A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond.... An inner valve was opened, andRed Roverslipped into the City of Space.
A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond.... An inner valve was opened, andRed Roverslipped into the City of Space.
A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond.... An inner valve was opened, andRed Roverslipped into the City of Space.
They were, Bill saw, at the center of an enormous cylinder. The sides, half a mile away, above and below them, were covered with buildings along neat, tree-bordered streets, scattered with green lawns, tiny gardens, and bits of wooded park. It seemed very strange to Bill, to see these endless streets about the inside of a tube, so that one by walking a little over three miles in one direction would arrive again at the starting point, in the same way that one gets back to the starting point after going around the earth in one direction.
At the ends of the cylinder, fastened to the huge metal disks, which closed the ends, were elaborate and complex mechanisms, machines strange and massive. "They must be for heating the city," Bill thought, "and for purifying the air, for furnishing light and power, perhaps even for moving it about." The lock through which they had entered was part of this mechanism.
In the center of each end of the cylinder hung a huge light, seeming large and round as the sun, flooding the place with brilliant mellow rays.
"There are five thousand people here," said Captain Smith. "The Prince has always kept the best specimens among his captives, and others have been recruited besides. We are self-sustaining as the earth is. We use the power of the sun—through our vitalium batteries. We grow our own food. We utilize our waste products—matter here goes through a regular cycle of life and death as on the earth. Men eat food containing carbon, breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide; our plants break up the carbon dioxide, make more foods containing the same carbon, and give off the oxygen for men to breathe again. Our nitrogen, our oxygen and hydrogen, go through similar cycles. The power of the sun is all we need from outside."
Captain Smith guided his "guests" down the ladder, and out through the ship's air-lock. They entered an elevator. Three minutes later they stepped off upon the side of the great cylinder that housed the City, and entered a low building with a broad concrete road curving up before it. As they stepped out, it gave Bill a curious dizzy feeling to look up and see busy streets, inverted, a mile above his head. The road before them curved smoothly up on either hand, bordered with beautiful trees, until its ends met again above his head.
The centrifugal force that held objects against the sides of the cylinder acted in precisely the same way as gravity on the earth—except that it pulledawayfrom the center of the cylinder, instead oftowardit.
A glistening heliocar came skimming down upon whirling heliocopters, dropped to rubber tires, and rolled up beside them. A young man of military bearing, clad in a striking uniform of red, black, and gold, stepped out, saluted stiffly.
"Captain Smith," he said, "the Prince desires your attendance at his private office immediately with your guests."
Smith motioned Bill and Captain Brand into the richly upholstered body of the heliocar. Bill, gazing up at the end of the huge cylinder with a city inside it, caught sight, for the first time, of the exterior of theRed Rover, the ship that had brought them to the City of Space. It lay just beside the massive machinery of the air-lock, supported in a heavy metal cradle, with the elevator tube running straight from it to the building behind them.
"Look, Brand!" Bill gasped. "That isn't the blue globe. It isn't the ship we fought at all!"
Brand looked. TheRed Roverwas much the same sort of ship that theFuryhad been. She was slender and tapering, cigar-shaped, some two hundred feet in length and twenty-five in diameter—nearly twice as large as theFury. She was cylindrical, instead of octagonal, and she mounted twenty-four motor tubes, in two rings fore and aft, of twelve each, instead of eight.
Brand turned to Smith. "How's this?" he demanded. "Where is the blue globe? Did you have two ships?"
A smile flickered over Smith's stern face. "You have a revelation waiting for you. But it is better not to keep the Prince waiting."
They stepped into the heliocar. The pilot sprang to his place, set the electric motors whirring. The machine rolled easily forward, took the air on spinning helicopters. The road, lined with green gardens and bright cottages, dropped away "below" them, and other houses drew nearer "above." In the center of the cylinder the young man dextrously inverted the flier; and they continued on a straight line toward an imposing concrete building which now seemed "below."
The heliocar landed; they sprang out and approached the imposing building of several stories. Guards uniformed in scarlet, black and gold standing just outside the door held ray pistols in readiness. Smith hurried his "guests" past; they entered a long, high-ceilinged room. It gave a first impression of stately luxury. The walls were paneled with rich dark wood, hung with a few striking paintings. It was almost empty of furniture; a heavy desk stood alone toward the farther end. A tall young man rose from behind this desk, advanced rapidly to meet them.
"My guests, sir," said Smith. "Captain Brand of theFury, and a reporter."
"The mysterious Mr. Cain!" Bill gasped.
Indeed, Mr. Cain stood before him, a tall man, slender and wiry, with a certain not unhandsome sternness in his dark face. A smile twinkled in his black, enigmatic eyes—which none the less looked as if they might easily flash with fierce authority.
"And Mr. Win——or, I believe you asked me to call you Bill. You seem a very hard man to evade!"
Still smiling enigmatically, Mr. Cain took Bill's hand, and then shook hands with Captain Brand.
"But—are you the Prince of Space?" Bill demanded.
"I am. Cain was only anom de guerre, so to speak. Gentlemen, I welcome you to the City of Space!"
"And you kidnaped yourself?"
"My men brought theRed Roverfor me."
"Dr. Trainor and his daughter——" Bill ejaculated.
"They are friends of mine. They are here."
"And that blue globe!" said Captain Brand. "What was that?"
"You saw the course it was following?"
"It was headed to intersect the orbit of the earth—and its direction was on a line that cuts the orbit of Mars where that planet was forty days ago."
The Prince turned to Bill. "And you have seen something like that blue globe before?"
"Why, yes. The little blue circle on Mars—that I saw through the great telescope on Trainor's Tower."
A sober smile flickered across the dark lean face of the Prince.
"Then, gentlemen, you should believe me. The earth is threatened with a dreadful danger from Mars. The blue globe that wrecked your fleet was a ship from Mars. It was another Martian flier that took theHelicon. I believe I have credit for that ghastly exploit of sucking out the passengers' blood." His smile became grimly humorous. "One of the consequences of my position."
"Martian fliers?" echoed Captain Brand. "Then how did we come to be on your ship?"
"I haven't any weapon that will meet those purple atomic bombs on equal terms—though we are now working out a new device. I had Smith cruising around the blue globe in ourRed Roverto see what he could learn. He was investigating the wrecks, and found you alive."
"You really mean that men from Mars have come this near the earth?" Captain Brand was frankly incredulous.
"Not men," the Prince corrected, smiling. "Butthingsfrom Mars have done it. They have already landed on earth, in fact."
He turned to the desk, picked up a broad sheet of cardboard.
"I have a color photograph here."
Bill studied it, saw that it looked like an aerial photograph of a vast stretch of mountain and desert, a monotonous expanse of gray, tinged with green and red.
"A photograph, taken from space, of part of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. And see!"
He pointed to a little blue disk in the green-gray expanse of a plain, just below a narrow mountain ridge, with the fine green line that marked a river just beside it.
