Part 1

ICE PLANET

by CARL SELWYN

_He saw the huge ball that was Neptune circle below, like a weak green light bulb._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet May 41. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"If it's going to happen," thought Bill Ricker, "it's got to be quick." Lounging deep in his red-leather chair, he peered out of the port as the sleek space ship streamed through the darkness. He could see nothing outside but a big, humorous-eyed young man who was his own reflection and the pale green globe that was Neptune. The great planet hung like a ghostly emerald in the void, sinister in its loneliness. But bleak, desolate, a snowball of frozen gases, it was hardly the place for an ambush....

"Pretty, ain't she?" said the whiskery old fellow across the aisle.

"Neptune?" Ricker glanced at the sourdough, then followed his gaze down the narrow aisle. "Oh--_her_!"

There were twelve seats but only five passengers. Further down was a tubercular-looking Martian and near the pilot room sat a fat man with a woman. The fat man chewed sleepily on a dead cigar and the woman stared out of the window. They were handcuffed together.

"Ever seen the orchids on Amor?" said Ricker. "Well, she's just as beautiful--and just as dangerous...." She was obviously Venusian but her skin wasn't exactly yellow, he decided. It was golden brown, little different from a deeply-tanned Earth girl.

"They say she shot his head plumb off," said the old codger.

"Yep, she certainly mowed him down."

The sourdough lifted a bony finger toward Ricker's brief case. "I noticed th' tag on yer kit there," he ventured. "Says th' _Planetary Times_. Be you one o' them telenews fellows?"

Ricker grinned. "Shore am, podner," he said.

"Gonna write about this here murderess arriving on Pluto?"

Ricker nodded good-humoredly. "That's my job."

Slowly a faint siren hum penetrated the cabin, not unlike the sound of a power plant. A power plant it was too, the ship digging in full blast as it skirted the pull of Neptune. Ricker turned away from his garrulous neighbor, saw the sea-tinted planet had doubled in size. It was a perfect sphere, without a mark on its surface, a ring of solid hydrogen and helium. A worthless world, thought Ricker; worthless as was half the universe--because the woman in the seat up front had killed a man!

"Molly Borden--Benjamin Adison ..." the sourdough mused, apparently still awed by such infamous company.

"Yep," said Ricker, remembering a line from his last story: "In the flash of a pistol those names became linked forever...." It was odd, he reflected. One was a woman nobody at the trial had ever seen before, the other was a man whose name echoed throughout the spaceways. Benjamin Adison was to stellar travel what Wright had been to terrestrial aviation and in his sixtieth year when, at the completion of his work on planet-warming, he had suddenly become _corpus delicti_ in the perfect telenews story. A stolen secret, a mysterious woman, a person high in the government--it had all the angles. Then Senator Trexel was acquitted, Molly Borden confessed. Now she was journeying to a life sentence on the penal planet.

"Too bad she burned Adison's plans when they trapped her." It was Ricker's self-appointed traveling companion again.

"We lost the resources of four worlds by that little trick," Bill agreed. "The police found enough in the ashes to convince them it was the plans." He smiled to himself slightly, like someone who expected something but wasn't quite sure he could count on it. He was probably the only one in the universe who wondered if those ashes really were the plans. What if they still existed--what if Molly Borden hadn't been working alone after all--what if those plans for an apparatus that could heat a whole planet were in the wrong hands--? Well, it would be a great telenews story at least, worth following this woman all the way from Earth on a hunch....

The Martian began coughing again and Ricker watched him get up, very tall, thin, emaciated. He was typically Martian with his dusty brown face, beaked nose and heavy handsomeness. He walked slowly down the aisle toward the water fountain.

"Funny how Adison's daughter swore she'd seen Senator Trexel leaving her pa's laboratory," continued the sourdough.

"Trexel proved he was somewhere else at the time," said Ricker. "He's got a bad reputation but it's graft--not murder. Dorothy Adison's just a dizzy debutante. She left for a hunting trip immediately after the inquest, couldn't be located for the trial. But with Molly Borden's confession there wasn't--"

It was a sound like a handclap. Ricker glanced up, then stiffened erect.

