Part 2

Kindt's voice trailed off into silence. At one end of the storeroom were several barrels, empty, their contents of wine having apparently been used by the passengers of the _Cosmic_ on the trip out. And from behind these barrels a faint, strange babbling sound came, as of a mad delirious thing, haunted by fear. For just a second the voice rose, shrill, eerie, then ceased abruptly as though choked to silence. Listening, Haller felt the hair at the back of his neck stiffen. Then he leaped forward, tugged the barrels aside. Deep in the shadows was a small door. Muscles standing out in ridges, Haller ripped it open.

The space thus revealed was a small airlock, perhaps four feet square, through which refuse was expelled. In its chamber two indistinct forms were huddled. One was a girl, and the other a gray-bearded man, his hand over his companion's mouth. As the door opened, the man plunged forward, his face contorted in desperation, in frenzy, as if he had determined to go down fighting. Catching sight of the spaceman, however, a look of stunned disbelief crossed his countenance, his arms dropped to his sides.

"Earthmen!" he croaked. "Earthmen!" Then something seemed to snap within him and he began to sob like a weary child.

Haller paid scant heed to the man. Pale as a ghost, he stared at the girl. Emaciated, she seemed feverish, but in spite of her changed appearance, there was no mistaking that bronze hair, blue eyes, and slender form. Haller felt as though he had swallowed a lump of lead.

"Fay!" he whispered. "Fay!"

The girl swayed to her feet, gazed at him a moment, then gave a queer high laugh.

"But it's a dream," she said slowly. "I know it's another dream. Because Steve is on Jupiter where there're houses, people." Abruptly the girl's voice broke; her knees buckled and she collapsed in a heap on the store-hold floor.

Haller picked the girl up, turned to Barger.

"Got to get her to the _Lodestar_," he snapped. "Needs food and water. Here, you," rather abruptly he shook the bearded man, "what's this all about?"

"About?" the man repeated dully. "We were hiding from Them. All the other men went down fighting, and the women were taken prisoner. I was unarmed and there wasn't any use fighting so many. This girl and I ran down here to the hold, hid in the airlock. For weeks and weeks. At first we could slip out and get food from the shelves but every day They came and carried some away and now there isn't any more." His voice trailed off into a senseless, tuneless crooning.

"They?" Haller shook him again. "Who're They?"

"Beasts, ghosts, devils." The man shuddered. "I don't know. They come shining, shining through the darkness and their eyes...."

"Nuts," Barger said succinctly. "Help him, Kindt. I'll carry the girl, Cap'n, long as you've got the gun. May need it if this guy's anywhere near the truth."

"Right." With the heavy magnetized flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, Haller led the way from the hold, followed by Barger, carrying Fay, and Kindt, aiding the bearded man. At the base of the ladder leading to the main deck, Haller froze in his tracks. Above them, in the cabin, the sound of running footsteps was audible along with queer, inhuman voices. Others had boarded the wrecked _Cosmic_, were rushing down the companionway!

"Quick!" Barger roared. "Get that door!"

Hardly had Barger's voice died away when there came a series of wild howls, a thud of racing feet. The door leading from the upper deck burst open and a score of nightmare figures leaped into the room. Human, they were, yet at the same time, grim travesties on human beings. Clad in rags, hair long and matted, beards streaked with filth, they seemed the most degenerate, revolting dregs of mankind. More beasts than men, they rushed forward with hoarse shouts of triumph. What shook Haller more than anything else was the queer aura of light that appeared to emanate from their bodies! The attackers were vaguely phosphorescent!

With an effort Haller swung up the magnetized atomite gun, fired. The blue bolt of energy tore through the ranks of the insane attackers and three of them slumped to the floor, charred, blackened corpses. Smoke and a stench of burnt flesh filled the storeroom. The maddened figures also had ray guns; the bearded man who had been in hiding with Fay toppled backward, torn by an atomite blast. Like hideous, human wolves, the phosphorescent figures swept on, bearing Kindt and Barger to the floor. As Haller's flash fell to the floor, shattered, the greenish light from their bodies lit up the hold with a queer, eerie luminescence.