"That blue circle is the first ship that came. It was the things aboard it that sucked the blood out of the people on theHelicon."
Captain Brand was staring at the tall, smiling man, with a curious expression on his red, square-chinned face. Suddenly he spoke.
"Your Highness, or whatever we must call you——"
"Just call me Prince. Cain is not my name. Once I had a name—but now I am nameless!"
The thin dark face suddenly lined with pain, the lips closed in a narrow line. The Prince swept a hand across his high forehead, as if to sweep something unpleasant away.
"Well, Prince, I'm with you. That is, if you want an officer from the Moon Patrol." A sheepish smile overspread his bluff features. "I would have killed a man for suggesting that I would ever do such a thing. But I'll fight for you as well as I ever did for the honor of the Patrol."
"Thanks, Brand!" The Prince took his hand, smiling again.
"Count me in too, of course," said Bill.
"Both of you will be valuable men," said the Prince.
He picked up a sheaf of papers, scanned them quickly, seemed to mark off one item from a sheet and add another.
"TheRed Roversets out for the earth in one hour, gentlemen. We're going to try a surprise attack on that blue globe in the desert. You will both go aboard."
"And I'm going too!" A woman's voice, soft and a little husky, spoke beside them. Recognizing it, Bill turned to see Paula Trainor standing behind them, an eager smile on her elfinly beautiful face. Her amazing eyes were fixed upon the Prince, their brown depths filled, for the moment, with passionate wistful yearning.
"Why, no, Paula," the Prince said. "It's dangerous!"
Tears swam mistily in the golden orbs. "I will go! I must! I must!" The girl cried out the words, a sobbing catch in her voice.
"Very well, then," the Prince agreed, smiling absently. "You father will be along of course. But anything will be likely to happen."
"But you will be there in danger, too!" cried the girl.
"We start in an hour," said the Prince. "Smith, you may take Brand and Windsor back aboard theRed Rover."
"Curse his fatherly indifference!" Bill muttered under his breath as they walked out through the guarded door. "Can't he see that she loves him?"
Smith must have heard him, for he turned to him, spoke confidentially. "The Prince is a determined misogynist. I think an unfortunate love affair was what ruined his life—back on the earth. He left his history, even his name, behind him. I think a woman was the trouble. He won't look at a woman now."
They were outside again, startled anew by the amazing scene of a street of houses and gardens, that curved evenly up on either side of them and met above, so that men were moving about, head downward directly above them.
The heliocar was waiting. The three got aboard, were lifted and swiftly carried to the slender silver cylinder of theRed Rover, where it hung among the ponderous machinery of the air-lock, on the end of the huge cylinder that housed the amazing City of Space.
"I will show you your rooms," said Captain Smith. "And in an hour we are off to attack the Martians in Mexico."
CHAPTER IV
Vampires in the Desert
Forty hours later theRed Roverentered the atmosphere of the earth, above northern Mexico.
It was night, the desert was shrouded in blackness. The telescopes revealed only the lights at ranches scattered as thinly as they had been two centuries before.
Bill was in the bridge-room, with Captain Smith.
"The blue globe that destroyed your fleet has already landed here," Smith said. "We saw both of them before they slipped into the shadow of night. They were right together, and it seems that a white metal building has been set up between them."
"The Prince means to attack? In spite of those purple atomic bombs?" Bill seemed surprised.
"Yes. They are below a low mountain ridge. We land on the other side of the hill, a dozen miles off, and give 'em a surprise at dawn."
"We'd better be careful," Bill said doubtfully. "They're more likely to surprise us. If you had been in front of one of those little purple bombs, flying on the white ray!"
"We have a sort of rocket torpedo that Doc Trainor invented. The Prince means to try that on 'em."
TheRed Roverdropped swiftly, with Smith's skilled hands on the controls. It seemed but a few minutes until the dark shadow of the earth beneath abruptly resolved itself into a level plain scattered with looming shapes that were clumps of mesquite and sagebrush. The slim silver cylinder came silently to rest upon the desert, beneath stars that shone clearly, though to Bill they seemed dim in comparison with the splendid wonders of space.
Three hours before dawn, five men slipped out through the air-lock. The Prince himself was the leader, with Captains Brand and Smith, Bill, and a young officer named Walker. Each man carried a searchlight and a positive ray pistol. And strapped upon the back of each was a rocket torpedo—a smooth, white metal tube, four feet long and as many inches thick, weighing some eighty pounds.
Dr. Trainor, kindly, bald-headed old scientist, was left in charge of the ship. He and his daughter came out of the air-lock into the darkness, to bid the five adventurers farewell.
"We should be back by night," said the Prince, his even white teeth flashing in the darkness. "Wait for us until then. If we don't come, return at once to the City of Space. I want no one to follow us, and no attempt made to rescue us if we don't come back. If we aren't back by tomorrow night we shall be dead."
"Very good, sir," Trainor nodded.
"I'm coming with you, then," Paula declared suddenly.
"Absolutely you are not!" cried the Prince. "Dr. Trainor, I command you not to let your daughter off the ship until we return."
Paula turned quickly away, a slim pillar of misty white in the darkness. Bill heard a little choking sound; he knew that she had burst into tears.
"I can't let you go off into such danger, without me!" she cried, almost hysterical. "I can't!"
The Prince swung a heavy torpedo higher on his shoulders, and strode off over bare gravel toward the low rocky slope of the mountain that lay to northward, faintly revealed in the light of the stars. The other four followed silently. The slender sunship, with the old scientist and his sobbing daughter outside the air-lock, quickly vanished behind them.
With only an occasional cautious flicker of the flashlights the five men picked their way over bare hard ground, among scattered clumps of mesquite. Presently they crossed a barren lava bed, clambering over huge blocks of twisted black volcanic rock. Up the slope of the mountain they struggled, sweating under heavy burdens, blundering into spiky cactus, stumbling over boulders and sagebrush.
When the silver and rose of dawn came in the purple eastern sky, the five lay on bare rock at the top of the low ridge, overlooking the flat, mesquite-covered valley beyond. The valley floor was a brownish green in the light of morning, the hills that rose far across it a hazy blue-gray, faintly tinged with green on age-worn slopes.
Like a string of emeralds dropped down the valley lay an endless wandering line of cottonwoods, of a light and vivid green that stood out from the somber plain. These trees traced the winding course of a stream, the Rio Casas Grandes.
Lying against the cottonwoods, and rising above their tops, were two great spheres of blue, gleaming like twin globes of lapis lazuli in the morning light. They were not far apart, and between them rose a curious domed structure of white, silvery metal.
Each of the five men lifted his heavy metal tube, leveled it across a boulder before him. The Prince, alert and smiling despite the dust and stain of the march through the desert, spoke to the others.
