Part 1

THE SPACE FLAME

By ALEXANDER M. PHILLIPS

A rocketless hulk spinning helplessly through uncharted heavens.... A derelict space-ship. But within that Eternity-bound shell was even greater peril. Fire--living, writhing, horrible! Flame that hissed and coiled and struck with jeweled tongues of Death.

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

Cargyle wiped away the blood from a flesh wound over one eye. The body of a mutineer lay half across the threshold of the small cabin. They'd gotten that close to him. They were out there in the corridors, the mutineers, searching out the officers ... killing them.

Far off in the rocket ship a burst of firing broke out. A chorus of wild yelling began, muted by distance and the intervening walls. Cargyle listened intently; perhaps a stand was being made against the crew! The sounds seemed to come from the control room. He hesitated, staring through the heavy port in the hull at the still stars in the blackness beyond. If there were officers still defending the pilot room, his place was with them. But if the mutineers were in possession, he'd be going to his death. With a shrug, he pressed a concealed button set in the wall. A panel of the inner wall of the hull slid quietly open. Tucking his blastor pistol into his belt, Cargyle crawled into the space revealed.

All space cruisers were equipped with passages like this, known only to the officers: in the long monotonous months in space tension between men would sometimes sweep up to murderous frenzy, and mutinies were not uncommon.

Mutiny on the _Denebola_ had been long coming. They were returning from a three-year surveying and specimen-collecting expedition among the asteroids. Sent out by the Cranford Foundation, they had outfitted in the Martian colony of Tracolatown.

Loneliness and monotony change men queerly, undermine character and sanity. And three years is a long time. Quarrels flared up and became feuds. Between two members of the crew, Kalson and Wrymore, a particularly bitter hatred developed.

The crew were permitted no weapons, but Kalson was found shot to death. The crew and their quarters were searched by the officers. No weapons were found. There are many places small side arms can be hidden in the length of a ship.

Captain Wallace didn't confine Wrymore, for there was no definite proof of his guilt. But he informed him he would be turned over for trial at the first port reached.

Then there was the starboard-dorsal rocket jet, forever threatening disintegration, which no amount of tinkering ever made right. At any unusual sound the crew would freeze, their expressions set. Had that jet gone at last?

But with all this Wallace could cope. A stern man, old in the service, he was fully capable of controlling a crew unnerved by the ceaseless watching of infinity. He strode through the ship, as stern and calm as though in his office on Earth, holding the men to their duty, their sanity.

But when the "flame of all colors" appeared....

* * * * *

The _Denebola_ pointed her sharp nose homeward; the frozen, dead lumps of the asteroids dropped behind. A new and clearer expression found its way to the faces of the crew.

And then Wrymore flung himself out of a storage compartment, where he'd been sent for a replacement part during one of the interminable repair jobs on the rocket jet. He dashed into the engine room, and the astonished engineers dragged him from behind a convertor, a trembling wreck of a man, near to madness. He told them Kalson's ghost was in the storage cabin--he'd seen it, a crawling flame-like thing, in which all the colors of the spectrum flickered and twined.

They put him in sick bay--and the next "day" an electrician calmly reported to the officer on watch the presence of "a funny-colored thing something like a slow flame" in the forward thermal chamber. Investigation revealed nothing but the inexplicable presence of an amount of hydrogen gas.

The ship seemed haunted. Men saw, or thought they saw, queer flames in every corner. Captain Wallace wondered if they were all going mad. Only he and Cargyle had yet to see the things. What was worse, things were disappearing--tools, supplies, replacement parts. More hydrogen made its appearance.

The effect of all this on the already teetering crew can be imagined. Captain Wallace left the problem of the mysterious flames to Calvin Markoe, the astrophysicist appointed by the Cranford people, and devoted himself to keeping the crew in hand.

But for the first time Wallace found himself helpless to stem the tide. The crew were too far gone, too fear-harried and space-crazy to know reason or fear punishment. And when corroded-looking holes began appearing in the walls of the ship, the mutiny burst out with all the savageness and fury of madness long suppressed.

