Part 1

SARGASSO OF THE STARS

By FREDERICK A. KUMMER, Jr.

The Spot was the curse of the Universe--a drifting Sargasso of vanished spaceships and soul-lost men.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Haller watched silently as they crowded into the control room. His eyes were slivers of gray granite, but he didn't speak. There was a long moment of silence as the five men, scum of the space-ports, shifted uneasily, their faces strained, tense. Haller frowned; he'd been expecting something like this for the past few days. From now on it would be his nerve against their strength.

"Well?" he snapped, whip-like. "What is it?"

Carlson, the big engineer, shouldered to the fore. His massive frame and sloping skull betrayed his Jovian blood, even as the scars and purple ray burns on his bulging forearm betrayed a checkered, violent past.

"We want to know where you're taking us!" he rumbled. "Seltzsky here, says it's off the regular lanes. If we're not heading for Jupiter, where're we going? We got a right to know."

Icy as outer space, Haller surveyed them. The pilots at Mercis had likened him, since the _Cosmic_ affair, to a living robot, devoid of all feeling, all emotion. Now, as he stared at the sullen crew, this simile was especially apt. His lean, set face held a curious hardness, as if it had been hammered from steel, and one sensed about him a terrible determination, an unswerving singleness of purpose, found in men who pursue a self-imposed duty rather than the call of adventure. Haller's eyes made one think that he had gazed upon all the worlds, all things that lived, and found them dull, futile.

"So you think you've a right to know where we're bound?" he said deliberately. "You'll recall that I chartered this ship, that you all signed on for three months, no questions asked. However," ... he smiled unhumorously ... "since you're so interested, I'll tell you."

Haller turned to the big chart upon the control room's wall, pointed.

"Our present position is about here ... ten days out of Mars and rather off the regular lanes. Our destination is this." He indicated a shaded area forming the apex of a vague triangle of which Mars and Jupiter were the other angles. "This area is known, for want of a better name, as the Magnetic Spot. Ships passing near it report radio disturbances, variations in their instruments. And that's where we're going! Any more questions?"

"The ... the Magnetic Spot?" Seltzsky, the wizened little navigator, cried. "But.... Good God! Every ship that goes near it disappears! Dozens, hundreds of 'em! The _Valerian_, the _Explorer_, the _Io_! Warships, liners, freighters! You're mad! Only two months ago, the _Cosmic_...."

At mention of the _Cosmic_ a bitter flame leaped in Haller's eyes. His hand shot to the atomite gun at his waist.

"That's enough!" he barked. "You wanted to find out where you were going, and now you know! Get back to your quarters!"

Carlson and Seltzsky leaned forward, their savage faces intent, fists knotted. Haller's cold gaze did not flicker. For a long moment the tension was like a dark bubble, growing, growing, as it approached the breaking point. Suddenly old Barger, the quartermaster, laughed.

"You're licked!" he grated. "Just as I said you'd be! I'll take one _man_, like Cap'n Haller, to a dozen blustering bullies like you!" He touched his cap, submissively. "To the Magnetic Spot or to hell, sir, if you say so! Come along, you lily-livered space-rats! Back to your stations!"

And then Carlson leaped, his face contorted with rage. Haller's hand gripped the atomite gun, jerked it from its holster, but before he could fire, the engineer's huge fist crashed against his jaw. One moment's glimpse, he had, of Barger going down under the assault of the other spacehands, and then the world went black.

* * * * *

Steve Haller came to, to find himself in the closet-like chart room. His hands were bound, and his jaw ached. Barger lay opposite him; the grizzled old quartermaster appeared to be still unconscious. Haller struggled to his knees, peered out of the small observation port. Space ... silent, intangible, unknown! Stars crawling painfully across the black void, and no one knew what mysteries lurking in the vast reaches between worlds. Like the Magnetic Spot....

Haller turned from the port, his face more like steel than ever. No chance of helping Barger as long as his hands were tied. The ship was silent, and without apparent motion in spite of the speed she was making; it gave one the impression of falling through a dark bottomless pit. Impossible to tell how long he'd been out, but they should be nearing the Magnetic Spot. He swore helplessly. Might have known that crew of space-rats would turn yellow, mutiny. Not that he blamed them so much, after the tales that were told about the Spot. Hundreds of ships, in the course of the past two centuries, had entered it, some fleeing meteor storms or enemy ships in time of war, others deliberately, in hopes of learning its secret. And none had ever returned. The whispered yarns told in spacemen's dives were lurid in their speculations about that strange unknown area.

