Chapter III

I must explain now what was happening to Mack and Vivian as they afterward told it to me. Mack recalls quite clearly that moment of dazed, numbed anguish when he writhed on the ground with the horrible sapping gaze of the Radak Ruler upon him. Then he heard Vivian scream, saw her rushing at the shriveled old Radak.

He called, "Vivian! Run--they'll kill you--"

He found himself staggering to his feet, stumbling until he was by her side. He felt her clutch him, both of them standing there, numbed and dazed, terrified, with the feeling that the rushing Radaks would instantly kill them. He remembers that the girl and himself took a stumbling step forward. To Mack it was like stumbling through a suddenly appearing black curtain of emptiness. Just an abyss of soundless nothingness, except that there seemed still to be Vivian's clutch on his arm. No, it was her hand holding his as they stood peering at a distant blur of red radiance.

"Viv--where are we? What happened?"

"Pete--I'm frightened--can't--see anything--"

But the red radiance was growing, spreading to dispel the blank empty darkness so that in a moment he could see the drab, disheveled form of the girl beside him, her moist, cold hand convulsively clutching his, and the red light on her pallid, terrified face. And in the distance now there were outlines--a sort of red line that looked like a shimmering cliff with jagged spires upstanding in a row.

"Vivian--everything's gone--the Radaks--we're not where we were--Bob and Shorty--gone--"

The red glow in a moment had brightened to be far more luminous than they remembered it in the caverns. Obviously there was a sky overhead now--a lurid, murky, blood-red haze of infinite distance. This was the outer surface of the little planetoid. The Realm of the Deathless Monsters! Mack realized it with a shudder of terror. He and Vivian now could see that they were standing upon a little rise of ground, in what could have been called a forest. Everywhere great stalks of spindly blue and grey vegetation towered into the air. Growing things of fantastic shape, woven in places to be a solid jungle. Or again there were open glades of rocky ground--buttes and little spires, small ravines and crevices. All of it bathed in crimson, as though here were a bloody landscape of unutterable horror. The horror of things not yet seen ... things lurking--

"Oh Pete, what can we do?" Hungry and faint she swayed against him. But in the blood-red light she was trying to smile. "You tell us what we ought to do--I will help us do it, Pete. I'm not--not afraid."

But the terror of despair was clutching at both of them. Mack tried to gather his wits. Alone here on an alien world. Could they find food and drink? Wander here, until some ghastly monster engulfed them? Or should they try to get back underground? Why? To have the murderous Radaks fall upon them and kill them?

But the will to live in every human is very strong. No one will lie down and just hopelessly wait for death.

"Viv--those cliffs over there--cliffs with the spires--there ought to be tunnels maybe at the bottom of them. If we could get back--maybe get to Bob and Shorty--" His voice trailed away. It all seemed so hopeless.

Then he felt the girl clutch at his arm. "Look! Maybe that's water? I'm so thirsty--"

"I see it. Maybe it is. Come on."

In a nearby open glade, surrounded by stalks of the towering fibrous vegetation, what could have been a shallow pool of water was spread on the open rocks. A little pool, twenty feet or so in diameter. Rivulets extended off to the sides of it in crevices of the rock-surfaces. It was quite shallow, seemingly only a few inches deep. The red radiant glow that suffused everything stained it like blood, but it was translucent so that the rocks showed through it.

Was it water? As they approached, Vivian stepped over one of the branching rivulet arms. The translucent red stuff suddenly lifted from the rocks, the little tentacle arm of it wrapping itself around her ankle!

* * * * *

The girl screamed. In a panic Mack reached down, plucking at the red mass. Ghastly horror! It was like quivering, sticky glue. Frantically he tore at it. Warm, pulsating, protoplasm. It stuck to his fingers, greedily fastening upon his flesh until he wiped it away. Vivian, too, was frantically flailing at the stuff. And in that second Mack was aware that the whole twenty-foot spread of it on the rocks was in motion now--rolling itself up from the rocks, congealing, gathering itself into a great circular mass. Huge, eight-foot ball of blood-red, pulsating protoplasm. Yet now it seemed there was a nucleus, a little central part, more solid than the rest, suddenly growing to look almost like a head and face in the center of the mass. Red-gleaming eyes; a sucking mouth, yawning.

All this Mack saw in a horrified second or two while still he was flailing to cast away the broken, pulpy arm of the monster. And he saw now that the great ball of it was rocking. Then it started to roll and bump toward them!

"Vivian! Run--good Lord, here it comes!"

