Project Gutenberg's The Raiders of Saturn's Rings, by Raymond Z. Gallun
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Title: The Raiders of Saturn's Rings
Author: Raymond Z. Gallun
Release Date: April 27, 2020 [EBook #61951]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAIDERS OF SATURN'S RINGS ***
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THE RAIDERS OF SATURN'S RING
By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
Only one man could save Titan's Earth colony
from the merciless legions of the furred
Callistans. But between Ron Leiccsen and his
goal lay Saturn's whirling, deadly Rings.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Everywhere in Leiccsenland the farms were burning. Silvery Callistan
ships, slim arrows of destruction, flew above the countryside
methodically. Splendid grain and hay crops were blazing. Barns and
dwellings, too.
The thin, clear air trailed streamers of blue smoke, that blurred the
ringed globe of monster Saturn, visible at the horizon, above the
craggy surrounding hills.
The Earth-Colony here on Titan, largest of Saturn's satellites, seemed
doomed. The invaders were firing everything they could reach.
Angry farmers were gathered in front of the Community Bank in
Leiccsendale. Old Arne Reynaud, who kept a great orchard and
flower-garden beyond the village outskirts, stood on the concrete steps
of the bank building, and shouted to the assembled group of bitter
faces.
"Twenty-three Earth-years, Terrestrials have been here in
Leiccsenland!" he shrilled grimly. "Ain't nobody gonna drive us out
now! Not even these damned Callistans from their moon back Jupiter-way!
Titan, so far from the sun, was a frozen world when we came. Its water
was ice. Even its air lay in frozen snowdrifts in the awful cold!
We slaved and starved and spent almost every cent we had, getting
started here! Setting up Bart Mallory's atomic sun-ray towers, to make
the climate warm! Cultivating the soil, that hadn't had any life in it
for a billion years, since Saturn cooled too much to radiate any heat
to Titan! Bringing in seeds and cattle and hogs! Even bumble-bees to
pollinate the flowers! Ain't no dirty, fuzzy Callistan devils gonna
take Titan away from us now! We made us a little heaven, here, with the
sweat of our brows! And we're gonna keep it! Ain't no--"
Arne Reynaud got this far in his speech, his shrill, scratchy old voice
vibrant with mingled grief and wild determination. But just then a
second voice, from the rear of the little crowd, cut in like a whetted
knife-blade, keen and caustic and condemning:
"Shut up, Reynaud! That Iron-Made language of yours is completely out
of place, now! It only makes things worse! So, for God's sake, shut up!
Stop talking like a damned fool!"
The words fairly snapped and snarled with bitterness. No Callistan
heat-bomb, dropped into the center of the little gathering itself,
could have produced more emotional startlement. Two hundred pairs of
haggard eyes turned as one toward the man who had broken a spell.
Surprise was too great to allow anger to awaken, yet. There was only
wonder as to who this rude traitor could be.
He stood there at the edge of the side-walk, with half his gaunt weight
leaned against a maple sapling. But his eyes glowed tensely, under a
broad-brimmed colonial hat, denying the indolence of his posture. A
crooked smile showed white teeth, and traced a line of derision in
one narrow, bronzed cheek. Youth and strength and sadness and broken
dreams, were in the curve of his brow and lips. But above all, there
was realism--the will to do the best, most reasonable thing, in the
face of heart-breaking defeat.
A girl, as forceful as himself--in her own pert way--was the one who
answered him. "You!" she stormed. "You--Ron Leiccsen--nephew of the
man who explored this world, and died from the effects of hardships
here, soon after his return to Earth! The man who made our Titanian
Colony possible! And you tell Arne Reynaud to shut up, when he talks
patriotism! You're not fit to bear the same name as Jan Leiccsen!"
The girl was Anna Charles, a teacher in the school at the village.
There was a moment of strained silence, after her furious, accusing
words tumbled out. Her tiny fists were clutched so firmly that the
knuckles showed white. Her heart-shaped face had gone pale with fury,
defiance, contempt! Her dark eyes blazed narrowly, and her whole,
small, reckless body trembled with emotion. Anna Charles, daughter of a
champion space pilot, killed several years before, was a tornado from
her golden head to the tips of her tiny boots!
* * * * *
But she was only part of the situation, now. Everyone, among those
hard, bristly-cheeked colonists, waited for Ron Leiccsen to answer
the girl's withering challenge. Ron had been a respected machinist
bearing an honored name--before. But his caustic attitude, now, made
a difference. Most of those grim men scowled at him. Many of them
fingered their smooth, trim-barreled atom-rifles in a silent threat to
a dissenter. Even old Arne Reynaud, on his impromptu orator's rostrum
before the Community Bank, said nothing. His withered features only
looked startled. His thin shoulders sagged in his shapeless overcoat.
The nearest great sun-ray globe, rising on its tall, steel-girdered
tower above Leiccsendale, purred softly, shedding its warmth and
brilliant light, and its special, invisible radiations, which acted as
a stimulus to all vegetable growth, over the scene. Smoke from rich,
ripe cornfields nearby, tanged in the cool air, like a questioning
ghost. Even the far-off sun itself, scarcely more than a great star in
the vast distance, seemed to wait, to see what would happen during the
next tense moment.
Ron Leiccsen's grin became a trifle more crooked. Otherwise he scarcely
moved, though his eyes admired Anna Charles' vigorous spirit.
"I apologize, if I've hurt anyone's feelings--without good reason,"
he said at last. "I look up to anyone with plenty of nerve, like
Arne Reynaud, or Miss Charles, here. But we can't successfully fight
Callistan heat-bombs, and their horde of heavily armed ships. We
can't expect any aid from Earth, since the Callistan space navy is
supreme in this part of the void. To continue to resist alone, is just
plain stupid. We'd all be killed or enslaved--Titan taken away from
us anyway, in the end. And we have women and kids, remember! Miss
Charles, who is a school teacher, should know that we have kids, here,
as well as anybody else! Tots. Who wants to see them enslaved, abused,
massacred? So, though it will hurt plenty to do it, let's face facts!
Let's leave Titan before these laughing devils from Callisto can fly so
many war-craft out from their world that even escape will be cut off!"
Ron Leiccsen paused for just a moment, to let his arguments sink home,
and to let the grim truth register in the minds of his hard, embattled
listeners. Then he went on.
"Of course, if Arne Reynaud has any information," he said, "any new
trick, or any means at all that might give us hope of defeating these
furry giants from Jupiter's outermost large moon, let him speak up!
Otherwise his talk of fighting is exactly what I implied before--just
senseless, foolish courage!"
When Ron Leiccsen finished speaking, farmers looked at each other,
their faces puzzled. It was easy to see that common-sense was tempering
their defiance against the Callistan hordes, now. Their wives. Their
children. Even Anna Charles' features showed a sheepish, apologetic
petulance for a moment, as though maybe she realized that the man whom
she had as good as accused of traitorous cowardice, might have told the
truth.
From the distance, over the blazing fields and farm buildings, a slim,
silvery shape flew silently, coming closer. And the atom-guns which had
so far kept the hamlet of Leiccsendale itself, safe from the bombs and
heat-rays of the Callistan raiders, began to spit their whining darts
up from the village outskirts.
But now old Arne Reynaud lifted a shaky hand. "Ron Leiccsen," he
shouted sincerely, "you got real, honest-to-gosh, good judgment! Talk
without backing don't get anybody anywhere! But I haven't been just
shooting off my mouth! There _is_ a way to lick them damned Callistans,
as I was gonna tell you all before! Everything's fixed, except for the
last tough part of the job!"
It was Ron Leiccsen's turn to be surprised, now. His brows creased in
mingled doubt and hope. He stood erect now, taut and ready.
"All right, Arne," he urged eagerly. "I'll eat those words of mine,
down to the last sour syllable, if I've said anything out of place!
Tell us what you've got up your sleeve."
