had unaccountably thinned. At least half of them had vanished. But more were approaching, materializing from the air.

  Standing above Strike's body, Gerry Carlyle was using her tank-and-hose. H20 — plain, ordinary water — spurted high in the cyanogen atmosphere, and the precipitated ammonium oxalate fell like snowflakes.

  "Use your tanks!" Gerry shrilled. "Forget the guns."

  Quade set the example. He twisted a valve, sent a fine spray of water shooting up. Immediately the others did the same. The salt had no effect on most of the Proteans.

  But suddenly, without warning, a number of them snuffed out and were gone. Then a few hundred more disappeared.

  "They're waking up," Gerry cried. "The seven sleepers —"

  Seven sleeping Proteans, securely hidden among their materialized dreams, each identical with the originals. Now awakening came to them, one by one. Sensitive nerve-endings reacted to the irritant salt. No real Protean could remain in dreaming sleep under the circumstances. And whenever a real Protean awoke, his dreams vanished.

  The hordes thinned. They were reduced quickly by leaps and bounds. Five hundred — two hundred — a few dozen —

  Finally, seven spheres, four blue and three red, lay within the tower. Quivering slightly, they shuddered under the attack of the irritant salt and began to roll toward the doorway.

  Quade blocked their path, lifting his sprayer threateningly.

  The Proteans hesitated, not knowing what to do.

  "Turn off the water," Gerry commanded. "They won't go to sleep again. I'll try to communicate with them. I've learned how."

  She turned the valve of her tank and advanced toward the nearest blue Protean. It waited helplessly. The five-foot sphere looked like nothing so much as a gigantic Christmas tree ornament, Quade thought absently.

  Gerry wasn't saying anything, but the sphere was agitated. Pictures appeared on its surface membrane.

  The woman turned to Quade.

  "They're telepaths, you know. They can read strongly projected thoughts. And I can piece out what they mean, more or less, from the pictures they make."

  There was another period of silence, while the strange, three-dimensional, color images flickered over the globe's bluish skin.

  "It's all set," Gerry remarked at length. "Tommy and the others haven't been hurt. They'll wake up by themselves pretty soon. Feed 'em caffeine and brandy and they'll be ready to go."

  "They're harmless now?" Quade said.

  "Yes. As long as we don't squirt water on them, they'll play ball with us. The ammonium oxalate is complete torture to the Proteans."

  The movie man was glancing at his chronometer. He audiophoned the ship, and conversed briefly with Morgan. Then he turned back to Gerry.

  "Yeah," he said bleakly. "It's nearly deadline. By putting all the men to work muy pronto we may get the engines repaired in time to pull free of the comet. But as for shooting any pictures, I can't spare a man. Well, I'll shoot what background I can on the way back to the ship."

  Gerry was communicating again with the Proteans.

  "The Sun's proximity won't hurt these beasties," she said. "Apparently they can resist electric energy much better than we can." Her voice turned wistful. "Maybe we could come back to the comet after it rounds the Sun."

  "Nope." Quade shook his head hopelessly. "No ship. Your Ark won't be ready till too late, and there's no other vessel. After we get through the coma again and pull away from the Sun — if we do — this boat of ours will need complete overhauling. When we leave Almussen's Comet, it means good-bye."

  He pondered.

  "Unless we can take some of the Proteans with us," he added at length. "Find out, will you?"

  The woman conversed silently. Then she shook her head.

  "They won't leave home. Although, I'll tell you what. Go back and get to work on the ship. Take Tommy and the others with you. Pick me up here when you take off, and I may be able to convince some of the Proteans in the meantime."

  "Better get more than one," Quade said, "or you'll lose out."

  The woman's eyes narrowed.

  "I'll attend to that," she observed. "Scram."

  But Quade still hesitated to leave.

  "Sure you'll be safe?"

  Gerry patted her water tank

  "Plenty safe. My audiophone's working, anyway. But I guess you'd better leave Tommy Strike here with me."

