The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 9

  The explorers were setting out on their longest expedition since they had landed on Mercury. It was their hope to make it to the foothills of the high, craggy peaks which reared their angular shapes above the curiously near horizon. Behind them the immense, melon-shaped hull of their cobalt-glass spaceship loomed, flecked with Venus light. It was hardly more than half a mile away, yet its stern was already hidden by the abrupt curvature of the planet’s surface.

  Crayley led the way with slowly deliberate caution. With only his flash lamp to guide him, he walked slowly forward, step by step, testing every foot of the ground ahead of him with his electrodynamometer-tipped staff. The very surface on which the group trod was a treacherous mystery; in particular, they knew it to be spotted irregularly with shock patches of enormously high electrical potential. A step into one of them would crumple a man in his spacesuit and sear his body to a crisp.

  These shock patches had been discovered several days before (“day” being defined in terms of an Earthian twenty-four hours, not in Mercury’s own terms) when the Craleys’ dog had stumbled into one of them. Its body was now a charred cinder under the glittering Mercurian night sky. Crayley had provided a miniature spacesuit for the animal, complete with oxygen tank, heating coils, and weights, and it had run ahead a short distance to the end of its leash, as dogs will do, exploring on its own. Now Scottie was gone, a martyr to science.

  After that, the explorers had thoroughly investigated the electromagnetic qualities of the crust, testing it until the full strangeness and menace of the phenomenon was apparent to all. It was because of the raging interference set up by the patches that they had to move in silence, for radio communication was obviously impossible.

  Slowly the little group filed across the slightly luminous surface of the Mercurian plain. All around them surged an alien atmosphere tainted with heavy gases and ionized by cosmic rays. Their oxygen tanks were their sole protection against the corrosive horrors of this Mercurian air.

  Gibbs Crayley, thinking of this and of the extended journey they were hoping to make, cut down the release gauge on his tank by two degrees, and signaled to the rest of the crew to do likewise. He knew that as the flow diminished they would all breathe less freely, but oxygen here was more precious than water on the deserts of Earth, and they could not afford to squander it.

  A moment later Crayley noticed with some concern that, of all the group, his wife alone had not followed instructions. He stared at her and motioned to her oxygen gauge. She ignored him; and so, standing still, he raised his dynamometer-tipped staff from the ground and gave her tank a rap.

  Behind the thick goggles of her helmet, Crayley could see Helen’s eyes widen in momentary vexation. He knew she was convinced that there was more than enough oxygen in the tank to last the round trip; they had discussed it before they started out. Obviously she planned to leave her gauge alone; and apparently she had an impulse to rebuke her husband by tapping his tank in return.

  In any event, she actually raised her own staff from the ground and swung it toward Crayley’s encased form. But as the metal wand swung up and toward him, Crayley stopped abruptly and stiffened. His electrodynamometer had recorded a mountain-moving charge in the patch of glowing soil immediately before him. And as Helen’s staff thumped against his shoulder, he swooped sideways, caught her about the knees, and in a running tackle carried her swiftly backward to safety.

  Unfortunately, young Grayson let his attention be diverted by this odd action on his superior’s part. Momentarily swinging his forgotten detector aside, he stepped forward into the shock patch while looking over his shoulder at the odd sight the Crayleys presented.

  One moment he was walking in the bright circle cast by his electric torch. The next, only a tortured part of him could be seen, waving frantic hands in the faint Venus light. There was a burst of flame that blotted out the stars.

  Like a dry leaf in a blast furnace, Grayson’s limbs withered instantaneously into inert ash. Then the upper part of the youth’s body crashed horribly in front of Seaton. For an instant the engineer was too appalled to move. He simply stood with his own staff extended, as though the fact that it was a man-made device could give him security when all else failed.