"Just this, friends," Arne returned seriously. "Mighty few Callistans
ever visit Earth. Even though they're immune to our germ diseases,
they don't thrive so well there, at certain seasons. Me and a brother
of mine, back home, are probably the only men, either Earthian or
Callistan, who realize why Callistans get very sick at certain times on
Earth, though it's so simple. I saw one die once, in New York State, in
summer. It ain't just the density of the air. They can stand that. It's
something else--and I've got the password. I found out.
"Quite a while ago, I wrote a letter to my brother. But everybody knew,
already, that the trouble with the Callistans was coming. My brother
has quite a lot of money, and I asked him to do me a favor. Just a few
hours ago I got his space-radiogram, probably one of the last that got
through the Callistan interference barrages."
Arne had taken a slip of yellow paper from his pocket. He cleared his
throat, and read the message aloud:
"'Dear Arne: Shipload of stuff you asked for is at Vananis, on Mars.
Have just learned that crew deserted, refusing to go farther into zone
patrolled by hostile Callistan craft. Delivery up to you colonists.
Luck. Tony.'"
* * * * *
Arne Reynaud ran his fingers through his ragged gray hair, as he
finished the radiogram. "You see, folks?" he continued. "That space
freighter is waiting on Mars right now, for somebody to go and get it.
All we have to do is sprinkle its cargo all over Leiccsenland, and as
much more of Titan as we can...."
The old horticulturist's words were cut short here, as the silvery
Callistan ship that had been approaching, swept close, overhead. It had
won through the outer defenses of the village. The ominous shadow of
the craft, which was small but deadly, slid swiftly over the ground.
Sparks of molten metal shot from the tower of the sun-ray globe, as an
unseen sword-beam of intense heat lashed at its girders. Steel crumpled
and snapped. There was an ugly, creaking, groaning sound, like that
which a great tree makes when it begins to fall, after the lumber-jacks
have severed its trunk. The tower leaned, like a man shot, and crashed
with a thunderous noise onto a row of stores and houses along the
street.
Fire spurted, as the great sun-ray globe of heat-resistent carbon-glass
shattered, spilling its seething, white-hot contents on the wreckage.
Flames lashed up, blazing furiously.
Everyone had crouched down, seeking whatever cover was available, as
the enemy ship, glinting in the pale sunshine, and reflecting the
glare of the conflagration, circled above. The hiss of its propelling
mechanism was almost a whisper. So low that the wild, challenging
laughter of the gray-furred Callistan pilot, leaning over its side,
could be plainly heard.
The beam of heat that had wrecked the tower, swung downward. It hit the
front of the Community Bank, and the latter's windows, with the gold
lettering on them, cracked and wilted. Old Arne Reynaud, hunched now
behind the stone blocks that flanked the steps, was hit. His whole back
was raked by that invisible sword of concentrated heat waves. Flesh and
clothing alike was burned away from his spine.
But even as this was happening, slender atom-rifles and pistols were
brought into play--sobbing and whirring. Ron Leiccsen was among the
other marksmen, firing with his pistol from beneath the foliage of the
maple sapling, where he had drawn Anna Charles.
The swift missiles struck the invader craft. Incandescent spots, bluer
and more eye-hurting than the glare of an electric arc, blotched its
burnished hull. It sagged in its flight like a mass of wet paper, and
plummeted to the street. From the wreck was hurled a big-chested,
furry, half-human form, bloodied, and spattered with its own brains,
its broken, slender limbs tangled in the wires of a house-yard fence.
Ron Leiccsen leaped to where Arne Reynaud lay on the heat-racked bank
steps. There was still a flicker of life in his faded blue eyes, glazed
with agony. But he was past all help.
"Ron," he muttered, as the youth bent over him. "You didn't believe
me--anyhow at first.... But I ain't a liar.... I told the truth....
Mars.... That ship there.... Do what I said--please.... It'll lick the
Callistans.... You got nerve--cleverness--plenty. A swell space-pilot,
too--the others aren't so good.... Bring the freighter to Titan....
Sprinkle the stuff in the hold all over Leiccsenland.... The cargo
is--is...."
And there old Arne's heart stopped beating. His charred body relaxed
in its last sleep. His brain ceased to think. And a vast question-mark
seemed to hang over him. While in Leiccsenland, chaos thundered. Fire
crackled and roared.
Anna Charles was bending close to the old man's body, too, her face a
mask of dumb horror. But she had become challenging again, now. "You
heard what he said, didn't you, Ron Leiccsen?" she flung at him with
a taut, cold softness. "Your idea that we should all leave Titan may
be wrong! There's that ship on Mars, which might save our colony! And
he--Arne--appointed you to go and bring it here!"
* * * * *
No one could ever have traced the course of the tumultuous hatred and
doubt that seethed in Ron Leiccsen's mind just then. Red hate of the
laughing fiends of Callisto! Little, withered Arne Reynaud--murdered!
He was a hero--an inspiration! And yet, maybe he was just an old
fool with an empty, hair-brained scheme that wouldn't work! Another
crackpot--a kind of fanatical inventor, perhaps, who deluded himself
into believing in a worthless idea! A ship on Mars, loaded with
something. What?
Ron struggled to be reasonable, fighting the mad fury that prompted
him to be rash, to believe what the old horticulturist had said and
fly to Mars. Such action might give the colonists here on Titan false
hope. Hope that would encourage them to stay, when maybe they should be
leaving with their wives and children.
"It's stupid!" Ron growled at last. "A shipload of some kind of
mysterious elixer! Scatter the stuff around on Titan! It'll defeat the
Callistans! Bunk! What kind of a magic charm is this, anyway? Arne was
a swell old guy, all right; but he fussed too much with his flower
garden, and dreamed and wished too much!" All of Ron's cynical, bitter,
doubting viewpoint, seemed to boil from his lips. "I've got to see that
the colonists leave Titan!"
"I won't leave for one!" Edward Clay, a hard-bitten young farmer with
a craggy jaw, stated definitely. "Me and Pa and my wife have been here
five years. Not a chance of me going, now! I'll stick, if only to even
the odds for Arne Reynaud! Maybe he was an idiot, but he had courage!"
Bart Mallory, who had invented the atomic sun-ray towers, and held
their patent rights for the exclusive use of the Titan Colony, was
present, too. All of his small, nervous body, even his neatly kept Van
Dyke beard, trembled with rage and grief.
"Arne was a good, practical man, when it came to taking care of fruit
trees," he said. "But he was certainly no highly trained scientist. I
haven't much faith in whatever his idea can be, either. Still, he was
my friend. If I ran away from Titan, now that he's been killed, I'd
feel like a dirty, yellow coward!"
Most of the other farmers had left the front of the bank building, to
fight the fire across the street. But several of those who remained,
nodded agreement with Bart Mallory. After all, everything they owned
was on Titan. It was their home.
"If you don't go to Mars for that ship, Ron Leiccsen," Anna Charles
said quietly, "I will! I know how to fly space-crafts as well as you
do, anyway. My father was a racing pilot, and he taught me a few tricks
of the trade! What Arne Reynaud said may be bunk; but there's a chance!"
Ron Leiccsen only growled inarticulately, and hurried off toward the
blazing buildings. He had to fight something to expend some of his
physical energies so that he could think, and clear his brain. Fighting
the fire might do this. The release of atomic heat in the incandescent
substance from the shattered sun-ray globe had ceased when the tower
had collapsed; for the catalytic forces which induced the breakdown of
the atoms had been cut off with the disruption of the apparatus. But
the spilled contents of the globe were still terrifically hot. Only
sand, poured on that dazzling fury, could cool and insulate it. And
water was needed to quench the blazing debris of the buildings. So Ron
Leiccsen worked like a demon with the other men.
And from the village jailhouse, opposite the row of fire-wracked ruins,
hollow, booming laughter mocked him. There a Callistan combat pilot,
captured some time ago when his ship had been shot down, clutched the
bars of his prison's window with slender, furry, three-fingered hands,
and made derisive, gloating remarks in his sketchy English.