Two of the wild-eyed specters plunged at Haller. The atomite gun blasted one of them to bits, but the other's clutching, taloned hands locked about his knees in mad fury, sent him reeling to the floor. Haller's head banged against the steel plates, the gun fell from his grip, and the gnarled, steely hands shifted from his knees to his throat. Dazed, he tried to fight back, but found he was no match for the other's inhuman strength. The distorted eldritch face, with reddened eyes peering through a tangle of hair, began to blur before his gaze, fire-flecked darkness slowly engulfed him. Faintly he could hear Kindt and Barger making strangled, choking sounds, realized that he was doing the same. No escape now, he realized. In another minute....

* * * * *

A million miles away Steve Haller heard the deep guttural voice, and miraculously the pressure on his windpipe ceased. As vision returned, he could see a huge, scarred man with an embryonic degenerate face, standing on the bottom step of the ladder. Vaguely glowing like the others, he made a ghostly figure in the darkness.

"Let them live," he grunted. "We got things to find out." He bent, dragged the dazed Kindt to his feet. "Which ship is yours?"

"The ... _Lodestar_," Kindt whispered through bruised lips. "She lies over that way about a mile. The magnetism caught us."

"So." The big man's sub-human face expressed satisfaction. "More food and fuel. This has been a good time, eh, Doul? First this liner with food and women, now another ship and" ... he glanced at Fay's inert form ... "another woman. Take six men with guns and see how strongly this new arrival is held."

Watching the six repulsive figures depart, Haller felt suddenly sick. The liner, the big man said, had furnished them with food and women. Fay.... Weakly he swayed to his feet.

"What's this all about?" he demanded. "Who are you?"

"Castaways, or their children's children." The huge figure looked spectral in the weird light that emanated from his skin. "No one leaves the Island of Lost Spaceships. I'm Orth. My people were wrecked many lifetimes ago, mated with the female passengers of the refugee ship, _Transvalia_. We rule here." He motioned his savage followers forward. "We will go now."

Half-strangled, throat aching, Haller felt himself seized by two of the savage beings, dragged along with Kindt and Barger to the upper deck. One of the phosphorescent figures had thrown Fay over his shoulder, was carrying her like a sack of meal. Through the airlock they were forced and out onto the rough, meteor-heaped surface of the planetoid.

"Haller! Look!" Barger turned toward the distant _Lodestar_; three figures, hands raised, were emerging from the metal hull. "The yellow rats! Not even putting up a scrap! They might have held the ship indefinitely against these brutes!"

Orth, the semi-simian leader of these denizens of the asteroid, was waving toward the band which had taken the _Lodestar_. These returned across the rubbled plain shouting jubilantly, with their captives. Carlson, Seltzsky, and Wallace were pale phantoms, cringing under the blows that urged them forward. Joining forces, the two parties set out across the rocky surface, led by the giant Orth.

Stumbling along between his captors, Haller found it hard to believe that this was not some mad dream. A magnetic asteroid, an Isle of Lost Spaceships, and humans who had degenerated into beasts. Covertly he studied their guards. Most of them were unnaturally squat, bow-legged, and were a startling example of how swiftly evolution can retrogress. Millenniums of progress, all the civilization so painfully acquired by man, had dropped from them. Faces crude and unintelligent, they spoke in hoarse gutturals, hardly intelligible. And even here, in the half-light of the plain, the uncanny green glow, like fox-fire, hung about their forms. Living ghosts, they seemed, walking through a twilight zone of death and desolation.

Over the rough terrain they led their captives, skirting crevasses, craters, leaping sure-footedly from rock to rock. And on all sides lay the battered hulks, looted of their food and cargoes by these strange beings, left to rust away or be buried by new rains of meteors. The barren melancholy of the scene pressed like leaden weights upon the captured earthmen.

At a mound of huge meteors rising above the plain, Orth, the herculean leader, turned. A narrow gap was visible between two great stones. Into this he plunged, his faintly glowing body giving wan light.

"Caves," Kindt muttered, glancing about. "Some job, too. Wonder why they didn't just live in the spaceships outside?"

