Part 1

THE STAR OF SATAN

By HENRY HASSE

More than the wreck of the _Martian Princess_ lay on the lazily spinning asteroid. That uncharted star of Satan harbored madness in awful, human form.

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

Hype Garth was suddenly awake. He lay there on his cot in the dark, listening intently for the sound he knew would shortly come through the receptor. It almost frightened him, this subconscious awareness of his. He often wondered about it and wished he could explain it. Always, during their sleep period, just a minute before a message came through he was wide awake and waiting, knowing. He supposed nerves had something to do with it. Or the time he'd spent out here? Nerves were bound to go raw and perhaps play strange tricks when two men were thrown together in this black isolated hell of outer space. And Garth had been out here for twenty-three full years and seen his partners come and go.

From the other side of the room came Prokle's slow, sonorous breathing. Garth suddenly hated his partner for his ability to sleep at this moment. Garth reached out and touched the huge, nine-foot receptube by his bed; a faintly glowing violet permeated the darkness. His whole attention centered in a strained, concentrated listening.

Then the sound came, as he knew it would: first the crisp, crackling static; then the familiar and hated voice of the sender at Martian headquarters, stabbing the darkness almost viciously:

"Salvage Station M3! Attention M3! Passenger liner _Callisto_, enroute Jupiter to Mars, radios they have just encountered uncharted asteroid swarm on the Martian side of the belt. They have passed through unscathed. But attention to this, M3: Captain Lambert of the _Callisto_ reports that he detected a light on the surface of one of the larger masses! This may have been a distress signal-flare, and if so, can mean but one thing: that the sole remaining life-boat unaccounted for from the wreck of the _Martian Princess_ twenty days ago landed on this asteroid; and the party, or some of them, have managed to survive. This seems hardly possible, but we must investigate.

"Proceed at once in search of this uncharted swarm. Approximate position when encountered by the _Callisto_, exact center of the belt, two hours behind the Lanisar group, orbital plane about twenty degrees from regular passenger route. Mass in question cannot be mistaken, largest of the group, about twenty miles diameter. Proceed at once, M3! End of message."

Garth knew it was not the end of the message. That Martian sender always reserved some little sardonic touch to send to Garth. Garth's jaw tightened, he waited about five seconds, and then, raspingly, it came:

"Oh, just a moment, M3--Garth listening I hope--here's a tip for you. As you probably know, J. P. Chiswell is among those still missing in that life-boat. If you two can locate that party, who knows--it may mean unconditional pardon for _both_ of you! End of message."

There came the hint of an amused chuckle before the tube went dead. Garth's face was grim. J. P. Chiswell, President of EMV Lines! Unconditional pardon. Yes, for Prokle, perhaps, if they were lucky, but never for him, and that rat of a Martian sender knew it. Garth, in the early days, had been a source of considerable annoyance in the spaceways, and he was now serving forty years. The longest sentence in the entire history of the Salvage Stations.

* * * * *

Garth arose and clicked on the light in the little cubicle. He crossed over and shook Prokle, grinning in anticipation of the grumbling protest he knew his partner would make.

"Message just came through," Garth said. "Sounds urgent."

"Go to sleep you damn idiot, and let me," Prokle mumbled. "I was just dreaming I was back in Chicago."

Prokle only lived for the time when he'd get back to Chicago, and Garth knew he never would. So did Prokle.

Garth grinned broader and shook his partner harder. "Come on, snap out of it. This is important, I tell you."

Prokle rolled over, half opened one eye and muttered, "Nothing's more important than sleep, out here. Hell, can't it wait 'til tomorrow--"

"I'll let you be the judge of that," Garth said with calm emphasis. "It's an uncharted swarm."

The effect was electric. Instantly Prokle was awake and on his feet, fumbling with his space equipment, no more questions asked. Garth smiled to himself, and moved over to his own equipment. He had been out here a long time and had often seen the effect of those magical words, "uncharted swarm." But never had he known them to work in quite the way they did on Prokle.