"Eart'men! Vaah!" he taunted, his words rumbling in his vast
chest. "Very little while--all done--you--here--Titan! Titan
be--Mado-Achar--New Achar--New Callisto! Very little while we build
shiny metal house here! You find out! You know already! Eart'men! Vaah!
Huah!"
And then he would laugh, the breath sizzling in his wide nostrils, his
little, close-set eyes, that peeped, like a poodle-dog's through the
thick fur that covered his face, reflecting the flames and seeming
to glow in appreciation of the situation, and of the choice Acharian
insults he had hurled.
As he helped fight down the fire, Ron Leiccsen glanced often toward
the defiant captive, wondering intently about all his kind. Tough and
hardy, and immune to all terrestrial germ diseases, the Callistans came
from a strange world of spore-plants and burnished, bizarre cities,
over which a steady, cool climate brooded. Achar--Callisto--being a
satellite of Jupiter, was far from the sun, too. But because Achar
had a radioactive core, generating heat constantly, its surface was
far warmer than would otherwise have been possible. And so there was
life, there. It was a different kind of life, in many minor respects,
than that of Earth. In that thin, cool atmosphere, nature had omitted
certain biological phenomena.
Others of the fire-fighters hurled insults back at the captive
Callistan--furious, defiant curses which showed that no sane argument
could ever win a good half of them to retreat.
* * * * *
Anna Charles was climbing into the cabin of her sleek, black space
flier, which rested on the landing platform on the flat roof of the
house where she lived.
She was prepared to seal the door, when a booted foot was thrust
against it, preventing her action. A slow, admiring grin was turned
upon her. The sullen, half-humorous line in the intruder's bronzed
cheek, was like a steel wall, against which her fury and her surprise
and contempt lashed in vain.
"Ron Leiccsen!" she choked. "I was ready to start for Mars! What do
_you_ want? You and your negative talk!"
Ron entered the ship's cabin. "To Mars, then," he drawled. "But not
all by yourself. You see, I've changed my mind, Miss Charles. About
half the colonists will stay on Titan, no matter what advice is given,
though I hope they'll have sense enough to get most of the kids out.
Result of this stubbornness, as far as they're concerned--well--Arne
Reynaud's shipload of I-don't-know-what is the one barely possible
salvation. So, not being able to rescue my friends with argument, I
have no choice. If I deserted them now, I'd only prove myself to be the
yellow rat you seem to think I am. Anyway, this trick of bringing that
ship back from Mars, is a real, man-size job."
Deliberately, Ron closed the flier's door. He worked the controls. The
ship shot up over the blackened, smoke-wreathed plains of Leiccsenland,
where splendid corn and grain had grown, under the stimulus of special
vitalizing radiations, mixed with the ordinary light and heat that Bart
Mallory's sun-ray globes emitted.
In a twinkling, Leiccsenland and Titan were dwindling away, below. In
brief minutes, even the bulk of giant Saturn and his Rings and ten
glowing moons were shrinking away astern. Ahead was the tiny sun, Mars
and Earth and Venus completely lost in its rays.
"Pray for speed, Miss Charles," Ron grated grimly. "Pray that we make
this trip in time! And that Arne Reynaud's idea is something better
than the froth of an addled brain!"
Their velocity was demoniac. But the distance they had to go was
tremendous. They plotted a course across the orbit of Jupiter, and
through the dangerous Belt of Asteroids. Luckily, Mars and Saturn, in
their respective orbital positions, were near their closest possible
approach to each other. So the journey was about as short as it could
ever be.
The spacial stars leered sardonically, and Ron and Anna stuck to their
posts like fiends, charting, piloting, keeping watch for meteors in
that dangerous region of cosmic debris, the Asteroid Belt. There was no
time for quarreling, there was no time for sentiment, there was little
enough time to eat, and only moments for sleep.
Thus they reached Vananis, the gigantic spaceport set amidst the rusty
red deserts of Mars. But even then it was only the beginning. Two
Earth-weeks it had taken to come. And it would take longer to return;
for on their trip back their ship would not be a slim scout, but a
heavy freighter instead.
They were directed to it there at the quays. _The Barbarian_ was the
name painted on its beetling black prow. It was a black ship, as were
all the space craft of Earth--slender, quite speedy, judging from its
lines and the power rating of its engines and gravity repulsion plates.
It was an old grain-carrying ship. Its cargo hatches were battened
down firmly, and could not easily have been removed.
"What does its cargo consist of?" Ron Leiccsen asked, after Anna and
he had presented their credentials, identifying themselves as Titanian
colonists and licensed space pilots--the only necessary formalities
in their taking control of the freighter; for special orders had been
radioed to Mars by Arne Reynaud's brother, weeks before.
"I don't know what the cargo is," the brown-skinned Martian official
returned indifferently. "You realize the crew deserted, not caring to
go any nearer to Titan, with the Callistan trouble brewing. And we
don't care especially what the _Barbarian's_ hold contains, so long as
it's not going to be unloaded here in Vananis."
There was no time for further investigations of what the tightly closed
hatches might conceal. It would have been useless to attempt to radio
Earth, and try to find out from Arne Reynaud's brother; for that would
take an hour at least, and besides, there was a barrage of static
even in this region, thrown out from a great station on Callisto as a
wartime blockade measure. No message could have gotten through.
Ron Leiccsen and Anna Charles cast longing, wondering glances at the
huge grain discharge-spout, under the flairing stern of the craft. But
there were no precious minutes to spare, to investigate what lay beyond
that spout, within the bowels of the ship, itself. They begrudged even
the moments it took to climb the narrow ladders to the control turret
of the _Barbarian_.
At Ron's manipulation of switches and levers, the engines that fed
power to the gravity plates began to whine. Like a black cloud, the old
freighter arose from the quays.
* * * * *
The first part of the trip back toward Titan was quite uneventful,
though the work and vigilance involved in bringing a huge, clumsy,
and far under-manned ship along a perilous, short-cut route through
the region of the asteroids, was even more gruelling than the journey
in the scout flier had been. Luckily, most of the machinery was
automatic, needing almost no attention to keep it functioning.
But Ron Leiccsen knew what kind of trouble lay ahead. So did Anna
Charles. By now many more silvery ships must have gone out from
Callisto toward Saturn and Titan to reinforce the conquering hordes
already there.
"We'll make it, all right, Ron," Anna declared vehemently, showing
almost her first signs of friendship toward her companion. "We'll make
it because we've got to!"
Her small, red lips jutted out petulantly. She was coaxing herself into
a mood of optimism with defiance alone. She was being optimistic only
by wanting to be.
"_Maybe_ we'll make it!" Ron Leiccsen answered doubtfully. "If our luck
is right, and if we work out a good enough plan!"
"Why, what do you mean?" she snapped back at him, angry again because
of his usual dark thinking, which seemed to laugh at hope.
"Just what I say," he returned brutally, feeling that he might have
tried to keep the grim facts from her, if she'd been less reckless by
nature. But she was no fragile clinging vine. Bleak, skeletal truth
might help to balance her judgment of what was wise and what was not.
"I guess you're right," Anna Charles murmured at last, her sagging
shoulders showing suddenly how very tired she was, and how little.
"Those Callistan ships are almost certain to spot us, as we approach
Titan. They can recognize a black Earth-craft from millions of miles
off, through their telescopes. They'll try to get us, of course, and
unless we find some way to trick them, we'll never win through the
blockade alive!"
Ron patted Anna's arm, and grinned reassuringly. She was not reckless
now, though she betrayed no hint of real fear.
Suddenly Ron wanted very much to kiss Anna Charles; but he didn't do
it. "We'll think hard, pal," he said quietly, almost apologetically,
"and maybe we'll find a way to reach Titan, yet!"
Thinking--with the sharp, steady stars gleaming ahead. Thinking--with
Saturn and his beady moors growing, getting closer, out of the distance
of space. Danger, coming nearer and nearer. Ron Leiccsen's head ached
with fatigue, with mental strain, with somber doubts. There was no way
to hide this huge, black Earth-freighter from keen Callistan eyes.