Haller's thoughts turned to the _Cosmic_, and his eyes grew tortured. Fay Carroll had been aboard the liner. Fay of the sleek, bronze hair, the laughing blue eyes, the curved red lips that were scarlet scimiters, stabbing at men's hearts. Reckless, madcap, with just enough of the devil in her to add piquancy to her charm. And now she was gone. He, Haller, had been to blame. He'd radioed her from Jupiter to meet him there, and she'd taken the first out-going ship, the _Cosmic_. And the _Cosmic_, driven off her course by a meteor storm, had last been reported on the outskirts of the Spot.

Haller moved restlessly, straining against his bonds. The lines about his mouth deepened as the old self-accusation returned to plague him. If he hadn't sent Fay that radiogram, urging her to come to Jupiter, she'd be alive today. For months that one thought had beat like a rocket-blast through his mind. It had changed him from a gay, happy-go-lucky space-pilot to a living robot, had driven him to resign from Trans-Jovian, sink his savings, the money he'd hoped to spend on a home for Fay, in chartering this old tub, the _Lodestar_, and setting out on this vain hope. He'd recruited his crew from the space-dives of Mars, loaded the ramshackle tramp with fuel, and headed for the Magnetic Spot. Not that he'd believed there was any chance of finding Fay, but he'd felt that if he could discover the secret of the Spot, he'd have done his bit toward atoning. Now, thanks to the mutinous crew, even that poor consolation was denied him. Yellow scum of space, without enough guts to venture into the unknown area!

A click of the chart room door drew Haller's gaze. Carlson appeared in the entrance, his great hands gripping an atomite gun, a broad grin on his brutish countenance.

"All right, you two," he grunted. "Come on out! We're going to have a little bull session! Up, you _molat_!" He prodded Barger not too quietly with the toe of his boot.

The quartermaster groaned, swayed to his feet. Dazed, he followed Haller out into the control room. Seltzsky, Wallace, and Kindt stood grouped about the navigator's table, their faces flushed with triumph. A bottle of fiery Martian _tong_, half-empty, stood before them.

"Okay," Carlson barked. "Now you listen to us! If you think we're going into the Magnetic Spot, you're nuts! But long's you're so anxious to see what it's like, you and Barger can go, in one of the life rockets! We'll take this packet to Jupiter, sell it, and whack up the dough! And you can run around the Spot in the life rocket to your heart's content, while your fuel holds out!"

"Life rocket!" Barger growled. "You dirty dogs! They don't carry enough fuel to get us a quarter of the way back to Mars! You can't...."

Carlson laughed, deep in his hairy chest.

"Right!" he said. "We'll be rid of both of you! An unfortunate accident, o' course. We'll be so sorry when we reach Jupiter! We'll think of you cruising around the Spot until you run out of tri-oxine!" He motioned to the companionway. "We got the life rocket all ready! Get going!"

Haller glanced through a port at the bitter darkness of space. Sent out in a life rocket! No chance of even reaching the ship-lanes in one of the little cylinders! Doomed to drift without control in the void until lack of food, oxygen, brought death!

"Come on!" Seltzsky dug a gun into his back. "Step on it!"

"Wait a minute!" Haller's gaze shifted to the control panel. Suddenly he laughed. "So you're heading for Mars after you get rid of us? Going to try it without instruments?"

"Without instruments?" Seltzsky's beady eyes swung to the illuminated board, and his face went white. The gravity compass and spaceometer were swinging back and forth crazily until they seemed like metronomes!

"The controls! They've gone haywire!" Carlson dropped the bottle of _tong_, made a dive for the radio. "We'll call Mars, pick up a beam." His voice trailed away. The screen of the televisor was a haze of fantastically dancing dots, the speaker gave off a fierce and uninterrupted crackle of static!

"Beginning to enjoy yourselves?" Haller queried lazily. "That's how it got the name of the Magnetic Spot! You waited just a trifle too long before putting the ship about!"