  Behind him the other members of the group crowded forward in horror. Through their goggles they saw the hideous spectacle of a limbless torso, spacesuit blasted away, spinning upright on a blazing red field, light spiraling from sandy hair galvanically extended. Faster and faster spun the body—and then flame mercifully engulfed it.

  Crayley set Helen down and threw one arm about her shoulder to steady her. For an instant she stood swaying, eyes lowered in sick comprehension. Then she stiffened and resumed her position beside her husband. There was no attempt at communication. Messages in sign languages could have been exchanged, but none were. There was nothing to say. The group moved on almost instantly, to avoid funking—like aviators going up immediately after a crash. The accident was due to human error, and they could not afford to stop for that. With slow steps they resumed their journey into the dark Mercurian night.

  It was nearly half an hour later when Crayley halted again, staring intently ahead through his thick goggles. On the torchlit circle of soil before him, something had moved. Helen saw it, too, and threw out her right arm, waving back the men behind her.

  Only Ralph Wilkus, perhaps missing the signal, moved forward into the region of dubious stirring. He did not recoil or shrivel but stepped right on through and continued to test his way with his staff on the featureless plain beyond.

  Obviously, this was not a new type of shock patch; but what it was wanted investigation. Less foolhardy than Wilkus, the other explorers hesitated before advancing, their staffs waving experimentally above the region of stirring. Only the surface sand moved, as though blown by a faint, circularly whirling, breeze.

  Crayley knew there was no breeze. The wind needle on Helen’s helmet did not even vibrate. He raised his gloved hand and made signs in the torchlight.

  “Something unknown here,” he motioned. “Stay back.”

  They spread out, trying to measure the size of the whirling patch of particles. Several yards ahead, Wilkus, his back to them, was moving steadily forward, his dynamometer swinging in the light of his torch.

  No one would ever know whether he had missed Crayley’s signal or had ignored it: for suddenly, with shocking abruptness, a blinding purple light flared out in the darkness above him and to his right, and seemed to reach out and touch him. With a terrible wrenching, he doubled up, hands pawing at his stomach. His torch and staff fell to the ground.

  For an instant the light hovered above him, pulsing with a greedy brilliance. Then it dimmed and whipped away into the darkness. Wilkus collapsed limply, like a deflating balloon.

  When Crayley picked up the stricken youth he seemed to be holding a nearly empty suit. The light of his torch on Wilkus’s helmet revealed two eyes that shone with the light of idiocy in a formless, boneless face.

  Crayley clicked his torch off and stood for an instant in nearly total darkness, holding the awful burden. The others were coming toward him, swinging their lights in wide arcs.

  Helen was the first to reach him. “What happened?” she gestured.

  Crayley’s helmet turned slowly in negation. He snapped on his torch again and focused it on Wilkus’s helmet. Helen cried out involuntarily. The face of the stricken man was chillingly expressionless, the features like wax. But the twitching of his mouth showed he was still alive. By now the others had come up and clustered about the tall scientist and his limp burden. He motioned, “We’ve got to go back. Wilkus is seriously injured.”

  Parkerson stepped to Crayley’s side and took part of his friend’s weight upon his shoulders, although it was so negligible that Crayley could easily have borne it alone. Seaton picked up Wilkus’s torch and staff, and with lead
en hearts the group began retracing its steps.

  Imbued with abnormal caution, they walked slowly, swinging their staffs in wide arcs before them, but they did not encounter any more shock patches until the vast, gleaming bulk of the spaceship loomed in reassuring relief against the sky. Then Helen’s dynamometer recorded one about five hundred feet from the stern of the ship, and the party made a cautious circle about it.

  A moment later they were ascending a metal ladder over the curving surface of cobalt glass. The little group crawled in beneath enormous hatches, down another short ladder inside, and along a narrow corridor that blazed with cold-light lamps. Then Helen threw a switch at the end of the passage and the hatches fell into place with a sharp clang. Air hissed in; another hatch opened before them.