No way at all! And yet he had to keep trying. Struggling to build a
scheme to run the blockade and elude the mathematical accuracy of the
long-range atom guns which the Callistans used in space fighting. The
_Barbarian_ was unarmed, and against such guns, within any range less
than two hundred miles, it wouldn't have a chance.
There was still no time to investigate the freighter's unknown cargo.
To do so would have involved the unbolting of massive doors, hasped and
sealed for the voyage, so that there would be no danger that the load
would shift, throwing the ship off balance, and disturbing its flight.
A couple of hours' work would be required to unscrew those bolts,
and replace them again, for safety. And there might be other unknown
dangers, too.
Ron decided to put the question of the cargo's value as a weapon out
of his mind. Arne Reynaud's mysterious idea, in which he still felt
scant confidence, would either fail or succeed--that is, if they got
through to Titan. And there was no use seeking an easily possible
unhappy disillusionment, now. Not when the cargo was the only hope of
Titan Colony! He and Anna were pledged to deliver it, and to scatter it
over and around Leiccsenland. That was their part of the job. If they
accomplished the job, without any hoped-for result against the men of
Achar--well--he couldn't help that.
They were only a million miles from Saturn, when danger finally became
visible. Anna, at the lookout telescope, gave the warning, her lips
atremble.
"I see them," she said. "Bright silvery dots against space. Callistan
ships, maybe fifty of them, ahead and to port about a million and a
quarter miles. They're coming this way, rapidly."
"They must have spotted us already, then," Ron stated with a slow,
surly nod. "Even a black ship reflects enough sunlight to be seen
easily from a long way off, through a telescope."
He moved the guide-levers, heading the ship to the right of Saturn's
colossal, whirling bulk. Titan was to the left of the planet now, and
far out.
After all his thinking, Ron had only one pathetic shadow of an idea to
use against the enemy. By going to the right of Saturn, instead of to
the left, he was avoiding the direct route to Titan, cherishing the
forlorn hope that such action might confuse the Acharians a little, and
perhaps enable the _Barbarian_ to circle the gigantic gaseous world,
and somehow reach Titan from the other side.
The engines of the freighter were throbbing and vibrating hideously,
feeding every ounce of power they could produce, to the gravity plates,
that hurled their propelling beams of reversed force, astern. Speed!
Speed! Ron's fingernails bit savagely into his palms, as he guided the
old freighter on, as fast as he could make her go.
"The Callistan ships are trying to close in ahead of us," Anna
announced from the telescope.
"I guess they see, then, what I'm trying to do," Ron commented
bitterly. "And they're twenty-percent more speedy than we are."
He didn't change his course. To do so would have been useless. He just
kept driving the old merchantman on, determined to make it as good a
race as possible.
* * * * *
Saturn bulked more and more huge in the ship's observation bay. Ron's
course took him straight to the edge of those vast, arcing circular
paths of cosmic dust and pebbles, known as the Rings. Seen from the
_Barbarian's_ angle of approach, the planet's northern hemisphere was
upward.
There, just beyond the stupendous natural miracle of the Rings,
thousands of miles across, Ron piloted his craft along, in a parallel
curve around Saturn. Anna and he had gotten this far, at least, ahead
of their enemies; but what good did that do?
Scarcely half a mile in front of the freighter, a terrific explosion
blazed soundlessly in the voidal vacuum. Then another and another.
A little nearer each time. The Acharian fleet was firing explosive
atomic shells at its prey. In greater and greater numbers, as each
second passed, and with better and better accuracy, as sighting
instruments and ballistics calculating machines improved the aim.
There was no way for Ron and Anna to return the fire. In spite of her
war-like name, the old merchantman carried no weapons. She had been
sent out from Earth on her strange errand too hastily to be fitted with
guns. But even had she been a battleship, her position would have been
hopeless against the odds of fifty to one!
Once the _Barbarian's_ hull rung and shivered like a vast,
deep-throated bell, as an exploding projectile barely grazed her
flanks. It was a matter of moments, now, before a direct and final hit
would be made. The atomic missiles the Callistans were using, were
different in their action from the silent, metal-melting darts employed
in the rifles of the terrestrial colonists of Titan. But they were no
less effective, in their more sudden release of atomic power, because
of that!
Young Leiccsen found himself looking into Anna Charles' brave, misty
eyes. The pale, flooding glow of Saturn, and its sinister Rings,
reflecting the sunlight, streamed through the broad observation bay of
the control turret, and touched her hair, making it give back soft,
golden glints.
"Ron," she said quietly, "I guess this is the end of the trail. But
I wouldn't like to let it be those devils from Callisto who kill
us. I'd rather choose the way to die. Maybe you would, too. There's
another road out of this life, Ronnie. A grander one. You're so bitter,
sometimes. But I think you're like me, in a few things. Shall we
go--that other way? It's so close, so easy, so swift. Look...."
She was pointing through the observation bay, straight into that
awesome flood of reflected sunshine. Not at Saturn itself, whirling
like a giant, streaked orb that filled almost half the spacial sky. But
at the Rings.
No words could ever have described that incredible spectacle--perhaps
the greatest natural wonder in all explored space! A tremendous,
sweeping path, circling in a perfect plane, like a highway of the gods.
Misty at the edges, with scattered, cosmic dust. So near, now, belting
monster Saturn. So calm, so grand, so unutterably beautiful. But deadly.
"A trillion-trillion little moons," Anna said softly, all traces of any
resentment she may have felt for Ron Leiccsen gone now. "Or many more,
even, than a trillion-trillion. Hurtling around Saturn in a sort of
stream at a velocity of many miles per second. Most of them dust, as
fine as powder. Steer the _Barbarian_ into the Rings, Ronnie. Instantly
those countless, tiny meteors will riddle our ship--and us."
For just a second Ron Leiccsen stared at that awful, dazing spectacle.
It made his throat ache with awe. There was a fascination about the
Rings, something unholy that beckoned suicide. But then Ron laughed,
as though he was part of that miracle--a man about to use the tools of
the deities for his own purposes. Two things he remembered, especially.
That the _Barbarian_ was moving very fast. And that it was to the right
of Saturn, considering the northern hemisphere as upward.
"Thanks, Anna," he said cryptically, as more projectiles from the
rapidly nearing Callistan ships blazed close to them. "Hold tight
to your stanchion, because here goes! And don't blame me if you're
surprised at what happens!"
For a moment he adjusted the velocity dials carefully. The _Barbarian_
slowed a little, then swerved, nosing at a gradual slant toward the
glory of Saturn's Rings. No inferno could have held a magnificence
like this! A stupendous, murky, curving ribbon, like an inconceivable
circle-saw, rotating at meteoric speed! So, certain death seemed to
hurtle closer. A matter of mere instants, now....
In a second, the plunge was completed. Within the _Barbarian's_ hull, a
dazing din roared suddenly. Partly like a magnified hailstorm, beating
on a sheet-metal roof. Myriads of dust-grains, and tiny pebbles of
meteoric iron and rock, were colliding with the freighter's hull. It
seemed impossible that any ordinary meteor-armor could turn aside such
an avalanche. Even Ron Leiccsen wondered that they were still alive,
and that their bodies, and the steel shell of their ship were still
unriddled, before he remembered why.
The murk of cosmic powder swallowed them, until the Callistan
battle-craft, and the stars themselves, were lost to view. Ahead,
through the observation bay, only a yellowish, foggy light
showed--sunshine penetrating deep into the hurtling substance of the
Rings. Uncountable billions of minute particles, whirling in eternal
moon-paths around the gigantic if tenuous mass of Saturn.
"They can't shoot at us now," Anna shouted, straining her voice so that
it might be heard above the hail-like clamor, and the gigantic hissing,
soughing sound--like blowing sand--that dinned within the vessel. "They
can't even see to shoot at us, through all this dust! And even if they
dared follow us, they couldn't find us! But how can it be, Ron? All
these meteors are traveling at planetary velocities--maybe twenty or
thirty miles a second! Small as most of them are, they should still
tear through the steel armor of the _Barbarian_, as though it was
butter! How is it that we're still alive?"