"This little tube along the top of the torpedo is a telescope sight. You will peer through, get the cross hairs squarely upon your target, and hold them there. Then press this nickeled lever. That starts the projectile inside the case to spinning so that inertia will hold it true. Then, being certain that the aim is correct, press the red button. The torpedo is thrown from the case by compressed air, and a positive ray mechanism drives it true to the target. When it strikes, about fifty pounds of Dr. Trainor's new explosive,trainite, will be set off.
"Walker, you and Windsor take the right globe. Smith and Brand, the left. I'll have a shot at that peculiar edifice between them."
Bill balanced his torpedo, peered through the telescope, and pressed the lever. The hum of a motor came from the heavy tube.
"All ready?" the Prince inquired.
"Ready," each man returned.
"Fire!"
Bill pressed the red button. The tube drove heavily backward in his hands, and then was but a light, sheet-metal shell. He saw a little gleam of white light before him, against the right blue globe, a diminishing point. It was the motor ray that drove the torpedo speeding toward its mark.
Great flares of orange light hid the two azure spheres and the white dome between them. The spheres and the dome crumpled and vanished, and a thin haze of bluish smoke swirled about them.
"Good shooting!" the Prince commented. "This motor torpedo of Trainor's ought to put a lot of the old fighting equipment in the museum—if we were disposed to bestow such a dangerous toy upon humanity.
"But let's get over and see what happened."
Grasping ray pistols, they sprang to their feet and plunged down the rocky slope. It was five miles to the river. Nearly two hours later it was, when the five men slipped out of the mesquites, to look two hundred yards across an open, grassy flat to the wall of green trees along the river.
Three great heaps of wreckage lay upon the flat. At the right and the left were crumpled masses of bright silver metal—evidently the remains of the globes. In the center was another pile of bent and twisted metal, which had been the domed building.
"Funny that those blue globes look like ordinary white metal now," said Smith.
"I wonder if the blue is not some sort of etheric screen?" Brand commented. "When we were fighting, our rays seemed to take no effect. It occurred to me that some vibratory wall might have stopped them."
"It's possible," the Prince agreed. "I'll take up the possibilities with Trainor. If they have such a screen, it might even be opaque to gravity. Quite a convenience in maneuvering a ship."
As they spoke, they were advancing cautiously, stopping to pick up bits of white metal that had been scattered about by the explosion.
Suddenly Bill's eyes caught movement from the pile of crumpled metal that had been the white dome. It seemed that a green plant was growing quickly from among the ruins. Green tendrils shot up amazingly. Then he saw on the end of a twisted stalk a glowing purple thing that looked somehow like an eye.
At first sight of the thing he had stopped in amazement, leveling his deadly ray pistol and shouting, "Look out!"
Before the shout had died in his throat, before the others had time to turn their heads, they caught the flash of metal among the twining green tentacles. The thing was lifting a metal object.
Then Bill saw a tiny purple spark dart from a bright little mechanism that the green tendrils held. He saw a blinding flash of violet light. His consciousness was cut off abruptly.
The next he knew he was lying on his back on rocky soil. He felt considerably bruised and battered, and his right eye was swollen so that he could not open it. Struggling to a sitting position, he found his hands and feet bound by bloody manacles of unfamiliar design. Captain Brand was lying on his elbow beside him, half under the thin shade of a mesquite bush. Brand looked much torn and disheveled; blood was streaming across his face from a gash in his scalp. His hands and feet also were bound with fetters of white metal.
"What happened?" Bill called dazedly.
"Not so loud," Brand whispered. "The thing—a Martian left alive, I guess it is. Must have been somewhere out in the brush when we shot. It blew us up with an atomic bomb. Smith and Walker dead—blown to pieces."
"And the Prince?"
"I can speak for myself."
Hearing the familiar low voice, Bill turned. He saw the Prince squatted down, in the blazing sunshine, hands and feet manacled, hat off and face covered with blood and grime.
"Was it that—that green thing?" Bill asked.
"Looks like a sort of animated plant," said the Prince. "A bunch of green tentacles, that it uses for hands. Three purple eyes on green stalks. Just enough of a body to join it all together. Not like anything I ever saw. But the Martians, originating under different conditions, ought to be different."
"What is going to happen now?" Bill inquired.
"Probably it will suck our blood—as it did to the passengers of theHelicon," Brand suggested grimly.
Windsor fell silent. It was almost noon. The desert sun was very hot. The motionless air was oppressive with a dry, parching heat; and flies buzzed annoyingly about his bleeding cuts. Wrists and ankles ached under the cruel pressure of the manacles.
"Wish the thing would come back, and end the suspense," Brand muttered.
Bill reflected with satisfaction that he had no relatives to be saddened by his demise. He had no great fear of death. Newspaper work in the twenty-second century is not all commonplace monotony; your veteran reporter is pretty well inured to danger.
"Glad I haven't anyone to worry about me," he observed.
"So am I," the Prince said bitterly. "I left them all, years ago."
"But you have someone!" Bill cried. "It isn't my business to say it, but that makes no difference now. And you're a fool not to know. Paula Trainor loves you! This will kill her!"
The Prince looked up, a bitter smile visible behind the bloody grime on his thin dark face.
"Paula—in love with me! We're friends, of course. But love! I used to believe in love. I have not been always a nameless outcast of space. Once I had name, family—even wealth and position. I trusted my name and my honor to a beautiful woman. I loved her! She said she loved me—I thought she meant it. She used me for a tool. I was trustful; she was clever."
The dark eyes of the Prince burned in fierce anger.
"When she was through with me she left me to die in disgrace. I barely escaped with my life. She had robbed me of my name, wealth, position. She named me the outlaw. She made me appear a traitor to those who trusted me—then laughed at me. She laughed at me and called me a fool. I was—but I won't be again!"
"At first I was filled with anger at the whole world, at the unjust laws and the silly conventions and the cruel intolerance of men. I became the pirate of space. A pariah. Fighting against my own kind. Struggling desperately for power."
For a few moments he was moodily silent, slapping at the flies that buzzed around his bloody wounds.
"I gained power. And I learned of the dangers from Mars. First I was glad. Glad to see the race of man swept out. Parasites men seemed. Insects. Life—what is it but a kind of decay on a mote in space? Then I got a saner view, and built the City of Space, to save a few men. Then because the few seemed to have noble qualities, I resolved to try to save the world.
"But it is too late. We have lost. And I have had enough of love, enough of women, with their soft, alluring bodies, and the sweet lying voices, and the heartless scheming."
The Prince fell into black silence, motionless, heedless of the flies that swarmed about him. Presently Brand contrived, despite his manacles, to fish a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, extract one, and tossed the others to Bill, who managed to light one for the Prince. The three battered men sat in dazzling sun and blistering heat, smoking and trying to forget heat and flies and torturing manacles—and the death that loomed so near.
