Part 3

"--Jim, you see, we couldn't believe father is a criminal. Captured maybe and forced to operate his ship by these bandits, and appealing to us for help."

Desperate adventure indeed. But they had tackled it; had taken passage on the little _Seven Stars_ which they understood would pass very close to Asteroid-9, this voyage. And they had known completely nothing of the _Seven Stars'_ cargo or of any plot which the raider might have against her! Brenda gasped now when I told her of those angles.

And there were still other angles that puzzled me. "Brenda, have you ever heard of an Earth-criminal called the Chameleon?"

She had not; and when I described his exploits of a few years ago, she was convinced that by no possible chance could her aged father have been secretly doing things like that. Nor Philip either, for that matter. She declared it vehemently, and I believed her. But the man with the metal skull had been on the _Seven Stars_ as stowaway, or spy among the passengers, ship's officers or crew. I had seen him there in young Carson's stateroom.

Brenda, when I was chasing her, had eluded me. "I saw you fighting with somebody at Philip's window," she told me now. "I was going to escape from the ship then."

"Even though Philip was dead, you were going on with your plans alone?"

"Yes, why not?" She smiled her twisted little smile. "Then I saw you fall to the deck. I ran, bent over you. I--I thought you were dead. So I--I ran down to the porte and took off. Philip and I had planned it so carefully. Oh, poor Philip!"

"He didn't miscalculate those air-mechanisms," I muttered. "That damned villain must have been there in the corridor for an instant while I was talking to Kellogg, and shoved the controls--killed Philip."

And I had tried to do the same thing to Brenda! I could only thank the Lord now that I had failed!

* * * * *

The two of us, alone here on Asteroid-9. No food nor water. Perhaps the only inhabitants of this desolate little world.

Abruptly she was gripping me. "Look--Jim--look there!"

I followed her gesture. Up in the leaden sky beyond the looming triple spires of Andros, a tiny speck had appeared. A ship coming down. Breathlessly we watched. In a few minutes it was a little oblong blob.

"It's coming this way, Brenda."

"Yes."

It seemed circling a little. By the look it would land on a small level plateau some quarter of a mile from us. We stared, mute, transfixed, watching.

And then suddenly I sucked in my breath with a new shock of startled amazement. There was something familiar about that cylindrical alumite hull with the curving pressure-dome above it, and those quadruplicate tail-fins.

It wasn't the bandit flyer! "That's the _Seven Stars_!" I gasped.

The _Seven Stars_ unquestionably. We saw her clearly in a moment, as she circled some five miles away from us and headed slowly for the small plateau. Captain Wilkes undoubtedly had changed his mind about trying to make a run for it. With chaos on his ship--his radio-helio wrecked so that he could not summon another convoy--he had headed down here to hide his vessel. And he did not know, of course, that the Phantom raider's base was here! He had brought his little treasure ship into the very camp of the enemy!

"We must warn him, Brenda."

The blob of the little liner dropped from our sight behind a line of broken rock-spires as she settled to the plateau. But we could tell within a few hundred yards of where she had landed. It took us only a few minutes to run there, with the slighter gravity of Asteroid-9 aiding us in our leaps across the intervening little chasms. And then we saw the _Seven Stars_, where she rested placidly on the level surface. One of her lower portes was open, but there were no figures out on the dim rocks.

There was silence inside as we entered the dark little pressure-chamber. As always customary in port, both its outer and inner door-slides were open, admitting the fresh outer air.

There was no one to greet us on the lower level catwalk. Its single overhead light was burning. We passed Kellogg's little cubby. No one was in it. Then we mounted the companion ladder; came to the superstructure corridor.

Queer, this silence. I held Brenda, with my heart chilling, sinking. It seemed suddenly that we were prowling like ghouls. The ship was so cold, so silent. With the ventilating fans stilled, the interior air here was turning fetid. I had an impulse to call out. Captain Wilkes, Controlman Kellogg, Purser Green, the crew, the passengers--where were they all? But abruptly I was furtive, with a slow, horrified terror dawning in me so that in the dim corridor I stood suddenly and turned to Brenda.

