Part 1

Phantom of the Seven Stars

By RAY CUMMINGS

Lovely Brenda Carson, scholarly Jerome, pompous Livingston ... everyone aboard the _Seven Stars_ scoffed at the idea of a Phantom Pirate. But I.P. agent Jim Fanning didn't laugh. He knew the luxury-liner's innocent looking cargo was already marked for plunder.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Part of my assignment on this space-flight of the _Seven Stars_ was to watch the girl. That much, at least, wasn't hard. She was certainly easy to look at--a little beauty, slim with a pert, oval little face framed by unruly pale-gold hair. With mingled starlight and earthlight gleaming in that hair, it was like spun platinum. Her name was Brenda Carson. Certainly, she was an inspiring figure to any young man, in her white blouse and corded black and white trousers and her long black traveling cape with its hood dangling at the back of her neck and the cape folds flowing from her slim shoulders almost to the ground.

We were several days out from New York, with Mars, our destination, hanging like a great dull-red ball among the blazing stars in the black firmament ahead of us, when I first noticed that there was anything queer about Brenda. We were sitting under the glassite pressure-dome on the forepeak of the _Seven Stars_, bathed in the pallid starlight. By ship-routine it was mid-evening.

I gestured toward one of the side bull's-eyes of the bow-peak. "Gloomy-looking world, that Asteroid-9," I said.

The little asteroid, one of the many out here in the belt between the orbits of Earth and Mars, was a small leaden crescent of sunlight with the unlighted portion faintly putty-colored. It was, I knew, a world some five-hundred miles in diameter, amazingly dense so that its gravity was not a great deal less than Earth. A bleak, barren little globe. It had an atmosphere breathable for humans; there was water--occasional rainfall; but chemicals in the cloud-vapors poisoned the water for human consumption. The rocks were heavily laden with metals. But they were all base metals, of no particular value. So far as I knew, nobody had ever bothered to settle on Asteroid-9. It was completely uninhabited.

"Asteroid-9?" Brenda murmured. "Is that what it's called?"

Something in my chance remark had frightened her. Her blue eyes as she flung me a quick, startled glance were suddenly clouded with what might have been terror.

Her brother Philip was with us. He quickly said, "Asteroid-9? Somebody said we pass pretty close to it this voyage." He laughed. "Rotten sort of place, by what I've heard. You can have it and welcome."

I must explain that I was--and still am--an IP Man. My name, Jim Fanning. I was assigned as Lieutenant to Patrolship two. I had been on vacation, in New York. My ship, one of the biggest in the Interplanetary Patrol, was now on roving duty somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. Then suddenly an emergency with the _Seven Stars_ had arisen. Chief Rankin had planted me on her. Only the captain knew my identity. To the dozen or so passengers, I was merely a young civilian traveler.

"I've never been to Asteroid-9," I was saying. And I, too, laughed casually, "I agree with you, Carson. Nice place to die in, but I guess that's all."

There was no question but what Brenda was trying to hide her sudden emotion. Terror? Was that it? We said no more about the asteroid; chatted of other things, and we were presently joined by another of the passengers.

"Ah, beautiful night," he greeted us. "I never get tired of the glories of the starways. Good evening, Miss Carson." He nodded smilingly to Philip Carson and me, and drew up a chair with us. His name was Arthur Jerome, well-known to me, though I had never before met him. He was a big, florid, distinguished-looking man of forty-odd; a habitual Interplanetary traveler, who between flights lectured over the earth television networks on things astronomical.

We talked for a while, and then suddenly Arthur Jerome said, "Nobody mentions the Phantom bandit. You know, if anything could spoil my interest in Interplanetary travel, it's to have a weird thing like that come up."

"Phantom bandit?" Brenda Carson murmured. "Is there--is there really such a thing?"

Arthur Jerome shrugged. "Naturally it's had no publicity. But things get out. Those last three accidents to space-liners--you can't hide that sort of thing. And you wouldn't call it supernatural. Or would you?"