The Martian stood in the aisle beside the detective and the woman. He stared calmly over his shoulder at Ricker and the sourdough and in his right hand was a pistol leveled generally at them both.

"Please be very quiet," his lips moved in soft, even tones. Then without taking his snaky eyes from them, he spoke to the woman. "The key is in his left vest pocket," he said. "We'll take a small boat and drop out of this before the pilots can be warned."

* * * * *

Ricker stared like he was watching a tele-movie. Molly Borden's face was expressionless as a doll as she fumbled at the detective. Ricker heard a click and the fat man toppled out of his seat into the aisle. His limp body settled awkwardly on the floor, legs under the seat, and from the back of his head welled a dark stain that seeped into the carpet.

"He slugged 'im," breathed the sourdough.

"Shut up!" threatened the beady-eyed Martian. "The first sound of alarm will be your last!" Coughing quietly, he stepped aside to let the woman pass and she moved up the aisle like a robot. Green eyes straight ahead, she did not even glance at Ricker as she passed him.

Ricker realized in open space their scheme would be absurd but here, with the pull of Neptune on their side, they'd fall away in the darkness before the pilots knew what had happened.

The Martian turned quickly as he passed, kept the gun on them. "Open the lock and get ready," he told the woman. She threw the lever on a safety door, entered the boat and reached for the switch to slide the boat's door shut after the Martian was in.

Both doors close simultaneously, thought Ricker; the boat drops when the doors close.

The Martian backed slowly through the door like a great dark crawfish. For an instant his pistol was out of sight.

Ricker sprang from his seat like a panther, dived head first as the doors slid home.

The pistol roared.

But the flash of the gun was an instant behind the hand that knocked it aside. It clattered to the hull of the boat as Ricker bowled the man to the floor.

Both were on their feet like cats. The Martian leaped for the pistol. The woman flattened against the wall.

Clang!

The door clamped shut and Ricker's stomach rushed into his chest. Blood suddenly throbbed in his ears. His feet seemed nailed to the floor. The Martian and the woman swirled dizzily before his darkening eyes. It was like being in an elevator when the cable broke.

They were hurtling down, down through the darkness toward Neptune....

Weak and sick, when his head quit spinning, Ricker struggled to his knees. The first thing he saw was a small instrument panel in front of him. He stared at it a moment, collecting his senses. One register read "ninety-three" but it didn't sink in at first. Then he gasped.

"Ninety-three _miles_!" They'd fallen that far--straight down! No wonder he'd gone out. The normal jump of these boats was only twenty miles before the autobrake took over. The gravity of Neptune--! He remembered then.

His gaze leaped to the Martian lying in a corner of the cabin. The thin fellow moaned slightly and his eyes were closed. His pistol lay beside him and Ricker stepped over, snatched it up as his eyes flickered. When they opened, the gun barrel was pointed at them.

"Tables're inclined to turn when you take a dive like that." He grinned at the bewildered man. The woman, crumpled near the door, stirred and sat up. She stared at them a moment as her ivory face changed from puzzlement to rage.

She glared and finally asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Make the scoop of the century," Ricker's blue eyes twinkled. "I'm Bill Ricker of the _Planetary Times_. I'm going to contact my boss and give him a chat with Benjamin Adison's murderess after her most sensational but unsuccessful escape." The idea was positively brilliant. "I don't think the law'll mind--the Patrol can have you when I'm through."

"You won't get me before a radio," snarled the Martian, his eyes like black marbles.

"Well!" said Ricker, feigning surprise. "The dear boy's publicity shy! Afraid your boss'll be annoyed if you make a fool of yourself?" The question went in the man like a barb. He said nothing, but his swarthy cheeks paled a shade. Ricker's elation soared. "I followed Molly Borden all the way from Earth thinking something would happen." He grinned. "I thought another plane'd attack and try to rescue her but you, my weak-lunged friend, were melodramatic enough. Also, when the Patrol gets through with you maybe we'll know where those _plans_ are."

The woman started, perceptibly. "I burned the plans!" she flared.

"That's what the police thought," said Ricker. "But they thought you were working alone, too, and your Martian chum here has rather disproved that. No, Molly Borden. There's more to the Adison case than came out in the trial. There're others involved. I'm going to find out _who_ if it's my last story."