"We'd better get back out of here," I murmured. "Something queer--"

"Jim--look!"

We stood frozen, transfixed. At the deck doorway a blob was lying. Captain Wilkes. Dead--suffocated. I swept Brenda away that she might not get a second glimpse of his puffed, mangled flesh where it had burst outward from its own pressure. There had been a vacuum here! Out in space the little _Seven Stars_ quite evidently had lost her interior air!

Ship of the dead! I took only one look at the dimly starlit deck triangle; the bodies lying strewn there. Little group of humans who had gathered there in a last frenzied panic, clinging to each other, falling one upon the other--suffocating, dying.

Nothing but the dead here.

But this tragedy had happened out in space! And we had seen the _Seven Stars_ calmly coming down, gracefully, skilfully landing!

I swung back to Brenda. I gasped, "Good Lord, we've got to get out!"

Too late a realization! I was aware suddenly of a dark glistening shape behind us in the corridor--a man in a sleek tight-fitting black robe. His white face, evil with a leer, grinned at us. Brenda screamed. I tried to defend us from another dark blob that leaped from a doorway beside me. And then something struck my head. I was aware only that Brenda was screaming as I felt myself falling, my senses hurtling off into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

I came at last into a dim half-consciousness in which I realized that I was being carried. I could feel the rhythmic step; and then I knew that I was slung over a man's shoulder and that he was walking with me on the rocks. Other dark forms were beside us. With blurred vague vision I could see the little _Seven Stars_ which we had left.

And near at hand another spaceship had landed now, here upon little Asteroid-9. I was being carried to it. I could glimpse it only vaguely as I hung inert on my captor's shoulder. It was a small ship, smaller than the _Seven Stars_, and of a type I had never seen before--barrel-finned and with a spreading fan-tail, somewhat in the British Earth-design. It rested on the rocks like a long, thin bird, with body puffed out underneath. Over it was the conventional glassite pressure dome, low-slung so that its top was no more than ten feet above the single deck. A dead-black bird. The starlight and mellow Earthlight were on it, but the black metal surface did not shimmer.

My senses wafted away again into another blank interval.... And then dimly my hearing came....

"We're glad to have you, little Brenda. You are a treasure indeed. A woman among us--to cook and sew with woman's duties. Your father will appreciate that. You do, eh Carson?"

Familiar, suave, ironic voice with a rich booming timber to it of assumed graciousness. I knew I had heard that voice before, but with my swimming senses now I could not quite place it. I felt my eyes opening to a blur of swaying outlines.

"You let her alone." The thin frightened voice of an old man. Brenda's father.

The dim scene clarified as my strength came. I was lying on the floor of a little circular control room, with a black shape beside me. And there were three other figures: Brenda, still garbed in her baggy deflated space-suit, with her white tense face staring in my direction; her gray-haired, thin father, in black trousers and black shirt, seated in a little metal chair beside her. And the other figure at the controls--a big, heavy-set man in tight-fitting black garment. Tubelight shone on his florid face. Arthur Jerome, Interplanetary traveler, Earth television lecturer on things astronomical! The man with the metal skull, unquestionably! Notorious chameleon of former years, and now the Phantom Raider!

"This Fanning comes to his senses," a voice beside me growled.

"Ah, so?" It brought Jerome with a leap, and then he bent over me. "So that blow on your head didn't kill you, Fanning?"

"No," I said. "You, Jerome. If only I had known--"

"Quite true," he chuckled. "Hindsight is very easy. And now we have you here. You will be useful, if you have any sense, A member of the Interplanetary Patrol, you should be skilled in many things of our adventuring in space. Romantic life, Fanning. Did you ever read of Captain Kidd, so long ago? One might say I am his modern incarnation. Romantic idea, eh Fanning?"