Ron was conscious of the bigness of the question, and yet the
simplicity of the answer now.
"Nothing to it!" he shouted back. "We approached Saturn from the right.
It rotates in the same direction as does the Earth--to the right, if
you consider that down lies toward the southern hemisphere, and that
up, of course, lies toward the northern. So do the Rings. With but one
exception, the direction of rotation is the same everywhere, for all
the bodies in the solar system. And now space ships equal and exceed
the velocities of planets and meteors. The _Barbarian_ was moving at
many miles per second, too, paralleling the Rings, and going the same
way. I adjusted our velocity a little, so that the difference between
it, and that of the Rings, is very small. Relativity, Anna. And now
that we've plunged into Saturn's cosmic belts, the difference in speed
gives the meteors only enough relative momentum to make a lot of noise,
when they strike our ship. They can't puncture us."
* * * * *
Anna Charles gasped as she realized the easy truth. "Then we can go all
around Saturn hidden in the Rings!" she burst out enthusiastically.
"Even though we can't see much, we can fly blind with our instruments.
But--" and her hopeful expression became faintly worried again--"we've
got to emerge into free, clear space sometime! To cross out to Titan!
And there the Callistan ships will spot us. They'll have plenty of time
to blow us up!"
Ron Leiccsen chuckled under his breath. It was funny to hear reckless,
daring Anna Charles talk like this now, while he, the cautious, careful
planner, felt a wave of contrasting optimism. Maybe they'd both learned
something from each other.
"Wait and see, Anna!" he yelled back. "You might be surprised again!
Remember, I'm a machinist!" On his lips was a taunting smile of
confidence.
Hours later, having circled Saturn, they dipped out of the Rings. But
as the murk that had concealed them cleared, and the voidal stars
showed bright again, they found a group of Callistan battle-craft not
much more than a hundred miles away, their burnished hulls gleaming
silvery in the faint sunshine.
"Ron!" Anna quavered, with a nervous catch in her voice. "We'll never
make it, now! They'll surely destroy us!"
Young Leiccsen gripped the controls, and put on full speed. His face
was grim, but that crooked smile was there again, tracing a line in his
left cheek.
"That, Anna," he said, "remains to be seen."
Through her telescope, the girl continued to watch the enemy vessels,
gleaming like silver arrows against the hard blackness of space. It was
impossible that the keen-eyed lookouts aboard those warships did not
see the black Earth-craft. And yet they approached no nearer. Their
atom guns did not fire. The _Barbarian_ was continuing on out toward
Titan, quite unmolested.
Anna Charles' beautiful face was alight with puzzled wonder again.
"Maybe I'm dumb, Ron," she murmured. "Just like I was last time. But
I still don't understand why the Acharians neglect such a splendid
chance to finish us."
Ron pointed toward a heavily glazed side-port in the control-turret.
"Look out there," he suggested. "Back at our own hull."
Half rising from the pilot-seat, he was looking, too. They couldn't see
much of their ship's flanks from the little window, but what they could
see of its great, spreading guide-fins was plenty.
Those guide-fins had been deeply black, once. Now they were almost as
bright and shiny as a polished mirror.
"When we were in the Rings," Ron explained, "all those fine meteors
pounding against the _Barbarian_ rubbed off every last speck of her
black lacquer, and gave the metal underneath a swell polish, besides!
I knew that it had to happen, of course. It was just a very ancient
machinist's trick, with a new, cosmic wrinkle. In effect, this old tub
of ours was just sand-blasted, Anna."
"Why, certainly!" the girl exclaimed in pleased startlement. "I should
have guessed it, too! The _Barbarian_ is bright silver now, instead
of black! From a distance the Callistans think it's one of their own
silvery ships! And so, naturally, they don't bother us!"
"Uhuh," Ron chuckled. "So far, so good! Now maybe we can concentrate on
delivering our mysterious cargo, as per Arne Reynaud's instructions.
It's all up to him, now! We're going to find out whether he was crazy,
or, to put it mildly, truly clever!"
* * * * *
Disguised as it was, the _Barbarian_ reached Titan's far upper
atmosphere without trouble. Evidence of fighting could be seen, many
miles beneath. Puffs of explosions in the weak sunshine. Silver ships
flying, spreading final destruction over the richest farm country in
the solar system--richest because of those scattered sun-ray towers and
their secondary, plant-stimulating radiations, and the fact that Bart
Mallory, the inventor, permitted the patent rights to be used only for
the Leiccsenland Colony.
A few of those towers were shattered, now; but most of them still shed
their sunlike brilliance. The Callistans needed them, if conquest was
completed, to maintain the warm climate and the fertility of the
farms. So, in general, they had avoided their destruction. And when,
as now, the sun itself shone during the day, it was useless for the
Earthians to shut off the globes for blackout protection.
[Illustration: _The dread Callistan ships were coming over again, death
spewing from their silver bellies._]
"Our people are still battling!" Anna said happily. "For weeks, with
all radio-communication blocked off by the Callistan static-barrage, we
didn't even know that, for sure! But it's a good sign!"
"Maybe," Ron commented with a shrug. "Anyhow we're here high up in the
atmosphere. Arne Reynaud said 'Scatter the cargo.' That should be easy
to do from this position. So, here's how!"
He pulled a lever which had been an enigma to Anna and to himself
through all their return voyage from Mars. It was the lever which
opened the discharge-vent of the _Barbarian's_ hold.
Peering wonderingly from the side-ports of the control-room, the man
and the girl saw what was coming out of that discharge-vent, and
settling gradually toward Leiccsenland, and the surrounding hills, far
beneath.
A brownish cloud--like chaff--that was all. It swirled astern like
a streamer, in that high, frigid altitude. It scattered, so that it
dissolved from view. Spreading, sinking downward.
"Not very impressive, is it?" Anna asked anxiously. It was plain that
she was doubting Arne Reynaud's mysterious weapon more and more. Just
chaff. What could it ever do against the Acharians, armed to the teeth,
hardy, and prepared for all violence?
"Not very impressive," Ron agreed with a cynical shrug.
But he kept guiding the freighter around and around at that vast
altitude until the discharge-spout had ceased to trail brown, chaffy
dust. The hold was empty. The job, at least, was accomplished, now,
according to exact specifications.
Not two minutes after it was completed, a shell exploded before the
prow of the old freighter--a signal to halt. Many burnished Callistan
war-craft were approaching.
As Ron cut the power in the propelling gravity plates astern, he
looked at Anna. "Well," he drawled, "I guess this is where we stop
being free Earthians."
The girl nodded, biting her lip.
Ron switched on the short-wave radio, which, over a limited distance,
could function, in spite of the static barrage. Over it came harsh
Callistan tones:
"You are blockade runner, perhaps. It is old trick--making ship shiny,
like ours. But from very close, we recognize Earthly shape of your
hull. Terrestrial resistance on Titan almost finished. Please land
outside Leiccsendale."
With so many weapons trained on the unarmed _Barbarian_, there was
little to do but obey orders. Ron guided the ship groundward. But as
it came to rest on the charred soil of what had once been an orchard,
he turned a control dial on which there were red marks--danger
graduations, indicating the limiting point of safety. He turned the
dial well past those points. The engines of the ship howled and groaned
with a fearful overload for a moment. Then there was a dull, grinding,
ripping noise astern, and the crackle and hiss of fire.
When the two Earthians emerged, red flames and black smoke were rising
from the crumpled aft-portion of the vessel. The engines had been
immersed in vats of oil to insulate their power. And now that oil was
blazing. The _Barbarian_ at least would be useless to the enemy, and
the secret of its cargo, whether a dangerous secret or not, would be
hidden in the ashes and the ruins.