* * * * *

The Phantom of the starways! That was the crux of my being here on the _Seven Stars_. Weird, mysterious thing--no wonder the Earth, Mars and Venus governments had not dared let it get any publicity which they could possibly avoid. For three months now, this Earth-year of 2170, mysterious accidents had been happening to commercial space-ships. Non-arrival at destination, and then later found by the Interplanetary Patrol, derelicts in space. Gruesome damn' thing. A ship unharmed, save that its air was gone. As though some mysterious accident had broken one of the pressure valves, or deranged the machinery of an exit-porte, so that the air had all hissed out. Ship of the dead. Everyone aboard lying asphyxiated.

It was eerie.

A "ghost-vessel" attacking the liners? A modern version of the ancient _Flying Dutchman_ legend? Radio newscasters talked of things like that. A vengeful ghost-ship roaming the starways, with dead pirates aboard, bent on attacking the living navigators whom they hated just because they were alive. It made nice gruesome broadcasting to give the television audience the shivers. Supernatural legends easily get support. Particularly from hysterical, imaginative women, or cranks who crave publicity. Reports had come from amateur astronomers who owned fairly decent telescopes that they had seen the wraith of a pallid ghost-ship hovering up in Earth's stratosphere; passengers on liners had hysterically thought they saw the same thing.

A supernatural menace. But no reputable observer had ever seen anything. Our Interplanetary Patrol was completely baffled. And what the public didn't know was that those wrecked vessels--one of them, at least--had shown evidence that it had been hit by an electronic space-gun with a range of several hundred miles, which had broken the pressure-dome and let the air out. And in every case the wrecked ship was looted; the passengers' money and jewelry gone; the Purser's safe rifled.

"Anyway, it's a good thing for us," Arthur Jerome was saying, "the little _Seven Stars_ ought not to be much of a prize for the phantom raider." He grinned, with his hand ruffling his sandy hair. "Let's hope we escape."

The _Seven Stars_ not much of a prize? It was certainly reasonable enough to think that. We had a few Martians in the second-class section, and a few Earthmen passengers; and just an average commercial cargo. That's what anyone would think; and only the captain and I knew differently. Our cargo was anything but average. The boxes, as they had come aboard and been stored in the hold, were labeled as American preserved food-stuffs; technical commercial instruments, German-made prisms, lenses and the like. But in reality those boxes were crammed only with modern electronic weapons of war. It was a shipment purchased by the Martian government which was faced by the insurrection of its wealthy colony on Deimos. They were unusual weapons of exclusive Earth-manufacture. Small, for short-range, hand-use only; weapons to disable, but not injure. The recently publicized so-called "paralysis gun" was one of them. The Martian government, humane at least in battle with its own people, desperately needed this type of weapon in its forthcoming invasion of Deimos to subdue the rebels.

* * * * *

Not much of a prize, our little commercial liner _Seven Stars_ this voyage? Just the opposite! Those rich colonists of Deimos most certainly would pay well to keep this shipment away for Mars! Would news of it have leaked out? Would the Phantom of the Starways attack the _Seven Stars_ for just that purpose? Chief Rankin, of the Interplanetary Patrol, certainly thought it a possibility. He had put me aboard here; and as only the Captain and I knew, my ship--Patrolship-2--had been ordered to join us out here somewhere and convoy us to Mars. Convoy us against an attack by an enemy that you couldn't see!

"The Phantom raider!" Young Philip Carson was echoing Arthur Jerome's lugubrious words. "You suppose there is really any such thing?" I saw him exchange a glance with his sister. He laughed, but it wasn't much of a success.

"I doubt it," I agreed. "So far as I ever heard, those accidents were--well, just accidents. An air-valve can go wrong, you know, and dump the air out of a ship. Air goes quickly, and with a pretty powerful rush, if it once gets started.... Gruesome kind of talk, Miss Carson," I added lightly.