Cargyle, the second officer, charged by a yelling, wild-eyed mob of crazy murderers, fought them coldly, shooting with deadly precision. His slow retreat brought him to the little cabin, where his position was almost impregnable, and which he knew connected through the secret passage with the control cabin.

He grinned as he crawled along the passage. What would the mutineers think when they charged the cabin and found it empty? They'd be sure the ship was haunted.

It was black as the Coal-Sack in the low-ceilinged tunnel. When a dim, elusive light began forming ahead of him, he first thought it a trick of his eyes, but as the thing brightened Cargyle halted and stared in amazement. At last he, too, was seeing one of the haunting flames.

In shape the thing did somewhat suggest a flame, but such a flame as never seen before. It was a writhing mozaic of colors that twined and faded one into the other. It curled as he watched, and the gleaming tip bowed slowly until it touched the floor. The thing lay flat, pulsing slowly with a gorgeous display of color.

Cargyle forgot the mutineers, the beleagured officers. In sheer bewilderment he watched the deliberate, enigmatic movements of the thing before him.

In all his wandering through the system he had never seen anything like this. What was it? A phenomenon of space, heretofore unknown, or was it--alive? The tip of the thing, bent to the floor, was moving delicately in small circles, touching and retreating, almost in the manner of a caterpillar on a leaf.

Cargyle was crouched on one knee. Abruptly his foot slipped, the heel coming down hard on the metal floor. The resultant clangor in that narrow tube was deafening. The flame-like entity sprang vibrantly erect. A huge red bubble, swelling, emerged from somewhere within its body and wound upward through vellicating strands of color. The thing paused there, its inner wonder of radiant light in flickering, nervous agitation. The tip, aloft again, twisted and writhed, once forming a superb, faultless spiral of brilliant scarlet.

* * * * *

The next moment it was moving toward him, and Cargyle, who had faced undaunted the thousand dangers, the unearthly foes of the spaceman, found himself shaking with a resistless horror.

Furious at himself, he took deliberate aim, and fired.

If the slip of his foot had been thunderous, the sound that followed the discharge of the blastor pistol was as that of worlds coming together. The walls of the passage shivered to the detonation, so terrific that an entrance door to the passage burst from its hinges, and fell into the cabin on which it opened.

Deafened, and blinded by the sudden flash, Cargyle waited helplessly. When his vision cleared he stared eagerly down the corridor. The flame-thing was where he had seen it last, motionless, unharmed!

As he stared in astonishment a roll of emerald smoke seemed to eddy under its surface, and it moved toward him. A recurrent wave of that strange horror surged through Cargyle. What _was_ this thing? Was it sentient--did it perceive and threaten him?

He thrust his pistol back in his belt--apparently it was useless against whatever stood before him--and started grimly forward. The thing waited, pale colors flowing fluidly through it. Suddenly it seemed to thin and tower and in its middle a ring appeared--a ring of dead black--and from that ring burst a blast of light; an intolerable, blinding beam that flamed in the very core of Cargyle's brain. Agony seared through him, rose to a piercing crescendo. Then a merciful blackness engulfed him, and the second officer crumpled to the floor. The flame-thing took up its incessant tapping and probing.

* * * * *

"Well," said Wallace. "We thought you were dead. What did they do to you? There's no wound; apparently no injury. But you were as close to death as a man can get, and still come back. What happened?"

Cargyle choked and coughed. His brain and chest were burning agony. Dimly he struggled, and the flow of raw oxygen that was making him gasp ceased. The pain in his head was going. As the space-helmet was pulled off, he found himself regarding Captain Wallace and the astrophysicist, Markoe. They helped him to his feet, held him while he wavered back and forth unsteadily.

"The light--the light from the flame-thing," stammered Cargyle.

"It attacked you?" Markoe caught his arm. "How?"

"A light--a ray of some kind. Shot it into me. I was coming through the starboard passage ... heard firing ... the mutineers ... where are they? Where's the crew?"