"Huh!" Carlson sprang to the controls. "The forward rockets'll throw us in reverse! Once we're out of the field, the radio and dials'll come back to normal!" He tugged at levers and the stuttering roar of the forward rockets shook the ship, while through the observation port they could see red flame enveloping her nose.

* * * * *

Slowly Carlson drew back on the lever, to ease the shock of deceleration. The cabin was silent, tomb-like, the pressure of braking squeezed the breath from them. Long minutes passed, as notch by notch, the big half-breed drew back the lever. Speed dropped from the _Lodestar_ until it merely crept across the heavens. Now the forward rockets were open full, and in another moment the ship should have lost all forward momentum, commenced gathering speed in reverse. Minute after minute passed, but the _Lodestar_ continued on ahead at approximately landing speed. Sweat broke out on Carlson's sloping brow.

"Rockets on full!" he muttered. "And she's still going forward! We ... we're caught in some sort of current, being drawn along."

"Into the Spot!" Haller cried. "Might as well take these ropes off Barger and me, we're all in this together! And if you hadn't slugged me, you might not be in this mess right now!"

The four mutineers were thoroughly cowed, sober, now, their coarse faces drawn with fear. Suddenly Seltzsky gasped. The pocket of his coat was bulging out as though a live thing were in it! He reached down, drew out a pocket knife ... and the knife showed an amazing inclination to move toward the front of the ship! Seltzsky had all he could do to hang onto it; invisible strings seemed to be trying to tug it from his hand! The others, too, were finding key-rings, metal buckles, drawing toward the front of the ship. A cloud of instruments from the navigator's desk flew forward and plastered themselves against the front wall of the cabin! Carlson's gun popped from its holster, crashed against the wall, stuck there!

"It.... It's screwy!" Kindt whimpered. "It ain't human!"

"Simple!" Haller laughed unhumorously. "Magnetism! Magnetism stronger than any ever imagined! It's got the ship in its grip!" He twisted his bound hands. "Let us loose, you fools! We're all in the same boat!"

With an effort Seltzsky cut the two men's bonds. A moment later as he relaxed his grip, the knife clanged against the forward wall of the cabin. At that instant, Carlson, peering through the glassex port, gave a fierce, terrified cry. Ahead and below them, weird in the light of the flaring red rockets, was a rocky rubble-strewn plain! Only an instant's glimpse of it, Haller had, before the loud, grinding crash, throwing him heavily to the floor!

* * * * *

It was some minutes before the stunned Haller picked himself up. The _Lodestar_ was bumping about, tossing, like a ship at sea. A scraping, crashing sound filled her hull, and the roar of the exhausts sounded like continuous thunder. Barger got unsteadily to his feet and staggered to the controls.

"It ... it's a planetoid of some sort!" he muttered. "The magnetism holds us down, but the force of the rockets is grinding us forward over the rocks! It'll rip open our plates!" He made a grab for the rocket-control, but the rolling, tossing motion of the _Lodestar_ balked him, throwing him against the wall.

Suddenly Haller, peering through the port, gave a cry of wonder. The blinding glare of the forward rockets, driving them in reverse across the rubbled plain, prevented him from seeing anything nearby, while further off, the darkness hung like a pall. In the distance, however, a line of light had become suddenly visible ... pale, orange light, stretching across the close horizon! Brighter and brighter it grew, as the shuddering, bumping vessel ground over the little planetoid's strangely rough surface.

"What ... what is it?" Seltzsky muttered. "It's like a great fire across half of this crazy world!" His face showed fear.

Haller stared, then realization gripped him. They were on the unknown world's darkside, and the line of light indicated its sunside.

His face cleared.

"Sunlight!" he exclaimed. "That's the day side of this chunk of rock! Leave the rockets on, 'til we reach it, Barger! Another mile won't make much difference now, and if we can see where we are, we may be able to do something about it!"

Barger nodded doubtfully and the _Lodestar_ continued to grind ahead toward the line of sunlight. The four mutineers had lost all their bluster; cringing against the wall, they gazed at Haller as though expecting him to find some way out of this mad place. They had been brave, out in open space, but now, face to face with the unknown, they instinctively sought his leadership.