  Bearing their unconscious burdens, Quade and his men set out on the return journey. Luckily the gravity of the comet was so small that they were able to negotiate the trip without too much delay.

  Once aboard the ship, every man pitched in and sweated and toiled over the motors. Even those who had been put to sleep were revivified without trouble, and they also contributed their efforts. Yet Quade watched his chronometer worriedly.

  It seemed hours before the final tests were completed. The reliability of the ship was still uncertain, but there was no time to waste. The deadline was already past.

  Quade worked hurriedly at the controls. The craft lifted waveringly, and slid along thirty feet above the uneven surface.

  Soon they sighted the tower. Quade landed beside it. From the monolith emerged Gerry, Strike, and two blue Proteans. The woman called Quade on the audiophone.

  "Two of them will go with us. One for you, one for me. Let me in the ship, will you?"

  "Swell," Quade replied, pressing a lever that opened the airlock nearest Gerry. "Hop aboard."

  She and Strike complied. In the ship, they removed their helmets and rushed to the control room.

  "Open the lock again," Gerry gasped. "Get cyanogen into it. The Proteans can't live in oxygen, so we'll have to keep 'em in the lock till we can fix up an air-tight room for them."

  "Check."

  Quade opened the lock, and the two Proteans hastily rolled into it. The valve shut after them.

  Gerry had already scurried off to prepare a home for her cometary guests. Strike remained with Quade, mopping his brow.

  "What an experience. Worse than going under ether, Tony. I've got the worst headache."

  He fumbled in a closet for a pain-killer.

  "You'll have a worse headache if luck isn't with us," Quade said grimly. "The deadline's past, Strike. I'm going to take the biggest chance I've ever taken in my life."

  The other man turned.

  "Eh?" he asked bewilderedly

  Quade sent the ship arrowing up.

  "We're a lot nearer the Sun than we should be. But this b
oat's too strained to stand up long in the electronic bombardment of the coma. We can't stay in it as long as we did before. Our only chance is to accelerate like hell and go straight through the thinnest part."

  Strike's jaw dropped considerably.

  "The thinnest part. You mean —"

  "Yeah. The tail of a comet always points away from the Sun. The Sun's energy pushes at the comet's coma and tail. That means the thinnest section of the coma is directly opposite the tail on the side facing the Sun."

  "Jumping Jupiter," said Tommy Strike weakly. "We break through at top speed, headed for the Sun. And we're inside Mercury's orbit?"

  "Way inside. Tell your side-kick to get the Proteans out of the lock in a hurry or they'll be fried alive. Unless they can resist plenty of energy."

  Strike departed in a frantic rush.

  Quade crouched over the controls, his lean face grim and expressionless, a cold fire in his eyes. He was taking a long chance. But it was the only one. To remain on the comet an hour or two longer would mean certain destruction.

  He jammed on more acceleration. The ship streaked up like a thunderbolt, heading for the turgidly flaming skies. Faster — faster —

  He called Morgan, spoke briefly over his shoulder.

  "Strap me in. Bandage me. I'm accelerating plenty."

  The other man obeyed.

  Quade, looking more like a mummy than a human being, snapped another order.

  "Take care of the men. Ready them for acceleration."

  Morgan nodded silently and went out.

  Already the space devils were tearing at the ship. The struts groaned and shrilled under the terrific strain. But this was only the beginning, Quade knew. The real test would come later.

  White fires loomed ahead. The coma! Quade jammed on more power, felt sickness tug at his stomach, felt his eyes press out of shape as the muscles strained to focus the delicate mechanism of vision.

  And now they were in the coma.

  Faster, faster! Added to the tremendous speed was the electronic bombardment that ripped at the fabric of the already weakened vessel. Once more the metal of the ship began to glow faintly. Again the craft yelled in shrill metallic protest.

  The visiplate was a hell of raving white fire. It cleared without warning. In place of the curdled flames was a round, blazing disk. The Sun —