A little mad, this fellow. I could well imagine it. But a clever scheming, murderous villain for all that. "Much money for you," he added slyly. "I treat all my men well. There are fifteen of us here."

"I like money," I said with an assumption of sullenness. "But there are a lot of things I want to know."

I found that I was still garbed in the space-suit, but my weapon was gone. I was presently allowed to sit up in a chair beside Brenda and her father. But for all my assumption that I could be bribed, it did not deceive the wily Jerome. The two other black-garbed men here were closely watching me.

* * * * *

The Phantom flyer. From here in its tiny control room, it did not seem unusually weird. Its fittings a dead-black metal. Its men garbed in sleek, dead-black, close-fitting fabric suits with black fabric helmets dangling at the back of the neck.

I could see that we were in space. Through the pressure dome the stars were glittering in a black firmament. Where were we going? Jerome had not the slightest objection to telling me. Perhaps in the back of his mind there was the idea that ultimately he could bribe me, make me one of his band of cutthroats, useful to him. He was a genial, triumphant villain now, flushed with his success, pleased to boast of it before his men and before Brenda.

Old Professor Carson had not intended that his children come to Asteroid-9 and try to rescue him. That furtive message he had found opportunity to send was intended to bring the Interplanetary Police. Jerome had discovered that the message was sent. On the _Seven Stars_ he had thrust Philip out through the porte; and had been searching Philip's stateroom, fearing that some incriminating evidence might be there, when I assailed him.

"You were using an X-ray screen?" he jibed at me now. "My metal headplate? Much good will it ever do you now to know that I was the Chameleon. A clever fellow, that Chameleon--but I like the Phantom bandit better, don't you?"

And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to don a pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked the air-valves and let the air out of the doomed _Seven Stars_. Ship of the dead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raider had come with a boarding party. Then the _Seven_ had been taken to Asteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arriving X-flyer, and here we were.

"Headed for Deimos," he chuckled. "How glad they will be to see us! A million decimars of Interplanetary currency, Fanning. You'll want some of it, surely. And then we'll go looking for another adventure. Romantic life, eh?"

I tried, during those following hours, very cautiously to convince Jerome that at heart I might be a villain like himself. Perhaps to some extent, I succeeded. At all events, there came at last a brief interval when the controls were locked and Brenda, her father and I were out on the tiny forepeak in the starlight, momentarily alone. I had found now that a little freedom of movement was given us. After all, there was nothing that we could do, trapped here.

"You know where the exit porte of this ship is?" I murmured.

"Yes, yes, of course." Professor Carson was a confused, dazed old man; his life among these cutthroats for so long now had cowed him. "But what--what do you think you could do?"

In truth I had no possible idea. But if ever a chance should come for escape--

"In the pressure chamber," I whispered, "would there be pressure suits? One for you--"

"Yes. Yes, there are."

A commotion up at the control turret interrupted us. The black-garbed man at the electro-telescope there was shouting. Jerome came running; and we followed him up into the turret. He was grim, but ironically smiling.

"Interplanetary Patrolship off there," he said. "Patrolship-3."

Sister ship of my ill-fated vessel.

"Sighted us?" I murmured.

He shrugged. "Probably. Only three thousand miles away--probably did." His mouth was set into a grim hard line. In his eyes I saw that gleam of fanatic irrationality. "Unfortunate, for them. This little vessel of mine has never been sighted before, you know." His lips twitched with a grin. "You see how we are dressed here? Why, we've even been down into Earth's atmosphere--we've landed and made away without discovery. We'll do that on Deimos. And now this Patrolship--no one on it will ever live to tell that even for a moment they sighted the Phantom raider!"

He turned to an intricate bank of levers, dials and tiny vacuum globes that were ranged on a table here at the side of the control room. Separate from the space-flying mechanisms. The controls of the mechanical electronic invisibility.

"You'll see us go into action now, Fanning. It should be interesting."

He swung the dials. I felt my senses reel with a weird shock. Brenda gave a little gasp. There was a momentary quiver of all the ship; a momentary current-hum. And then silence.