It was early noon when Bill heard a little rustling beyond the mesquites. In a moment the Martian appeared. A grotesque and terrifying being it was. Scores of green tentacles, slender and writhing, grew from an insignificant body. Three lidless, purple eyes, staring, alien, and malevolent, watched them alertly from foot-long green stalks that rose above the body. The creature half walked on tentacles extended below it, half dragged itself along by green appendages that reached out to grasp mesquite limbs above it. One inch-thick coil carried a curious instrument of glittering crystal and white metal—it was a strange, gleaming thing, remotely like a ray pistol. And fastened about another tentacle was a little metal ring, from which an odd-looking little bar dangled.
The thing came straight for the Prince. Bill screamed a warning. The Prince saw it, twisted himself over on the ground, tried desperately to crawl away. The thing reached out a slender tentacle, many yards long. It grasped him about the neck, drew him back.
In a moment the dreadful being was crouching in a writhing green mass above the body of the manacled man. Once he screamed piteously, then there was no sound save loud, gasping breaths. His muscles knotted as he struggled in agony against the fetters and the coils of the monster.
Bill and Captain Brand lay there, unable either to escape or to give assistance. In silent horror they watched the scene. They saw that each slender green tentacle ended in a sharp-edged suction disk. They watched the disks forcing themselves against the throat of the agonized man, tearing a way through his clothing to his body. They saw constrictions move down the rubber-like green tentacles as if they were sucking, while red drops oozed out about the edge of the disks.
"Our turn next," muttered Captain Brand.
"And after us, the world!" Bill breathed, tense with horror.
A narrow, white beam, blindingly brilliant, flashed from beyond the dull green foliage of the mesquite. It struck the crouching monster waveringly. Without a sound, it leapt, flinging itself aside from the body of the Prince. It raised its curious weapon. A tiny purple spark darted from it.
A shattering crash rang out at a little distance. There was a thin scream—a woman's scream.
Then the white ray stabbed at the monster again, and it collapsed in a twitching heap of thin green coils, upon the still body of the Prince.
A slender girl rushed out of the brush, tossed aside a ray pistol, and flung herself upon the monster, trying to drag it from the Prince. It was Paula Trainor. Her clothing was torn. Her skin was scratched and bleeding from miles of running through the desert of rocks and cactus and thorny mesquite. She was evidently exhausted. But she flung herself with desperate energy to the rescue of the injured man.
The body of the dead thing was light enough. But the sucking disks still clung to the flesh. They pulled and tore it when she tugged at them. She struggled desperately to drag them loose, by turns sobbing and laughing hysterically.
"If you can help us get loose, we might help," Bill suggested.
The girl raised a piteous face. "Oh, Mr. Bill—Captain Brand! Is he dead?"
"I think not, Miss Paula. The thing had just jumped on him. Buck up!"
"See the little bar—it looks like a sliver of aluminum—fastened to the metal ring about that coil?" Brand said. "It might be the key for these chains. End of it seems to be shaped about right. Suppose you try it?"
In nervous haste, the girl tore the little bar from its ring. With Brand's aid, she was able to unlock his fetters. The Captain lost no time in freeing Bill and removing the manacles from the unconscious Prince.
The thin, rubber-like tentacles could not be torn loose. Brand cut them with his knife. He found them tough and fibrous. Red blood flowed from them when they were severed.
Bill carried the injured man down to the shade of the cottonwoods, brought water to him in a hat from the muddy little stream below. In a few minutes he was conscious, though weak from loss of blood.
Captain Brand, after satisfying himself that Paula had killed the Martian, and that it was the only one that had survived in the wreckage of the blue globes and the metal dome, set off to cross the mountain and bring back the sunship.
When theRed Rovercame into view late that evening, a beautiful slender bar of silver against the pyrotechnic gold and scarlet splendor of the desert sunset, the Prince of Space was hobbling about, supported on Bill's arm, examining the wreckage of the Martian fliers.
Paula was hovering eagerly about him, anxious to aid him. Bill noticed the pain and despair that clouded her brown eyes. She had been holding the Prince's head in her arms when he regained consciousness. Her lips had been very close to his, and bright tears were brimming in her golden eyes.
Bill had seen the Prince push her away, then thank her gruffly when he had found what she had done.
"Paula, you have done a great thing for the world," Bill had heard him say.
"It wasn't the world at all! It was for you!" the girl had cried, tearfully.
She had turned away, to hide her tears. And the Prince had said nothing more.
TheRed Roverlanded beside the wreckage of the Martian fliers. After a few hours spent in examining and photographing the wrecks, in taking specimens of the white alloy of which they were built, and of other substances used in the construction, they all went back on the sunship, taking the dead Martian and other objects for further study. Brand took off for the upper atmosphere.
"Captain Brand," the Prince said as they stood in the bridge-room, "since the death of poor Captain Smith this morning, I believe you are the most skillful sunship officer in my organization. Hereafter you are in command of theRed Rover, with Harris and Vincent as your officers.
"We have a huge task before us. The victory we have won is but the first hand in the game that decides the fate of Earth."
CHAPTER V
The Triton's Treasure
"I must have at least two tons of vitalium," the Prince of Space told Bill, when the newspaperman came to the bridge of theRed Roverafter twenty hours in the bunk. The Prince was pale and weak from loss of blood, but seemed to suffer no other ill effects from his encounter with the Martian.
"Two tons of vitalium!" Bill exclaimed. "A small demand! I doubt if there is that much on the market, if you had all the Confederation's treasury to buy it with."
"I must have it, and at once! I am going to fit out theRed Roverfor a voyage to Mars. It will take that much vitalium for the batteries."
"We are going to Mars!"
"The only hope for humanity is for us to strike first and to strike hard!"
"If the world knew of the danger, we could get help."
"That's where you come in. I told you that I should need publicity. It is your business to tell the public about things. I want you to tell humanity about the danger from Mars. Make it convincing and make it strong! Say anything you like so long as you leave the Prince of Space out of it. I have the body of the Martian that attacked me preserved in alcohol. You have that and the wreckage in the desert to substantiate your story. I will land you at Trainor's Tower in New York tonight. You will have twenty-four hours to convince the world, and raise two tons of vitalium. It has to be done!"
"A big order," Bill said doubtfully. "But I'll do my best."
The city was a bright carpet of twinkling lights when theRed Roverdarted down out of a black sky, hovering for a moment over Trainor's Tower. When it flashed away, Bill was standing alone on top of the loftiest building on earth, in his pocket a sheaf of manuscript on which he had been at work for many hours, beside him a bulky package that contained the preserved body of the weird monster from Mars.
He opened the trapdoor—which was conveniently unlocked—took up the package, and clambered down a ladder into the observatory. An intent man was busy at the great telescope—which pointed toward the red planet Mars. The man looked understandingly at Bill, and nodded toward the elevator.
In half an hour Bill was exhibiting his package and his manuscript to the night editor of theHerald-Sun.
"The greatest news in the century!" he cried. "The Earth attacked by Mars! It was a Martian ship that took theHelicon. I have one of the dead creatures from Mars in this box."
