Chapter I: Front Matter

Cosmic Castaway

By CARL JACOBI

Within a year Earth would be a vassal world,
with the Sirian invaders triumphant. Only
Standish, Earth's Defense Engineer, could
halt that last victorious onslaught--and
he was helpless, the lone survivor of a
prison ship wrecked in uncharted space.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Standish came back to consciousness, a dull pain surging in his head and a feeling of nausea in his midsection. The room about him was strange: grey _arelium_ walls, a single light burning above the iron cot, and a low vibration that trembled the floor beneath his feet.

For a time he lay there, fighting off a cloud of dizziness. Then he groped unsteadily to his feet. As he did, the vibration ceased, and far off he fancied he heard voices pitched in alarm. A bell clanged hollowly several times.

He recognized those sounds now, as his thoughts struggled to bridge the gap in his brain and the memory of past events came rushing to him.

He was on a Sirian prison ship!

The silence grew upon him, and he stood there uncertainly, listening. Something was wrong. There was no familiar drone of atomic motors, and there should be....

When the shock came, he was hurled completely across the room to the far bulkhead. Yet it wasn't a severe shock. It was as if the ship faltered suddenly and heeled over on her side.

Above him, Standish saw induction and exhaust pipes, coated with sulphur dioxide frost, writhe and twist like so many serpents. The explosion that followed was deafening. The floor buckled upward under the pressure. The door to the cabin was torn from its hinges, and a sheet of flame and a column of smoke gushed inward.

In an instant, Standish understood. The prison ship, well on its voyage from Earth, had entered the danger zone, that part of space swarming with planetoids and miniature planets. A sleepy pilot had failed to make the proper gravitational allowances. They had struck!

The ship was almost over on her beam ends now. It righted slowly, and Standish fought his way into the outer passageway, every muscle tensed for instant action.

The corridor was empty. Gas and smoke searing his nostrils, the Earthman made his way to the companion. Up he climbed. Emerging on the second level, he stood rigid, stark horror gripping him.

The cages were there. Tier after tier of them stretching into the bowels of the space ship as far as the grey light permitted him to see. In those cages, he knew, were men of his own race: Earth soldiers, prisoners of war.

But over each cage the heavy ceiling plates had been ripped free by the force of the explosion, and where the imprisoned men had been, only twisted bars and sheets of _arelium_ steel were visible. The entire level was a tomb of silence.

Standish choked back a sob. His men all dead! Crushed like rats in a trap.

He crossed to the ladder leading to the third and main level, climbing slowly.

Reaching the crew deck, he rocked backward again with a cry of dismay. Here, too, the fearful destruction was evident on all sides. Uniformed Sirians lay dead in the scuppers. The entire bridge house was a mass of fallen girders and broken metal.

The officers' quarters had been crushed like an eggshell. Only the steering cuddy and control room had been spared. But here, too, Standish found death had not spared the occupants. A pintax bar, ripped free from its rocker arms, had jammed itself like an exploded cartridge into the pilot's skull. All in the control room had died of fumes forced into the chamber when the motors backcharged through the instrument pipes.

* * * * *

From cabin to cabin Standish went from the living quarters of the crew in the forecastle, to the ammunition chamber in the stern. Everywhere he found destruction and death.

And slowly the fact dawned upon him that he alone aboard was alive. He had been spared because he had been imprisoned in the lower hull, and that section of the ship had escaped damage. Slowly he sank onto a settee and tried to reconstruct his thoughts.

A few hours ago as defense engineer for Earth, he had generaled a daring undercover attack against the Sirian's main base at San Francisco. For ten years--since 3010--the war between Earth and Sirius had been going on, with Earth the stage for all battles of the conflict. The cause of the war was long forgotten. Earth people only knew that the Sirians, greedy for more land, had successfully vanquished Mars and Venus and were steadily closing in on terrestrial territory.

Already Australia and Asia had fallen. With every known device of interplanetary warfare, the Sirians had captured district after district, until the American continent alone remained untrampled by the invaders.

But Standish's story had begun a week before. Through an operative in his vast espionage system, he had learned that the Sirians under command of the ruthless Drum Faggard, were preparing for the "big push."

With a dozen chosen companions disguised as Sirians, the Earth engineer had successfully passed through the enemy lines. He had hoped to capture Drum Faggard and a number of his officers-of-staff and race with them back to the Earth's front line breastworks at Omaha. It was a wild scheme; but Standish knew if Faggard were captured, the war would collapse.

The plan had failed. Counter-spies had warned the Sirians. The little band of twelve had been permitted to penetrate deep into Sirian territory, then had been overwhelmed. And after that--Standish's fists clenched--he had been brought face to face with Drum Faggard.

He was a renegade, this Sirian master of conquest. He had been born on Earth of low parentage, but at the beginning of hostilities he had wormed his way into the graces of the Sirians and by cunning and force of will had risen to Chief of Command.

The Sirians were a wafter-headed race with featureless faces and short barrel-like bodies. Their legs were the same as those of the men of Earth, but their arms possessed tumor-like swellings above the wrists, secondary nerve centers. Faggard, a huge man with a gross face, pig-like eyes and thin lips, had smiled sardonically when Standish was brought before him.

"So your little plan failed, eh?" he said, swallowing a glass of Sirian whiskey and wiping his mouth with the flat of his hand. "Well, Standish, you may as well realize it, you're quite in our power now, and you'll be treated with no more consideration than the rest of the prisoners, unless you answer a few questions."

"What sort of questions?" Standish had demanded.

Faggard smiled again. "Now that your connections with Earth have been forever severed, it can be of little concern to you what happens to that planet. What I want to know is this: How many anti-rocket guns has Earth located at its Omaha base? What is the number of strato-cruisers stationed at Powerville? How heavy are the reserves in the Electra City sector?

"Answer those question, Standish, and you will be virtually a free man. You will be released on our colony planet of Pluto, with five hundred _planetoles_ in your pocket. That money will enable you to live a life of ease for the rest of your days."

For a moment Standish had stood there, face emotionless. Then like an uncapped bottle spewing forth, he had given in to blind rage. He lunged across the room, seized Faggard's thick throat and pounded his right fist into the smirking lips. Twice he had struck before a guard had rushed forward and pulled him off. Then something hard and heavy had crashed down upon his skull, and he knew no more.

He had awakened on this prison ship. But had not this accident occurred he knew well enough the fate that would have been in store for him. All prisoners captured by the Sirian army were transported back to Sirius where they were put to work as slaves in the marsh fields, extracting hydro-carbon gas for use in the food-distillation plants. It was said a terrestrial man could live only one year there.

Only one thing puzzled the Earthman. Why had he been given special quarters on the prison ship instead of being placed in one of the cages with the other prisoners? To that he could give no answer, and as the ringing silence of space closed in on him, he got to his feet and made his way slowly back to the control room.