My head cleared; the shock was passed. I gripped the arms of my chair and stared.

* * * * *

A glow like an aura of green radiance suffused the control room. A green glow of unreality throughout all the little ship. I could see it out on the forepeak triangle--the black-garbed figures like wraiths out there in a luminous green gloom. The glassite bull's-eye portes seemed now to have a green film on them. The stars outside were shut away. The transparent glassite dome was spread with the same dull-green opaqueness now. And then I saw, here in the turret walls, in the dome and in the center of each of the bull's-eyes, little holes through which a tiny segment of the starfield still was apparent--windows like dull little eyes puncturing our barrage of invisibility so that we could see outward through them.

Here in the control room the dull radience shone upon Jerome's grinning, triumphant face; it was tinted ghastly, putty-colored by the strange light. And the light glistened on his eyeballs, glowing like phosphorescence--like the eyes of an animal in a hunter's torchlight at night.

Everyone here, the same. And I saw old Professor Carson's face--the face of a dead man. His expression was stamped with his mixed emotions. This, his science of which he had been so proud, perverted now into murderous, ghastly warfare by the villainous Jerome.

Then Jerome moved to his space-flight controls; through the tiny windows in the barrage I could see that our ship was swinging, heading for the oncoming patrolship. Only three thousand miles apart. They would be upon each other in a few minutes.

Jerome's footsteps as he moved across the room faintly sounded on the metal floor-grid. Toneless footsteps in this eerie radiance. Unreal--they might have been tinkling bells, or harsh thuds. All timbre had gone from them so that they had lost their identity completely.

"Not long now, Fanning," Jerome said. "You'll see that ship go to its death." Ghastly dead voice. Every overtone had gone from it. It could have been a man's voice, or a woman's. The voice of a dead thing in a hollow tomb.

"Weird--" I muttered. My own voice the same. And Brenda's, as she murmured something in horror. All dead, indistinguishable one from the other.

Down on the forepeak in the sodden dull-green light, I could see the crew raising the electronic gun-carriages into position now. They were quite evidently of the most modern Edretch type, squat projectors with grid faces fitted into vacuum firing portes on each side of the forepeak. Guns undoubtedly with an effective range of some five hundred Earth-miles.

X-flyer going into action. The crew, with their dead putty-colored faces, moved, silently in the soundless ship. Up here in the turret with us, Jerome's hollow voice was gloating:

"That fool patrolship--they have seen us vanish. They know now who their adversary is. Want to see them, Fanning?"

There was no need of a telescope now. A magnified image of the oncoming patrolship as seen through one of the little barrage-vents on our bow, was spread here on a grid-screen in the control turret. Fascinated with horror, I watched it--the foreshortened looming bow of the patrolship clearly outlined against the black velvet of the firmament. It had seen us vanish, had turned and was heading straight for where it had last seen us! Even as I watched, the image of it was visibly enlarging. A thousand miles away now, probably. But almost in a moment it would be within range!

Then the wily Jerome abruptly swung us sharply. He was still at his gravity-control levers. The starfield rolled sidewise as we turned in a great hundred-mile arc. The maneuver was obvious. The patrolship had marked our position. Jerome quite evidently was not sure what range-guns his adversary had. He was taking no chances that a premature shot, aimed by calculation at where we might be, would strike us.

Patrolship-3 had guns very similar to these which I saw now being erected here on the X-flyer. It could have been a fairly even battle, a test of electronic battery-strength, of astronomical skill, of reckless daring--and yet, against an invisible enemy it could be no fight at all! I knew the commander of Patrolship-3 well. A stalwart, youngish fellow named Rollins. A man of infinite skill, reckless daring. I could picture him now in the turret of his ship, with his mouth set grim and his eyes flashing as he hurtled his little vessel forward. At what? Nothing but an apparently empty starfield from some unknown quarter of which a sudden stab of bolt would leap to strike him! I knew what Commander Rollins was thinking now. He would watch for that first bolt, and if it did not wreck his ship he would fire at the blankness from whence the shot had come. His only chance. An almost hopeless one. And yet he had done his best to hurl himself at us.

