Part 2

I was crouching now in the shadow of the loading engine on the bow-peak, puzzled by my rush of thoughts. Should I take this to Captain Wilkes? Vaguely I realized that perhaps I should, but something stopped me. My own instinctive feelings for Brenda Carson. She seemed somehow so pathetic. Surely she was no plotting murderess. Her brother--yes. But the girl--protecting someone she loved? Was her father really the Phantom raider? His invention an X-flyer endowed with mechanical, electronic invisibility? I knew that such a thing was scientifically possible, of course. But Professor Carson was a frail old man. And my mind leaped back to some other things Chief Rankin had told me. The Phantom was thought to be a notorious Earth-criminal who, a few years ago, had been known as the "Chameleon." A fellow skilled in the art of wax disguise so that none of the Earth crime-trackers really knew what he looked like. He was wanted in both Great New York and Great London for mail-tube murders. Nothing was known of his identity save that he had once had an operation for a fractured skull, where in the back of the skull a big triangular platinum plate had been inserted to take the place of the shattered bone. A criminal surgeon, dying, had confessed that much; had said he had performed the operation. And then he had mumbled something about the Chameleon being the Phantom raider.

Surely such a notorious skilled adventurer could not be old Professor Carson. I decided not to have Brenda and Philip hauled before the captain now for questioning.

* * * * *

Thoughts are instant things. I was crouching there behind the engine loader no more than a moment; and suddenly down the other side deck just beyond the smoking lounge, I saw a moving figure. A slight figure in dark cloak and hood--the bottoms of black and white trousers were visible. Brenda? It made my heart pound. For a second I stared as she ducked into a doorway. I was there in twenty seconds, until I saw the cloaked shadow of her going down a companion ladder into the ship's hold.

Swiftly I followed. Down two eight-foot levels, and then I caught another glimpse of her as she moved into the lower passage. It was a metal catwalk with small cubbies opening from it. The ship's air-renewers, ventilating system; a cubby controlling the hull gravity-plate shifters; other mechanism rooms. She went past them, a furtive little shadow. And stopped at what seemed the door to one of the tiny pressure chambers of an exit-porte in the side of the hull.

"Oh, you, Mr. Fanning? What do you want down here?" The voice in the silence so startled me that I whirled. It was Kellogg, the ship's gravity-control operator. In his shirtsleeves, pipe in hand, with a green eyeshade on his forehead, he had seen me from the door of his little cubby.

"Why--" I murmured. "Just coming down to see you." I turned to join him. And suddenly a buzzer in his control room interrupted him. I stood while he answered it--an audio-tube for direct voice-transmission.

"Yes, Captain Wilkes--" And then Kellogg gasped and clutched at the table beside him; then he whirled upon me, his face chalk-white. "Our radio-helio is smashed! Someone--something smashed it!"

Our little _Seven Stars_ was cut off from Earth or Mars communication! Captain Wilkes had evidently decided to flash a call for help to Earth, and found that the apparatus had been smashed! But even that startling news instantly was stricken from Kellogg and me. Out in the corridor quite near us a low scream sounded! And then there was the sound of air hissing!

"What the devil!" Kellogg gasped.

My gun was in my hand as we ran. There was nothing in sight on the dim little catwalk. The scream had died. The air-hissing stopped.

"Somebody went into the pressure-chamber!" Kellogg muttered. "What in the hell--"

"The pressure-chamber door-slide was closed. I knew the mechanism of these exit-portes. There were four of them in the hull-bottom of the _Seven Stars_--two on each side. There was an inner door-slide; a sealed pressure-room some ten feet square and six feet high; and an outer door-slide. Ordinarily the mechanism was automatic. The outer slide must be closed if the inner one was open. To make an exit, one went into the pressure-room; closed the catwalk door, and with manual control slowly opened the outer slide, so that the air in the sealed room would hiss out into space. After which, with a thirty-second interval, the outer slide would close and the inner one slowly open, admitting the ship's air again into the pressure-room.

"Someone worked the manual controls wrong!" Kellogg was muttering. He gestured to where there was a duplicate set of controls out here in the corridor. "That outer slide opened too quickly!"

