Protoplasm couldn’t live out there. It was too cold and there was no atmosphere. Protoplasm … that was the stumbling block. All known life was based on protoplasm, but did it necessarily follow that life must be based on protoplasm? Protoplasm, of itself, wasn’t life. Life was something else, a complex phenomenon of change and motion. Life was a secret thing, hard to come at. Scientists, pushing back the barriers to their knowledge, had come very close to it and yet it always managed to elude them. They had found and defined that misty borderline one side of which was life, the other side where life had not as yet occurred. That borderline was the determining point, the little hypothetical area where life took shape and form and motion. But just because in the so-far known Solar System it had always expressed itself in protoplasm, did it necessarily mean it must always express itself in protoplasm?
He watched the metallic glitter of an asteroid off their port. It was only a few miles distant and it would pass well over them, but the sight of the thing gave him the creeps. Those barren rocks reflected little light. Hard to see, they rushed through space on erratic orbits and at smashing speeds. At times one could locate them only by the blotting out of stars.
“Karen,” he said, “maybe we should turn back. It was foolish of us to try. Your Dad won’t blame us. I don’t like the look of things.” He swept his hand out toward the soaring Space Beast.
She shook her head, obstinately. “Dad would have come himself, long ago, if it hadn’t been for the accident. He’d be with us now if the doctors would let him take to space again.” She looked into Johnny’s face solemnly. “We mustn’t let him down,” she said.
“But rumors!” Johnny cried. “We’ve been chasing rumors. Rumors that have sent us to the far corners of the system. To Io and to Titan and even in close to the Sun seeking a mythical planet.”
“Johnny,” she asked, “you aren’t afraid, are you?”
He was silent for a time, but finally he said: “For you and for the boys back there.”
She didn’t answer, but turned back to the vision plate again, staring out into the velvet black of space, watching the Space Beast and the shimmer of nearby rocks, the debris of the Belt.
He growled in his throat, watching the Beast, his brain a mad whirl of thoughts.
Metal Seven had started the whole thing. Five years ago old Jim Franklin, one of the system’s most intrepid explorers and space adventurers, had found Metal Seven on Ganymede … just one little pocket of it, enough for half a dozen space ships. Search had failed to reveal more. Five years of hectic search throughout the system had not unearthed a single pound of the precious mineral.
Its value lay in its resistance to the radiations that poured through space. Space ships coated with a thin plating of Metal Seven acquired an effective radiation screen.
But few ships had such a screen … because Jim Franklin had found only enough for a few ships. The Karen had it, for the Karen was Franklin’s ship, named after his only daughter. A millionaire back on Mars had paid a million dollars for enough to plate his pleasure yacht. One big passenger line had bought enough of the original find to plate two ships, but one of these had been lost and only one remained. The Terrestrial government had acquired the rest of the metal and locked it in well guarded vaults against possible need or use.
The sale of the mineral had made Jim Franklin a rich man, but a large portion of the money had been invested in the search for more extensive deposits of Metal Seven.
Two years ago Franklin, on one of his rare returns to Earth from space, had visited a rocket factory to watch some tests. A rocket tube exploded. Three men were killed … Jim Franklin was saved only by a miracle of surgery. But he was Earth-bound, his body twisted and broken. His physicians had warned him that he would die if he ever took to space again.
So today his daughter, Karen Franklin, carried on the Franklin tradition and the Franklin search for Metal Seven. A search that had taken the sturdy little ship far in toward the Sun, that had landed it on the surface of unexplored Titan, had driven it, creaking and protesting against the tremendous drag of Jupiter’s gravity, down to little Io, until then unvisited by any rocket-ship. A search that was now taking it into the heart of the Asteroid Belt, following the trail pointed by the mad tale of a leering little man who had talked to Karen Franklin at the Martian port of Sandebar.
It might have been an accident … just that one little pocket of Metal Seven found on Ganymede. There might be no more in the solar system. Special conditions, some extraordinary set of circumstances might have deposited just enough for half a dozen ships.
But it didn’t seem right. Somewhere in the system, on some frigid rock of space, there must be more of Metal Seven, enough to protect every ship that plowed through space. A magic metal, screening out the vicious radiations that continually streamed through space without rhyme or reason, eliminating the menace of those deadly little swarms of radioactive meteors which swooped down out of nowhere to engulf a ship and leave it a drifting hulk filled with dead and dying.
Karen’s voice roused him from his thoughts, “Johnny, I thought I saw a light. Could that be possible? Would there be any lights out here?”
Johnny started, saying nothing, staring through the vision plate.
“There it goes!” cried George. “I saw it.”
“I saw it again, too,” said Karen. “Like a blue streak way ahead of us.”
A tremulous voice spoke from the doorway of the control room. “Is it a light you are seeing, Johnny?”
Johnny swung around and saw Old Ben Ramsey. He was clad in a bulky work suit and his twisted face and gnarled hands were grease-streaked.
“Yes, Ben,” said Johnny. “There’s something out ahead.”