_Uncharted swarm!_ To men such as they, that meant much--or it meant nothing. But above all things it meant a _chance_, and eternal hope. It had all begun twenty years ago when the group of four men over on Station J5 had found gold on one of the uncharted asteroid swarms. They had pledged secrecy and worked it the smart way, leaving the swarm unreported. They had mined the gold until the rocks sped too far away in their orbit for them to venture out in safety; but they had obtained enough to buy off the duration of their penal terms, and had gone back to Earth very rich men.

Some years later Malcolm and Schroeder, on M1, had made a similar strike, but platinum. They worked it the same secret way. Malcolm had died, and there were rumors his partner had murdered him. Schroeder, through the obvious channels, had bought off his remaining sentence. Through the years there were other such rumors, and "uncharted swarm" had become magic words to all Salvage Station men. Secrecy, jealousy, hope continued to prevail.

Except with Garth. Garth knew that all the precious metals in all the asteroids would not suffice to buy his freedom.

* * * * *

The two men stepped from their sleeping quarters out onto the metal platform which had been Garth's world for twenty-three years, Prokle's for two. It was a tiny world, extending in each direction for a mere quarter of a mile to end abruptly at the edge of the eternal darkness. Man-made, glass-domed, it was the tiniest of all the Salvage Stations. Garth had been stationed there at his own request, defiantly, alone at first. He had worked alone pirating the spaceways, not liking the company of many men. He still didn't.

But he did like the single men they sent out to him now when necessary. And it was frequently necessary. The trouble was, either their sentences expired too quickly, or they did! Garth's last two partners had done that--one stumbling clumsily over a precipice while exploring, shattering his oxygen helmet; the other being crushed in his solo cruiser between two asteroid masses from which Garth himself only narrowly escaped.

And Prokle he liked perhaps best of all. Prokle was the reckless type and it was those who always, somehow, managed to survive. It was Prokle, too, who had hung the name "Hype" on Garth and made him like it. He had first called him "hyper" because of that amazing, premonitory sensitivity of his; then shortened it to "Hype." Garth had at first resented it, then bore it laughingly, then liked it.

And it was not only at the receptube that his strange "awareness" was in evidence. He used to tell Prokle an hour or two in advance when a supply ship was arriving at their Station--and they were supposed to arrive in secret! He could uncannily sense the proximity of dangerous chasms on the asteroids they explored. And once, just before boarding a derelict freighter, Garth had told Prokle to wait; they waited, and five minutes later the freighter was torn asunder by a terrific explosion, caused by seeping fumes.

Now, as they crossed over to the safety lock where their cruiser waited, Garth told Prokle the content of the message. But all the latter heard was "uncharted swarm." There was a gleam in his eyes Garth had seen before, which caused him to say abruptly:

"Look here, Prokle, that gold lust is going to be your finish some day. I can see it coming."

"What else is there to live for out here?" Prokle flared up.

"Work. First of all we're going to follow instructions implicitly. Later we'll have plenty of time to explore and prospect; this swarm is our exclusive property. But just remember old man Chiswell's with that missing party, and that might mean plenty, to you anyway, if we can find 'em."

Prokle's mind came back from its flight. "Yeah, that's right. That _is_ an angle." He seemed to consider it for the first time. "That _is_ an angle," he repeated. "Say, how many are supposed to be in that missing party, anyway?"

"The entire passenger list of the _Martian Princess_ is accounted for," replied Garth, "except six persons. And the missing life-boat is one of the very small ones, accommodating but six. Draw your own conclusions."

"Sure, that's what I'm trying to do. But it just don't add up. Look here, Hype, those life-boats are all provisioned about the same, ain't they? Oxygen for three or four days, and food for a day or two at the most?"

"That's about right. Close enough."

"Then _you_ add it up. The _Martian Princess_ was wrecked twenty-one days ago. Three weeks to the very day. How do you figure a party of six could have survived that long?"

Garth shook his head sadly. "You jump to conclusions like a Venusian Polywog. Nobody's said that the six, or that any of them, have survived. A light was seen, that's all; maybe it was a meteor. Anyway it's not for us to believe it or doubt it, our job is to find out."