She tried to smile. My heart went out to her in that moment. Her beauty, I suppose; but somehow she seemed horribly pathetic. That mention of Asteroid-9 mysteriously frightened her; and now this mention of the phantom spaceship terrified her even more.

"You're right," Arthur Jerome agreed. "The supernatural is fascinating. Or a thing that you can't see but still can kill you--that's just as gruesome."

"And fascinating?" Philip Carson put in sourly. "Well, it may be to you, but it's frightening my sister. Let's talk of something else."

Then another passenger joined us. That girl was a magnet to men.

"Well, well, Miss Carson," he boomed as he came up. "You are looking very beautiful in the starlight." He sat down with us. His name was Walter J. Livingston--the Very Honorable Walter J. Livingston to give him his official title. He had just been appointed by the President of the World-Federation as Earth Ambassador to the Martian Government; was on his way there now to present his credentials. He was a big, heavy-set fellow, with a mass of iron-gray hair, a ribbon across his ruffled shirt-bosom; and the out-jutting jaw and booming voice of a born politician. Did he by any chance know the contents of the _Seven Stars'_ cargo, this voyage? So far as I had been informed, he did not. I studied him now, and instinctively I didn't like him--possibly because of the extravagant compliments he was paying Brenda Carson.

The talk went on, and presently as I glanced up to the little control tower under the pressure-dome above us, I saw the bulky figure of Captain Wilkes standing there. He caught my gaze and furtively gestured. I excused myself in a moment; sauntered down the narrow side deck, turned a distant corner of the little superstructure. Then I went up to its roof, and forward again. In a moment I was in the control tower.

* * * * *

Captain Wilkes was there, seated alone with his electro-telescope beside him. He slid the oval doors closed upon us.

"Your ship's in sight," he greeted me. "Thought you'd be interested."

Patrolship-2, coming to convoy us. I took a look through the eye-piece of the telescope. Familiar vessel on which I had spent so many months. Its long cylindrical alumite hull, with the pressure-dome over its single upper deck, was painted by sunlight on one side and starlight on the other as it headed diagonally toward us. By the range-finder on the telescope I measured its visual length.

"Ten thousand miles off us," I said to the captain.

"Yes. Just about. Now listen, Fanning--there'll be no contact. It will circle us, close at hand. If the passengers ask you why we need any convoy--we don't want any panic here you know."

What he had in mind about explaining this convoy was never disclosed. He was staring through a duplicate eye-piece, and suddenly his words were checked as he sucked in his breath.

"Good Lord, Fanning--"

I saw it also--a tiny puff of electronic light at the top of the oncoming patrolship's dome. There was nothing else to be seen, I searched the starfield in that second of premonitory horror. Absolutely nothing visible. Just that puff of light where an electronic shot must have struck.

"Fanning--you saw that?" Captain Wilkes murmured.

"Yes."

Another few seconds. It seemed an eternity. And then the Patrolship wavered; drunkenly lurching and slowly turning over! Ghastly silent drama, out there in space ten thousand miles away. We could not see its details; just the tiny image of the ship, lurching, turning end over end.

A derelict in space. My horrified imagination pictured the air hissing out, spewing wreckage and bodies out perhaps. Ship of the dead, all in those seconds. Then it was hanging poised, slowly turning on a drunken axis of its own. The leprous, smashed dome was for a moment visible as it turned.

The Phantom raider had struck again!

* * * * *

My comrades. Thirty of them meeting their deaths out there in that moment. The thought numbed me. Captain Wilkes had leaped to his feet.

"Why--why, good Lord, it got them! And now--us next!"

Our convoy gone. Unquestionably that was because the phantom was after us!

"What are you going to do?" I murmured. "Not tell the passengers--"

"Good Lord, no. Nor the crew. What good would it do? We're not armed with long-range guns--no preparations to make. Only spread panic maybe among my men. Some of them might want to try and persuade me to turn back to Earth."

