Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?" Blaine demanded.

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is that, Ratan?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now you damned villain--"

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV

Back in our cave-cell, Shorty and I stared blankly after the figure of the Lei woman, Tahn, as she motioned to the Radak guards who slid our door-panel closed. Again we were alone.

"Well," Shorty murmured. "What do you make of that? The wife of some Lei named Taro, she said."

And that she would come back and try to get us out of here. That her husband had some plan--

Eagerly, Shorty and I waited. Would it be an hour, or a day? Both of us were thinking of Blaine, locked somewhere around here, perhaps in a cell like ours. Or had the Radaks killed him by now? And Vivian and Mack, wandering out there in the Realm of the Things you couldn't kill.

"Guess they're done for," Shorty said, when I mentioned them.

"Unless we can get out there to them--"

Shorty's smile was ironic. "That would fix everything, of course. Don't be an ass, Bob. If we were out there, we'd all be trying to get back. For what? So the Radaks would jump on us and kill us."

It was all so utterly hopeless. But it was queer, that instinct all five of us had, to try and keep together.

The young Lei woman had brought us food and drink. Shorty and I slumped on the earthern floor now and sampled the food. Nauseous stuff, indescribable.

"If it's been weeks since we left the Earth," Shorty said, "no wonder we're nearly starved to death."

But we managed to eat and drink some of it, and then exhausted by the nerve tension of what we had been through, we drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

The rasp of the sliding door-panel jerked us into alertness. I had the feeling that only a little time had passed. The panel slid open just a foot or two, and a figure came in. It was Tahn.

Both Shorty and I were on our feet. "You came as you hoped," I said softly. "We're ready. Just tell us what you want us to do."

She barely whispered, "The Radak guards just now are changing. There is no one outside. We go, quickly."

"Go where?" Shorty demanded.

"To my husband, Taro. He is in a corridor near here. Come now, quickly."

The faintly red corridor outside was empty. Swiftly Tahn led us along it, around several sharp bends, past a cross-corridor intersection. I was tense, expecting every moment that Radaks would leap upon us from the shadows. But so far we had escaped notice, though obviously there were many Radaks near here. Several times we passed the dim oval openings of little grottos, and often there were guttural, chattering voices from within them.

"Won't the guards discover we're gone?" Shorty murmured.

"Perhaps not for maybe much time. I am in charge of you, I bring you food and drink. The guards stay outside, should you try to break out."

Our tunnel was descending now. And suddenly from the dimness to one side, there came a murmur: "Tahn! Tahn--"

A young Lei man was crouching in a shadowed recess. It was Tahn's husband, Taro.

"She has brought you, Earthmen. That is good."

We crouched down with him. He was a youngish fellow, tall, slim and powerfully built. His single draped garment exposed one bronze shoulder. His grey-black hair was chopped at the base of his neck, with a narrow band of bright-colored fabric tied around his forehead. With his high-cheek bones, hawk-like nose and gleaming dark eyes he could have been a stalwart young savage of Earth.

"I want to help you," he was saying. "Your coming here fits my plans, and believe me I have worked on them a long time. Tahn and I, making the Radaks trust us."

"Say," Shorty murmured, "you certainly are fluent with English."

The young Lei's face wrinkled into a smile. "Why should I not, my wife and I? We Lei learn things quickly. Perhaps a different mind-quality from yours, almost at once to absorb what we hear. Ratan--he is next to the Great Mind as leader of the Radaks--he chose Tahn and me to go on the expedition to Earth. We were carefully watched, or we would have escaped to warn you. It was Tahn who took care of you on the way here."

* * * * *

He told us then of the weird Radak-gun, with its flash of mind-current--the weapon which probably just at this exact moment no more than half a mile away in this maze of subterranean corridors, Blaine was snatching from Ratan.... And Tahn told us, too, of the Radak plot to devastate Earth.

"You have some plan?" Shorty murmured.

He told us then that he knew how to get into the Cavern of Machines--a huge, guarded grotto where all the diabolic, giant mechanisms of the Radaks were housed. The power plant of little Zelos, and the source of the purple radiance which was bathing Earth.

"If we can kill the guards and get into the Cavern--only the Great Mind himself--or Ratan--will be there. No one else but those two are allowed there. No one else knows the secrets of the mechanisms to operate them."

"So we just get in and overcome the Great Mind himself," Shorty commented. He gave a mock shudder with an attempt to be humorous. "All right. Figure that's done. Then what?"

Taro's plan was certainly desperate, but at least it promised the possibility of success. "Do you know where the Earthman Blaine is?" I demanded.

Tahn said, "He is in a cave-cell. I am ordered to take him food and drink very soon."

"What weapons have you got?" Shorty asked. "Say, if you could get one of those brain-paralyzing guns--"

Taro shook his head. "Never could I even get near one. The Great Mind always carries one--and so does Ratan. But there is no chance--"

"We must get to Blaine," I said. "And then try and find Vivian and Mack. We've all got to be together--"

We planned it for a few moments more. Then cautiously Taro and Tahn led us to a corridor intersection. "We will hide here," he said, gesturing to another shadowed recess where the ragged rocks of the wall jutted out in an overhang. "Tahn can go best." The young Lei turned to his wife. "Tahn, listen. You get food and drink. You take it to Blaine's cell. There are not always guards perhaps. You watch your chance--"

"Listen!" Shorty suddenly interjected. "Maybe I'm crazy, but there's some kind of commotion around here."