* * * * *
But for Anna Charles and Ron Leiccsen, this was the beginning of
slavery. Within a hundred hours of their capture, Callistan heat-rays
and shells and heat-bombs had put down the last resistance of the
terrestrial colonists. They were all either chattels or dead--those who
had not left Titan in time. The colony had possessed enough ships to
remove everyone to Earth; but those that had not been used had fallen
into Acharian hands.
The captives were herded into their barracks--the few half-ruined
farm-buildings which still stood, after the conflict was over. They
were put to work repairing damaged sun-towers, re-cultivating
desolated fields, and helping the Callistan engineers erect the
burnished metal structures which duplicated in architecture the
buildings of that distant moon of Jupiter. Rapidly, Mado Achar--New
Callisto--was being born. Bizarre cactiform vegetation, from the
flowerless mother-world, began to sprout from spores, under the
stimulus of the radiations from Bart Mallory's sun-ray towers.
And among the chattels, the whip was not spared. Frequently a slave,
driven to vengeful mania by maltreatment and overwork, was blasted down
with a heat pistol, by some furry, laughing overseer.
Ron Leiccsen saw Anna Charles only rarely, at assembly roll-call
periods. Always she looked tired from endless hours in the fields.
Still sweet and beautiful, though, even through the grime that covered
her face and tattered clothing. Luckily Callistans were not attracted
to Earth-women.
Once Ron got a chance to talk with her for a few minutes, in the shadow
of a fire-charred warehouse.
"I can't stand it much longer, Ron," she whispered raggedly, her face
strained with horror. "At the end of the last work-period, I saw Joe
Kerrin killed, his head and shoulders burned off with a heat pistol,
simply because he was too weak to carry a heavy box of tools. Kerrin
was an old man, Ron, and a neighbor of mine. And that isn't all! Not
long ago, Ollie Marvick, only eleven years old, was kicked to death
by one of the overseers, because he was too ill to work. Ollie was a
student of mine at school, and one of the few kids that wasn't gotten
out of Titan in time. I tell you I can't endure it, Ron! I'll go crazy!
So--well--some of us have been thinking of making a break for the
hills."
The hills! Ron Leiccsen had seen horror, too; horror that there was
no way to fight, downtrodden and disarmed as the Earthians here now
were. The hills that rimmed Leiccsenland--the borderline region between
the reclaimed territory, warmed by the sun-ray towers, and the still
bleakly frigid portion of Titan, as yet uncolonized. Ron's mind ached
with a fierce, sharp eagerness at the thought of the hills, and all
the wild, self-reliant pioneer blood in him throbbed violently. It was
natural for beautiful, reckless Anna Charles to be forced toward the
idea of escape.
But then Ron looked toward those hills, and at the intervening rows
of silvery Acharian ships resting on the ground. A barrier that stood
in the way! And there were many furry guards pacing, too, their
accoutrements and gaunt, deadly weapons glinting in the glare of the
sun-ray globes.
Ron saw how hopeless it all was. It was all but impossible to get past
those guards, and those heavily armed vessels. And even if you did get
to the hills, what then? Doubtless even now they were the refuge of
many colonists who had fled Leiccsenland before the final surrender.
But sooner or later they would all be tracked down by burnished,
vulture-like ships, flying overhead.
Ron's common-sense conquered. "Don't try to break away, Anna darling,"
he urged seriously. "At least not yet. You see, it's almost sure death.
Remember we're still relying a little on Arne Reynaud's plan, which
we carried out. Maybe it's one of those schemes that takes time to
develop."
Even as he spoke, the usually cynical young machinist was aware that he
was not talking much like himself. Once he'd denounced Arne Reynaud.
But then things had been different. Retreat to Earth, in favor of which
he had argued, had still been possible for everybody, then. Now all
those who had remained behind were prisoners, and you had to make the
best of a bad situation. You had to find hope where you could, even if
its basis was only the word of a dreamy old horticulturist.
He was relieved to see Anna nod agreement before she left him. "Okay,
Ron," she whispered. "I'll try to endure it." Her dark eyes were misty
and strange, as she continued: "And I'll say 'darling,' too, because I
think you meant it as I do. Maybe you're right. I guess we should wait,
before we try to escape to the hills. But I've sort of lost faith in
Arne Reynaud."
Ron kissed Anna then, and let her walk away toward one of the women's
barracks. But all the time he was thinking of her words--lost faith.
And what a tragic let-down it would be, if Arne Reynaud's scheme
proved fruitless. That daring race across the void to Mars, to bring
in the _Barbarian_ and its unknown cargo. The eluding of the Callistan
ships by facing death in a dive into the incredible grandeur of
Saturn's Rings. The sand-blasting by those tiny meteors, changing the
freighter's black-painted hull, the obvious mark of a terrestrial
ship, to a polished, gleaming, Acharian disguise! These things were
all triumphs in themselves. But if Arne Reynaud's brown, chaffy dust,
sprinkled over Titan's surface, failed to turn Callistan conquest into
defeat, then all this luck and effort was for nothing!
Then the Titan Colony might just as well not have been established! The
frozen atmosphere and water of the far-flung world might just as well
never have been thawed! The building of the sun-ray towers had been
futile, then. Anna Charles and he, Ron Leiccsen, might just as well
never have met and quarreled and fallen in love! For Acharians, with
their gray fur and beady eyes, and harsh, mocking, inhuman laughter,
would rule forever here then, and their human slaves would be worked
until the last of them had dropped, or had been destroyed.
So, in increasing bitterness, time passed for Ron Leiccsen, in spite of
his will to be patient. It was daylight, always, of course, with the
sun-globes glowing eternally, just as they had in the old days, before
the conquest. The tiny sun itself would creep slowly across the sky,
and set, as Titan revolved around Saturn. A great, long day, like the
day of Earth's moon; for, like the latter, Titan rotated only once on
its axis, every time it completed a journey around its parent planet.
But all this made no difference. There was no night--only the brief
sleep-periods in the ever lasting light of the Mallory towers.
* * * * *
Ron was transferred from the construction of Callistan apartment
houses, to a job in a newly completed factory. There, under a cruel,
petty old tyrant in dirty fur, Ron toiled in a little cell, polishing
metal plates. Acharians loved burnished surfaces.
Young Leiccsen could talk with no one now, except his boss, Arruj. For
he was forced to sleep at the foot of his polishing machine. And he ate
the food brought to him while the abrasive discs whirled. He had only
this little metal cubicle to live in now, with its heavy door locked,
its single window barred.
"Be faster, Eart'man!" Arruj would growl. "Or shall I beat you more.
Maybe I kill you, this moment, eh." And then Arruj would laugh
uproariously, and seem to wait for an outburst or an attempted assault
that would give him an excuse. Ron could hear the breath wheezing and
whistling in the Acharian's great chest.
It took all the courage, and all the will that Ron Leiccsen could
muster, to check that maddening impulse of murder. But always, so far,
he had controlled himself, because he still clung savagely to hope. But
it was still there, maybe only because he willed its presence.
Arruj wasn't in the room most of the time, for there were other slaves
to supervise in other cubicles in this great factory building. When
Arruj was gone, there was always a chance to climb up on a bench for a
moment, and look out of the barred window.
The building of the Callistan city was continuing, strange, square,
shiny structures rearing bizarrely among the half-ruined houses of
Leiccsendale. The construction work took first place, of course, ahead
of the replanting of the desolated land. But strange, flat-leaved,
flowerless growths from Callisto, were already sprouting before those
gleaming new factories and dwellings.
The distant hills, which seemed forever unreachable now to Ron in
his prison, showed a faint, unfathomable green now, even at their
pinnacles. Young Leiccsen often wondered about this, for the higher
slopes of the hills had been barren before of vegetation. The
twenty-three years since Leiccsenland had been thawed, and Earthians
had come to Titan, had been insufficient time for much of the imported
plant-life to spread to the rocky crests.
