“Those ships out there,” he said, speaking slowly, his voice cold with suppressed excitement. “Some of them might be undamaged, might be made to operate.”
George stared.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Johnny,” he cautioned. “They’re probably riddled with meteors.”
“We could patch them up,” said Johnny. “Seal off the pilot room and stay there. We’d be safe in the suits until we got it fixed.”
CHAPTER THREE
Beasts of the Pyramid
The valley of the Pyramid was a nightmare place. A place of alien beauty, lit by the blue radiations that lapped, flame-like, around the tip of the massive monument of masonry. Weird and eerie, with a quality that set one’s teeth on edge.
An outpost of hell, Johnny told himself. Lonely and forbidding, with the near horizon of jagged peaks and rocky pinnacles lancing against the black of space. A puddle of blue light holding back the emptiness and blackness of surrounding void. The rocks caught up the shine of the Flame and glowed softly, almost as if endowed with a brilliance of their own. The blue light caught and shattered into a million dancing motes against the drifts of eternally frozen gases, evidence of an ancient atmosphere which lay in the rifts and gullies that traversed the peaks hemming in the valley.
Hunched things squatted on the peaks. Imps of space. Things that resembled nothing Man had ever seen before. The Beasts, no two alike, squatting like malevolent demons keeping silent watch. Mind-shattering forms made even more horrible by the play of light and shadow, like devils circling the pit and speculating darkly upon the punishments to be meted out.
“It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it,” said Karen Franklin and her voice was none too steady.
One of the things spread its wings and lifted from a peak. They could see the cloud of whitish vapor which shot from the “rocket tubes” and lifted it into space. It soared toward the Flame, hovered for a moment above it and then dipped down, almost into the play of bluish light.
Karen cried out and Johnny stared, unbelieving. For the thing was changing! In the shifting light of the radiations it was actually taking on new form! Old features of its appearance dropped away and new ones appeared. The face of the Beast, seen clearly in the light, seemed to vanish like a snatched-off mask. For a moment it was faceless, featureless … and then the new features began to form. Features that were even more horrible than the ones before. Features that had cold fury and primal evil stamped upon them. The wings shimmered and changed and the body was undergoing metamorphosis.
“Mutation,” Johnny said, his voice brittle with the terror of the moment. “The Flame mutates those things. A sort of re-birth. From all regions of Space they come to get new bodies, perhaps new vitality. The Flame is the feeding grounds, the source of nourishment, the place of rejuvenation for them.”
Another Beast shot down from the blackness that crowded close over the valley, skimmed lightly for a peak and came to perch.
Thoughts banged against one another in Johnny’s skull.
Mutations! That meant then, the Flame was a source of life. That it held within its core a quality that could renew life … perhaps, a startling thought … even create life. Back on Earth men had experimented with radiations, had caused mutations in certain forms of life. This was the same thing, but on a greater scale.
“A solar Fountain of Youth,” said George, almost echoing Johnny’s thoughts.
The pyramid, then, had been built for a purpose. But who had built it? What hands had carried and carved and piled those stones? What brain had conceived the idea of planting here in space a flame that would burn through the watches of many millennia?
Surely not those things squatting on the peaks! Perhaps some strange race forgotten for a million years. Perhaps a people who were more than human beings.
And had it been built for the purpose for which it was now being used? Might it not be a beacon light placed to guide home a wandering tribe? Or a mighty monument to commemorate some deed or some event or some great personage?
“Look out!” shrieked George.
Automatically Johnny’s hand swept down to his belt and cleared the blaster. He swung the weapon up and saw the Space Beast plunging at them. It seemed almost on top of them. Blindly he depressed the firing button and the blaster slammed wickedly against the heel of his hand. Swaths of red stabbed upward. George was firing too, and Johnny could hear Karen sobbing in breathless haste as she tried to clear her weapon.
Inferno raged above their heads as the beams from the weapons met the plunging horror. The body of the thing burst into glowing flame, but through the glow they still could see the darkness of its outline. The blast from the guns slowed it, so that it hung over them, caught in the cross-fire of the blazing weapons.
Suddenly it shot upward, out of the range of the guns. Shaken by the attack, they watched it flame though space, as if in mortal agony, twisting and turning, writhing against the black curtain that pressed upon the asteroid.
Another Beast was dropping from a pinnacle, shooting toward them. And another. Once again the beams lashed out and caught the things, slowed them, halted them, made them retreat, flaming entities dancing a death fandango above the blue-tipped pyramid.
“This won’t do,” said Johnny quietly. “They’ll coop us up inside the ship. They’d attack us if we tried to take off in the emergency boat to reach one of the ships up there.”
He stared around the horizon, at the roosting Beasts hunched on the jagged rim. Men, he realized, were intruders here. They were treading on forbidden ground, perhaps on sacred ground. The Beasts resented them, quite naturally. He seemed to hear the subdued rustling of wings, wings of flame sounding across countless centuries.