They fled. But behind them it was coming, gathering speed, bumping and squishing over the rocks. Mack tried to keep his wits. The monstrous thing was only twenty feet behind them now. And as it rolled, it was expanding. A lashing ball twice as high as their heads. Then ahead of them Mack saw a narrow pass between two huge rocks--a space some three feet wide. He shoved Vivian into it--a space too small for the monster to follow. It was a crevice only some ten feet long. They dashed through it.

Mack turned to see what the crimson Deathless Thing would do. It had hit the rocks, and now it was oozing through the narrow space--thin red streamer of protoplasm feeding itself through the crevice. Mack and Vivian had fled to one side, and as the jet of red pulp came through, out on the other side it rolled itself again into a ball--ghastly thing that kept on going down the slope! In a moment it was a hundred feet away. Panting, Mack clutched his companion and they stared. The bumping, rolling circular mass had reached a patch of forest. It slowed; stopped.

"Pete, look!" The girl's terrified, awed voice murmured it. "Look at it now!"

There in the forest glade the monstrous crimson ball was sagging, flattening, spreading itself out into a thin, translucent layer on the rocky ground. Then it was motionless, quiescent, waiting.

"Well!" Mack breathed. "At least we know now what to avoid! We--"

But again Vivian gripped him. "What's that over there?" Her shaking hand gestured to one side. It was an upright blob moving in a patch of trees. A tree hid it; then it showed again. It stopped, seemed to turn upon itself. Still upright. Then again it moved.

Suddenly Mack gasped, "A man! Look--see it now--a man--why--why it's Blaine!"

Startled relief was in his voice. The figure came to another open space, where the crimson glow in the air showed it plainly. It was Blaine. He was moving along, gazing around as though searching.

"Blaine! Blaine!" Mack called.

The banker turned at the voice; saw Mack and Vivian who now were running toward him. "You Mack--Vivian--you're safe--"

"Yes, sure!" It was a blessed relief to Mack.

"I've been looking for you," Blaine called. He was running to meet them. "And I've got something--something important! A weapon--"

The three reached each other. Blaine and Mack gripped hands. Then suddenly Vivian gasped: "Another! Another of those Things--"

Out among the trees beyond where Blaine had been a moment before, a slithering red shape was visible. Another of the Deathless Things which soundlessly had been stalking Blaine. Like a huge thirty-foot crimson python it was sliding through the vegetation. Its neck and head came up, reared up as for a second it stopped, peering with red-green eyes seeking its prey. Then it lowered its head and came slithering rapidly forward!

* * * * *

I must go back now for just a moment to recount what had happened to Blaine, from that moment when the Radak guards hustled him away from their shriveled ancient ruler. Ignoring his protests, he was shoved along a corridor, thrown into a cave-cell and its door-slide closed upon him. But he wasn't alone there for long. Presently the slide opened again and a figure came in. It was obviously a Radak, but of somewhat a different type. The same square, powerful look. But this one was taller, almost as tall as Blaine. Grey-skinned, lean and muscular. He seemed fairly young, thirty Earth-years perhaps.

"I have come for to talk to you," the visitor announced. He sat stiffly on a rock by a wall of the cave. His grey-black woven garment swished as he motioned Blaine to sit on the ground before him. "You are very interesting to me. Sit down."

"Thanks. I'll stand," Blaine said. "You speak my language very well."

"That I should." The Radak's smile made his strange face wrinkle into a grimace. "I am Ratan. Our Great Mind sent me to your Earth. I picked you Earthmen, and ordered you seized. I will tell you about that. You can be very helpful to us, I am thinking. Perhaps especially so. I am commanded to tell you our plans."

Carefully Blaine listened to the strange things this Ratan quite calmly was telling him. With their weird mechanisms, the Radaks now were directing their tiny world through Space, toward our Earth. Already they were bathing Earth with a radiance which was disturbing the Earth's axial and orbital rotations--that vague, dim purple haze which Dr. Johns had described to Shorty and me. Then when Zelos was closer to Earth, the vibratory beam would be intensified.

The Earth would be drawn from its orbit. Engulfed in this weird gravitational force, it would follow Zelos back from the Sun--out into Interplanetary Space.... The abduction of the Earth! Blaine knew little of science, but enough to realize what soon would happen on Earth....

"Storms--the disturbance of all your atmospheric pressures--" Ratan was saying with his ironic smile, "that will very soon kill many of your people. And then will come the congealing cold. Certain it is that human life on your Earth will not withstand it."

Our atmosphere, not adapted to insulate the cold of Space--

There was no need for this Ratan to picture for Blaine the wild devastation of Earth. "Perhaps even before we have drawn you out to the orbit of Saturn," Ratan was saying, "then there will be no Earthman still living."