We could hear the last of the air rushing out with a wild gush. A stab of horror went into my heart. Brenda Carson in there, trying to escape from the ship--not knowing how to work the controls--opening that outer slide too quickly.

The air in the pressure-room was gone in a few seconds. Then we heard the click of the outer slide closing. The inner door began very slowly opening. With a muttered curse of impatience Kellogg twitched at the control levers here. The inner door slid wide.

We clutched at the catwalk rail to hold ourselves against the gust of wind as the little pressure-room filled. And then we rushed into it. Pressure suits, powered as I knew by tiny gravity-repulsers and a rocket-stream mechanism, stood here in racks. One of them lay here on the floor, entangled with a rack-post so that it had not blown out. Brenda evidently had tried to get into it and failed.

"Look! Good Lord--poor little thing--" Kellogg murmured. He had slid aside a tiny bull's-eye shade. Through it a segment of space outside the hull was visible.

We had only a glimpse of a ghastly body, mangled by the explosion of the pressure within itself, out in the pressureless vacuum of space. It floated past us, some forty feet out. Held poised by the gravity, the nearness and bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Horrible little satellite, already finding an orbit of its own, slowly circling around us.

* * * * *

I staggered back from the bull's-eye. As I rushed back along the catwalk my horrified mind was clamoring with the vague thought: had Brenda operated that pressure-mechanism wrongly? Or had someone on the catwalk, at the controls there, done it?

That thought, too, was stricken away. I reached the forward deck triangle. The bow-peak lookout was calling up to Captain Wilkes:

"Passenger overboard! Brenda Carson! It's Miss Brenda Carson!"

Dead girl in the space-light. I could not look at the horrible thing as it rounded our bow and came slowly floating past again.

"You, Fanning--what's happened? Brenda Carson, he says."

Arthur Jerome stood calling to me from his stateroom door at the bow superstructure corner. He was in his nightrobe with a negligee hastily wrapped around him.

"Yes--" I gasped. "Brenda Carson. She--"

"And I heard something about radio-helio room wrecked." The big, florid television lecturer seemed in a panic. Experienced space-traveler, but he had never run into anything like this before. I wouldn't blame him for his terror. But I had no time for him now. The ship was in confusion. I could hear the Martians, below deck in the bow, shouting with frightened questions. Two or three members of the crew were running up to Captain Wilkes who was outside his turret calling down orders.

I ran down the side deck. One of the excited crew stopped me. "You seen young Philip Carson? Captain wants him."

I shook my head and ran on. Somebody else was calling Carson's name. I mounted the companionway to the superstructure roof. Had Philip Carson vanished? They couldn't find him? Well, what I knew about Philip Carson now I'd certainly tell Captain Wilkes! Suddenly I realized fully that because of Brenda I had wanted to keep silent--but there was no need of that now.

From the superstructure roof, as I ran forward along it, I could see down to the side deck. A cloaked figure there. Philip Carson. I had just a glimpse as he darted into a door under me. A ladder was nearby. My little paralyzer-gun was in my hand as I climbed down the ladder, reached the dark side-deck. The commotion was all up forward; there was no one here at the moment. The corridor door into which Carson had run was beside me. I ran into it, ten feet or so and into a cross corridor. Came to his doorway. It was locked. I ran around to the deck again. His window was near here.

The glassite pane of the window was closed and locked. The inner fabric-shade was drawn down. What was he doing in there? Searching for his map? For other things which might be incriminating?

I had a few instruments hidden in my clothes, tiny devices which we of the Interplanetary Patrol sometimes have occasion to use--a small electric listener and a tiny X-ray fluoroscope screen. The listener yielded the sound of a man's panting breath, his furtive, fumbling movements within the dark little cubby. Then I tried the X-ray, through the fabric-shrouded glassite pane of the window. It shot its invisible, soundless rays through the window into the cubby. The little hooded three-inch screen in my palm glowed with the greenish fluoroscopic X-ray image.