"They've gone mad completely," said Wallace. "We held them off at the pilot cabin--all the officers and a few loyal men are with me--and after an hour or so they went away. Half hour later we saw them through a port. They deserted in the two scouting rockets. What's left of the crew must have crowded into the two small ships; we didn't find a living man when we explored the ship. Except you. Where they expect to go, God knows. With a normal crew of four the air in a scout rocket is good for only about five days. Crowded they won't last two, and Mars is it least a week away."

"How did you know that oxygen would bring me back?" asked Cargyle. They had started back toward the pilot room.

"Didn't," replied Wallace. "Markoe and I were inspecting the ship--we had to wear space-suits aft of the main air renewer. The whole stern of the ship's riddled. These flame-things doing it, Markoe says. We've got all the compartments closed off, but if he's right, the _Denebola's_ through. We found you on our way back. Looked as though you were dead. But we tried the oxygen from one of the helmets on you, and it eventually brought you around.

"What are they?" Cargyle asked. "These flames? Are they alive?"

"If they are," said Markoe, "they're like no kind of life ever known before. They set up a powerful field of some kind. I've been studying them back there in the stern. Trying to find out what they are." He held up some equipment--coils, and a detector.

"I turned a blastor pistol on one," said Cargyle. "It was only ten feet away--I couldn't have missed. And the thing never moved!"

A thunder of running feet brought the three men to a sudden halt. The next instant a man charged out of a side passage. At sight of them he halted and one glance at his face told them he was hopelessly insane. His eyes blazed with madness, and a line of foam ringed his mouth. In one hand he held a gun.

"Kalson!" he screamed at them. "He's following me! He's dead! I killed him once! But he's here! I'm going to open the port and let the air out! Then Kalson won't follow me. I'll kill him again! Then I won't see him crawling ... and crawling...."

He wheeled and ran down the corridor.

"It's Wrymore!" gasped Captain Wallace. "I thought he'd gone with the rest. Come on! We've got to stop him!"

The three raced down the corridor after the madman, who had disappeared into the main passage leading to the 'midships airlock. They reached the corridor together and wheeled into it. There at their feet lay Wrymore--they almost fell over him.

Markoe turned the man over. "He's dead!" he exclaimed. "What could have--"

"Fright, I suppose," said Wallace. "Look."

* * * * *

They followed his gaze along the corridor. There, on the deck in the center of the passage, slender, mobile tip questing and probing, lay one of the flame-things. Markoe and the captain drew their pistols, but Cargyle, who had already one experience with these glowing enigmas, seized their arms.

"It's no good," he whispered. "Come away. It's no good. You can't hurt them."

"Well, by the Star of Saffta, I'm going to try," retorted Wallace, and he swung up his gun. The next moment the cavernous passage-way roared and trembled to the blaster's discharge, and the hissing uproar was intensified as Markoe fired in turn. The flame-thing sprang upright--grew longer--towered high above them.

"Run!" snapped Cargyle, diving into the side passage.

But the other two, struck with astonishment, stood where they were. Cargyle, peering cautiously around the corner, saw that ominous, dead-black ring in the flame-thing's middle.

Before he could draw back the intense and brilliant beam sprang out of the black ring, but this time it struck at Wallace and Markoe, and Cargyle, although momentarily blinded, was not subjected to the tearing pain that had snuffed out his consciousness. When he could see again, he perceived his companions sprawled on the deck--to all appearances, dead. Their attacker was again pursuing its endless testing of the floor.

Would the thing strike at him if he went to his companions' assistance? Cargyle shrugged. He'd have to take that chance.

Cautiously he moved out into the passage. Except for a noticeable increase in the rapidity of the pulsation of its shifting colors, the flame-thing ignored him. As quietly as possible he dragged first Captain Wallace and then the astrophysicist back into the shelter of the side passage.

What in God's Name were these flame-things, Cargyle wondered. They appeared to recognize and resent attack. They _must_ be alive! Where had they come from, and was Markoe right? Were they slowly destroying the _Denebola_?

