One last card remained to him. One last venture wherein his life would hang from so slender a thread, and yet.
He began to scream and shout with a passion that raised reverberating echoes in the enclosing metal cell. Almost immediately the metal door opened with a bang, and the powerful figure of Koerber flanked by guards with drawn atom-blasts was silhouetted in the light.
"Have you gone space-crazy, you rat?" Koerber growled through clenched teeth. "What's the racket for?"
"You double-crosser," Dennis spat like an animal at bay, "if I have to be caged like this, after telling you about my discovery, at least you could let me have some air. You've got the air rectifiers shut off in here, and it's worse than in the caves! Want me to choke?"
"Haw!" One of the guards guffawed. "That's real good, boss ... saves us the trouble of shooting 'im!"
"Shut up!" Koerber rumbled. "Double-crosser, eh? What made you think I'd cut you in on the discovery? But you've given me an idea! Branche ... Jennings! Truss him up and carry him out to the cave. The radio-active minerals'll take care of him better'n anything else." His sadistic nature gloated on the thought of Dennis' gradual disintegration as the powerful radio-active vibrations bombarded his being.
Koerber's smile was like a feline caress, but his eyes were feral in the ecstasy of his triple triumph. He had Marla, the wealth and power of a new universe before him, and, his greatest enemy condemned to a horrible death.
Thoroughly trussed, they carried Dennis to the entrance to the cave system where the radio-active minerals were in greatest abundance. Then they threw him carelessly on the rough, rocky ground.
"I can watch you from here," Koerber said silkily, "as you slowly rot away. We'll be working on the spacer for at least four more hours before we blast off, time enough for the effects of the radiations to begin to show, eh Dennis?"
There was no doubt in Captain Brooke's mind what would happen to Marla, and to the I.S.P. cruiser when Koerber was ready to leave. The monstrous egotism of the man demanded a series of triumphs, for he already saw himself as a supreme ruler. He watched the guards walk back to the cruiser, where most of the crew were engaged in final repairs, and he was glad, fiercely glad, so he could concentrate. All the fear he felt for Marla, all the horror at the murder of his comrades and the destruction of his cruiser, and the vast, awful vision of a universe ruled by a sadistic madman, utterly evil, began to flood into his mind as he willed himself to emotionally see these things realized.
Suddenly he was aware that through auto-suggestion, he was beginning to feel fear,real fear! He thought of the luminous spheres ... there was something monstrous about them ... the way they sucked the life-energy from poor Randall. He continued to elaborate and build up a crescendo of horror. A blast of thunder from Koerber's ship shook the cave.
The distant sun was moving rapidly toward the horizon's rim, and the swift settling twilight enhanced the spumes coming from the jets of the black, pirate spacer. As the rumble of the warming rockets died to a murmur, Dennis saw two guards leave the airlock of the pirate cruiser. They were Jennings and Branche. They must be almost ready to leave, he thought. The guards came to where he lay and roughly jerked him to his feet then dragged him further inside the cave, where the deadly radio-actives would really get to work on his body. Then they dropped him unceremoniously as they turned with a start.
Like black magic, a stentorian voice had begun speaking, filling the melancholy dusk of the eerie planetoid, as the thundering tones seemed to come from everywhere. Ear-drums throbbing with the vibration, the guards jerked Dennis back to the cave entrance, the binding cords that tied Dennis becoming dangerously ragged with the dragging over the rough ground he had endured twice.
"Bren Koerber! Attention! This is the I.S.P." The voice rolled and echoed. "You're completely surrounded. Resistance will be futile! You have just one minute to get your men together in front of your ship. Throw your side-arms in a pile on the ground!"
Koerber appeared at the lock of the pirate spacer then he scrambled down with surprising agility, followed by three of his men.
"Who in hell is playing jokes!" The pirate roared. "Come on!" He yelled at the two guards now at the cave's entrance. "You ... Branche ... Jennings! Who's getting funny? Somebody's going to get their heads blasted off for this!"