A kneeling skeleton was revealed--the skeleton of a man kneeling in there with his back to me. I stared, and suddenly gasped, with my breath stopped. The back of the skeleton's skull was visible--the image-shadow there was of a different density from the bones of his skull! A dark triangular patch--not bone, but metal! The man with the metal skull! Philip Carson, of notorious Chameleon fame! The Phantom raider! I had him here identified at last! Had him trapped here!

* * * * *

With a blow of my gun-butt I smashed through the glassite pane; tore the fabric-shade aside. This room was dark. I had an instant's glimpse of the dark blob of his crouching figure. There was the whiz of something he threw at me; the tinkling of glass as some fragile little thing struck against my forehead. I recall that my paralyzer ray darted into the dark room. Perhaps it caught him, held him for a second. But my head was reeling; my senses swiftly fading, with a cold sweat breaking out all over me.

And then I was aware that I had fallen to the deck with my gun clattering away. With my last dim thought came the realization that I was fainting. That tiny glass globe which had broken against my forehead--I knew what it was! A little bomb of acetycholine, a weird drug to lower the blood-pressure and cause me to faint. I fought, but it was useless. My senses faded.

Then after an interval I seemed vaguely to be conscious that someone was bending over me. A dark cloak.... Again I knew only blankness; and then slowly my senses were coming back. Weak, dizzy, with my head roaring, my body bathed in cold sweat, I found myself still lying on the dark deck. Perhaps I had been out only a moment or two. I could still hear the commotion up forward. I staggered to my feet; saw the cloaked figure as it ran into the superstructure. Carson making his getaway! I had a glimpse of him again, two levels down on the dim catwalk, and saw him dart into the pressure-chamber. I was too late getting there. The metal pressure-door closed in my face.

But I had him! I could do to him what he had done to Brenda! I started for the manual controls. I could open that outer slide, let the pressure-room air out with a rush before he could get into his space suit, blast him out into space, or suffocate him in the pressure-room.

But I had over-taxed my strength. My blood-pressure was still too low from that accursed drug. My senses were fading again and I sank to the floor. Weakly I tried to call Kellogg. But he wasn't in his little nearby cubby now.

I did not quite lose consciousness this time. I heard the air slowly going out through the outside opening slide. Then heard the click as the automatic mechanism closed it. The corridor slide in another moment, automatically was slowly opening. The rush of air into the little room helped revive me. I got to my feet again; ran into the room. I could see the empty space on the rack where he had taken one of the powered pressure suits and escaped. At the bull's-eye observation porte I had a glimpse of him--a bloated figure in his air-filled suit--a tiny comet with a radiance of rocket-stream like a tail behind it.

The blob of him in a moment had vanished. Where did he expect to go? Diagonally ahead, and far down in the glittering starfield, the round, putty-colored disk of Asteroid-9 was visible.

My strength had almost fully come back to me now. Quickly I got into another of the power-suits. They were a somewhat old-fashioned model, but adequate enough, a double-shelled fabric with electronic pressure-absorbing current in it; air-renewers, and the small power-units. I bloated the suit in another moment; closed the corridor slide. I let the air rush out through the outer slide as quickly as I dared.

And then I catapulted out, not bothering with the rocket-stream but using full gravity-repulsion against the bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Far down, ahead of me, for an instant I could just see the speck which was the fleeing Carson. Over me the bulk of the _Seven Stars_ hung, a great alumite cylinder, receding, dwindled by distance until it was only a tiny speck, lost among the blazing stars.

With the huge, dull-lead disk of Asteroid-9 growing in visual size under me, I hurtled downward, using the asteroid's full attraction now as I sped after the escaping Carson.

* * * * *

Alone in space; a little drifting world of yourself. It is an eerie feeling. I have no idea how long that descent to Asteroid-9 took; one loses all sense of time as well as space, hurtling alone through the starry universe. The _Seven Stars_ long since was gone, vanished in the black illimitable distances of the blazing firmament above me. Head down, with full attraction in the little gravity plates of the padded shoulders of my bloated suit, like a diver I headed, hurtling for the dull-lead surface.