Ben wagged his head. “Strange things I’ve heard about the Belt. Mighty strange things. The Flame That Burns in Space and the Space Beasts and the haunts that screech and laugh and dance in glee when a rock comes whizzing down and cracks a shell wide open.”
He dragged his slow way across the room, his feet scraping heartbreakingly, hunching and hobbling forward, a shamble rather than a walk.
Johnny watched him and dull pity flamed within his heart. Radiations had done that to Old Ben. The only man left alive after his ship hit a swarm of radioactive meteors. Metal Seven could have saved him … if there had been any Metal Seven then. Metal Seven, the wonder metal that screened out the death that moved between the planets.
“I saw it again!” yelled George. “Just a flash, like a blue light blinking.”
“It’s the Flame that burns in space,” Old Ben said, his bright eyes glowing with excitement. “I’ve heard wild tales about the Flame and Space Beasts, but I never really did believe them.”
“Start believing in them, then,” said Johnny grimly, “because there’s a Space Beast out there, too.”
Old Ben’s face twisted and he fumbled his greasy cap with misshapen, greasy hands. “You don’t say, Johnny?”
Johnny nodded. “That’s right, Ben.”
The old man stood silent for a moment, shuffling his feet.
“I forgot, Johnny. I came up to report. I loaded the fuel chambers and checked everything, like you told me to. Everything is ship-shape.”
“We’re going deeper into the Belt,” said Johnny. “Into a sector that is taboo to the miners. You couldn’t hire one of them to come in here. So be sure everything is ready for prompt action.”
Ben mumbled a reply, shuffling away. But at the door he stopped and turned around.
“You know that contraption I picked up at the sale in Sandebar?” he said. “That thing I bought sight unseen?”
Johnny nodded. It was one of the jokes of the ship. Old Ben had bought it in the famous Martian market, bought it because of the weird carvings on the box which enclosed it. Somehow or other, those carvings had intrigued the old man, touched some responsive chord of wonder deep
in his soul. But the machine inside the box was even more weird … an assembly of discs and flaring pipes, an apparatus that had no conceivable purpose or function. Old Ben claimed it was a musical instrument of unknown origin and despite the friendly jibes and bickering of the other crew members he stuck to that theory.
“I was just thinking,” said Old Ben. “Maybe that danged thing plays by radiations.”
Johnny grinned. “Maybe it does at that.”
The old man turned and shuffled out.
CHAPTER TWO
Attack!
The ship careened and bucked as George blasted with port tubes to duck a wicked chunk of rock that suddenly loomed in their path. Johnny saw the needle-like spires as the asteroid swung below them, spires that would have sheared the ship as a knife cuts cheese.
There was no doubt now that the flash they had sighted actually was a light. They could see it, a streak of blue that arced briefly across the vision port, lending its surroundings a bluish tint.
“It’s an asteroid,” declared George, “and our little friend is heading right for it.”
What he had said was true. The Space Beast had gained on them but was still almost directly ahead, apparently moving in toward the distant light.
The Karen drove on with flaming tubes. The meteoric screens flared again and again, in short flashes and long ripples, as tiny debris of the Belt struck like speeding bullets and were blasted into harmless gas.
“Johnny,” asked George, “what are we going to do?”
“Keep going,” said Johnny. “Head for the blue light. We want to see what it is if we can. But be ready to sheer off and give it all you’ve got at the first sign of danger.”
He looked at Karen for confirmation of the decision. She nodded at him with a half-smile, her eyes bright … the kind of brightness that had shown in the eyes of old Jim Franklin when his fists knotted around the controls as his ship thundered down toward new terrain or nosed outward into unexplored space.
Hours later they were within a few miles of the asteroid. Minutes before the weird Space Beast had dived for the surface, was roosting on one of the rocky spires that hemmed in the little valley where the light flamed in blue intensity.
Speechless, Johnny stared down at the scene. The flame was not a flame at all. Not a flame in the sense that it burned. Rather it was a glowing crown that hovered over a massive pyramid.
But it was not the flame, nor the roosting Beast of Space, nor even the fact that here was an old tale come to life which held Johnny’s attention. It was the pyramid. For a pyramid is something which never occurs naturally. Nature has never achieved a straight line and a pyramid is all straight lines.
“It’s uncanny,” he whispered.
“Johnny,” came George’s hoarse whisper, “look over that highest peak. Just above it.”
Johnny lined his vision over the peak, saw something flash dully. A shimmering flash that looked like steel reflecting light.
He squinted his eyes, trying to force his sight just a little farther out into the black. For an instant, just a fleeting instant, he saw what it was.
“A ship!” he shouted.
George nodded, his face grim.
“There’s two or three out there,” he declared. “I saw them a minute ago. See, there’s one of them now.”
He pointed and Johnny saw the ship. For a moment it seemed to roll, catching the shine from the blue light atop the pyramid.
Johnny’s lips compressed tightly. The skin seemed to stretch, like dry parchment, over his face.
“Derelicts,” he said, and George nodded.