But instantly on the heels of Koerber's tirade, came Scotty's voice, magnified a hundred times:
"Your time's almost up, Koerber! Fifteen seconds more andthe newest, most deadly weapon of the I.S.P.will be released against you!"
Even though he was still concentrating on the spheres and the emotion of fear, Dennis felt a sudden exaltation. But he brushed it aside and continued to recreate the terrible fear that had begun to invade his being under his relentless auto-hypnosis. Subconsciously he could hear Scotty's sonorous voice describing the horrible, irresistible weapon that was to be used. Scotty was doing a magnificent job of laying it on, with variations!
Koerber gazed around in stupefaction, then spying the prone figure at the mouth of the cave, he cursed at Dennis and then began to race across to the trussed up figure of his enemy, but he was halted by a hoarse shout from one of his guards:
"Boss, look!There issomething coming!" The guard yelled excitedly.
Still lying on the ground, where the guards had dropped him, Dennis could barely see the top of the cliff behind him. Over the edge, high above the plain, swept cluster after cluster of the glowing, gloriously shimmering spheres. A myriad rain of lavender, greens, pulsing reds and flamboyant blues, iridescent, flaming with inward fires and spinning ever faster the spectral globes swept downwards in the deepening twilight with dazzling speed.
"Get the gun working, you scum!" Koerber cursed, pointing to the portable atom-ray still remaining outside the spacer. Two men jumped at his order and the livid ray blasted skyward. Blasting fiercely for a few seconds, the two outlaws hesitated. Astonishment then fear crossed their stubbled faces. The deadly ray was merely expanding the globes, which flared into incandescent light and, kept right on coming down!
Huge chunks out of the side of the cliff behind the zooming spheres crashed to the plain. And still the glittering flood of glowing globes kept flowing on. His men must have done a wonderful job of luring the deadly spheres, Dennis thought with a part of his mind.
"Needle guns!" Koerber screamed, rushing over to the two men who stopped firing. "Use your hand guns, men! Someone get atomite capsules, we'll blast whatever these things are out of space!"
Picking up the heavy atom-ray, Koerber cradled it in his powerful arms, sweeping the deadly projector in wide arcs through the approaching, luminous mass. Suddenly, Koerber shouted again. One of the men near the stern of the ship had dropped his weapon and was running, horror-stricken, across the broken ground.
"Come back here, you rat!" Koerber shrieked, swinging the big atom-ray around. But he had no need to fire, a glowing globe fully six feet in diameter, already was pursuing the doomed, fear-maddened creature with vertiginous speed. Koerber saw it suddenly descend and envelop the running figure, and in seconds the outlaw was a shrunken mass that dropped to the ground like a squeezed fruit.
The spheres rolled down in a deadly wave.
The spheres rolled down in a deadly wave.
The spheres rolled down in a deadly wave.
Koerber's eyes were blazing as he whirled around and screamed at his men: "Fight ... fight you lousy rats!" Uncontrollable passion twisted his features in a fiendish snarl at the thought of losing the supreme power and unimaginable wealth he had thought to be within his grasp. His voice rose piercingly above the concussions of the atomite capsules that at his command had been brought into action.
But unknown to him, stealthily, a growing fear was creeping into his brain as all his efforts and the deadly fire of atom-blasts, atom-ray and atomite capsules failed to even destroy a single globe. The unearthly, macabre appearance of the luminous globes was already playing havoc with the men's minds, and one by one the outlaws fled shrieking into the darkness, to be consumed by the glowing spheres.
In the impenetrable blackness of the cave, Dennis Brooke had stopped building the emotion of fear. With part of his mind he sought to dispel the stubborn auto-hypnosis, and slowly, he was able to regain a measure of normalcy. The thought of Marla helped, as with the growing destruction of Koerber's men, he deliberately forced himself to see her safe, in his arms. And slowly he came back out of the abyss of fear into which he had purposely pushed his courageous mind. It took patience, infinite patience and time, but time was growing short. He rubbed the frayed bonds that bound his arms back of him, against the jagged outcroppings of radio-active rock, until he burst them with herculean strength, then it took a matter of seconds to free his legs. Painfully he stood up, and let the blood course with exquisite torture through his semi-paralyzed limbs. Then he sought the tiny atom-blast Marla had given him to conceal.