The end of human Earth-life. It might take another Earth-year, or many. But it was coming. Inevitable. A thing that the Radak Great-Mind had long planned, and that already was being successfully accomplished.... There are on Earth now as I write this brief narrative, many scientists working to understand the theories of the strange, diabolic mechanisms of the bandit Crimson Comet. The projection of some new application of gravitational force. The purple ray was something of that nature, of course. A link between Zelos and Earth, like a chain binding them together--a powerful little tug pulling a great ocean liner. And the same force unquestionably was what made Zelos itself mobile in Space. That much we know definitely because in miniature, but doubtless of the same approximate nature, the purple gravitational ray is the motive power for the Radak Space-ship which we now have intact.

"So you are planning to kill everyone on Earth," Blaine said. His heart was pounding, but he tried to hold his voice calm. He stood with folded arms, gazing at Ratan. "And what will that gain you?"

"Our little planet here we do not like," Ratan retorted. "Many space-ships we will build, and when your Earth-people are gone, then we will migrate to your much better world. The Lei, and the Radaks to rule them. The Great Mind has planned it all. We have been secretly to your Earth, we have studied life there. It will be much better for us than this. The Great Mind will rule your whole world for a while--until he dies. And then--do you not see something unusual in me?"

"What?" Blaine demanded.

"I am the appointed one to be the next Great Mind. When I was born it was decided. I have been trained for that. Just for that, nothing else."

* * * * *

Blaine could see it in him now. That air of quiet, confident dominance. "I see what you mean," Blaine agreed. "I am like that, on Earth. You realize it?"

"It is why I chose to bring you here," Ratan said.

"I can be very helpful to you," Blaine added. "My companions--they are just captives. But I would like to be more than that." The banker shrugged. "I bow to the inevitable. If you are to seize my world, then I would like to do the best for myself. That's good sense, isn't it?"

Was he gaining this fellow's confidence? The big Radak smiled also. "What do you mean?"

"On Earth I am very powerful. I have money, property."

"Of what good could that be to me?" Ratan smiled. "And when I get there--I have it all anyway."

"What I mean," Blaine persisted, "I am an organizer. I know the resources of Earth--"

"And to that I agree," Ratan interrupted. "You mean, you would join us, as a friend."

"For a position of power among you Radaks, yes. You will find I can handle the Lei." He smiled cannily. "On Earth they called me ruthless. I could bend men to my will--and always to my own profit."

Blaine's keen, appraising gaze was watching the Radak. Ratan was smiling; he could understand talk like this, and it was obvious that he liked it.... Blaine's heart was pounding. At Ratan's broad grey belt a little pot-bellied metal cylinder was hanging. He gestured to it casually.

"What is that, Ratan?"

"That? It is a weapon of ours. Very important. There are only very few of us who may carry it. A Rak-gun, perhaps your language would term it."

"Let me see it. How does it work?"

But Ratan was only fingering it lovingly. He made no move to detach it from his belt. He was smiling. "It is what brought you from Earth."

He seemed willing enough to describe it. The projection of a vibration akin to thought-waves, but infinitely more intense. In effect it paralyzed the conscious mind, yet left the motor area intact. The victim, to all intents and purposes was a somnambulist. The subconscious mind, with will power numbed, then was open to any suggestive stimulus which it received. The victim's muscles instinctively obeyed commands. And the memory areas recorded nothing. Shorty and I had seen it happen to Vivian and Mack. Blaine did not know of that. But it had happened to him, on Earth, as it had to all of us.

"And, then, after a time it wears off?"

"Exactly. An hour--what you would call an hour on Earth, perhaps. But another shock of it can be given. You were under its influence for about three weeks--the time it took for our Space-ship to bring us here."

"And you fed me very badly," Blaine commented. He was taut inside now. He took a casual step forward so that he was almost within reach of the seated Radak. "Is that thing easy to operate?"

Blaine's heart leaped as Ratan unclipped the little cylinder from his belt. "Very simple," the Radak said. "Just a pressure on this little lever. But it will be years before the Great Mind or myself would let you handle one of these."

"I was thinking," Blaine said, "when we get to Earth you yourself will not be the Great Ruler. But if, perhaps, the Great Mind should suddenly die? Then it would be only the great Ratan, with me to help him--" Blaine had leaned forward confidentially and lowered his voice. "Did you ever think of that?"

Surely at least the idea of murdering his commander was startling to Ratan, and for that instant he was off his guard. Just a second, but it was enough for Blaine. The banker abruptly reached, snatched the cylinder and leaped backward.

"Now you damned villain--"

* * * * *

Blaine raised the cylinder level. With a roar, Ratan was on his feet. There was a soundless, vague little flash. Ratan, tensing his muscles for a leap abruptly relaxed, wavered.