During his stolen moments of observation, Ron watched other human
slaves, toiling in some of the fields, clearing away fire-charred corn
and other Earthly crops, to plant Acharian spores. But most of the
cultivated land was still neglected by the conquerors. It showed that
same rough green as the far-off hillsides. Weeds, it looked like. And
yet no weeds had ever been brought to Leiccsenland, as far as Ron knew.
The colonists had always been careful to see that the imported seed was
pure.
Vaguely, Ron wondered if these growths were something from Titan's
tremendously ancient past, when Saturn had been a hot, youthful world,
acting as a warming sun to its satellites. Some vestige of plant-life
preserved here through the frozen eons. But why should such vegetation
appear suddenly, now? Why hadn't its seeds sprouted as soon as
Leiccsenland had been thawed, years ago, if they had existed?
And then, with a sudden inspiration, Ron saw part of the truth. The
brown, dusty stuff that had filled the hold of the _Barbarian_! Seed of
some kind! Arne Reynaud's plan! But what in the name of sense could it
all be about? Those growths out there weren't poison, evidently! Ron
saw both Callistans and Earthians handle them with impunity! What harm
could they ever be to the invaders?
None! With a cold wave of despair, Ron reached this inevitable
conclusion. So this, then, was the final disillusionment! Reynaud had
been a crackpot after all! Like many a hare-brained inventor, he had
dreamed only nonsense! And the struggle to carry out his wild scheme
had been utterly wasted!
Ron Leiccsen sank into black dejection. Once, beyond the wall of the
great factory, he heard a flurry of hisses. Heat-guns and pistols being
discharged. And then human screams of agony--and silence.
Stealing another moment to peer from the window, he saw furry guards
reloading their weapons, after the brief, murderous action. On the
ground, too far off for their personal identity to be revealed, were
burnt and crumpled human corpses. A group of colonists, maddened by
their heartless overlords, must have tried to escape to the hills. And
this was their end.
Had Anna Charles been among them? Quite possibly. Reckless and brave
and impatient as she was, it was almost probable. And Ron Leiccsen
couldn't have found it in his heart to blame her. He would have been
among that bunch of rebels, too, if he hadn't been imprisoned here.
Grief struck home, until his eyes misted and his throat ached.
Arruj came into his cubicle not long afterward. "Very little more time
for you to live, Eart'man," he announced gleefully. "When our city
built, we kill all Eart'folk. No good! Much trouble! Always try revolt!
All things from Eart' no good! Except sun-ray towers. Plants from Eart'
no good! Don't like Eart' plants. Corn, grain, trees, everyt'ing! Look
ugly. No use. We root up--destroy!"
Arruj emphasized his hatred of all that was terrestrial by striking Ron
across the back with his metal staff. Blood oozed, dying the filthy
tatters of Ron's shirt.
But the young machinist remained quite cool. He wouldn't have to curb
that lust for murder much longer! There was a certain guide-bar that
was part of his polishing machine. It could be unscrewed without much
trouble. Next time Arruj came into his cell, he would strike him down,
before the Callistan could reach the pistol in his belt. He would
kill Arruj at least--smash his hideous, fur-draped head, and have the
satisfaction of seeing the petty tyrant's bloody brains dribble, before
the other Acharians killed him, too. Partial revenge! Ron knew now that
there was no need to conserve his own life. For hope was gone.
This time Arruj stayed for quite a while in Ron's cubicle, as he
inspected the machine, and the quality of the work his chattel was
turning out.
"Very, very bad!" he grumbled, commenting on the latter without sound
reason except plain cussedness. "Vaah! It will be great pleasure to see
you die, Eart'man! You are even more useless than the others."
Ron scarcely listened. He was too used to this treatment by now. He
turned his face upward toward the window, toward blue sky and brilliant
artificial daylight. It was like an afternoon in late summer, on Earth.
Suddenly a swift gust of breeze began to blow from across the fields
and from the distant hills. It was refreshing and cool to Ron, as it
filled his stuffy cell.
"Your work is very, very bad, Eart'man," Arruj repeated. "I beat you
more now!"
He raised his staff to strike. But then, half-way up, the end of the
metal rod wavered. Arruj drew in a great, spasmodic breath. An instant
later the wind in his vast lungs was expelled in a mighty sneeze!
Once more he inhaled deeply and spasmodically, and again an explosive
sneeze tore through his wide-flairing nostrils. But this was only the
beginning. Rapidly the sudden fit that had gripped him grew worse, as
sneeze was heaped on sneeze in agonizing, choking succession.
* * * * *
Wonderingly Ron turned to watch. Arruj's pink skin, showing here and
there through his fur, had turned livid. He was strangling. His little
eyes were streaming tears so profusely that he could not open them. His
strange, three-fingered hands clutched at his chest as though he had
inhaled a whiff of lethal gas! He tried to speak, but he could not. His
strangled, bellowing, tortured lungs would not give him time, as one
coughing, sneezing explosion came after another, in a swift, inexorable
sequence.
He tried to grope for his keys, to unfasten the locked door of the
cell and reach the open air. But the effort was lost in a confused,
quaking gesture. He could not keep his hands steady for a second, as
the violent spasm that heaved and tore at his breathing organs, fairly
threw his whole body off balance! The keys jingled to the floor, and he
tried to find them, feeling with his fingers. His streaming eyes were
blinded, so that he could not see. Weakened and choked, he crumpled to
his knees, and sprawled helplessly on his belly. But that smothering,
drowning fit that wracked him, went on.
From this point, the transition from humor to horror was swift. Bloody
froth came to Arruj's lips. He writhed. His sneezes and coughs and
raking gasps became less forceful with exhaustion, but more hideous,
with the bubbling, scratching sound of an unmistakable death-rattle.
All this, Ron Leiccsen watched, almost without moving. He was too
fascinated, too puzzled, too unbelieving to move. But then, as if
remembering a duty, he picked up Arruj's staff. It was quite massive.
He lifted it, and aimed a blow at Arruj's skull. But the blow that
would have pulped the Callistan overseer's gray matter, never was
delivered. Ron felt suddenly sheepish--almost guilty. It was against
best human principle to murder a helpless enemy. And Ron did not need
the word of a physician to know that Arruj was dying.
But how? Why? That was the question! Ron listened. Dimly, within the
great, roaring factory, and beyond its walls he could hear more coughs
and sneezes, like the rattle of great drums. No human chests of Earth
could have produced such noises. Only the great barrel-like thoraxes of
Callistans could ever reverberate like that!
It was a plague, then. Something that must have stricken them all,
suddenly. But how was it possible? They were tough, these beings from
that moon of Jupiter. Earth-germs, for instance, did them no harm. And
there were few native Acharian diseases that their rugged flesh could
not throw off. Still, now, there was a pestilence among them--a killing
horror, swift and strangling! Ron Leiccsen thought of Arne Reynaud, and
wondered.
Then he saw the keys there on the floor, beside Arruj's writhing,
tortured form. He picked them up, chose the one he knew fitted the lock
of his cubicle, and opened the door.
Cautiously he stepped over the quivering, doomed Arruj. In the corridor
outside, along the row of cells, other Callistans sprawled, helpless
and strangled, their efforts to breathe consisting only of horrible,
gurgling gasps. Something must be swiftly inflaming their lungs, until
death by strangulation was inevitable. Like pneumonia or diphtheria,
but far more rapid.
In a daze of wonder, in which hope and optimism scarcely dared to rise,
Ron rushed from one cubicle door to another. It was easy to release
the human slaves who had worked the machines within each cell. All the
doors could be unlocked with the same key as his own.
Startled, unbelieving men collected in the corridor, as he freed them.
Men with great welts from many beatings on their backs, and dull gleams
of confusion in their eyes. Larsen, Schneider, Novak, Lloyde, and a
host of others.
Bart Mallory, the inventor and patent-holder of the sun-ray towers, was
there, too, his once neat beard, which had been clipped in a Van Dyke
fashion, an unkempt tangle, now.
"What's happened, Leiccsen?" he croaked. "We're free! I don't
understand! How can all the Callistans be suddenly ill like
this--dying?"