Haller studied the passages. They had been made by removing loose fragments of the meteors, and were clumsily shored up by plates and girders from the wrecked ships. Enormous effort must have been required to drag the steel supports across the surface of this magnetized world, though perhaps by heating them it might have been possible. But why, when the ships offered luxurious accommodations, was it necessary to dig this rabbit-warren into the layer of meteors that covered the surface?

Downward they went, the bodies of their captors lighting up the rocky galleries. Now voices were audible ahead, the corridor was widening. Rounding a bend in the passage, Haller drew a sudden sharp breath.

* * * * *

Before them lay a vast cavern, crowded with bizarre figures. There were at least half a hundred of the bearded savage men, their skin giving off the greenish luminescence. Among them were four or five less uncouth looking individuals, wearing the uniform of Trans-Jovian. Some of the _Cosmic's_ crew, apparently, had joined the renegades. What struck Haller, however, was the difference among the women. Some were ragged, dirty creatures, almost as neanderthal in appearance as the men, clutching ugly children to their breasts. But the other women huddled in the cavern brought harsh lines to Haller's face. Earthwomen, these, and of pure blood, some young, some approaching middle age, but all with horror stamped upon their features.

As Orth and his men swaggered into the cavern, an admiring throng ran to greet them.

"Another freighter caught in the field," he grunted. "More food aboard her! No shortage, now! And a new woman for one of us!" He motioned toward Fay, a wan, pale figure in the sickly glow that issued from her captors' fetid bodies.

"For one of you!" Haller hardly recognized his own voice. For months he had been a living robot, condemning himself for the girl's death, and now that miraculously he had found her, she was to be claimed by one of these degenerate sub-men! Suddenly all the pent-up emotion of those long months burst its bonds; he felt himself surging forward, a red mist before his eyes.

Lean and muscular as he was, Haller was no match for the mighty Orth. A glowing hand shot out, gripped him, held him as helpless as a child. And Barger, who had followed blindly at his heels, was seized by another of the sub-men. The other four men of the _Lodestar's_ crew made no move to join in the hopeless struggle and Haller, berserk, cursed them in the worst language of six planets.

"Fools, these two," Orth grunted. "Take them away!"

Helpless in the grip of the green-glowing creatures, Haller and Barger were dragged from the big cavern, along passages that wound deep into the heap of meteoric stone. Here and there, in the weird light, they could see other caves, apparently sleeping, living quarters, furnished with equipment taken from stranded ships. Once again Haller found himself wondering why these people buried themselves deep in the ground when they might have lived aboard one of the big luxury liners. Then thoughts of Fay crossed his mind again and he struggled vainly to be free.

At the end of one of the passages a large tank, perhaps ten feet in diameter, was sunk flush in the loose rubble. A circular iron plate in its top, sucked down by the inexorable magnetism, required the combined efforts of four of the sub-men to remove. The plate at last dragged aside, they motioned their two captives forward. For just a moment Haller hesitated, but with an atomite gun digging into his back, there was no choice. Gripping the edge of the opening he lowered himself into the tank. The drop of about six feet was jarring and he had just time to move aside as Barger landed beside him. A moment later the glowing sub-men had dragged the magnetized iron plate over the opening.

* * * * *

The interior of the metal tank that served as their prison was dark, except for a faint greenish fluorescence, like that which emanated from the renegade earthmen, visible in one corner. Moving toward it, Haller saw a copper vessel filled with water, apparently for the use of prisoners.

"Barger!" he exclaimed. "That's why they give off that green light! It's the water! Phosphorescent water! We've seen it on earth often, caused by microscopic animal life! Only this is so full of the stuff that by drinking it, a living person becomes phosphorescent also! Like the deep-sea fish on earth! The human body's over eighty per cent water, remember!"

"Interesting," the old quartermaster grunted, biting off a quid of blue Jovian _tole_. "But hardly helpful." He spat noisily. "What next?"