I had picked up velocity swiftly. The great round disk of Asteroid-9 widened, spread, crawled outward and seemed visually coming up. For a time, sunlight was a thin stream on its distant curving limb of mountains. Then I went into the cone of its shadow. At once the look of the weird leaden mountains changed; starlight and earthlight mellow with a faint sheen that struck down through the clouds and tinged the giant ragged peaks with a tinting glow.

The clouds, still far down, were broken in thin stratas here over this hemisphere. The disk had widened now so that presently it filled all the lower half of the firmament; and a visual convexity had come to it. I tried to calculate my velocity by the apparent enlarging of the desolate scene as it rushed up at me.

Where was Carson? Long since, I had lost sight of the tiny speck which had been he. Was I overtaking him? I could not tell. With the leaden glow of the asteroid's surface as a background, I knew I could be quite close to him and still not see him. Undoubtedly he was not using his rocket-stream now; had only used it in starting, for quick repulsion against the ship's hull. I was sure he could not be very far below me unless, during the time which had passed, he had headed in some other direction, departing from a straight, swift descent. Could he drop faster than I was dropping? I doubted it. Unless he was very skilled--or very desperate, holding the asteroid's attraction to a dangerous point. I held my own until I dared hold it no longer. I was in the upper atmosphere now. In every direction, save above me, the planet's dark surface spread out to its jagged, circular horizon.

Then at last I dared not hold the attraction longer. With all the tiny plates in my suit electronized to full repulsion, I began slackening my fall. Still I had not glimpsed Carson. Disappointment was within me. What a long chance was this! A five-hundred-mile hemisphere of utter desolation. No food; no water. And I had no weapons or instruments, save the single little paralyzer-gun which I had snatched from the deck when I recovered my senses. I was beginning to be sorry now that I had so hastily left the _Seven Stars_. No chance of getting back; the die was cast, here on little Asteroid-9 pitted against this resourceful, youthful astonishing Interplanetary murderer.

What was Carson's plan? Escape from the ship had been a desperate necessity for him, of course. And my memory was back to the fragments I had heard between him and Brenda. I could understand them better now! They had planned from the beginning to escape to Asteroid-9! And poor little Brenda, entangled in this criminality with her brother, had left the ship first, and met her death. Memory of the map they had had came suddenly to me. I had it in my pocket now; I tried to conjure what it had looked like. Outlines of mountains; the word Andros. Was that the name of one of the asteroid's mountain peaks? Probably it was. I cursed myself for my ignorance. The Phantom raider probably was based upon this desolate asteroid. A hide-out here, with food and water and possibly with some of the raiders' men living here. And Carson was dropping now to join them.

What chance had I against a layout like that?

But I had no choice now but hurtle downward, trying to check my descent as best I could. For a time, as I came out from under the clouds, with the dark, fantastic surface of naked, ragged little peaks no more than twenty or thirty thousand feet down, it seemed that I had been too brash; I was dropping too fast; never would I be able to check it. I would crash....

* * * * *

But that, too, was an error, born of my momentarily despairing thoughts. I was presently poised, some ten thousand feet up. The highest of the little peaks was no more than half that. They stood in a tumbled mass--jagged needle-spires--rocks and buttes and great round-top boulders, with ravines and gullies between them. Scene of utter, naked desolation, convulsed landscape, frozen into immobility.

And suddenly my heart was pounding with abrupt exultation. Far down, where the starlight and Earthlight bathed a little peak, I saw the speck which was the descending Carson! Just for a second the tiny outline of his bloated suit was clear against the background of a shining rock. Then he dropped into an inky shadow and was gone again.

I tried to mark the spot. A little triplet of spires, standing like sentinels above a small dark valley. Was that Andros, a landmark here? Probably it was.

I was down in perhaps another half hour, with the triplet of spires standing up against what was now a sullen sky of broken leaden clouds through which the starlight and Earthlight fitfully shone. I had landed, by all that I could judge, about half an Earth-mile from where Carson had dropped. Had he seen me coming down above him? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

With my helmet off, and with my lungs panting as they tried to adjust themselves to the weird air, I crouched for a moment in the shadow of a rock, peering, listening. There was nothing. It seemed a dead world, myself its only inhabitant--a silence so utter that my own breath, my pounding heart were roaring in my ears.