"I don't know," Ron stammered. "We'll have to try to find out."
Like a bewildered pack the liberated slaves rushed to the factory exit.
There, on the metal steps, a half dozen Acharian guards lay helpless.
One already had ceased to sneeze and strangle. The dark red froth on
his lips had ceased to drip to his bosom, smearing his fur. He was
already dead.
Before the factory exit, the released prisoners halted, staring across
the plain, brilliant in the glow of the sun-towers. Leiccsenland still
looked beautiful, though weird with the addition of strange, gleaming
Acharian buildings, and with a puzzling greenness that had sprouted
from the charred ground, masking the effects of Callistan vandalism,
not so long ago. The conqueror-fleet of silvery ships stood in serried
rows of silent power at the edge of a fire-blackened woods, that was
beginning to show new leaves, once more.
But not one of the invaders, among the hundreds that could be seen,
stood on his feet. All writhed on the ground, in the streets, on the
lawns, and beside the ships, helpless. The stamp of doom was upon
them--sudden, subtle, nameless destruction!
Then one of the Earthmen sneezed. Smith, it was. He was a big, husky
fellow; but now his red cheeks blanched with fear. His unpleasant
thought was easy to understand. That sneeze looked like a symptom. Were
the Earthians, the colonists, to be wiped out by this hellish plague,
too?
Ron looked at Bart Mallory, and Bart Mallory stared back in concerned
doubt. A group of other slaves who had been clearing the unkempt
fields, were coming forward, shouting questions. Ron saw Anna Charles
among them, haggard and tattered, but still alive, still herself.
Impulsively he ran swiftly toward her.
"Anna--honey!" he blurted, as he gathered her briefly into his arms.
"You didn't try to break away to the hills. They didn't kill you! But
now--I don't know what to think. This is Arne Reynaud's scheme come to
fruition, isn't it? But maybe it'll get us, too--this pestilence."
He looked at her carefully. With increasing worry, he saw that her
nose was red. Her long eyelashes were blinking back telltale moisture.
And yet it didn't seem as though she'd been crying or anything. Were
these, then, more forerunners of the plague? Several other men sneezed
violently. And Ron looked, with a touch of real fear, at the motionless
body of a Callistan, lying on the grass nearby, its fur blowing in the
wind. Maybe the Acharian doom was also going to be an Earthian doom.
"Anna--" Ron gasped. That single name, as he uttered it now, was like
some strange plea and prayer to the unknown.
But the girl smiled back at him. "I think that I'm the one who
understands what this is all about this time, instead of you, Ron," she
declared almost tauntingly.
"Then tell us, Miss!" Bart Mallory urged in a half-frantic tone.
Anna glanced briefly and mysteriously at the bulk of Saturn--a pale,
pearly, enhaloed bubble at the horizon--above the now green-tinted
hills.
"Yes, it's Arne's scheme come true," she said musingly. "The Acharians
lived unknowingly with death here, for almost two terrestrial months.
Too few of them had ever visited Earth, even to recognize the enemies
that lurked there for them. And when that nemesis was brought here, it
was far too harmless and unobtrusive in its aspect, for them to notice
or be warned.
"Remember what Arne Reynaud told us, long ago, just before he
was killed by one of those Callistan heat-guns, in front of the
Leiccsendale Community Bank? The time he made his speech, Ron? You
heard him, too, Mr. Mallory. I think I can quote almost his exact words:
"'Me and a brother of mine are probably the only men, Earthian or
Callistan, who realize why Callistans get very sick on Earth at certain
times--though it's simple.... I saw one die once, there, in summer.
It ain't just the density of the air. They can stand that. Something
else. I found out...."
"Well, what is it, then?" Mallory demanded, not meaning to sound
impatient.
* * * * *
The girl glanced at him, then back at Ron, then all around at the
waiting faces. "We all know, don't we," she said, "that we are used
to certain conditions, we Terrestrials from Earth. We get tough and
acclimated. People from other worlds, not used to similar conditions,
wouldn't have the same resistance. Space travel bears this out--Martian
plagues spreading on Earth--Venusians dying of the common cold.
Even an interchange of germs between the terrestrial continents was
dangerous, according to history. Tuberculosis ravaging the American
Indians. Eskimoes killed by the measles. Terrestrial germ diseases
don't bother the Callistans, it is true, because their blood is at too
high a temperature for Earthly bacteria to survive. But there's another
thing--a weak point. The cargo Ron and I brought from Mars in the
_Barbarian_, was the answer."
"Then you guessed, too, what that cargo was, Anna," Ron burst out.
"Seeds of some kind--plants. They're growing elsewhere now. Out there
in the fields, and on the hillsides. But that's all so crazy! Where
can there be any danger in simple, everyday Earth-weeds? Poison
ivy is bad, of course; but even it couldn't kill off thousands of
Callistans--certainly not in a few minutes!"
"Yes, I guessed what the _Barbarian's_ cargo consisted of, Ron,"
Anna returned. "I was working in the fields all the time, seeing
those plants, which had never been on Titan before. Not even many
of the slaves remembered them, though, since we've all been a long
time away from home, and from some of the familiar things, there.
But I'm a school teacher, and I know a little about biology, and the
common afflictions of humankind. But I kept still, because secrecy
might be important. Well, those plants grew like wild-fire, under the
stimulating rays of the sun-towers. And I was praying that they'd hurry
up and blossom. Callisto's a flowerless world, Ron. Probably that's the
big point. With an equal start in their growing, the plants blossomed
all at once. And the winds blew, and the plague came. And now we
colonists are masters of Titan once more. The Acharians can never
threaten us again. Not even if they find a way to face the pestilence
with filter-masks and so forth. For we've got the major part of their
space fleet to protect us. Do you know what I'm talking about now, Ron?
Everybody?"
There was an awed quiet in the listening crowd. Then Bart Mallory
whooped suddenly. "I get it!" he shouted in triumph. "Of course!
Callistan lungs are huge and delicate and entirely unacclimated to one
Earthly condition! Naturally they'd react to it far more violently even
than we do! And now Terra is mistress of this section of space! My
sun-towers must have helped some, by increasing the normal virulence
of the plants. But most of the thanks go to Arne Reynaud, and to you,
Anna, and to you, Ron."
Mallory, the scientist, swept his arms out toward the fields. Waving
there in the bright artificial sunshine, was a tattery green host of
plants, that men of Earth had known and lived with, with considerable
discomfort but scant real harm for countless ages.
Was it just the wind that blew that host, making it sway and undulate
with a simple grandeur, while huge Saturn looked on? Or was the unseen
spirit of Arne Reynaud, the old horticulturist, the old fool, the
dreamer and the wizzard, stirring them, too?
Ron Leiccsen scowled, still lost and bogged down with the enigma, as
were most of the other listeners. "I guess you've got to draw me a
diagram, Anna," he grumbled, shaking his head ruefully. "I know a lot
about machinery and space ships and Saturn's Rings, but it looks as
though this biological problem goes beyond my depth."
Anna Charles smiled a faint, twisted little smile. "We've been through
a lot together, Ronnie," she said wistfully, not caring if the others
heard. "We've quarreled a lot, learned an awful lot together, and I
think at last found that life could be beautiful for us both. So I can
afford to be patient. Now look--"
She bent down. Her little fists clutched a tall, tattery plant, that
grew nearby in the grass. Tugging vigorously, she pulled it out. From
its top, where there was a cluster of homely golden nodules, there
dusted a fine, yellowish powder. Pollen.
Anna's nose wrinkled. Suddenly she sneezed very hard.
"Somebody ought to write some music about this plant, now," she said at
last. "It is commonly known as--Ragweed. Some Terrestrials are terribly
alergic to it, though nothing like the poor Acharians from flowerless
Achar, of course. Its dry pollen, drifting with the summer breeze,
causes more--and more violent--_hay-fever_, than anything else known on
Earth!"
End of Project Gutenberg's The Raiders of Saturn's Rings, by Raymond Z. Gallun
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