"Still, it's damn funny where that life-boat could have got to," Prokle growled. "The way this whole section's been scoured. Our own detector would have picked it out anywhere in a thousand-mile radius."

"Yes, I've been thinking of that. And I sort of lean to the belief they landed somewhere; Captain Lambert was probably right about that light he saw."

"But after three weeks," Prokle protested, "and only a few days' oxygen and provisions? For six that'd be impossible, and even for one man--well, that's a long stretch on oxygen and food."

Garth turned to his partner and said, "You know, Prokle, that's one thing I like about you. You're unimaginative. You're always yourself. You never can put yourself in the other fellow's place. You and me, we don't put a high value on our lives anymore, but other people still value life highly, they cling to it tenaciously. Isn't that quaint?"

"Skip the sarcasm," Prokle said. "I know what you mean. The oldest story in the world, the survival of the fittest."

"Exactly. They can't all have survived. But I'm sure someone did."

* * * * *

They reached the edge of their half-mile world and stepped into the lock where the two-man cruiser waited, Garth having decided against the solo cruisers. Something told him they ought to stick together on this venture.

They sped away into the blackness, Prokle at the controls. Garth looked back at their tiny glass-enclosed world and the wreck of the _Martian Princess_ anchored there, bordering almost one entire edge. She was a rather helpless looking "Princess" now, but her lines were still regal. Garth smiled as he remembered the wreck, three weeks ago. Station M6, with its larger crew, had done most of the rescue work; but the hull of the huge liner had drifted toward M3 and so Garth and Prokle got the salvage job, to the envy of every other Station this side of the belt. But that was the inviolable law of the Stations. The two men were now leisurely engaged in putting the liner back into condition for the inspection crew who would be due out here at the end of the month.

Garth grimaced, remembering the earliest days of these Stations. The few prisoners out here then had at first been sullen, stubborn, unresponding to the occasional messages of salvage work flashed out to them. But there had been no attempt to force the men to do the work. No pretense of discipline. Supply ships had stopped every three months, briefly as possible, then went on their way. Less than a year of this, and the sheer stark _ennui_ of the black outer hell had proved to be the real disciplinary master. There were only three Stations then, a handful of men on each, who soon vied with each other for the too infrequent salvage jobs. Garth had to hand it to the psychological genius who devised the plan!

Prokle brought him abruptly out of his reminiscences.

"What do you say, Hype? Sight for the Lanisar group?"

Garth examined the chart which showed the position and orbit of every known asteroid swarm. He consulted their present position and made swift calculation.

"Sure. Lanisar's coming on fast, but we won't cross it for an hour yet. The baby we want is about two hours behind it, according to headquarters, but on the _inside_. Remember, that's plenty dangerous territory in the middle of the belt for a flea-cruiser like this, without a repulsor. How does that suit you?"

Prokle revealed how it suited him when he said: "It's an uncharted swarm, ain't it?"

* * * * *

They skirted the edge of the belt, easily avoiding the occasional smaller swarms. The charted Lanisar group, easily recognizable and already thoroughly explored, intersected them in less than an hour.

Prokle turned their tiny craft deeper into the belt. Here there were long stretches of comparative emptiness, but these became ever more infrequent. Dark masses began looming out of nowhere, but luckily they were tinged faintly from the light of the distant sun. Many of these veered crazily, or hurtled across their bow, seeming much closer than they actually were. Some of the larger pieces eventually formed miniature solar systems in themselves.

After more than an hour of this both men were nerve-wracked and exhausted. But they dared not relax for a moment. This was deeper, presumably, into the belt than any men had ever gone with a cruiser as tiny as theirs. They now seemed to be in a veritable sea of leprous light reflecting from the pock-marked masses speeding around them.

Prokle had just turned a worried face to Garth, and the latter moved forward to take the controls ... when the swarm abruptly thinned. They were in the comparative emptiness of space again, with only tiny pebbles peppering their hull harmlessly. Prokle slumped in relief.

But the relief was brief.