The astounded editor formed a quick opinion that his star reporter had met with some terrifying experience that had unsettled his brain. He listened skeptically while Bill related a true enough account of the cruise of the Moon Patrol ships, and of the battle with the blue globe. Bill omitted any mention of the City of Space and its enigmatic ruler; but let it be assumed that theFuryhad rammed the globe and that it had fallen in the desert. He ended with a wholly fictitious account of how a mysterious scientist had picked him up in a sunship, had told him of the invaders from Mars, and had sent him to collect two tons of vitalium to equip his ship for a raid on Mars. Bill had spent many hours in planning his story; he was sure that it sounded as plausible as the amazing reality of the Prince of Space and his wonderful city.
The skeptical editor was finally convinced, as much by his faith in Bill's probity as by the body of the green monster, the scraps of a strange white metal, and the photographs, which he presented as material evidence. The editor radioed to have a plane sent from El Paso, Texas, to investigate the wrecks. When it was reported that they were just as Bill had said, theHerald-Sunissued an extra, which carried Bill's full account, with photographs of the dead monster, and scientific accounts of the other evidence. There was an appeal for two tons of vitalium, to enable the unknown scientist to save the world by making a raid on Mars.
The story created an enormous sensation all over the world. A good many people believed it. TheHerald-Sunactually received half a million eagles in subscriptions to buy the vitalium—a sum sufficient to purchase about eleven ounces of that precious metal.
Most of the world laughed. It was charged that Bill was insane. It was charged that theHerald-Sunwas attempting to expand its circulation by a baseless canard. Worse, it was charged that Bill, perhaps in complicity with the management of the great newspaper, was making the discovery of a new sort of creature in some far corner of the world the basis for a gigantic fraud, to secure that vast amount of vitalium.
Examination proved that the wrecks in the desert had been demolished by explosion instead of by falling. A court injunction was filed against theHerald-Sunto prevent collection of the subscriptions, and Bill might have been arrested, if he had not wisely retired to Trainor's Tower.
Finally, it was charged that the pirate, the Prince of Space, was at the bottom of it—possibly the charge was suggested by the fact that the chief object of the Prince's raids had always been vitalium. A rival paper asserted that the pirate must have captured Bill and sent him back to Earth with this fraud.
Public excitement became so great that the reward for the capture of the Prince of Space, dead or alive, was raised from ten to fifteen million eagles.
Twenty-four hours later after he had been landed on Trainor's Tower, Bill was waiting there again, with bright stars above him, and the carpet of fire that was New York spread in great squares beneath him. The slim silver ship came gliding down, and hung just beside the vitrolite dome while eager hands helped him through the air-lock. Beyond, he found the Prince waiting, with a question in his eyes.
"No luck," Bill grunted hopelessly. "Nobody believed it. And the town was getting too hot for me. Lucky I had a getaway."
The Prince smiled bitterly as the newspaperman told of his attempt to enlist the aid of humanity.
"About what I expected," he said. "Men will act like men. It might be better, in the history of the cosmos, to let the Martians have this old world. They might make something better of it. But I am going to give humanity a chance—if I can. Perhaps man will develop into something better, in a million years."
"Then there is still a chance—without the vitalium?" Bill asked eagerly.
"Not without vitalium. We have to go to Mars. We must have the metal to fit our flier for the trip. But I have needed vitalium before; when I could not buy it. I took it."
"You mean—piracy!" Bill gasped.
"Am I not the Prince of Space—'notorious interplanetary outlaw' as you have termed me in your paper? And is not the good of the many more than the good of the few? May I not take a few pounds of metal from a rich corporation, to save the earth for humanity?"
"I told you to count me in," said Bill. "The idea was just a little revolutionary."
"We haven't wasted any time while you were in New York. I have means of keeping posted on the shipments of vitalium from the moon. We have found that the sunshipTritonleaves the moon in about twenty hours, with three months production of the vitalium mines in the Kepler crater. It should be well over two tons."
Thirty hours later theRed Roverwas drifting at rest in the lunar lane, with ray tubes dead and no light showing. Men at her telescopes scanned the heavens moonward for sight of the white repulsion rays of theTritonand her convoy.
Bill was with Captain Brand in the bridge-room. Eager light flashed in Brand's eyes as he peered through the telescopes, watched his instruments, and spoke brisk orders into the tube.
"How does it feel to be a pirate?" Bill asked, "after so many years spent hunting them down?"
Captain Brand grinned. "You know," he said, "I've wanted to be a buccaneer ever since I was about four years old. I couldn't, of course, so I took the next best thing, and hunted them. I'm not exactly grieving my heart out over what has happened. But I feel sorry for my old pals of the Moon Patrol. Somebody is going to get hurt!"
"And it may be we," said Bill. "TheTritonwill be convoyed by several war-fliers, and she can fight with her own rays. It looks to me like a hard nut to crack."
"I used to dream about how I would take a ship if I were the Prince of Space," said Captain Brand. "I've just been talking our course of action over with him. We've agreed on a plan."
In an hour the Prince and Dr. Trainor entered the bridge. Paula appeared in a few moments. Her face was drawn and pale; unhappiness cast a shadow in her brown eyes. Eagerly, she asked the Prince how he was feeling.
"Oh, about as well as ever, thanks," the lean young man replied in a careless voice. His dark, enigmatic eyes fell upon her face. He must have noticed her pallor and evident unhappiness. He met her eyes for a moment, then took a quick step toward her. Bill saw a great tenderness almost breaking past the bitter cynicism in those dark eyes. Then the Prince checked himself, spoke shortly:
"We are preparing for action, Paula. Perhaps you should go back to your stateroom until it is over."
The girl turned silently and moved out of the room. Bill thought she would have tottered and fallen if there had been enough gravity or acceleration to make one fall.
In a few minutes a little group of flickering lights appeared among the stars ahead, just beside the huge, crater-scarred, golden disk of the moon.
"TheTritonand her convoy!" shouted the men at the telescopes.
"All men to their stations, and clear the ship for action!" Captain Brand gave the order.
"Two Moon Patrol sunships are ahead, cruising fifty miles apart," came the word from the telescope. "A hundred miles behind them is theTriton, with two more Patrol fliers twenty-five miles behind her and fifty miles apart."
Brand spoke to the Prince, who nodded. And Brand gave the order.
"Show no lights. Work the ship around with the gyroscopes until our rear battery of tubes will cover the right Patrol ship of the leading pair, and our bow tubes the other."
The whir of the electric motors came from below. The fliers swung about, hanging still in the path of the approachingTriton.
"All ready, sir," came a voice from the tube.
A few anxious minutes went by. Then theRed Rover, dark and silent, was hanging squarely between the two forward Patrol ships, about twenty-five miles from each of them.
"Fire constantly with all tubes, fore and aft, until the enemy appears to be disabled," Brand gave the order. The Prince spoke to him, and he added, "Inflict no unnecessary damage."