"You blundering imbecile--!" the woman broke suddenly. But quickly she stopped, clinched her teeth and lowered her eyes. Since Ricker had known her, this was the first time she'd lost that notorious composure and he made a mental note of it. He had the telenews man's objectivity about murderers, millionaires and chorus girls. Molly Borden wasn't a cold-blooded killer to him, nor a most lovely woman. To Ricker she was just a good telenews yarn....

He waved the pistol toward the boat's little air lock. "Get in there, both of you," he ordered. "It'll keep you out of mischief while I contact the _Times_."

The lock was slightly larger than a closet, about one quarter the size of the whole boat. Standing well away from any sudden move, Ricker forced them in, sullen and tight-lipped. He spun a wheel giving them enough air and slid the door on the hissing chamber. Then hands on his hips, he surveyed the interior of the cabin.

From about waist-high on all sides and sloping overhead, the walls were transparent--glassite, a foot thick. At the nose of the triangular shaped room was a control box, instrument panel and a small radio outfit. Ricker stepped over quickly, his pulse pounding with glee.

He checked the auto-pilot; it was idling the boat correctly in its wide driftless circle. Then he clicked on the transmitter, found the New York beam and sat down.

"Ricker calling _Times_, Ricker calling _Planetary Times_...." As he waited, he glanced through the glass, saw the huge ball of Neptune circle beneath him. The planet glowed like a weak green light bulb in the lonely darkness and he shivered to think twelve inches of glassite was all that stood between him and the vacuum of stellar night, the long dead fall to those snows far below....

"_Planetary Times_. What is it--?"

"Gimme th' Chief!" His fingers tattooed excitedly on the panel. "Chief? This's Rick. Got th' biggest story since the ice age. Molly Borden's escaped with a Martian. What? No! Don't start an extra yet!" He paused for breath. "Gimme a Mercury-to-Pluto hook up. I've got Molly and her accomplice _here_--for a personal interview."

"Jupiter's jumpers!"

Ricker had never heard the Chief so gone wild before. "Yep. That's right." He laughed. "Do I get that raise? Just a moment and I'll put Molly Borden on the ether...."

He turned half-way around, half rose from his seat--and froze.

Beside him, outside the glass, was a huge glistening shape, like a space beast swimming in the void. It gleamed bright silver in the light from the cabin and as he stared, mouth open, it THUMPED against the side of the boat.

Panic jumped in Ricker. He almost fell over the instrument panel.

Then he made out a row of darkened ports, a shark-like prow. He realized then slowly. The shadowed bulk outside was a space ship. It showed no lights, no life....

* * * * *

The ship drifted past like a falling leaf, a ghostly hulk floating aimlessly down toward Neptune. As it disappeared below the glass, Ricker caught a number and an insignia.

It was the liner they had just left.

"Chief," Ricker spoke to the transmitter. "Stand by! There's something wrong! The Jupiter-Pluto Liner--the one we were on--it just passed without signaling." He grabbed the controls, eased down on the throttle. Top-jets humming, it was but a moment till the liner came in view again.

Ricker circled the falling ship, saw no trace of a light. Its jets were off but the gyro-brake must be working because it wasn't falling fast. He moved closer alongside, shot out a spotlight. The white beam glowed weirdly on the silver hull, its dead staring windows. He flicked the light through the glass of the liner's control room--and his heart jumped.

It wasn't a Negro or a Mercurian. He could tell by the features which still clung to the face. It was an Earthian, in the stained uniform of Stellar Liners, lying on his back across the instrument board. His arms stuck out stiffly, crumbling hands palm up, and one pipe-like leg swung with the motion of the wallowing ship. His face was black, black as a charred hunk of steak--as if his head had been sprayed with a blow torch....

Ricker spasmodically snapped off the light.

It was several moments before he turned it on again and played it through the ports of the lifeless cabin.

They were all the same. The other pilot lay in the aisle. The detective lolled restlessly near his seat. The old sourdough swayed, upright in his chair--with his head almost burned away.

Ricker clicked off the light, pulled away from the drifting tomb and bent over the transmitter. "Chief?" he said hoarsely. "Everybody on that liner's been murdered. They're black--burned. I don't know how. I think--"

"Do you think you're the only plane with a radio?"