Karen had turned from the vision plate and was staring at them. For the first time there was terror on her face. Her cheeks were white and her lips bloodless. Her words were little more than a whisper: “Derelicts! That means …”
Johnny nodded, finishing the sentence: “Something happened.”
A nameless dread reached out and struck at them. Alien fear creeping in from the mysterious reaches of the Asteroid Belt.
“Johnny,” said George quietly, “we better be getting out of here.”
Karen screamed even as Johnny leaped for the controls.
Through the panel he saw what had frightened her. Another Space Beast had swept across their vision … and another … and another. Suddenly the void seemed to be filled with them.
Mad thoughts hammered in his brain as he reached for the levers. Something had happened to those other ships! Something that had left them drifting hulks, derelicts that had taken up an orbit around the asteroid with its flame-topped pyramid. This was an evil place with its derelicts and its Space Beasts and its flaming stones. No wonder the miners shunned it!
His right hand shoved the lever far over and the rockets thundered. The ship was shaking, as if it was being tossed about by winds in space, as if something had it in its teeth and was worrying it.
Johnny felt the blood drain from his face. For an instant his heart seemed to stand stock still.
There was something wrong. Something was happening to the ship!
He heard the screech of shearing metal, the shriek of suddenly released atmosphere, the crunching of stubborn beams and girders.
His straining ears caught the thud of emergency bulkheads automatically slamming into place.
The rocket motors no longer responded and he snatched his eyes away from the control panel to glance through the vision plate.
The ship was falling toward the asteroid! Directly below loomed the little valley of the pyramid. From where he stood he could look straight down into the glare of the blue light.
A great wing, a wing of writhing flame, swept quarteringly across the vision plate. For a moment the cabin was lighted with a weird green and blue … the gleaming instruments reflecting the light from the wing and the pyramid flame. Weird shadows danced and crawled over the walls, over the whiteness of the watching faces.
The Space Beast veered off, volplaning down toward the flame. Johnny caught his breath. The Beast was monstrous! Cold shivers raced up and down his spine. His flesh crawled.
From the creature’s beak hung a mass of twisted steel, bent and mangled girders ripped from the Karen’s frame. Gripped in its talons, or what should have been its talons, was an entire rocket assembly.
The Karen was plunging now, streaking down toward the asteroid, headed straight for the pyramid.
In the brief second before the crash Johnny recreated what had happened. Like a swift motion picture it ran across his brain. The Beast had attacked the ship, had ripped its rear assembly apart, had torn out the rocket tubes, had plucked out braces and girders as if they had been straws. The Karen was falling to destruction. It would pile up down in that little valley, a useless mass of wreckage. It would mark where its crew had died. For most of the others back there must be dead already … and only seconds of life remained for him and the other two.
The ship struck the pyramid’s side a glancing blow, metal howling against the stone. The Karen looped, end over end, struck its shattered tail on the rocky valley floor and toppled.
Johnny picked himself out of the corner where he had been thrown by the impact. He was dazed and blood was flowing into his eyes from a cut across his forehead. Half blinded, he groped his way across the tilted floor.
He was alive! The thought sang across his consciousness and left him weak with wonder. No man could have hoped to live through that crash, but he was still alive … alive and able to claw his way across the slanting floor.
He listened for the hiss of escaping air, but there was no hiss. The cabin was still air-tight.
Hands reached out and hosted him to his feet. He grasped the back of the anchored pilot’s chair and hung on tightly. Through the red mist that swam before his eyes he saw George’s face. The lips shaped words:
“How are you, Johnny?”
&nb
sp; “I’m all right,” Johnny mumbled. “Never mind about me. Karen!”
“She’s okay,” said George.
Johnny wiped his forehead and gazed around. Karen was leaning against a canted locker.
She spoke softly, almost as if she were talking to herself.
“We won’t get out of here. We can’t possibly. We’re here to stay. And back on Earth, and on Mars and Venus, they will wonder what happened to Karen Franklin and Captain Johnny Lodge.”
Johnny let go of the chair back and skated dizzily across the floor to where she leaned against the locker. He shook her roughly by the shoulder.
“Snap out of it,” he urged. “We got to make a try.”
Her eyes met his.
“You think we have a chance?”
He smiled, a feeble smile.
“What do you think?” he challenged.
She shook her head. “We’re stuck here. We’ll never leave.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, “but we aren’t giving up before we try. Let’s get into suits and go out. There are radiations out there, but we’ll be safe. There’s Metal Seven in those suits and Metal Seven seems to be screening it out in here all right.”
Karen jerked her head toward the rear of the ship.
“The men back there,” she said.
Johnny shook his head. “Not a chance,” he told her.
George was opening another locker and taking out suits. He stopped now and looked at Johnny.
“You say there’s radiations out there,” he said. “You mean the Flame is radiation?”
“It couldn’t be anything else,” said Johnny. “How else could you explain it?”
“That’s what happened to those other ships,” declared George. “They couldn’t screen out the radiation. It killed the crews and the ships took up an orbit around the asteroid. We were all right because we had the Metal Seven screen. But the Beast came along and ruined us. So here we are.”
Johnny stiffened, struck by a thought.