Wings! That was it. He knew there was something incongruous about the Beasts. And that was it … their wings. Wings were useless in space. They had no function and yet the Beasts spread them exactly like the winged things in Earth’s atmosphere. He racked his brain. Might those wings, after all, have some definite purpose or were they mere relics of some other life, some different abode? Might not the Beasts have been driven from some place where there was an atmosphere? Had they been forced to adapt themselves to space? Or were the wings only for occasional use when the things plummeted down upon the worlds of Man and other earth-bound things?
Johnny shuddered, remembering the old dragon myths, the old tales of flying dragons, back on Earth. Had these things once visited Earth? Had they given rise to those old tales out of mankind’s dim antiquity?
He jerked his mind back, with an effort, to the problem at hand. He had to take up the emergency boat and find a ship. From among all those derelicts there certainly would be several that still would operate, would take them from this hell-lit slab of rock. But with the Beasts standing guard there wasn’t a chance.
Perhaps, if all of them could get into the emergency boat they could make a dash for it and trust to luck. But there was only room for one.
If there were only a way. If Old Ben were only alive. Old Ben could think of some way. Old Ben, with his shuffling walk and twisting face. He closed his eyes and a vision of Old Ben seemed to form within his brain. The twisted lips moved. “I am here, Johnny.”
Johnny jumped, for the words had actually rung within his brain. Not spoken words, but thought even louder than the words themselves.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mutation of Old Ben
“Who said that?” asked Karen sharply.
“It’s Old Ben, ma’m,” said the soundless voice. “Old Ben is speaking to you.”
“But Ben,” protested Johnny, “it can’t be you. You were back in the engine room. You’re …”
“Sure, Johnny,” said the voice. “You think I’m dead and probably I am. I must be dead.”
Johnny shivered. There was something wrong here. Something terribly wrong. Dead men didn’t talk.
“It was the rad
iations,” said Old Ben. “They changed me into something else. Into something that you can’t see. But I can see you. As if you were far away.”
“Ben …,” Karen cried but the soundless words silenced her.
“It’s hard to talk. I have to hurry. I haven’t any mouth to talk with. Nothing like I used to have. But I’m alive … more alive than I have ever been. I think at you. And that is hard.”
Johnny sensed the struggle in the thoughts that hammered at his brain. Inside the helmet perspiration dripped down his forehead and ran in trickling streams along his throat. Unconsciously he tried to help Old Ben … or the thing that once had been Old Ben.
“The musical instrument,” said Old Ben, the thoughts unevenly spaced. “The musical instrument I brought in Sandebar. Get it and open the box.”
They waited but there was nothing more.
“Ben!” cried Johnny.
“Yes, Johnny.”
“Are you all right, Ben? Is there anything we can do?”
“No lad, there isn’t. I’m happy. I have no mangled body to drag around. No face to keep all streaked with grease so it won’t look so bad. I’m free! I can go any place I want to go. I can be everywhere at once. Any place I want to be. And there are others here. So I won’t be lonesome.”
“Wait a minute, Ben!” Johnny shrieked, but there was no answer. They waited and the silence of space hung like a heavy curtain all about them. The valley was a place of silence and of weird blue light that sent shadows dancing.
George was running for the shattered stern of the ship. Johnny wheeled to follow him.
He shouted at Karen:
“Get back into the lock and wait for us. You’ll be safe there.”
The two men climbed through the gaping hole the Beast had torn. Carefully, torturously, they made their way through the twisted girders and battered plates. The engine room was a mass of wreckage, but there were no bodies.
“The radiations,” said George. “It changed all of them into the kind of things … well, into whatever Old Ben is.”
Thoughts ran riot in Johnny’s brain. Radiations that changed life. Changing Beasts into other shapes and forms. Changing men into entities that could not be seen, entities that had no bodies but could go anywhere they pleased, could be any place they wanted to, or in all places at the same time!
If the worst came to the worst there was still a way of escape! Still a way open to them. A doorway it would take courage to cross, but it was there. A doorway to another way, to another form of life, to a life that might be better than the one they had. Old Ben said he was happy … and that was all that mattered. Just strip off their suits and walk unprotected into the full glare of the light.
He cursed at himself, savagely. That wasn’t the way to do things. If it happened and one couldn’t help it … all right. But to do it deliberately … that was something else. Perhaps, if all else failed, if there was no other way …
They found the box containing the strange musical instrument and between them they lugged it out. Despite the lesser gravity it was heavy and hard to handle.
Outside, in front of the lock, they pried up the lid. Instantly, music filled all of space. Not music in the sense that it was sound, but a rhythmic pulse and beat that one could sense. Music that filled the heart with yearning, music that made one want to dance, music that plucked and pulled at the heartstrings with tripping, silvery fingers. Sobbing notes and clear, high notes that rang like the gladsome clanging of a bell, rippling music like wind across the water and sonorous chords like the bellowing of a drum. Music that swelled and swelled, reaching out and out, appealing to all emotions, crying for understanding.
Johnny saw the astonished oval of Karen’s face through the helmet plate.
She saw him looking at her. “How lovely!” she cried.
“It’s the radiations again,” said George, breathlessly. “Old Ben was right. The thing plays by radiation.”
“Look at the Beasts!” Johnny shouted.