We could all hear it now--a distant murmur of turmoil down one of the side corridors. Taro nodded. "Something is wrong. And Blaine's cell is down that way. You Earthmen wait here! I will go with Tahn. Then we come back to you."

* * * * *

They were gone only a few moments. From a little distance they had stood unnoticed, watching and listening. Blaine had escaped! He had seized Ratan's thought-gun; turned it upon Ratan and one of the guards; had stricken them. And had knifed another guard, and vanished.

"Well! Good for Blaine," Shorty murmured. "He's smarter than all the rest of us put together! And he's got one of those guns! Where'd he go--"

"They think perhaps out to the outer surface," Taro said. "He ran that way."

"To find Mack and Vivian!" I exclaimed. "Well, that's what we want to do. Show us that exit, Taro."

"I will go with you," the young Lei said quietly. But there was no mistaking his shudder and the grim look on his face. "Tahn, you stay here."

"I will go with my husband," she retorted. "Taro, please--"

We took her. It seemed that the commotion at Blaine's cell must have drawn all the Radaks from these other passages. We were not discovered as we threaded our way back, until presently we were ascending a winding tunnel which ended at the crimson upper surface. How long it took us to sight Mack, Vivian and Blaine I do not know. It seemed an eternity of apprehension, as Taro and Tahn cautiously led us along winding rocky defiles and past patches of that weird, fantastic forest. Shorty and I saw none of the monsters. But there were many times when suddenly, without explanation, Taro turned us from where we would have wandered.

Then we were far enough from the tunnel entrances so that we dared talk without possibility that the Radaks would hear us.

"Blaine! Blaine--where are you?"

"Mack! Vivian--are you here?"

It was Tahn who first saw them. We were in a cluster of rocks with a brink ahead of us. I could see lower ground perhaps fifty feet down--a precipitous descent close ahead of us. It chanced that Tahn was leading, and suddenly she turned, gave a cry, and then pointed over the brink.

"There they are! Down there! Look--look at them--"

We crowded to the brink. Fifty feet down this ragged wall, Blaine, Vivian and Mack stood backed against it. An abyss was near them. And in front of them a great crimson, python-like thing was slithering, almost upon them now, with Blaine futilely firing his gun at it!

There was nothing we could do; and for those seconds all four of us stood staring, mute, numbed with horror. The scene on the ledge below us was clear as though on a little stage. The monster in another second would be upon its victims. I saw Blaine throw down his gun in despair. His voice floated up to us.

"Damn thing won't work! Got to--try to run--"

Then, suddenly we saw Mack leap forward, not toward where he might have a wild chance of climbing up our ragged little cliff-wall, but the other way--toward the brink that dropped down to another terrace, between the brink and the monster's slithering length. His intention was obvious--to lead the monster over that other brink after him.... To sacrifice himself so that his companions might escape.

In the chaos of that second we saw Mack get past the monster's head and neck. Its head turned. And then, before Mack could hurl himself down the hundred-foot drop, a loop of the great crimson body lashed out. It seemed that a tentacle whipped separate from the undulating snake-like body--a tentacle that seized Mack, looped around him and flung him into the air.

Just a ghastly second or two as Mack's whirling body came up diagonally toward us in the air, and then fell back, into a ragged cluster of rocks beyond the monster's tail. Horribly we could hear the thud as it struck. For another second the great crimson head of the monster seemed to rear, with swaying eye-beams searching. But Mack's body was hidden by the rock-cluster.

* * * * *

Then, suddenly the gruesome python shape, head down, began oozing over the brink beside it. Flowing mass of protoplasm. It thinned out as it sagged down the hundred-foot drop--thinned until it was a narrow ribbon--a blood-red rivulet of waterfall. Then it was all on the lower level, gathering itself together until in a moment it was a great congealed, quivering crimson ball with the head in the center. For another instant it pulsated; then it bumped and rolled down a ragged slope, reached a little patch of distant vegetation where we could dimly see it spreading itself thinly out.... Spread like a blood-red pool, quiescent, waiting.

With Taro and Tahn, Shorty and I climbed down the ragged little descent, joined Vivian and Blaine.

"He tried to save us," the white-faced Vivian murmured.

"Yes," I agreed. "We saw it."

We found his broken body in the cluster of rocks fifty feet away. He was still conscious but we thought he was dying. One of his arms hung limp. Blood was coming from a head wound. But his pallid face was trying to smile.

"My leg and arm," he mumbled. "Can't move them."

One of his legs undoubtedly was broken. As we told him that the monster had gone his gaze seemed only on Vivian.

"Thought it would kill you, Viv," he muttered. "Didn't want that." Then he fainted. He had been trying to get up on one elbow as Vivian knelt with an arm under his head. Then his eyes closed, and he sagged, went limp.

"We must stop that blood from his head," Tahn murmured. "And then try and get him into one of the tunnels."

Vivian jumped up. "Here's what we need--bandages." She flashed us a little twisted smile as she tore off her waist and skirt and ripped them into strips. "Here--bandages." She handed the strips of fabric to Tahn. Then she grinned at me. "This underdress--not too becoming, is it?" She gestured at the brief undergarment that now partly covered her, and her whimsical smile broadened. "Well this time, anyway, I had a good motive, didn't I?"

Shorty and I carried the still unconscious Mack back to one of the tunnel entrances. And Taro led us to a shadowed, cave-like little place where we laid him down. Good luck seemed with us. We had encountered, so far, no Radaks.