Ricker looked around helplessly as his nerves turned to high tension wire. The very hair on his head tingled. It was a voice vibrating through the walls of the boat itself. An insane metallic voice from nowhere.

Suddenly little dots of fire began to rain over the boat, sparkled on the glass roof. Then a stream of crimson light gashed the blackness outside and a drone of rockets came softly into the cabin. He caught a glimpse of a space ship circling over. The light disappeared in a cascade of sparks again. The plane vanished behind him.

Ricker gripped the panel and his nails whitened. He began talking to the transmitter, very clearly and carefully.

"Chief!" The humming increased as the plane neared again, coming in from behind. "Can you hear me? There's another ship outside. They're using impact phones and it isn't a Patrol boat. I think I'm in for trouble." The little pointer on the transmitter dial quit vibrating.

"We burned off your aerial," chattered the mechanical voice through the walls. "Open your space-door and prepare for boarding. And no tricks! We have a sight on you."

With clenched fists, Ricker gazed into the blackness a moment, then resignedly walked over and opened the lock. The Martian stepped out with a smirk of malicious triumph. The woman's face was expressionless. Of course they'd heard the voice, too, probably recognized it, and Ricker made no pretense of covering them with the pistol. Doubtless, _he_ was the prisoner now.

The Martian coughed behind his hand. "Soon," he said, "I shall repay you for this delay."

"It's all in the game," said Ricker.

The boat trembled as the craft outside clamped to the air lock.

* * * * *

Ricker opened the lock when the order came and a dark, rat-like little man in gray coveralls entered the cabin. He carried a pistol of a type Ricker had never seen before. It looked like a revolver with the barrel sawed off.

"Nice work, Vanger," he greeted the Martian. He glanced at Molly Borden curiously, then with narrow-eyed admiration. Ricker waited stiffly. The Martian motioned to him.

"Watch this man, Gurren," he said. "Don't hesitate to shoot if he tries anything but I'd like to find out what he knows when we land."

_Land!_ Ricker's forehead wrinkled. Where could they land? The nearest habitable planet was the radium-warmed Pluto and prison was what they were escaping. And who were they? Could they explain the liner and its cremated passengers? As he was marched through the lock into the other plane he decided information wouldn't do a corpse much good but he'd certainly find out all he could until he became one....

The ship was egg-shaped, its interior bisected into cabin and blast-engines. Small but powerful, Ricker inferred from the heavy insulation. He was led into the cabin where another man, also wearing coveralls, with ear-phones on his head, sat at the wheel. He was squat, like a tractor. He eyed Molly Borden appraisingly.

"Hello, Hines," said the Martian. "Get rid of that boat out there and let's go."

"Right," said the big fellow, reluctant to take his eyes from the woman.

They cast off, circled the boat and then settled just over it. Hines jerked a trigger-like lever on the wheel. Ricker glanced through the viewplate.

The boat beneath him glowed red. A puff of white smoke--it was _gone_!

God o' Mars! Ricker stared through the glass hardly believing what he'd seen. A little chill tickled the back of his neck. The boat had vanished in clear space, like a magician's trick. This plane must have some sort of heat gun--a disintegrator.

Vanger, the Martian, laughed in a voice irritatingly shrill. "And you tried to interfere with us," he jeered at Ricker's amazement. He pushed him into a seat in a corner of the cramped cabin, then turned to Gurren. "It took you long enough to find us," his tone changed to displeasure.

"The liner circled back and radioed the Patrol," the ratty fellow explained. "We thought we better put it out of the way." He grinned. "We just gave 'em a small dose--cooked 'em. When the Patrol comes, won't they get a headache trying to figure that out?"

Vanger laughed with him till a fit of coughing darkened his face.

Ricker ground his teeth. So that's what happened to the liner! They'd blasted it like the small boat, but with only just enough heat to--. Ricker thought of the friendly old sourdough. The dirty yellow weasels!

Suddenly he sprang up like a whip, lashed his fist into Vanger's mouth. The Martian crashed backward into the instrument panel. Ricker started after him with blind fury in his heart.

Something banged into the back of his head, stunning, blackening.

