Part 2

We were soon to see. Another Radak appeared, motioning us imperiously to follow him. Neither of these fellows seemed to have any weapons on them, though of course there was no way of telling. Shorty nudged me, muttering something about starting a fight.

"You're crazy," I whispered. "We'd be killed."

"The Great Mind--want see you now," one of the Radaks said. He led us, and we followed him, with the other Radak behind us, out into a dim rock-corridor gleaming with that same crimson phosphorescence.

The banker, Blaine, pushed past me. "I'll attend to this," he said. "This Ruler, whoever he is, he can be bought. I'll get him to take us back to Earth--promise him riches--"

The ragged, cadaverous Mack gave Blaine a glance of contempt. "I guess it's strange to you, not being able to buy everything with your money, isn't it?" he commented.

A distant murmur of voices sounded ahead of us now, and we could see where the light-glow widened as the corridor emerged into another grotto. More Radaks were around us now, herding us with their stiff, jerky movements, jabbering with their strange guttural voices. The murmur ahead of us grew louder; then we emerged from the tunnel.

* * * * *

It was at first almost like being above ground--a huge grotto with red-glowing ceiling high up, dim in the crimson haze. To the sides the precipitous rock-walls widened rapidly out. Ahead of us, down a ragged, undulating slope, there was only a red haze of distance. There seemed to be distant fields, with things growing in them. There was a spindly blue and red stalk-like vegetation growing like trees perhaps to a height of a hundred feet. And off to the left, under the trees, there were mound-shaped little buildings.

We were on a broad level space at the top of the slope. A hundred or more Radaks were here, some crowding at us, but most standing stiff, gazing at us with gleaming, animal-like eyes. And now I saw Radak women and children among them--the women broader-hipped, narrower shouldered. But they were all cast in the same mold--even the children stood at attention, like rows of little statues waiting for something to move them, with only their eyes in motion.

Most of the murmuring voices were further down the slope. A crowd of figures milled about, down there, trying to see us better. A thousand perhaps. The Lei, the slaves of this little world. Certainly they seemed far more human than the Radaks--slim and slight, and some of them as tall as Shorty. They were dressed in simple flowing fabric garments. A bronzed-skinned people, the women with long-flowing hair.

"You come--this way," the Radak said. "Now--you stand still--the Great Mind speak to you."

Ruler of the Crimson Comet. He sat on a sort of stone throne with a leafy canopy over him. Our captors shoved us forward until we stood in a wavering line, all of us staring blankly at this Being whose mentality encompassed and dominated every living human on his tiny world. He looked as though once he had had the aspect of a Radak. But that perhaps was a hundred or two hundred Earth-years ago. He sat now with his shriveled, wrinkled grey body small as a child, encased in a single garment of woven fabric. His round head, devoid of hair, wobbled on a spindly neck. Skin like shriveled grey parchment covered his shrunken bony face giving him a mummy-like appearance of immense age. His shiny, smooth-grey skull seemed bloated by the pulsating brain-tissue within it. It bulged in places, with worm-like knots under the scalp, dilating, quivering, as his huge green-glowing eyes regarded us.

Then he spoke, slowly with a measured, sonorous voice of weird sepulchral tone. And what he said--it was as though here we faced a mental power too great to resist; as though there could be no question but that his thoughts must be our thoughts. I felt it with a sudden strange shudder--a radiance of thought from him, beating down, destroying whatever was within me of independent individualism. And the realization swept me; if I yielded to this radiance--these thought-waves, whatever they might be, then all that was Robert Rance would be gone. I would be nothing but an automaton.

He was saying, "You will listen. There are things I shall explain to you Earthmen. I have sent to Earth and brought you here--because each of you has a knowledge of many things on Earth that I wish to know."

* * * * *

I listened, numbed, somewhat perhaps as though hypnotized. In this Radak ruler's judgment, Blaine the banker, Mack the derelict, Shorty, myself and Vivian--the sum total of the myriad things that were stacked in our brains--were what now must go into his. Certainly a varied, representative strata of Earth-knowledge.