"Look," Garth said, pointing.

Far ahead, directly in their trajectory, a pinpoint of light was discernible. It did not remain a pinpoint long. They watched it grow nearer and larger and slowly take shape. Another swarm, seemingly a large one. But gradually they saw that it was, rather, one very large mass with lesser ones speeding along behind it. The large mass turned lazily on a vertical axis, the sunlight striking it sharply.

Then, without the slightest warning, Prokle gave a short gurgling cry. He lurched up from the seat and backward against Garth, clutching at him. Garth could only stare at Prokle in amazement as the latter pointed, in a kind of horror, through the glassite prow.

Garth pressed forward and looked. Now he saw clearly. An involuntary sharp gasp hissed through his clenched teeth.

The large rock ahead, turning on its axis, had suddenly presented a new contour. Due to its formation and the way the sun struck it, it now seemed almost a perfect, though rough-hewn, death's-head!

In fascination rather than horror, Garth watched the rock turning slowly. A minute later, considerably larger, the semblance was directly facing them--undeniably the rough shape of a human skull, all leprously sun-illumined, seeming to grin a sardonic welcome as it came nearer. Deep shadowy gorges were in the places where the eyes would have been. Then it slowly revolved away, and the semblance was lost.

"Very cute, huh?" Garth said, quickly taking over the controls. "Nature's a grand comedian sometimes. I've seen some queer sights out here, but never anything like that!" And he added with grim humor: "Well, that's undoubtedly the baby we're looking for, the one we've got to contact. About twenty miles diameter. Glad you came along?"

Prokle hadn't quite gotten over the initial shock. He started to snap a reply, then clamped his teeth as he remembered something. He smiled wryly and said:

"If it's got gold teeth, I won't mind landing on that thing at all!"

* * * * *

Regulating their speed to that of the asteroid, Garth swung their cruiser behind it and came closer in a gradually contracting spiral. Meanwhile they kept a sharp lookout for the distress flare the Captain of the _Callisto_ had presumably seen.

They detected no light, however. They only saw below them a terrain that might have been lifted from an ink-sketch of grotesquerie by Goya or Sidney Sime. This was a cold and unutterable outer hell running rampant. This was a new canto for Dante. The rock was like a broken-off black tip of a mountain surging suddenly toward them, with jagged pinnacles reaching out to grasp and deep black gullies agape.

Garth allowed the cruiser to drift just beyond gravity, away from the sunward side. Peering at the scene below, he shook his head.

"I wouldn't want to attempt a landing there. Safer to use the magnibullet--there's usually enough metallic content at the core of these rocks to make it feasible, and we're only a few hundred yards away."

They donned space-suits and moved into the air-lock. There the magnibullet, a heavy magnetized projectile, rested in a powerful compressed air tube. From it led a thin cable, wound upon a pivoted spool. Garth opened the outer door and swung the compression tube around. He released the power and the magnibullet shot "down," or "out," straight for the asteroid. The cable unreeled behind it until it struck.

The cruiser was now a tiny satellite, revolving slowly as the rock revolved, but connected to it by the taut strand of wire. The two men moved along the wire hand over hand until the gravity of the rock gripped them, to pull them slowly downward. They alighted on a precipitous plateau bordering on the sunward side. All was an amorphous mass of guttered rock, of serrate pinnacles and precipices and sudden chasms. Bizzare and ever-changing shadows played slowly over the naked, revolving surface.

As they stood there staring around, Prokle clicked on the radiophone in his helmet and said:

"Hype, I thought of something. How could there be a signal flare here anyway? No oxygen."

"How do you know?" Garth replied. "Surprising thing, but there often is air, a thin sort, on asteroids this large--deep down in the crevices. I've even seen various kinds of moss, lichen, and other sparse growth on some of these rocks. Come to think of it, that might conceivably serve as food. You know--to men who cling tenaciously to life?"

Prokle shuddered at the thought. He said, "Well, shall I take the light side and you the dark? That way we could circle this rock in a couple of hours."