Dazzling white rays flashed from the tubes. Swiftly, they found the two forward sunships. The slender octagons of silver shone white under the rays. They reeled, whirled about, end over end, under the terrific pressure of atomic bombardment. In a moment they glowed with dull red incandescence, swiftly became white. A bluish haze spread about them—the discharge of the electric energy carried by the atoms, which would electrocute any man not insulated against it.
From the three other ships flaming white rays darted, searching for theRed Rover. But they had hardly found the mark when Brand ordered his rays snapped out. The two vessels he had struck were but whirling masses of incandescent wreckage—completely out of the battle, though most of the men aboard them still survived in their insulated cells.
The Prince himself spoke into the tube. "Maneuver number forty-one. Drive for theTriton."
Driven by alternate burst from front and rear motor tubes, theRed Roverstarted a curiously irregular course toward the treasure ship. Spinning end over end, describing irregular curves, she must have been an almost impossible target.
And twice during each spin, when her axis was in line with theTriton, all tubes were fired for an instant, striking the treasure ship with a force that reeled and staggered her, leaving her plates half-fused, twisted and broken.
Three times a ray caught theRed Roverfor an instant, but her amazing maneuvers, which had evidently been long practised by her crew, carried her on a course so erratic and puzzling that the few rays that found her were soon shaken off.
Before the pirate flier reached theTriton, the treasure vessel was drifting helpless, with all rays out. TheRed Roverpassed by her, continuing on her dizzily whirling course until she was directly between the two remaining fliers.
"Hold her still," the Prince then shouted into the tube. "And fire all rays, fore and aft."
Blinding opalescent rays jetted viciously from the two rings of tubes. Since theRed Roverlay between the two vessels, they could not avoid firing upon each other. Her own rays, being fired in opposite directions, served to balance each other and hold her at rest, while the rays of the enemy, as well as those of the pirate that impinged upon them, tended to send them into spinning flight through space.
Blinding fluorescence obscured the vitrolite panels, and the stout walls of theRed Rovergroaned beneath the pressure of the hail of atoms upon them. Swiftly they would heat, soften, collapse. Or the insulation would burn away and the electric charge electrocute her passengers.
The enemy was in a state as bad. The white beams of the pirate flier had found them earlier, and could be held upon them more efficiently. It was a contest of endurance.
Suddenly the jets of opalescence snapped off the pirate. Bill, gazing out into star-dusted space, saw the two Patrol vessels spinning in mad flight before the pressure of the rays, glowing white in incandescent twisted ruin.
A few minutes later theRed Roverwas drifting beside theTritonholding the wrecked treasure-flier with electromagnetic plates. The air-lock of the pirate vessel opened to release a dozen men in metal vacuum suits, armed with ray pistols and equipped with wrecking tools and oxygen lances. The Prince was their leader.
They forced the air-lock of theTriton, and entered the wreck. In a few minutes grotesque metal-suited figures appeared again, carrying heavy leaden tubes filled with the precious vitalium.
TheRed Roverwas speeding into space, an hour later, under full power. The Prince of Space was in the bridge-room, with Bill, Captain Brand, Dr. Trainor, and Paula. Bill noticed that the girl seemed pathetically joyous at the Prince's safety, though he gave her scant attention.
"We have the two tons of vitalium," said the Prince. "Nearly forty-six hundred pounds, in fact. Easily enough to furnish power for the voyage to Mars. We have the metal—provided we can get away with it."
"Is there still danger?" Paula inquired nervously.
"Yes. Most of the passengers of theTritonwere still alive. When I gave her captain my card, he told me that they sent a heliographic S.O.S. as soon as we attacked. Some forty or fifty fliers of the Moon Patrol will be hot on our trail."
TheRed Roverflew on into space, under all her power. Presently the lookouts picked up a score of tiny flickering points of light behind them. The Moon Patrol was in hot pursuit.
"Old friends of mine," said Captain Brand. "Every one of them would give his life to see us caught. And I suppose every one of them feels now that he has a slice of that fifteen million eagles reward! The Moon Patrol never gives up and never admits defeat."
Tense, anxious hours went by while every battery was delivering its maximum current, and every motor tube was operating at its absolutely highest potential.
Paula waited on the bridge, anxiously solicitous for the Prince's health—he was still pale and weak from the adventure in the desert. Presently, evidently noticing how tired and worried she looked, he sent her to her stateroom to rest. She went, in tears.
"No chance to fight, if they run us down," said Captain Brand. "We can handle four, but not forty."
Time dragged heavily. TheRed Roverflew out into space, past the moon, on such a course as would not draw pursuit toward the City of Space. Her maximum acceleration was slightly greater than that of the Moon Patrol fliers, because of the greater number and power of her motor tubes. Steadily she forged away from her pursuers.
At last the flickering lights behind could be seen no longer.
But theRed Rovercontinued in a straight line, at the top of her speed, for many hours, before she turned and slipped cautiously toward the secret City of Space. She reached it in safety, was let through the air-lock. Once more Bill looked out upon the amazing city upon the inner wall of a spinning cylinder. He enjoyed the remarkable experience of a walk along a street three miles in length, which brought him up in an unbroken curve, and back to where he had started.
It took a week to refit theRed Rover, in preparation for the voyage to Mars. Her motor ray tubes were rebuilt, and additional vitalium generators installed. The precious metal taken from theTritonwas built into new batteries to supply power for the long voyage. Good stocks of food, water, and compressed oxygen were taken aboard, as well as weapons and scientific equipment of all variety.
"We start for Mars in thirty minutes," Captain Brand told Bill when the warning gong had called him and the others aboard.
CHAPTER VI
The Red Star of War
TheRed Roverslipped out through the great air-lock of the City of Space, and put her bow toward Mars. The star of the war-god hung before her in the silver-dusted darkness of the faint constellation of Capricornus, a tiny brilliant disk of ocherous red. The Prince of Space, outlawed by the world of his birth, was hurtling out through space in a mad attempt to save that world from the horrors of Martian invasion.
The red point that was Mars hung almost above them, it seemed, almost in the center of the vitrolite dome of the bridge. "We are not heading directly for the planet," Captain Brand told Bill. "Its orbital velocity must be considered. We are moving toward the point that it will occupy in twenty days."
"We can make it in twenty days? Three million miles a day?"
"Easily, if the vitalium holds out, and if we don't collide with a meteorite. There is no limit to speed in space, certainly no practical limit. Acceleration is the important question."
"We may collide with a meteorite you say? Is there much danger?"
"A good deal. The meteorites travel in swarms which follow regular orbits about the sun. We have accurate charts of the swarms whose orbits cross those of the earth and moon. Now we are entering unexplored territory. And most of them are so small, of course, that no telescope would reveal them in time. Merely little pebbles, moving with a speed about a dozen times that of a bullet from an old-fashioned rifle."
"And what are we going to do if we live to get to Mars?"
"A big question!" Brand grinned. "We could hardly mop up a whole planet with the motor rays. Trainor has a few of his rocket torpedoes, but not enough to make much impression upon a belligerent planet. The Prince and Trainor have a laboratory rigged up down below. They are doing a lot of work. A new weapon, I understand. I don't know what will come of it."