"And you're not going to do that?"

"Hell, no." Captain Wilkes was a choleric fellow. His ham-like fist crashed down on his desk. "I was told to run this cargo to Mars, and by Heaven, Fanning, that's what I'm going to do. Make a run for it." He swung for his controls. "I can use a greater Earth-repulsion and once we get past Asteroid-9, by a little jockeying I can use that, too. We'll see if there's any damn' phantom-ship going to overtake us."

It was a weird, gruesome feeling, realization that in all probability we were being pursued by something we couldn't see. Something still ten thousand miles away. Could it overtake us? Certainly not in less than a few hours, perhaps not even in a day. And then, would there be a flash of an electronic space-gun, weirdly from its unseen source? The crash of our hull, or our pressure-dome exploding outward; the wild rush and hiss of our air out into the vacuum of space? And then death by suffocation all in a minute or two.

The thing had me shuddering. I must have been murmuring something of my thoughts, for Captain Wilkes retorted:

"If they crash us with a shot they might very easily injure the cargo. More apt to try running in close to us--a boarding party with powered pressure-suits." His fist thumped his desk again. "An' by Heaven, if they try that--you got a gun, Fanning?"

"Yes," I agreed. I had a small weapon of the paralyzer-gun type, efficient at a few feet of range. But of what use against an enemy you couldn't see?

Wilkes presently dismissed me. "You keep your own counsel," he told me. He lowered his voice. "By what your Chief Rankin intimated, there's at least a reasonable possibility that we've some damn' spy on board."

"Well, if that's a fact," I said, "the Phantom won't try cracking us with a long-range gun and killing the spy as well as the rest of us."

"Exactly. That's what I'm counting on. Keep your eyes open and your ears stretched. Report to me anything that looks queer."

* * * * *

I left him presently. Dogged, indomitable old fellow. He was seated grimly at his desk with his astronomical charts as he figured by what ingenuity he could map an emergency course to give the little _Seven Stars_ its greatest speed. The ship was silent as I padded the length of the superstructure roof and went down to the stern triangle. By ship-routine it was now about eleven at night. The Martian Passengers were out of sight, sleeping probably. None of the crew were about, save the man in the aft peak with his small, wide-angle telescope. The wreck of the patrolship was certainly far beyond sight of the naked eye. This stern lookout evidently hadn't spotted it, and in a moment now I knew it would be beyond his range also. The captain and I, doubtless, were the only ones who knew what had happened.

I went forward along the side deck. In the men's smoking lounge, amidships in the superstructure, I heard voices, caught a glimpse as I went past of Arthur Jerome, the television lecturer, and Livingston, the Earth Ambassador to Mars, in there with Green, the ship's purser. Did that mean that Brenda Carson and her brother were still on the forward peak? I went cautiously forward. They were there--the blobs of them, faintly starlit, showed where they were standing together at one of the side bull's-eyes. Upon impulse, instead of joining them, I slid unseen into the shadows of a loading engine.

"Oh, Philip--" The girl's voice was faintly audible in the silence. "I'm so frightened. You think we can do it safely?"

"Yes, of course. I'll make sure--" He lowered his voice and I lost the rest of it.

"When?" she murmured.

"I'll just take a look presently. We're not there yet--closer in a few hours."

What, in Heaven's name, could that mean? Were these two spies, planted here on the _Seven Stars_ by the phantom-bandits? Were they discussing the attack which Captain Wilkes and I feared? Certainly it did not seem so. Young Philip Carson wasn't much older than his sister. Slim, handsome, rather effeminate-looking fellow, with a weak jaw and slack mouth. He wore black and white trousers, somewhat like hers. He and she seemed devoted to each other. Rankin had told me that Philip Carson had a bad record of gambling and bad companions. Was the girl entangled because of him?