But he had no time for such questions now. He ran back to the space-suit, dropped when Wrymore had appeared, and got the helmet and its oxygen tank. Captain Wallace looked lifeless; he was waxen-white and unbreathing. But there was a faint heart-action. Cargyle thrust the helmet over his head, and turned the flow-control.

He sat there an hour or more, and he thought the oxygen tank would have emptied before Markoe showed signs of life.

Both men were still dazed when they entered the pilot room. While Cargyle explained what had happened to them, and the manner of his own survival, his glance noted the signs of battle. Blackened pits, marks of blastor discharges, spattered the walls and furniture. Equipment had been shattered by chance shots. The inner lens of one of the ports had been drilled through the center, long cracks radiating from the spot. It had been hastily repaired, fused together with _thurlite_.

Most of the men wore bloody bandages, and one lay unconscious. Chapman, the chief pilot, was pacing nervously back and forth before the dead control board; the other men were now dropping back into attitudes of listless dejection.

"Why are we drifting?" Cargyle asked. The ship was silent, vibrationless. All rockets were inoperative--they were sweeping helplessly through space, undirected.

"Why?" growled Simms. "Because those crazy devils took as much fuel as they could and then drained the tanks. We're falling into an orbit--"

"Speed?"

"Roughly ten per second. We were trying to contact Tracolatown, but the mutineers smashed the hull plates. Parker and Swift are out on the hull now, working on the plates."

"Then we're--"

"We're sunk, unless we can fix those plates and get a patrol ship out to us."

* * * * *

A red light over the viso-set winked, and then glowed steadily. Barfield, the viso operator, sprang to his control board and swiftly manipulated switches and dials. The viso-screen remained blank, but from the speaker came the familiar uproar produced by the vibrations that flood space. Barfield swung the controls, seeking the wave-length of the station at Tracolatown.

"Calling the _Denebola_," said the speaker, hollowly, a moment later. "Calling the _Denebola_ ... where are you, _Denebola_? 3TRA45 calling. Tracolatown calling the _Denebola_."

"They've got those hull plates working, Captain," cried Barfield. "That's the Martian operator, Nunglon! This is the _Denebola_, Nunglon!" he continued, speaking into the phone. "The _Denebola_ calling Tracolatown! A mutiny ... the crew deserted. They drained our tanks and we're drifting. Here's our position--" He turned to Chapman. "What is the position?"

The pilot began reading off the ship's co-ordinates. "Send him those. They're some hours old, but they can start on them, and correct course as soon as our present position is determined."

"Stop!" interrupted Markoe. "Wait a minute. We can't call a ship out here. What about the flames?"

They looked at him. In the silence two men in space-suits entered the cabin; stood still, surprised. "What's the matter?" asked one, crawling from his suit. "The plates are working, ain't they? What's wrong?"

"What's the flames got to do with it?" demanded Simms. "To hell with the flames! We can transfer to the patrol ship if the _Denebola's_ completely destroyed. We could even navigate her back in space-suits, if she'll still move. Go on, Barfield, send our position."

"Mr. Simms," said Wallace, quietly, "I'll give the orders. We'll hear Mr. Markoe's objection. What about the flames, sir?"

"Just this, Captain," said Markoe. "If we call a ship out here and transfer to it, what's to stop these things from transfering, too? Any ship that comes near us is done for, the same as the _Denebola_, unless we find some way to destroy them."

"So you tell us," growled Simms. "And ask us to sacrifice our lives on your guesses. I won't do it, I tell you! You don't know what these things are, or where they came from. You know nothing about them."

"They came from the asteroids, I believe," replied Markoe. "Give me a day or two more. There must be some way of destroying them. And have you forgotten the oath you took? The oath of the spaceman, never to return to port with an unknown disease that might become a plague? These flames are included ... in the spirit of that oath, at least I tell you we can't call a ship's crew out here, possibly to their death!"

"That's the answer," said Wallace, firmly. "We call no other ship until these things are gone. Operator, tell Tracolatown we'll call them later. Markoe, it's up to you now."