The space in front of the black spacer was milling with men battling spheres, a vortex of flaring illumination that hungrily enveloped the maddened crew. Now and then, another man sank to the ground a lifeless hulk. Suddenly one of the spheres came floating into the cave, curious, attracted by the remnants of the fear vibrations and approached Dennis. The Captain saw it enter and illuminate the impenetrable darkness, he laughed. A few moments ago it would have meant his life, but now he contemptuously bent down and picking a glittering specimen of radio-active mineral flung it unerringly at the gently spinning globe. As if the sphere weren't even there, the I.S.P. Captain strode out of the cave. It was then he saw his own crew, space-suited, exultant, spewing green death from their atom-blasts at the milling remnants of what had been the scourge of the space-lanes. Far to one side he spied Koerber, now a demoniac figure still firing the few remaining charges left in the atom-ray. Saw him finally drop the useless weapon and turn to fend off the swooping spheres. In a few bounds Dennis was beside him.
At the sight of Dennis, the scowling face went black with fury. He sprang forward with both arms jabbing like pistons. Dennis swerved and again planted a terrific left to Koerber's solar-plexus, it almost doubled the pirate over, but Koerber was not through. He knew death was very close, but he meant to take with him the one man he blamed for his defeat. He came in with a fury that swept all before him, impervious of the rain of blows that Dennis aimed at his face, and unleashing a right to Dennis' jaw, he put every ounce of remaining power behind it. But the I.S.P. Captain moved slightly, letting the blow whiz past his face, then flat-footed, he let his right ride with the power of a sledge-hammer. Koerber's face lost contour, a gout of dark, welling blood flooded over it and he sank to the ground.
Suddenly Dennis' own men saw him, and came running to where he stood planted over what remained of Koerber, pirate of the space lanes. His chest heaving, clothes torn, he heard them as if in a dream, as they shouted in joy at the complete victory they had achieved. It was only when cool hands touched his face, and a remembered fragrance was in his nostrils, that he came out of his daze. A voice was whispering the simple words, "my dear ... my very dear!" Slowly he gathered Marla in his arms and kissed her tenderly, while around him, the hovering spheres sensed another emotion, greater even than fear—but of another kind—that greatest of all emotions, Love.
Captain Dennis chewed the end of his stylus. After a moment he began to write again in the large metallic book:
B-XA-3212400 SCTThe plan outlined in the previous entry was carried out. Operation successful. Bren Koerber is being brought back a prisoner. All members of his crew are dead. Koerber's cruiser is being towed to Ceres Base. Full report on radio-active mineral discovery has been radioed I.S.P. Headquarters, Terra. No luminous spheres captured. Suggest scientific expedition be sent.Casualties suffered: One. Junior Lieutenant George Randall killed in performance of duty by one of the spheres. Recommend heroism be recognized by posthumous honors. Suggest Antares Cross.
B-XA-321
2400 SCT
The plan outlined in the previous entry was carried out. Operation successful. Bren Koerber is being brought back a prisoner. All members of his crew are dead. Koerber's cruiser is being towed to Ceres Base. Full report on radio-active mineral discovery has been radioed I.S.P. Headquarters, Terra. No luminous spheres captured. Suggest scientific expedition be sent.
Casualties suffered: One. Junior Lieutenant George Randall killed in performance of duty by one of the spheres. Recommend heroism be recognized by posthumous honors. Suggest Antares Cross.
Dennis Brooke, paused for a moment, uncertain whether or not to enter in the official log book the one burning desire that dominated his thoughts, at last he smiled and with a flourish he added:
Leave of absence for two months requested. Reason: Marriage. Miss Marla Starland has consented to honor me by becoming my wife.
Leave of absence for two months requested. Reason: Marriage. Miss Marla Starland has consented to honor me by becoming my wife.
Distantly he heard the muffled roar of the warming rockets. The great cruiser was ready to leave the fateful Planetoid. He sighed in vast contentment as he unplugged the stylus and gently closed the book.