"Wait a minute!" Garth said severely as Prokle started off. "You haven't worked a rock this size before. First we're looking for that missing life-boat and not for a gold or platinum vein--remember that. Second, we work only on the dark side, because it's safer. Yes, I mean it. On a rock this size there's always a certain bombardment of fragments--some no larger than your fist. Over here we can see 'em coming, on the light side we can't. I'm cautious on this point because the first partner I ever had out here went that way with a hole smashed clear through him. Now, you take the left, I'll take the right, keep always on the side away from the sun by working away from the direction of rotation."

As Prokle moved away Garth called a final instruction: "Contact me every once in a while, and watch the chasms especially for that light."

* * * * *

Prokle was just a little resentful as he moved away. Much as he liked Garth, he sometimes didn't like his dictatorial manner. As for any of that missing party being left alive here--it was sheerly fantastic. They were wasting time which they might be putting to better and more personal advantage.

Prokle looked into the blackness and saw two tiny points of light moving swiftly toward him. He ducked involuntarily. But the meteoric fragments passed high above his head, and he turned in time to see one and then the other hit on a pinnacle far behind him. He decided suddenly that Garth was right on that point, at least.

He came to a chasm and peered down into stygian blackness. No light there. He muttered disgruntedly and leaped far across to the opposite edge, limned by the faint tinge of starlight. He stopped and looked back and Garth was already out of sight below the rock's ragged horizon. He forged cautiously ahead, leaping chasms and skirting pinnacles and stumbling over dangerously sharp rocks.

Prokle stopped at his eighth or ninth chasm and scanned the utter blackness. Still no light. Why should there be? Fantastic to think a human being could subsist on this place for three weeks. Prokle muttered to himself in ever-increasing sullenness. He hated this derelict rock and this blackness and Garth and--

Then without faintest warning the white flash of a ray spurted up from the depths, past Prokle's left ear, and hung for a moment against the darkness of space. It vanished. And just as Prokle, in his surprise, stumbled backward and fell prone, it spurted up again to burn the lip of the cliff at his feet. Then all below was dark again.

Prokle lay there a moment in silence, blessing the protecting darkness which he had cursed only a moment before. Then, hardly moving, he chuckled grimly and clicked on his phone.

"Hype! For the love of--Hey, Hype, can you hear me?"

Garth's voice came faintly in reply.

Prokle continued: "Hype, listen. I hate to admit it, but I guess you were right. There's someone here all right, and I've got him spotted. I've got him spotted so damn good that I don't dare move! He's got a ray-pistol and he just took two pot shots at me."

Garth's voice came again, thinly: "If this is your idea of a joke, it's out of place and very unfunny."

"It's unfunny all right! You get over here damn quick! And Hype, be careful. I'll keep talking to guide you."

Ten minutes later Garth crept cautiously to his partner's side and whispered: "You're sure it wasn't a meteor you saw?"

"Do meteors singe your ears? It was a ray, I tell you! It came from down there."

Garth crept to the edge of the chasm and rolled a fragment of rock over the rim. It bounded steeply down in the dark, but they could hear no sound due to the helmets they wore. No answering ray flashed up. For a minute Garth lay there, peering down cautiously. Then he crept back.

"You're right," he told Prokle, "someone's down there."

"See something?"

Garth shook his head.

"Oh, I see, it's one of those--those things of yours again. Well, you've never been wrong yet on those premonitions, but this time you don't need it. Can you tell if there's more than one?"

"Not sure," Garth said, "but I don't think so. Just _someone_. Lord knows where he got the ray-pistol, those life-boats aren't equipped with 'em. He was probably carrying one."

"But good Lord, why take pot shots at us? He must know who we are! He must know we're here to get him off this blasted rock!"

Garth looked straight at Prokle and spoke calmly: "Maybe he knows it and maybe not. Twenty-one days, Prokle, remember? Imagine three weeks on this place, knowing there's only a chance in a million of you being located. Maybe watching the others die off one by one. You'd hate to be the last, Prokle, wouldn't you? But remember what I said about some men loving life more than others, clinging to it longer, even when it means...."