"You want to learn everything we know?" Blaine suddenly said. "How can you do that? Suppose we don't want to teach you? And why do you want to learn it? What are your plans? What I want to know is--do you realize who and what I am, on Earth?"

Of us all, undoubtedly the dominating nature of J. Walter Blaine made him best able to resist that weird mental force that was engulfing us. Yet his manner, his querulous, arrogant questions under these strange, unearthly conditions here on the Crimson Comet certainly were fatuous, childish. Mack gave a short, disagreeable laugh.

"On Earth, okay," Mack muttered. "But you don't amount to much here."

"Money of course, won't mean anything to you," Blaine was saying. "But I have other things on Earth--things you would want. Look here, if you'll send all these people away, I'll have a talk with you. I'll--"

He got no further. It seemed that a look of wonderment was upon the shriveled, ancient grey face. The eyes were darting little green fires. The measured voice said, "I shall attend to you later--" And then droned into the Radak tongue. Four of the squat little men marched upon Blaine, seizing him.

"What in the devil--stop that!" Blaine remonstrated. There was a scuffle beginning. I recall that I shouted,

"Blaine! Take it easy! You'll be killed!"

Amazing power of these squat little men! A claw-like hand was clapped over Blaine's mouth; his flailing arms and kicking legs were pinned by the Radak's clutches; and then they picked him up and carted him away.

"I shall begin with you, Peter Mack," the Radak ruler said quietly. "Come forward, bend before me."

For a second Mack hesitated, flinging Shorty and me a questioning glance. But we had nothing to offer. Then the shabby, lanky figure of the bearded Mack shambled forward, guided by two Radaks until he was standing with head bent before the Ruler. Down the slope the murmurs of the crowd of Lei rose into a babble. The milling throng of slave-people a hundred yards or so from us crowded curiously forward to see Mack better. There was a sudden, low-voiced command from the Radak Ruler. A dozen or more of the squat, grey Radaks ran at the Lei, cuffing them, knocking them back ... I saw a young Lei girl, slim, with flowing white and tawny hair framing her face. The little automaton Radak ran at her, struck her in the mouth so that the blood spurted out.

And through it all, near me a row of Radak children stood stiffly at attention, motionless, with only their round green eyes turning sidewise to watch the scene.

Then the ancient Radak Ruler's smouldering gaze was upon Mack's head. An awed silence fell over the scene as Mack stood motionless. Who shall say by what weird and gruesome process Mack was now being sapped! No one on Earth knows what a thought is. No one can say what is within our brain cells to constitute knowledge. But something is there, something in our conscious and subconscious minds upon which our memory can draw. And we do know that thought is a wave of vibration--an infinitely tiny, infinitely rapid vibration. A thing that at least has a tangible entity. And this Radak's mind now was drawing, sapping from Mack.

A minute. Five minutes. In the tense silence, I felt Shorty clutch at me, heard him mutter: "God, it's weird!"

Mack now was drooping. A mental agony, rasping his nerves now, drawing vitality from him so that he drooped, swayed, and suddenly let out a groan. Mental anguish, with screaming nerves translating it into physical pain.

"It's torture!" Vivian murmured. "Look at him--stop it! Stop it!"

Mack had fallen to the ground, writhing now, mumbling with futile hands clawing at his face and head as though to pluck away that damnable, torturing gaze. But still, calmly, inexorably the green-eyed, monstrous little Radak held him--this shriveled Radak Ruler, avidly, greedily drawing in the knowledge of Mack's past life--those myriad little things of Earth-life stored within Mack's brain. Surely it must have been a torture most horrible.

* * * * *

Shorty and I were starting to leap forward in protest. But Vivian was ahead of us, raging, rushing heedlessly at the old Radak. She almost reached him. She was screaming, "You--you rotten damn Thing--you--"

Her hand went up to strike him. It was all a sudden chaos, just a few seconds. Radaks caught Shorty and me; with almost machine-like strength their arms pinned us. I think I yelled at Shorty not to struggle. In that same second, I saw Vivian's arm with clenched fist trying to hit the Radak Ruler, but a little squat grey figure standing guard there, jumped and seized her. It was an amazing tableau. At the threatened blow, the Ruler shrank back. His whole little body quivered, pulsated; and on the weird, almost unhuman face, there was a look, not of fear, but of strange revulsion--as though the threat of that physical blow were something too horrible to contemplate.