The Beasts were shuffling toward them, hopping and running, sliding down from their perches on the soaring pinnacles, racing across the boulder jumbled valley floor.
George and Johnny lifted their guns from the holsters and waited. The Beasts advanced and stopped, forming a half circle in front of the wrecked ship. Every line of their gruesome bodies had assumed a pose of rapt attention. They did not even seem to see the Earthmen. Motionless, as if carven from stone, they listened to the swelling paean that swept up and out of the metal box.
Johnny let out his breath, slowly. But he still kept a tight grip upon the gun. The Beasts seemed to be hypnotized, held entranced by the music that poured from out the radiation instrument.
Johnny spoke softly to the others: “As long as the music lasts it will keep them quiet. Keep in the lock and watch. Don’t take any chances.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Karen, sharp anxiety in her voice.
“There’s one emergency boat left,” said Johnny. “All the others are smashed. I’m taking it up and see about the ships. They are our only chance.”
“I’ll help you,” offered George.
Johnny turned to face Karen. “Please take care of yourself.”
She nodded. “And you, Johnny. You take care of yourself, too.”
The ship was old … a thousand years at least, but it seemed to be serviceable. The hull appeared in good shape. The rocket tubes were intact. A meteor had drilled a hole as big as a man’s hand through the pilot cabin. But it had missed the instruments and it would not be too big a job to patch the holes. Probably there were other similar holes through the rest of the ship but they wouldn’t matter unless the rocketing projectiles had smashed the machinery. The machinery in a ship of this sort was elemental. Mostly fuel tanks, combustion chamber and tubes. No niceties.
Johnny walked to the control board and grinned as he looked over the instruments and controls. Not much to them. In the days when this craft had set out to sail the void a space ship was a rocket pure and simple … nothing else.
But the ship was the best he had found so far. He had visited three others and all three were damaged beyond repair. The fuel tanks had been smashed in one. In another the control panel had been shattered by a tiny bit of whizzing stone and the third had one of the rockets sheared off.
Johnny walked back to the open lock and peered down at the asteroid. The valley where the pyramid was situated was just coming over the horizon and the light from the flame made it appear that dawn had just arrived on the little world.
He whirled from the lock and went to the door communicating with the stern of the ship. He’d have to look over the fuel tanks and other machinery, make sure that everything was all right. And he had to hurry. Johnny could imagine what was going on in the minds of the two he had left in the flame-lit valley. The speculation and apprehension, the pitting of hope against hope.
The door creaked open and Johnny stepped through into the living quarters.
The room looked lived in. After all these years it appeared as it must have that day nearly a thousand years before when the men who drove the ship had dared come into the Belt, had left their course to investigate the Flame in Space. They had been trapped, exactly as the crews of all those other ships had been trapped. Caught by radiations that turned them into something that didn’t have human form, although human thoughts and aspirations and human hope might still remain. Adventurers all … men who felt within them the lure of the unknown, men who had dared to come and see and hadn’t been able to get back again.
Broken dishes and crockery lay on the floor, where they had been swept off the table or hurled from the shelving by the rocking of the ship, by the shock of hammering debris. The bunks were unmade, exactly as they had been left when the men had tumbled out to rush forward and look out through the vision plate at the mystery which loomed ahead.
&n
bsp; A strange tingle of fear rippled along Johnny’s spine. He stopped and listened, looking around.
His hand slid down to the butt of his blaster.
Then he laughed, a throaty laugh. Getting jittery in an old ship. There wasn’t anything here. There couldn’t be anything here. Nothing except the ghosts of the men who had manned the craft ten centuries ago. He shuddered at the thought. Could it be possible that the ghosts of the old crew were still here? Was it possible that the things they had been turned into by the radiations still hovered in this room, keeping eternal watch?
He cursed at his fears and strode forward but fear still rode upon his shoulder, a little jeering fear that taunted him and yelped in hideous glee.
The fuel tanks were intact, the combustion chamber seemed undamaged. His inspection of the ship from the emergency boat had assured him that the tubes were unhurt. The ship could be navigated.
Back in the living quarters he stopped momentarily, his eyes lighting on a desk. The ship’s log would be kept there. He had just time for a peek. Find out something about the ship. The name of its captain, the identity of the men who had served under him, its ports of call, its home port back on Earth.
He hesitated. The desk drew him like a magnet. He took a swift step forward and slammed into something. Something that yielded to the touch, but with a sense of terrible strength.
Heart in his throat, he backed away. He felt his legs and arms grow cold as ice, the muscles of his abdomen squeezing in, the sudden surge of fear hazing his brain. But his reflexes were at work. Like an automaton, he reacted to the spur of danger. His right hand swept the blaster free and he paced backward, on the alert, like a retreating cat, poised for instant action.
He felt his way through the door into the pilot cabin, backed warily for the open port. But there he stopped. Maybe he had imagined he ran into something back there in the living quarters. Maybe there wasn’t anything at all. Space sometimes did queer things to a man. He needed this ship … Karen and George back on the asteroid needed it. He couldn’t let himself be scared away by wild imaginings.