Onward the _Lodestar_ ploughed, held down by the strange magnetism, driven forward by her rockets. At the edge of the dawn-like light, however, there came a staggering shock, as the vessel glanced against a mammoth boulder, and one of the stout glassex ports starred, and then shattered.

"God!" Carlson gave a rising, bubbling cry of terror. "Broken! Our air...."

But there was no hiss of escaping air, no awful suffocation. Haller, who had torn off his coat to stuff into the gap, paused, eyes narrowed. A strange sharp odor had permeated the control room, and he felt an odd exhilaration.

"Air!" Kindt muttered. "Air! Thin, but with a high oxygen content! It's safe out there! Safe!"

"Right!" Old Barger cried exultantly. "We can go out, have a look around!" He snapped shut the flaring exhausts, sprang quickly toward an airlock. "Come on! Let's go!"

"Wait a minute!" Haller turned to the wall against which the atomite gun had been held. Now that the magnetic center was beneath them, the collection of iron and steel objects had fallen to the floor. With an effort Haller wrenched the gun free, thanking his stars that only the trigger and recoil mechanism were of steel. Even so, the weapon, drawn groundward, seemed to weigh pounds. Gripping it, Haller opened the massive doors of the airlock, swung through.

The sight that greeted his gaze defied comparison. The entire surface of the little world was deep with uneven, jagged rocks, roughly spherical in shape. Some of vast size, larger than a spaceship, some no bigger than marbles, they appeared to have fallen like hailstones upon the asteroid's surface, covering it to an unknown depth. Peering between two of the larger stones, Haller could see a crevasse of appalling deepness, and below it, more of the loose rounded rocks. How large the original planetoid was, he could not imagine, but it was evident that for millenniums its magnetic attraction had been collecting about it meteors, most of which have a high ferrous content, drawing them to it and increasing its size. The little world was like a spider ... a spider of space ... catching all ferrous objects in its magnetic field, sucking them to it, fattening on them! Meteors, spaceships, iron-permeated cosmic dust ... all were drawn inexorably to it!

Queer as was this great top-layer of meteoric stone, it received only a passing glance from the crew of the _Lodestar_. Their gaze was fixed on the gleaming, cylindrical shapes that lay scattered over the rocky, gray plain. In the weird half-light dozens of them could be seen, large and small. Spaceships! Spaceships of every size, sort, and description! The surface of the tiny world was littered with them, some half-buried beneath meteoric stone, some hopelessly wrecked, some, like the _Lodestar_ intact.

Haller and his companions stared in awed wonder at the scene. Space-craft of every type, every era. Great liners, all burnished chrome and glass; sleek cruisers, heavily armored, their big ray-guns peeping through open ports; rusty, battered freighters; old vessels of the design of a century, two centuries before, with their archaic wind-vanes and detachable rockets. The names inlaid upon their sides were keys to countless mysteries of the void. Here was the long-lost _Tycho_, vanished off Jupiter with a billion dollars' worth of polonium in her holds; here, the ancient _Explorer_ which had headed for the outer planets two hundred years before, and never returned; here, the battle-cruiser _Valiant_, long since given up for lost, and upon which the last remains of Commander Lane, hero of the Venusian wars, must lie. Ship after ship, venturing too near the Spot, caught in its magnetic field, drawn to the tremendously magnetized surface of this grasping, spider-like little world.

"The Isle of Lost Spaceships!" Barger gasped. "Great Cosmos! Must be hundreds of 'em, scattered over the surface, caught by the chunk of lodestone that's at the center of these ferrous meteors!"

Haller nodded.

"Steel ships and magnetic field," he said somberly. "The asteroid proper, within this layer of steel and iron it's attracted, must have tremendous power. Still, even back in the 20th century they had alloys which, when permanently magnetized, could do fancy tricks. A piece the size of your thumbnail would support two hundred pounds. Plenty powerful. And this planetoid must be of similar stuff." He grinned crookedly. "Seems as if the secret of the Magnetic Spot's solved. Not that we'll ever get back to tell it. We're caught like the others." Haller glanced at the battered, dust-covered ships strewing the rubbled plain, and then suddenly the set, robot-like look faded from his face. Pale, tense, he stared at a big liner that bulked against the horizon.