  They emerged into the ship’s combined control room and bunkhouse. Crayley gently eased Wilkus down on one of the bunks and then sat down, fumbling with the screws of his helmet. Helen and the others also slumped down on their bunks, still wordless in the cold light of the room.

  Crayley got his helmet off first and then shucked off his spacesuit, depositing it in inside-out disarray on one of the benches. As the others struggled out of their suits, he turned and began unscrewing Wilkus’s helmet. His thoughts were under grim self-control; he half expected what he would find and was stoically prepared for it.

  Not so the others. As Crayley stripped the spacesuit from the injured man, the other men took one shocked look and turned away. Helen saw the shriveled body with the drooling, idiot face moving, jerking about on the bench; for fully five seconds she stared without a sound, lips slack. Then she crumpled.

  When she opened her eyes again she was lying on her bunk, concealed behind the automatic privacy screen that provided the only seclusion she had on the vessel. Parkerson was standing beside her. For a moment she could not recall where she was nor what had happened; then, with a little cry, memory returned and she swung her feet out and tried to stand up.

  Parkerson sat on the edge of the berth and took her small hand in his, restraining her lightly.

  “Frightened?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “What happened to Wilkus?”

  Parkerson avoided her gaze.

  “Tell me,” she insisted.

  “He died.”

  Some of the strain went out of Helen’s face; she moistened her dry lips with her tongue.

  “I’m going to Gibbs,” she said, struggling to her feet. “Where is he now?”

  “In the laboratory,” said Parkerson.

  He stood regarding her for a moment with a troubled expression, still holding her hand. Helen looked in his eyes. “What’s—what is it, Parky?”

  “I—nothing…”

  “Wilkus was your friend…”

  Parkerson made an impatient gesture. “He was more than that. We grew up together. But that’s not it. Forgive me, Helen; I’m upset. It’s Gibbs…”

  “Gibbs?”

  “Yes. You’re married to him. You know him better than any of us. I wonder if it ever occurs to you how he looks to other people.” Parkerson looked away from her. “He’s not human,” he said in a strained voice. “He’s a damned machine. Did you see his face when he took off Wilkus’s suit? You’d think he was taking a clock apart!”

  Helen touched his arm. “You know you’re wrong, Parky. It’s the situation we’re in that’s getting you. Gibbs Crayley wouldn’t be what he is if he didn’t have that kind of iron control. He’s in charge, Parky. Wilkus and Grayson were out there on his orders. In spite of the fact that they were careless, both of them, Gibbs feels responsible. He always will; you know that. You’ve lost a dear friend; but at least you didn’t acquire that kind of a burden at the same time.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “Think it over.”

  Parkerson managed a small smile. “You’re right, of course. I guess—I guess I blew my top. Thanks, Helen.”

  Helen found her husband sitting motionless beside the covered body of Ralph Wilkus. He looked up and scowled when she entered the tiny laboratory and shut the sliding door behind her.

  “Parkerson told me,” she said, looking down at the narrow ledge where the dead man lay.

  Crayley said nothing for a moment. He was grateful for the assurance of her hand seeking his and tightening in sympathy.

  At last he said, “He died before I could etherize him.”

  “What did you find, darling?”

  Crayley’s lips tightened. “Something…incredible.” He turned to the ledge and removed the sheet. “Let me show you.”

  Helen turned pale. Wilkus’s body was flaccid and blue. It looked as though it had been poured on the ledge. The girl bit at her lower lip and dug her nails into her palms in her effort to maintain self-control.

  “He should have died out there,” said the calm man beside her. “His vitality must have been tremendous.”

  Helen said, “It’s incredible, Gibbs.”

  Crayley looked down at the body before him. “Look, I’ll show you something.”

  He put on his rubber gloves and raised the limp, bluish hand of the dead man. With the other he turned up a Bunsen burner standing on the table until the flame was blue-hot.

  “Watch.”