"Vivian! Vivian--you--they'll kill you! Run--Vivian, run--"

Mack was staggering to his feet, stumbling, half falling. But he reached Vivian, clutched her. Both of them were confused, dazed so that all they could do was stand there, holding onto each other. I saw Mack gazing defiantly at the oncoming Radaks--Mack who on Earth probably wouldn't have lifted a hand to help anyone, ready now to fight to protect this girl.

"You will all--stand--away from them." It was the Ruler's quiet, measured voice. And abruptly I saw that his shriveled hand had gone to his belt. A weapon was hanging there--a little pot-bellied black cylinder. His fingers shifted it, seemed aiming it at Vivian and Mack. Shorty and I were struggling, but the Radaks held us. And we were both shouting. Then there was a soundless, almost invisible flash, just a vague spitting glow of light from the little cylinder. It leaped and for a second clung upon Mack and the girl. They seemed to stiffen. Just that; nothing else. Still clutching each other they stood transfixed, and on their faces there was a blankness, a strange emptiness.

"You will walk together, hand in hand," the Ruler's soft voice was droning. "One of my Radaks will lead you to the upper exit. And then you will walk together alone--out into the Realm of the Deathless Things."

He added something in his own language. A little Radak moved in front of Mack and Vivian now. Hand in hand they were standing docile, and then they were following the Radak--following him with slow measured steps, their faces blank, their eyes staring straight ahead of them. Like somnambulists, walking in their sleep.

"Good Lord," Shorty murmured. "That could be the way we were abducted on Earth! Do you suppose--"

* * * * *

His words were cut off. The Ruler had given another command. The Radaks gripping us were pulling us away--shoving us back into the dim crimson tunnel from which they had brought us. I turned to look behind me. The stiff figures of Mack and Vivian still were visible, walking in a trance, following the square, box-like little Radak who marched silently ahead of them. For a moment they wound along the edge of the slope; then the crimson murk of radiance enveloped them and they were gone.

Roughly Shorty and I were shoved along the tunnel by our captors. Then a rock panel slid aside. We were shoved in, and the panel slid closed.

"Well," Shorty murmured. "That's that. We're in a jam, Bob--a damn weird jam."

It was soundless in here, and darker than out in the main open grotto. But still there was that dim crimson glow. We were in a small cave-cell now. The air was hot, fetid, earthy. Presently we could see a little better. There was nothing but black, spongy ground, glowing red rock walls and a rock ceiling close over us. In the dimness I fumbled, feeling the wall, trying to find the crevice of the sliding door panel; but could not.

Time passed. Shorty and I both realized now that we were weak and faint from hunger--not altogether the hunger from missing a meal or so, but the depletion of long under-nourishment. Together we lay down on the fibrous ground. I think at that moment I was more despairing than ever before in my life. I seemed unable to cope with even the thought of what we might possibly plan. I closed my eyes. I seemed just to want to drift into the blessed relief of sleep.

"This is one jam we might not get out of, Bob," Shorty murmured presently.

"Yes, looks so."

Then suddenly both of us were galvanized into alertness. The door-panel was sliding open with a little rasp and an influx of brighter red glow. Outside in the corridor we saw a group of Radaks on guard. But none of them came in. They moved aside and a figure came past them--a Lei girl. Her slim body was draped in a bluish garment of thatch. Her long tawny hair flowed down over her shoulders. She was carrying a slab on which there was food and drink for us.

Then she set the slab on the ground near us. She was between us and the door, almost a silhouette but I could see that her hand was at her lips and her glowing eyes seemed warning us to be silent.

For an instant she leaned close toward me. "I am Tahn--the wife of Taro, the Lei." Her voice barely whispered it. "You say nothing. I come again--with Taro's plan to help you! We would save you and your Earth--if we can!"

Silent, Shorty and I just stared. Then she had turned and was gone. The rock panel slid closed upon us.

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Blaine! Blaine!" Mack called.

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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