Haller disregarded the question. "I'm beginning to get a clear picture of this," he announced. "For millenniums this little asteroid drew about it ferrous meteors. Then, two hundred years ago, man perfected the spaceship. Since then, this has become the Isle of Lost Spaceships. Hundreds of vessels, venturing too near, were caught in the field, drawn down. I can imagine the men on the first ship, half-mad, starved, before another was drawn down by the field, plundering the new arrivals of their food and supplies, killing their crews. Orth mentioned the _Transvalia_. She was the ship chartered by some fanatical religious sect who were going to found a new world. Also, she had women aboard. That was the start of this degenerate race. Two centuries of savagery, piracy, and we've seen the result." He paused grimly. "They're strong but stupid. That's our only chance. Also we haven't drunk any of this water and aren't fluorescent. That means we've a good chance of getting by unseen in these caves, once we get out of this tank."

"And then, I suppose," Barger grinned, "we build an aluminum spaceship that isn't affected by magnetism and take off. Or do we thumb a ride on a comet?"

By way of answer Haller commenced to examine their prison. A large cylinder, of a bronze-like alloy, it had no openings except the one at the top, covered by the steel plate.

"Thought this had a familiar look to it," he announced. "It's the fuel tank of an old-style rocket-ship. Here! Climb up on my shoulders and have a look at the top. Might be an intake valve or loose plate up there. Can't see in this light."

"The optimist," Barger grunted. "Steady now! Ah! Wait'll I light a match."

A match flared in the darkness above and Barger shook his head. "Not a sign of an out up here," he muttered. "Looks like we're in storage for keeps. We.... Look out!"

Barger leaped, and Haller fell in a heap upon the floor. Something small, flaring white-hot, had dropped from the top of the tank, was sputtering on the floor plates. A moment later it winked out, but where it had lain, a small hole, the size of a man's finger, was visible.

"A hole!" Barger exclaimed. "Burnt right through the metal! What in hell...."

"Don't you see?" A tight-lipped grin crossed Haller's face. "This was, as I said, a fuel tank. Little drops of tri-oxine have dried on the top, years ago when it was drained, and your match ignited one! When you think how the toughest steel rocket tube linings burn through in a year or less, it's no wonder this bronze alloy melts!" He snatched up the jar of phosphorescent water, held it near the wall of the tank. Here and there tiny brown globules were visible, dried rocket-fuel, like sap on a tree's bark.

"Okay," said Barger, unimpressed. "But how are you going to hold it against the top while it's burning through? Soon as it's lit, it falls ... and I don't want to be beneath, thanks."

"What's wrong with the floor?" Haller was already scraping the bits of dried fuel from the walls. "The whole top strata of this asteroid is like a heap of stones. The small fragments we can lug into this tank through the hole, and the big ones don't fit so close that we can't squeeze between them! Get busy!"

Slowly from walls and roof they collected the bits of long-dried fuel. A globule here, a flake there, it was painfully slow work. At the end of an hour they had a double handful of the brown crystals.

"Enough for a try, anyhow," Haller muttered. "Let's see!" He arranged the brown grains in a circle perhaps two feet in diameter. "Stand clear! Here goes!"

A match flickered in the darkness, described a short arc as Haller tossed it toward the circle. At once a ring of lurid fire flared up and a searing gust of heat swept through the metal tank. For only a moment it burned, then died away, leaving the floor plates around it a cherry red. Barger, staring, gave a cry of triumph.

"Worked!" he exclaimed. "Burned through!" He poured a portion of the phosphorescent water on the bronze, watched clouds of steam arise.

"Now the work starts!" Haller's grin was fierce. Kicking aside the metal disc that had been melted from the floor, he peered into the opening. Small stones, chunks of meteoric rock, lay beneath.

* * * * *

Largely ferrous, the stones were caught in the grip of the asteroid's magnetic core. It required the combined efforts of both men to lift them through the opening into their prison. At the end of half an hour they were drenched with sweat, and the hole beneath was only four feet deep.

"No ... no use!" Old Barger panted. "We can go on like this indefinitely. And if we try to tunnel sidewise it'll fall on us."

"But we ought to reach the big meteorites soon," Haller muttered. "They'd have settled lower and will have open spaces between them. And the sub-men have this place honeycombed with passages. If we hit one...."