As he fell, he saw Molly Borden standing over him with a wrench in her hand. Her green eyes glinted with a look he could not define as he wavered into blackness....

* * * * *

"We can't fail!" The words reached Ricker through a haze of pain throbbing in his head. "With all that equipment, it'll be like capturing a rabbit hutch. And won't I just love potting several rabbits I know. The chief of police, the judge, twelve rabbits that were on the jury--I really can't wait!"

Ricker opened his eyes, fought with his whirling senses. The Martian leaned against the opposite wall, the other two men worked silently at the controls. The woman sat on the floor with her legs neatly crossed, a cigarette spiraling toward the ceiling. Her green eyes played the Martian like a piano and apparently the strings of his black heart were attuned.

"But," Molly Borden purred, "you don't know what I went through on that liner, Van. After we passed Uranus and nobody came, I almost gave up. I knew there wasn't a livable place after Jupiter and--well, I had no idea you could have located at Neptune...."

"So!" Vanger glanced toward Ricker, interrupted her. "Our publicity agent's with us again!"

Ricker met his eyes evenly, said nothing. Sinking into his mind was what he had just heard. _Something_ was located on Neptune; something would be like shooting rabbits.... But Neptune was covered with snow a hundred miles deep. Its surface was a bleak hell of frozen, screaming winds. Nothing could hide, or live on Neptune. And equipment--rabbits--?

He turned to the port, looked out as in his mind three facts suddenly and logically came together: Benjamin Adison could warm a planet and his plans were stolen--Neptune was barren with ice and--He saw the planet slowly spreading out beneath them like a convex plain of white glass....

"That's right, telenewsman," the Martian interpreted his movement. He coughed like a dog sneezing. "Take a good look. Out of that desolate waste soon will come the most terrible armada of all history. We shall sweep everything before us--in a blast of white heat. Did you notice what happened to the boat we escaped in? Such will happen to your war planes. Who opposes us will quickly become a crisp black corpse."

"I presume," said Ricker dryly, "that you have Adison's plans. They were supposed to be able to heat a planet but your Neptune still appears cold as ever. Do you care to elaborate on this little scheme of yours?"

"Certainly." Vanger smiled like a cat in the canary's cage. "As to Neptune, you will have a personal showing in due time. As to the Adison Unit--you've seen an application of it destroy a plane in a matter of seconds. This ship is equipped with four guns that can cut through a yard of steel instantly. And the guns are controlled in range, intensity and breadth of contact. They can reduce a space liner to dust at ten feet--or melt a pin-head a mile away. What will you think when you see ten thousand planes like this--and materials for a million?"

"I'll think you're a damn liar," said Ricker, "till I do see 'em. And even then I won't believe you can lick one Patrol boat." He was bluffing and he knew it. Obviously Vanger knew it, too, for he winked at the imperturbable Molly Borden, his nasty smile still there.

Ricker cursed himself. If he'd called the Patrol instead of trying to be smart and contact the _Times_, this would have been nipped in the bud. What if it all _was_ true? He'd seen what this ship could do. He'd also seen those dark crumbling bodies in the liner. And he'd followed Molly Borden on the wildest hunch. What had he run into? And what a story--if he lived to tell it....

"Landing," voiced Gurren from the wheel.

Ricker felt a sinking sensation as the plane slowed its descent. Looking out the port, he saw the surface of Neptune gradually flatten into an endless table of sleek gleaming ice, ghostly blue in the pale light, like a frozen lake in moonlight. They sank closer and the bare expanse swelled to a dim monotonous plain of mirrored shadows. Far out, above the razor-smooth horizon, a dull red ball cast its feeble light across the lonely scene. Ricker felt a twinge of helplessness, home-sickness. That weak orange light was the sun....

Gurren fought the controls. The plane wallowed like a ship in a storm and outside a wind that was almost visible tore at them with grim, icy fingers. That sweep of wind, Ricker knew, was an endless hurricane that scoured the dead surface of Neptune to the smoothness of tin. It was a wind of tinted methane, a five hundred mile gale, eternally....

What live secret teemed on this forgotten planet? What lurking fate awaited _him_--when he'd learned its festering secret--too late?

Bump!