Presently Bill found his way down the ladder to the laboratory. He found the Prince of Space and Dr. Trainor hard at work. He learned little by watching them, save that they were experimenting upon small animals, green plants, and samples of the rare vitalium. High tension electricity, electron tubes, and various rays seemed to be in use.
Noticing his interest, the Prince said, "You know that vitalium was first discovered in vitamins, in infinitesimal quantities. The metal seems to be at the basis of all life. It is the trace of vitalium in chlorophyl which enables the green leaves of plants to utilize the energy of sunlight. We are trying to determine the nature of the essential force of life—we know that the question is bound up with the radioactivity of vitalium. We have made a good deal of progress, and complete success would give us a powerful instrumentality."
Paula was working with them in the laboratory, making a capable and eager assistant—she had been her father's helper since her girlhood. Bill noticed that she seemed happy only when near the Prince, that the weight of unhappiness and trouble left her brown eyes only when she was able to help him with some task, or when her skill brought a word or glance of approval from him.
The Prince himself seemed entirely absorbed in his work; he treated the girl courteously enough, but seemed altogether impersonal toward her. To him, she seemed only to be a fellow-scientist. Yet Bill knew that the Prince was aware of the girl's feelings—and he suspected that the Prince was trying to stifle a growing reciprocal emotion of his own.
Bill spent long hours on the bridge with Captain Brand, staring out at the star-scattered midnight of space. The earth shrank quickly, until it was a tiny green disk, with the moon an almost invisible white speck beside it. Day by day, Mars grew larger. It swelled from an ocher point to a little red disk.
Often Bill scanned the spinning scarlet globe through a telescope. He could see the white polar caps, the dark equatorial regions, the black lines of the canals. And after many days, he could see the little blue circle that had been visible in the giant telescope on Trainor's Tower.
"It must be something enormous, to stand out so plainly," he said when he showed it to Captain Brand.
"I suppose so. Even now, we could see nothing with a diameter of less than a mile or so."
"If it's a ship, it must be darned big—big enough for the whole race of 'em to get aboard."
Bill was standing, a few hours later, gazing out through the vitrolite panels at the red-winged splendor of the sun, when suddenly he heard a series of terrific crashes. The ship rocked and trembled beneath him; he heard the reverberation of hammered metal, and the hiss of escaping air.
"Meteorite!" screamed Brand.
Wildly, he pointed to the vitrolite dome above. In three places the heavy crystal was shattered, a little hole drilled through it, surrounded with radiating cracks. In two other sections the heavy metal wall was dented. Through the holes, the air was hissing out. It formed a white cloud outside, and glistening frost gathered quickly on the crystal panels.
Bill felt the air suddenly drawn from his lungs. He gasped for breath. The bridge was abruptly cold. Little particles of snow danced across it.
"The air is going!" Brand gasped. "We'll suffocate!"
He touched a lever and a heavy cover fell across the ladder shaft, locked itself, making the floor an airtight bulkhead.
"That's right," Bill tried to say. "Give others—chance."
His voice had failed. A soaring came in his ears. He felt as if a malignant giant were sucking out his breath. The room grew dark, swam about him. He reeled; he was blind. A sudden chill came over his limbs—the infinite cold of space. He felt hot blood spurting from his nose, freezing on his face. Faintly he heard Brand moving, as he staggered and fell into unconsciousness.
When he looked about again, air and warmth were coming back. He saw that the shaft was still sealed, but air was hissing into the room through a valve. Captain Brand lay inert beside him on the floor. He looked up at the dome, saw that soft rubber patches had been placed over the holes, where air-pressure held them fast. The Captain had saved the ship before he fell.
In a moment the door opened. Dr. Trainor rushed in, with Prince and others behind him. They picked up the unconscious Brand and rushed him down to the infirmary. The plucky captain had been almost asphyxiated, but administration of pure oxygen restored him to consciousness. On the following day he was back on the bridge.
TheRed Roverhad been eighteen days out from the City of Space. The loss of air due to collision with the meteorites had brought inconveniences, but good progress had been made. It was only two more days to Mars. The forward tubes had been going many hours, to retard the ship.
"Object dead ahead!" called a lookout from his telescope.
"A small blue globe, coming directly toward us," he added, a moment later.
"Another of their ships, setting out for the earth," Brand muttered. "It will about cook our goose!"
In a few moments the Prince and Dr. Trainor had rushed up the ladder from the laboratory. The blue globe was rushing swiftly toward them; and theRed Roverwas plunging forward at many thousand miles per hour.
"We can't run from it," said Brand. "It is still fifty thousand miles away, but we are going far too fast to stop in that distance. We will pass it in about five minutes."
"If we can't stop, we go ahead," the Prince said, smiling grimly.
"We might try a torpedo on 'em," suggested Dr. Trainor. He had mounted a tube to fire his rocket torpedoes from the bridge. "It will have all the speed its own motor rays can develop,pluswhat the ship has at present,plusthe relative velocity of the globe. That might carry it through."
The Prince nodded assent.
Trainor slipped a slender, gleaming rocket into his tube, sighted it, moved the lever that set the projectile to spinning, and fired. The little white flame of the motor rays dwindled and vanished ahead of them. Quickly, Trainor fired again, and then a third time.
"Switch off the rays and darken the lights," the Prince ordered. "With combined speeds of ten thousand miles a minute, we might pass them without being seen—if they haven't sighted us already."
For long seconds they hurtled onward in tense silence. Bill was at a telescope. Against the silver and black background of space, the little blue disk of the Martian ship was growing swiftly.
Suddenly a bright purple spark appeared against the blue, grew swiftly brighter.
"An atomic bomb!" he cried. "They saw us. We are lost!"
He tensed himself, waiting for the purple flash that would mean the end. But the words were hardly out of his mouth when he saw a tiny sheet of violet flame far ahead of them. It flared up suddenly, and vanished as abruptly. The blue disk of the ship still hung before them, but the purple spark was gone. For a moment he was puzzled. Then he understood.
"The atomic bomb struck a torpedo!" he shouted. "It's exploded. And if they think it was we——"
"Perhaps they can't see us, with the rays out," Brand said.
"It is unlikely," Trainor observed, "that the bomb actually struck one of our torpedoes. More likely it was set to be detonated by the gravitational attraction of any object that passed near it."
Still watching the azure globe, Bill saw a sudden flare of orange light against it. A great burst of yellow flame. The blue ball crumpled behind the flame. The orange went out, and the blue vanished with it. Only twisted scraps of white metal were left.
"The second torpedo struck the Martian!" Bill cried.
"And you notice that the blue went out," said Dr. Trainor. "It must be merely a vibratory screen."
TheRed Roverhurtled on through space, toward the crimson planet that hour by hour and minute by minute expanded before her. The blue disk was now plainly visible against the red. It was apparently a huge globe of azure, similar to the ships they had met, but at least a mile in diameter. She lay just off the red desert, near an important junction of "canals."