My mind went back to the meager details which Rankin had given me. Brenda and Philip Carson came of a cultured and once-rich family in New York. Their father--their only close living relative--had been a research physicist. An eccentric old fellow; he had built a laboratory down on Long Island where, working in secret, he was laboriously experimenting on something. Two years ago the place had exploded. Presumably he had been killed. But in the wreckage his body had not been found; nor was there anything to give a clue as to what he had been doing there.

Had he been building the phantom space-raider? The thought was obvious now. Brenda and Philip had denied knowing, when the authorities had questioned them. And now they were going to Mars, on this of all voyages, and for no reason that they had been able to give. Was the vanished eccentric Professor Robert Carson the Phantom raider? My heart leaped as I heard another fragment from the girl.

"You think you got his message correctly?"

"Yes, of course I did."

"If we can do it safely--Oh, Phil--the location."

"I've got it all figured out, Bren," he insisted. "Even made a little map--got it in the wallet of my jacket."

That stiffened me. I could see the blob of him standing there with her. The folds of his hooded cape, like hers, fell almost to his feet. But his arm held the cape draped a little to one side. I could see his white shirt; he was wearing no jacket. It would be in his sleeping cubby then.

For a moment more I crouched in the shelter of the little loading engine; I caught a few more fragments, but they were not important.

* * * * *

A wallet in young Carson's cubby, with a map in it? I shifted silently backward, reached the side deck and padded aft. The smoking lounge was empty now. The little interior cross corridor of the superstructure was dim and silent. Carson and his sister had connecting rooms, with corridor doors side by side. Cautiously I tried them. They were locked.

In a moment I was out to the side deck. Carson's window was closed; I pulled at the vertical sash and it yielded, slid outward. The room was dim, with just a faint glow of the corridor light coming over the lattice-grille above the door.

I jumped over the sill; landed silently in the room. No need for any lengthy search; his jacket was here, folded on a chair. The wallet was in a pocket. Swiftly I riffled through it, came upon a folded square of notepaper. The map? I was opening it. By the dim sheen of reflected light I could see its penciled scrawl. And suddenly I was stricken by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Someone coming. I jumped on the chair. Through the grille I could catch a glimpse of a cloaked figure coming along the corridor. Carson or the girl--in that second I could not tell which.

But at all events I had no desire to get caught here by either of them. I got back out the window just in time. Aft down the side deck there was the blob of a loitering figure, a big, bulky silhouette. It was Walter Livingston, the Earth-Mars Ambassador. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the dimness as he stood by one of the side bull's-eyes. Was he watching these windows of Carson and the girl? Did he see me? I had no way of telling. I ran forward, ducked around the superstructure corner. The bow-peak triangle was empty; the chairs where the group of us had been sitting were still here.

There was enough light for me to examine the folded sheet of paper I had purloined. It seemed a crude map. A rough, penciled sketch. But a map of what? There were the ragged outlines of what might be intended to represent mountains. The scribbled word: "Andros." A dotted line through what might be a mountain pass. And then a tiny X.

I stared at the thing, puzzled. A few hundred years ago the fabled surface-ship pirates of Earth's romantic sea-history supposedly made maps like this. Maps of buried treasure. Pirates' gold. Were Carson and his young sister after some treasure? Where? On Earth? Mars? Little Deimos? Asteroid-9? That thought leaped at me. Certainly they had shown a queer interest in my chance remark about Asteroid-9. We were not far from it now. Fifty thousand miles perhaps--would pass at our closest point to it in an hour of two. I stared through the bull's-eye beside me. It was down there, diagonally ahead of us--a full-round, putty-colored disk, with the configurations of its mountains and the turgid clouds of its atmosphere beginning to be visible.

But what could any of that have to do with the Phantom raider, or the attack on the patrolship and the impending attack upon us? Surely there was no treasure on Asteroid-9. The treasure, if you could call it that, was right here on board the little _Seven Stars_.