"Quiet now! Stand still!" Blaine ordered sharply.

He stood listening, with the quiescent, blankly staring Ratan before him. Had Ratan's roar of startled anger aroused any guards out in the corridor? It seemed not. There was only silence.

"Now we will go out of here," Blaine said softly. "We will go out. You know where Robert Rance is now. You will lead me to him."

With hands outstretched, the big Radak moved to the door, slid it open. At this moment Shorty and I were confined in another cave-cell not far away. Ratan knew it; he was leading Blaine there. But suddenly, at a corridor intersection, voices sounded! Radaks were coming.

"Crouch down!" Blaine commanded. "Be quiet! Not a sound from you!"

There was a wall recess. Blaine shoved his numbed captive into it. Together they crouched. And now Blaine saw that in a sheath at Ratan's belt, there was a knife. He drew it out; held it in his other hand and kept the cylinder ready. Two Radaks were coming. They were talking together in their own language. They stopped nearby, evidently with the intention of parting here at the intersection.

Blaine listened. Then he whispered to Ratan: "Answer me softly. What are they saying? Tell me in English."

"Those Earth-people banished--into the Realm of--Deathless--Monsters--and they will die--of course." Ratan's words were mumbled, queerly mouthed, like one who talks in his sleep. Blaine assumed that all of us were out there on the upper surface, not just Vivian and Mack. Swiftly he changed his plans.

"In a moment when I command you," he whispered, "you will lead me there. You know where the Earth-people would probably be now? Out which exit they went? Answer me--softly."

"By the--big cliff with the--rock spires.... The exit is--down this left corridor."

Tensely Blaine waited. The nearby Radaks parted and moved away. "Now, lead me," he whispered.

Again they moved forward, down the left-hand corridor-branch now. And suddenly behind Blaine there was a shout. He whirled. One of the Radaks had changed his mind and was coming back, calling something to his fellow. Blaine had no time to get himself and Ratan out of sight. The Radak saw them--saw the stiffly walking Ratan, and Blaine with the cylinder in his hand.

With a startled shout, the little Radak leaped at Blaine. The flash met him; he stopped in his tracks, stood stiff. But from the other direction, his companion was coming. And now the commotion was bringing others. Blaine could hear several of the guttural voices and the thuds of their oncoming footsteps.

With a leap Blaine went past Ratan. The squat little shape of the other Radak came charging down the center of the narrow corridor. His greenish eye-beams were weird in the crimson gloom. Again Blaine fired his cylinder. But this time evidently he missed and in another second the Radak was on him. The shock of the impact flung them both to the ground. The cylinder was knocked from Blaine's hand. He felt his adversary's arms clutching him, squeezing him with machine-like strength. In another moment Blaine's ribs would have smashed. But his left hand still gripped the knife. With despairing effort he drove it into the Radak's side.

Ghastly knife-thrust! It went in with a crunch, a rasp as it severed the strange flesh. There was a hiss as hot fluid spurted. The Radak's scream was horrible. His arms fell away. Blaine disentangled himself. On the ground near him he saw the cylinder, snatched it, dropped it into his pocket. A commotion was all around him now. Oncoming Radaks in several of the branching corridors. But ahead of Blaine there seemed no one.

He ran. Behind him he could dimly see the squat little figures gazing at their dead fellow, and surrounding the stricken Ratan. No one seemed to notice the fleeing Blaine as he ran the length of the winding corridor until at last he was out upon the crimson upper surface.

For a time he wandered. He did not see any of the crimson monsters, or at least did not recognize them for what they were. Then he heard Mack shouting at him; saw Mack and Vivian running toward him.

"I've got something important--a weapon," he called to Mack.

Then abruptly the three of them saw that huge, python-like crimson Thing which had been silently stalking Blaine.

"Look!" Vivian gasped. "Another of them!"

It was slithering rapidly at them now, no more than fifty feet away. Its green-swaying eye-beams clung to them. For that instant they were standing stricken with terror. To one side of them there was the brink of an abyss a few yards away, and to the other, and behind them, a ragged little cliff.

"Got to try and climb those rocks!" Mack gasped. "Can't get past that snake thing--we're trapped--"

But Blaine swept him aside. The cylinder was in Blaine's hand now. "This will stop it!" he muttered. "You two--get behind me!"

The monstrous thirty-foot thing was only half its own length away from them now. Then, as its head reared over a projection of the uneven, rocky ground, Blaine carefully aimed the cylinder and fired. But the monster didn't stop! There was no conscious, thinking brain in that ghastly, pulsating crimson head! Just motor-ganglia reacting to the impulses of instinct!

Blaine fired again. But the monster kept on coming and in another second was upon them!