Wheeling, Haller sprang into the ship, returned with a pair of powerful field-glasses. For a long moment he focused them upon the vessel when he spoke, his voice shook.

"It's the ... the _Cosmic_! And Fay...." Abruptly he spun about, barking orders. "I'm going to find out if anyone's left alive aboard her. Barger, you and Kindt'll come with me! You others stay here and keep watch over the ship! No telling what dangers we're liable to run into in this screwy world! All set? Let's go!"

Followed by Barger and Kindt, he set out toward the wrecked liner. The going was rough, uncertain, over the great jagged meteors. They were forced to leap from rock to rock, skirt huge meteorites. Small stones rolled and slipped under their feet and once Barger fell through a space between two of the dark ferrous rocks, was saved only by gripping a projecting ledge, hanging on with torn hands until the others dragged him up to safety.

* * * * *

Sliding, stumbling over the rubble, Haller kept his gaze on the _Cosmic_. The liner was badly battered, her nose crumpled as if she had crashed on landing. Haller forged ahead grimly through the gray half-light of the twilight zone that lay between darkside and sunside of the mad little world. Past ship after ship they toiled, rusty freighters, queer century-old exploring craft, gaunt skeletons of vessels half-buried in the débris.

No signs of life were visible aboard the _Cosmic_ as they drew near. Haller's face was a strained mask.

"Cap'n!" Barger paused, his gray-stubbled face drawn. "Look! Out there!"

Haller turned, staring, but there was nothing to be seen except the shattered rocks, the desolate, silent ships.

"Well?" he said sharply. "What was it?"

"Thought I saw something moving over yonder," Barger muttered. "Queer-looking figure that was human and still wasn't. Nerves, I guess, or this damned shadowy light."

"Sure. Nerves." Haller moved ahead impatiently. What would he find aboard the _Cosmic_? What had happened to those on the wrecked vessel?

The silent, dust-shrouded liner loomed above them, now. One of her airlocks was curiously fused, blackened, and nearly twisted from its massive hinges. Haller seized the flush-sunk ring bolt and, followed by his companions, drew himself into the ship.

The _Cosmic's_ main saloon was a scene of desolation. The crash landing had hurled furniture, bric-a-brac, luxurious decorations into a jumbled heap. Amidst this shattered débris lay several gaunt skeletons, clad in the uniform of the Trans-Jovian line.

"Funny!" Kindt muttered. "Look!" He pointed to the atomite guns clutched in the bony hands. "Why guns?"

"Mutiny, maybe," Haller said with grim emphasis. "Common failing, it seems! Let's go on!"

They moved along the companionway, toward the rear of the ship. Dark, silent, there was something eerie about the deserted vessel. Like a ghost ship, it seemed, a weird metal tomb. Already rust was beginning to flake the walls, and a moldering smell of decomposition filled the air. The footsteps of the three men echoed hollowly along the dank corridors, and in the light of Barger's _astralux_ torch, grotesque shadows slid along the walls. Death, decay, hung like a pall about the _Cosmic_ and Haller, thinking of Fay, was a tight-lipped specter.

"Kind of gives me the creeps, this packet," Barger muttered. "We...." He broke off, listening. "Did you hear something just then? Like soft footsteps?"

"More nerves," Haller grunted. "Come on!"

Onward they went, examining staterooms, engine-rooms, galley. All at once Haller began to realize that things were missing from the ship. Here, a skeleton stripped of its garments; there, a bed minus its mattress and covers; there, sections of wire, lighting equipment, removed. Reaching the ship's storeholds, they found the shelves swept bare of food.

"She's been cleaned out," Barger said hoarsely. "Looks like the survivors took everything they might need, lit out for parts unknown."

"Maybe," Haller was doubtful. "But from the number of skeletons, there weren't many survivors. And where'd they go?" A picture of Fay crossed his mind as he spoke. Was hers one of these whitened, grinning skulls, or had she been among those who for some reason had abandoned the _Cosmic_? Memory of the girl's slender loveliness tortured him.

"Might's well go back," Kindt said uneasily. "I don't like this ship. There's something damned wrong here."

* * * * *