"I can't tell Nunglon the ship's full of funny-colored flames," protested Barfield. "He'll think we're all space-crazy!"

"Tell him we haven't our position--that we're working it out," instructed Wallace. "Tell him we're away off the ecliptic, and that it will take time."

For the next three days they saw little of Markoe. He spent hours in the airless stern of the ship, where he had set up a rough laboratory. Occasionally he appeared to renew the oxygen tank of his helmet. A glance at his face was sufficient. They asked him nothing.

Cargyle joined him frequently, and tried to be of assistance, but the astrophysicist's experiments meant little to the second officer.

Once Markoe turned to him and said, tensely, "There's a wave-length, or a modulation, that will break down their field. I know it! But how to find it? How to find it in time!"

"Markoe," said Cargyle, "why haven't they attacked the control cabin? It's the one compartment of the ship where you never see them. There must be some reason."

Markoe looked at him a moment, then shook his head. "Chance, that's all. They started in the tail of the ship, and they're working forward. There's nothing in the pilot cabin to stop them. I've tried the viso-set's wave-lengths. Doesn't bother them."

But, unreasonably, Cargyle clung to the belief that there was something about the control cabin....

* * * * *

In the high vacuum of those airless cabins there was no diffusion of light--the shadows were deep, ink-black. Through the jagged holes in the hull--where holes in the inner and outer skin coincided--entered faint star-light; on Markoe's table dim lights gleamed; and everywhere the gorgeous colors of the flame-things flickered. It was a weird and eerie setting: a suitable background for the incredible beings that moved against it.

Danger was there also, which was the principle reason Cargyle spent so much time there. Should Markoe be struck down by one of the flame-things he might suffocate, if his oxygen tank was nearly empty, or turned off by the fall, before anyone came to him.

But the flame-things paid them little attention. The men moved little, and then slowly.

They watched them reproduce. A tiny branch flame would appear. At first it would be ochre-colored, but as it lengthened it acquired the prismatic character of its parent. Then, abruptly, it broke off, and was a separate individual.

It was upon these "infant" flames that most of Markoe's experiments were made--they were unable to discharge the paralyzing ray of their parents, and they could be moved about by persuading them to mount a loose piece of metal.

One cabin in the stern Cargyle avoided. It held the dead--a half dozen bodies laid side by side, each under a white sheet. In the sharp mosaic of pale light and deep shadow, these six glimmering shapes, austere and rigid in the final stillness of death, struck a cold foreboding into the beholder. Preserved in the airless cold of space, there was something prophetic in their fixity.

On the third day the men closed off the last compartment. They were confined now to the control room, unless they wished to visit Markoe's laboratory, or roam the ship in space-suits.

The control cabin contained a separate plant for light, heat and air-renewal. Batteries, and a small generator operated by its own motor and tank of fuel, were banked beneath the floor. It constituted another defense against mutineers.

Periodically Wallace took sights and computed their position. Simms made no effort to relieve him. The chief officer had discarded coat and cap; dark hair, uncombed, hung across his forehead. From beneath it his shadowed eyes watched the captain sullenly.

Strain marked them all. Some sat in hopeless silence; others restlessly paced the slow hours away. Parker, alone among those aboard the dying _Denebola_, seemed unaffected. He busied himself repairing the damaged equipment, devoting most of his time to the starboard dorsal rocket timer, which resisted all his efforts. Although it sparked each time a terminal was contacted, something inside the timer was out of order, for it boiled and hissed.

Once Simms snarled at him: "Parker, you fool! Let it alone! What the hell's the use of that now?"

Each compartment was separated from the adjoining one by an airlock, left open when both compartments contained an atmosphere. As Markoe and Cargyle emerged from the airlock they heard Simms' voice.

"--and we're desperate, Captain," he was saying. "You're got to call Tracolatown and give them our position. Do you want us to die like rats? How much longer will these batteries last? Perhaps it's too late now. Let Markoe stay here and play with these things if he wants. I'm not!"

"Mr. Simms, I've warned you once," said Wallace, sternly. "If you forget yourself again, I shall place you under arrest."