  He sprayed the intense flame of the burner on the corpse’s hand as far as the wrist. The flame flared, shot out fiery jets; its color turned greenish, then purple, then blue again, as Crayley moved the torch here and there over the lifeless member.

  “I have dipped that arm in hydrochloric acid, dilute solution,” he said. His tone was clinical, impersonal.

  Helen’s eyes widened as she grasped a little of what this meant. Crayley turned to the table again and picked up a thin glass slide. He held it before the flame-sheathed flesh.

  “What color do you see through that glass, Helen?”

  “Yellow,” she whispered, awe-struck.

  “Only the faintest tinge of orange in the flame,” he said. “And when you view it through green glass it looks yellow, not green as it should.”

  Helen drew in a long breath. “Then there’s no calcium at all. No calcium—even in the cells of his flesh! What—?”

  Crayley shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that when calcium compounds are moistened with hydrochloric acid, they turn the blue flame deep orange. Strontium also turns it orange-red, often concealing the characteristic calcium glow—but strontium shows yellow under green glass. The faintly orange tinge was undoubtedly imparted by strontium. Calcium would show finch-green under green glass.”

  He turned down the flame of the torch. “I used spectroscopic tests to make sure,” he said. “The characteristic lines of calcium—orange and green and faint indigo—were wholly absent. Helen, something has extracted all the calcium from Wilkus’s body!”

  “But could a man live if—”

  “A little while, apparently,” said Crayley, anticipating his wife’s thought. “I would have said no, but we can’t dispute the evidence. The instantaneous withdrawal of calcium from his body must have left behind the neural patterns, temporarily at least. Motor and sensory nerves functioned, although the brain failed completely.”

  “But what could have caused it?” asked Helen.

  “Only one thing. Radiation. Invisible-spectrum radiation, more intense than anything we have ever known on Earth. A terrific bombardment by ultraviolet. So-called black-sheep rays, perhaps, which would be deadly to all life on Earth.”

  He turned off the Bunsen burner. “Why, even the comparatively harmless members of the ultraviolet family will drain calcium from protoplasm. You know—single cells, amoebae, slipper animalcules, things like that, exposed to ultraviolet and whirled in a centrifuge become viscous blobs in a few seconds—blobs with a hardened core. The radiation drains the calcium from the outer surface of the cell
and deposits it about the nucleus. Such radiation as I have suggested would do that to all the cells of the human body, drain off the external lime and—”

  Crayley shivered for the first time. “It’s pretty horrible, dear. Horrible. And yet there’s something wonderful here, too. This looks like a directed, a purposeful, effect. Outside there in the darkness there may be living—perhaps intelligent—beings. Mercury is not a lifeless planet, as we thought!”

  Helen shook her head in bewilderment. “But ultraviolet does not penetrate metal, Gibbs.”

  “You are forgetting that difolchrome is a silver alloy, Helen. Ultraviolet could penetrate our difolchrome suits if the radiation is sufficiently intense. And it must have been unimaginably intense to do what it did to Wilkus.”

  “You think it is a life form?” breathed Helen. “Why? Did you see anything?”

  “Just that flash of purple light. And we both saw the moving sands. Something was resting on the sand, perhaps, and arose as we approached.”

  “You don’t think the form was composed of invisible light itself?”

  Crayley shook his head. “I hardly think so. I think it used the rays as a weapon. Something tangible moved out there.”

  He covered Wilkus’s body again, and then slipped off his gloves. His fingers were shaking a little.

  Helen said, “Are you going out again, Gibbs?”

  Crayley nodded slowly. “I shall take the infrared stroboscopic camera with me, too,” he said.

  “Stroboscopic?—”

  “Suppose the shapes are moving incredibly fast. Maybe that is why we couldn’t see them with our own eyes. The stroboscopic camera can take dozens of swift images at intervals of ten-millionths of a second. The infrared plates will take care of the darkness, and the strobe will catch movements too swift for the eye to catch.”