"About as much chance as a snowball on Mercury," the quartermaster wheezed. "Hold the water jar near. I'm going to have a look."

Haller held the jar close to the opening so that its green glow faintly illuminated the pit they had dug. Barger, his face red from exertion, jumped into the excavation.

"Stones and more stones," he grunted. "Might dig the rest of our lives before we struck anything. I...."

A rumble of rock, a smothered cry, and the grizzled quartermaster disappeared from view!

"Barger!" Steve shouted. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"Bruised up a bit." The answer echoed hollowly. "And I can't see where I am!"

"Okay, sit tight." Haller knotted his belt to his leather jacket, lowered the half-empty jug of phosphorescent water into the opening. When Barger announced its safe arrival, he made one end of the improvised rope fast, climbed down it.

In the faint green glow a hollow, between two immense meteorites, was visible. Barger, dirty, disheveled, glanced about.

"The opening seems to run back aways," he announced. "Want to try it?"

"Right." Haller led the way, testing each step carefully. As they moved on, the tunnel narrowed, and they were forced to crawl. Haller, creeping under the overhang of a huge stone, felt like an ant moving through the spaces in a mound of cannon-balls. Now they were forced to dig again, dragging aside the magnetized rocks, holding their breaths for fear of a cave-in. They had made their way perhaps a hundred feet when Haller pulled up short. His hands had encountered something smooth, cold!

"Metal!" he exclaimed. "Wait!" Quickly he raised the vessel of luminous water. Before them, buried beneath massive rocks, was a rusty, ancient spaceship!

"Lord!" Barger stared at the archaic forward rocket tubes. "The great grand-daddy of all spaceships!" He pointed to a gaping crack in the battered hull. "Let's see what's inside!"

Squeezing through the crack, they found themselves in a dusty, old-fashioned cabin. Two skeletons lay sprawled upon the floor, moldering clothes hanging on their bones. Haller picked up a yellowed book, studied the all but illegible writing. "... caught on the barren sargasso-like world. Magnetism holding us here. Radio blanketed, last food eaten three days ago. No hope. Jameson died today. Too weak to write more. Donovan closing this log. July 17, 1994."

"Poor devils!" Haller muttered. "But," ... he thought of their savage captors, of Fay, and his face hardened ... "maybe they were lucky! Nineteen-ninety-four! That'd be before Orth's forefathers, before the _Transvalia_! No wonder it's been completely covered by meteors!"

Barger, poking about the cabin, suddenly gave a grunt, came up with two L-shaped black objects.

"Guns!" he exclaimed. "Old-time lead-throwers! But they'd be better than nothing!"

Rather curiously Haller examined the weapons. Scraping dried oil from the mechanism, he thrust one into his belt.

"May help," he murmured. "If we ever get out of here. Maybe if there's any fuel left, we may blast our way through to one of the caves." Haller moved to the rear of the ship, studied the rusty engines. The fuel tanks were empty, every drop apparently having been used in a vain effort to break the magnetic grip.

"Nothing here," he muttered. "Dead end. Might as well go back and try these lead throwers on our guards when ... and if ... they open the top of that tank. Unless ..." Suddenly Haller broke off, leaning forward, face intent. Very dimly, far away, the sound of hoarse, shouting voices was audible!

"Orth and his gang!" Barger muttered. "But it's not coming from the passage we made! Seems to be in that direction!" He motioned toward the rubble behind the ancient ship.

"We're near one of their caves!" Haller leaped toward the rear rocket tubes, forced open a massive breech-block. "Come on!"

Into the big exhaust tube he dove, crawling through it as though it had been a drain pipe.

"Take the rocks as I pass them back," he ordered. Then, chuckling grimly, "Makes you feel like Dante's tunneling under the Chateau D'If. Here comes a big one!" He shoved a chunk of meteor back along the tube.

The heap of stones in the old engine room had grown large when Haller saw the light ahead. A pale trickle of illumination, it filtered through the loose rocks. Haller wormed his way nearer, peered through the opening ... and his face went gray.

* * * * *