* * * * *

We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an invisible soundless wasp encircling it.

One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome.

"Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must not even be a chance of an answering shot."

Maneuvering for the kill. Fascinated, silently I watched as again we were heading for Rollins' ship. And within me a vague, desperate thought was growing: There are things through which one has no right to live. If only I could contrive it.

Jerome was absorbed at his controls, his range-finders and his calculations. My hand touched Brenda's arm where she sat beside me. I whispered:

"Brenda, we may not live through this."

"I know."

"I mean, if we were to die, to help that other ship."

She stared at me, and then at her father. Jerome had called the old man, ordered him to the mechanisms of the vessel's invisibility, where he sat checking the dial-readings of his intricate apparatus.

Briefly, its operation involved three scientific factors: De-electronization, thus to create around any metallic object a barrage of magnetic field of a new type to any previously developed; color-absorption, by which there can be no reflected light from the de-electronized object; and the Albert Einstein principle of the natural bending of light-rays when passing through a magnetic field. In effect then, the total color-absorption into the de-electronized object would make it, when viewed externally, a _nothingness_ to see. A blankness, like an outlined dark hole. But that in itself is not invisibility--merely a silhouette. The background would be blotted out, so that the invisible object would be perceived by the background it obscured. The magnetic field, however, by natural law which Einstein discovered, bends the light-rays from the background, _around_ the intervening object. The background thus seems complete. The intervening object has vanished!

Simple in theory; but it was an intricate little apparatus here which now old Professor Carson was attending. I stared at him as he bent so earnestly over it. His beloved brain-child.

For that moment Brenda tenderly regarded him. And then she turned to me. Her eyes were misted.

"Whatever you think best," she murmured.

Tensely I was waiting my chance. That tiny row of fragile vacuum tubes.

My heart pounded suddenly as Jerome locked his space-controls and darted down to the forepeak to consult one of his men at a gun-range finder. I muttered:

"Brenda take your father and get out of here quickly!" A burly, black-garbed guard was coming in from the turret balcony to watch us in Jerome's absence. I added in a swift undertone: "Go down with Jerome. Find some pretense to help him."

They would escape Jerome's wrath and there was just a chance that they might live through this.

They had only reached the little balcony outside the turret when the guard came in. I was on my feet.

"Sit down," he commanded.

He was between me and the little table where Carson's tiny row of vacuum tubes glowed dull-green. And in that second I leaped, head down like a battering ram. With my skull striking his middle he went backward, spun as he tried to get his balance. And he landed, sprawled forward on Carson's little table.

There was a tinkling crash as the de-electronizers short-circuited. A hiss of neutronic flame which in that second with its half-million ultra-pressure oscillating volts, electrocuted the luckless villain who was sprawled there.

I was down on the floor, crawling in the chaos. Amazing, electronic turmoil. The shock of it swiftly spread around the little vessel; made the senses of everyone on board momentarily reel. I was aware of thin slivers of neutronic fire darting upward from the cooking flesh of the sprawling man's body. Neutronic fire that all in that second of deranged current darted throughout the ship. A split second of flash; but in that second the darting tiny slivers of light-fire everywhere were drinking up the weird green glow. The muffled ghastly, toneless sounds of the ship's interior were brought to life. Down on the forepeak Jerome gasped a startled curse. One of his men fell with reeling senses.

And light was here. Normal celestial light, streaming down through our transparent dome where the blazing firmament of stars was now clearly to be seen. We had lost our invisibility! Gone. Irrevocably gone. At least this combat would be upon an equality! Rollins at last had his equal chance with the Phantom raider!

Patrolship-3 was clearly apparent now through our forward dome. I saw Rollins swing his bow toward us. There was a tiny violet flash from his forepeak. The first shot!

It came like a great violet lightning bolt hurtling at us!

* * * * *