"Some huge machine, screened by the blue wall of vibration," Dr. Trainor suggested.
During the last two days the Prince and Dr. Trainor, and their eager assistant, Paula, had worked steadily in the laboratory, without pause for rest. Bill was with them when the Prince threw down his pencil and announced the result of his last calculation.
"The problem is solved," he said. "And its answer means both success and failure. We have mastered the secret of life. We have unlocked the mystery of the ages! A terrific force is at our command—a force great enough to sweep man to the millennium, or to wipe out a planet! But that force is useless without the apparatus to release it."
"We have the laboratory——" Trainor began.
"But we lack one essential thing. We must have a small amount of cerium, one of the rare earth metals. For the electrode, you know, inside the vitalium grid in our new vacuum tube. And there is not a gram of cerium in all our supplies."
"We can go back to the Earth——" said Trainor.
"That will mean forty days gone, before we could come back—more than forty, because we would have to stop at the City of Space to refit. And all the perils of the meteorites again. I am sure that in less than forty days the Martians will be putting the machine in that enormous blue globe to its dreadful use."
"Then we must land on Mars and find the metal!" said Captain Brand, who had been listening by the door.
"Exactly," said the Prince. "You will pick out a spot that looks deserted, at a great distance from the blue globe. Somewhere in the mountains, as far back as possible from the canals. Land there just after midnight. We will have mining and prospecting equipment ready to go to work when day comes. Almost any sort of ore ought to yield the small quantity of cerium we need."
"Very good, sir," said Brand.
A few hours later theRed Roverwas sweeping around Mars, on a long curve, many thousands of miles from the surface of the red planet.
"We'll pick out the spot to land while the sun is shining on it," Captain Brand told Bill. "Then we can keep over it, as it sweeps around into the shadow, timing ourselves to land just after midnight."
"Isn't there danger that we may be seen?"
"Of course. We can only minimize it by keeping a few thousand miles above the surface as long as it is day, and landing at night, and in a deserted section."
As they drew nearer, the telescope revealed the surface of the hostile planet more distinctly. Bill peered intently into an eyepiece, scanning the red globe for signs of its malignant inhabitants.
"The canals seem to be strips of greenish vegetation, irrigated from some sort of irrigation system that brings water from the melting ice-caps," he said.
"Lowell, the old American astronomer, knew that two hundred years ago," said Captain Brand, "though some of his contemporaries claimed that they could not see the 'canals.'"
"I can make out low green trees, and metal structures. I think there are long pipes, as well as open channels, to spread the water. And I see a great dome of white metal—it must be five hundred feet across.... There are several of them in sight, mostly located where the canals intersect."
"They might be great community buildings—cities," suggested Brand. "On account of the dust-storms that so often hide the surface of the planet, it would probably be necessary to cover a city up in some way."
"And I see something moving. A little blue dot, it seems. Probably a little flier on the same order as those we have seen; but only a few feet in diameter. It seemed to be sailing from one of the white domes to another."
Brand moved to another telescope.
"Yes, I see them. Two in one place. They seem to be floating along, high and fast. And just to the right is a whole line of them, flying one behind the other. Crossing a patch of red desert."
"What's this?" Bill cried in some excitement. "Looks like animals of some kind in a pen. They look like people, almost."
"What! Let me see!"
Brand rushed over from his telescope. Bill relinquished him the instrument. "See. Just above the center of the field. Right in the edge of that cultivated strip, by what looks like a big aluminum water-pipe."
"Yes. Yes, I see something. A big stockade. And it has things in it. But not men, I think. They are gray and hairy. But they seem to walk on two legs."
"Something like apes, maybe."
"I've got it," cried Brand. "They're domestic animals! The ruling Martians are parasites. They must have something to suck blood out of. They live on these creatures!"
"Probably so," Bill admitted. "Do you suppose they will keep people penned up that way, if they conquer the world?"
"Likely." He shuddered. "No good in thinking of it. We must be selecting the place to land."
He returned to his instrument.
"I've got it," he said presently. "A low mountain, in a big sweep of red desert. About sixty degrees north of the equator. Not a canal or a white dome in a hundred miles."
Long hours went by, while theRed Roverhung above the chosen landing place, waiting for it to sweep into the shadow of night. Bill peered intently through his telescope, watching the narrow strips of vegetation across the bare stretches of orange desert. He studied the bright metal and gray masonry of irrigation works, the widely scattered, white metal domes that seemed to cover cities, the hurtling blue globes that flashed in swift flight between them. Two or three times he caught sight of a tiny, creeping green thing that he thought was one of the hideous, blood-sucking Martians. And he saw half a dozen broad metal pens, or pastures, in which the hairy gray bipeds were confined.
Shining machines were moving across the green strips of fertile land, evidently cultivating them.
The Prince, Dr. Trainor, and Paula were asleep in their staterooms. Bill retired for a short rest, came back to find the planet beneath them in darkness. TheRed Roverwas dropping swiftly, with Captain Brand still at the bridge.
Rapidly, the stars vanished in an expanding circle below them. Phobos and Deimos, the small moons of Mars, hurtling across the sky with different velocities shed scant light upon the barren desert below. Captain Brand eased the ship down, using the rays as little as possible, to cut down the danger of detection.
TheRed Roverdropped silently to the center of a low, cliff-rimmed plateau that rose from the red, sandy desert. In the faint light of stars and hurtling moons, the ocherous waste lay flat in all directions—there are no high mountains on Mars. The air was clear, and so thin that the stars shone with hot brilliance, almost, Bill thought, as if the ship were still out in space.
Silent hours went by, as they waited for dawn. The thin white disk of the nearer moon slid down beneath the black eastern horizon, and rose again to make another hurtling flight.
Just before dawn the Prince appeared, an eager smile on his alert lean face, evidently well recovered from the long struggling in the laboratory.
"I've all the mining machinery ready," Captain Brand told him. "We can get out as soon as it's warm enough—it's a hundred and fifty below zero out there now."
"It ought to warm up right soon after sunrise—thin as this air is. You seem to have picked about the loneliest spot on the planet, all right. There's a lot of danger, though, that we may be discovered before we get the cerium."
"Funny feeling to be the first men on a new world," said Bill.
"But we're not the first," the Prince said. "I am sure that Envers landed on Mars—I think the Martian ships are based on a study of his machinery."
"Envers may have waited here in the desert for the sun to rise, just as we are doing," murmured Brand. "In fact, if he wanted to look around without being seen, he may have landed right near here. This is probably the best place on the planet to land without being detected."
CHAPTER VII
A Mine on Mars
The sun came up small and white and hot, shining from a black sky upon an endless level orange waste of rocks and sand, broken with a black swamp in the distant north. Even from the eminence of the time-worn plateau, the straight horizon seemed far nearer than on earth, due to the greater curvature of the planet's surface.