I started in a moment, heading along a ridged, fantastic little terrain at the bottom of a shadowed valley. The deflated suit hung in baggy folds upon me; the bulky helmet was folded, hanging down from the back of my neck. Half a mile to where Carson had dropped. Gun in hand I advanced as cautiously as I could, until presently I was following a ragged ditch with the triple spires of Andros looming above me.

Was this where Carson had landed? So far as I could judge, it seemed so. I was tense, alert with the vague, horrible feeling that I was walking into ambush.

Then ahead of me, in a distant shadow, it seemed that there was a faint stir of movement. Soundlessly I melted down to the lead-gray rocks. I could not see the shadow now, but every instant I expected the luminous darkness to be stabbed with a bursting bolt. There was nothing.

Suddenly the stillness was broken by a faint scraping sound. It seemed fairly close, and into the darkness from whence it had come I aimed my ray; pressed its lever.

There was a faint, gasping scream; then a choked silence. I jumped to my feet, holding the paralyzer-gun leveled as it throbbed and quivered in my grip. Got him! He couldn't move. He was rooted there in the darkness, with rigid, stiffened muscles as the ray held him.

I saw him in an instant, the dark blob of him almost merged with the shadows, with his baggy space-suit like my own deflated in folds upon him, and his helmet folded back.

Triumphant, I dashed forward; and then stopped transfixed, amazed. The paralyzed figure, stricken upright here on the rocks wasn't young Carson! Above the folded helmet there was a head of bobbed blonde hair! Brenda! Brenda, not dead! Not that ghastly thing that was a gruesome little satellite of the _Seven Stars_!

I saw her rigid face, with goggling mouth and staring eyes. Brenda mute, stricken by my ray. I snapped it off frantically; called to her as I dashed up. And as the ray released her, I saw her waver; then, with her knees buckling, she sank into a little heap on the ground.

If only I had some water to dash into her face! Frantically I knelt, holding her head, brushing her curls from her damp forehead. The ray, I knew, upon her for so short a time, should not quite do this to her. It was her emotion, her terror which had caused her to faint.

My mind went back to that hooded figure, cloaked, which I had chased in the ship's corridor. I had had a vague indecision, then had decided it was Brenda--and the ship's lookout at the bow-peak had confirmed my fears. But that had been Philip, and it was Brenda whom I had chased that second time, following her out the porte, hurtling into space after her.

"Brenda--"

She opened her eyes presently, bewildered, but she was unharmed.

"Oh--you--I was so frightened."

* * * * *

I held her as she recovered, and presently she was filling in all the grim details of her tragic little story. Whatever her brother Philip's propensities for gambling and bad companions, he had been no criminal. They had lost their father; had been truthful when they said they did not know what Professor Carson had been building in his lonely little laboratory. But they knew enough so that when the Phantom bandit began his mysterious raids, they suspected it was their father's ship; the laboratory explosion merely a blind. He had often mentioned, when they were children, that the dream of his life was to discover and perfect electronic invisibility.

"Albert Einstein of two hundred years ago," she was telling me now. "Father studied his writings and his theories very closely. He said that the secret of practical mechanical invisibility was clearly forecast by Einstein's discoveries."

"And you think now," I murmured, "your father is this mysterious Phantom raider?"

Her little face clouded. Her blue eyes, misty with Earthlight which was striking down upon us now through the clouds, gazed at me with a pathetic appeal.

"We did not know. We--we were afraid so. And then Philip got a message one night--"

Weird occurrence. Young Carson had been on the porch of their Long Island home. From the sky overhead, where nothing was to be seen, had come a little stab of waving white light. A helio signal. From their father? Certainly it seemed so. It told them to come secretly to Asteroid-9. He would be there, at the base of Andros. And so they had come to try and help their father.

"Help him?" I murmured.

"Yes. Oh, Mr. Fanning--"

"Jim is shorter," I interjected.