The Beast of Space Page 3
* * * * *
Nat placed the girl in his bunk, removed the cumbersome spacesuit. Hereyes blinked faintly, then sprang open. But they did not see him; theywere staring straight ahead. Her mouth opened and shut weakly as thoughshe were speaking, but no sound issued from it. He brought her water,but when he returned she had fallen asleep. He returned to the kitchento prepare some food.
"You're still running around in that pillow case," he remarked toDigger as he extracted the spacehound from it. "Attend me, now. We knowwhy and how those people disappeared. It would take the Space Patrolship at least a month to arrive here; I don't intend to perch on theback of this devil as long as that. And if we leave, old thing, it'lljust lure other chivalrous fools to very unpleasant ends.
"And we've got to get this kid back to civilization. She needs adoctor's care, preferably a doctor with two arms."
Digger's vibrations were one of general approval.
"We could poison it," he went on. "Only I'm not a chemist; even if Iknew the compounds contained in that reeking stomach I wouldn't knowwhat would destroy them. Might blow it up, but we haven't enoughexplosive.
"No, we'll have to get down into the thing's insides again. In fact--"He paused suddenly, mouth open. "Congratulate me, Digger! I have it!"
The smell of burning vegetables cut short his soliloquy. He fed thestarved, half-blind girl, then left her sleeping exhaustedly as hesquirmed into his suit.
No sooner had he entered the mouth of the cave than a half-dozen of thesinging sensory organs rolled quickly, yet not angrily, toward him. Thebeast was apparently optimistic, for the globes sang in their mostsoothing, seductive tones. They tried to herd him into the first caveon the right, but he had remembered the _squeaker_; they could notdistract him.
Effortlessly he leaped over them toward the mouth of the cave on theleft. That was where the spaceships lay, pointing in all directionslike a carelessly-dropped handful of rice.
All the ships were in running order. Good; had there been one vessel hecould not move, then all was lost. The fuel in several ran low, butafter a few moments of punching levers and pulling chokes, the underrockets thundered in the big room.
Taking care not to injure the motor compartments of the other ships,using only the most minute explosion-quantities, he jockeyed each shiparound until all their noses pointed in one direction. The exhaustspointed out through the wide doorway. It was well that the beast hadformed curved corners in the room, otherwise the scheme would not haveworked. The exhausts which did not point toward the door, directly,were toward the curved walls which would deflect the forceful gassesexpelled doorward.
When he emerged from the ship, the spheres attacked. He seared offtheir tentacles throughout what seemed to be eternities. His body wasbecoming a mass of bruises from the lash of their tentacles. He burnedhis way through the swarm on to ship after ship.
As he stepped from the last vessel there was a rumbling beneath hisfeet. Did the monster understand his intent? Was it stirring in itsshell? Most of the globes had disappeared; now a nauseatingly sweetodor penetrated the screen in his headpiece, which permitted him tosmell without allowing the oxygen to escape. He hurried around to therear of the ship, an apprehensive, sickening feeling at the pit of hisstomach. A thick jelly-like wave of liquid was rolling over thefloor--the reeking, deadly juices from the beast's stomach. If theliquid touched him, it would eat through the heavy fabric, explodingthe air pressure from around his body. How was he to escape from thecave?
The answer came to him suddenly. Quickly he darted back toward thenearest vessel. Two of the screaming spheres blocked his way; he sentbolt after searing bolt into them, more of a charge than he had givenany of the others. The lights in the globes went out; their voicesceased. And they burst into slowly mounting incandescence. Yet, theywere not consumed by their fire, only glowed an intense white lightlike that of a lighthouse.
"Lighthouse!" The word flashed through his mind clearly, strongly. Theyglowed like the "zirconia lights" of a lighthouse. Why hadn't herecognized the greasy, quartz-like material before? It was zirconia, acompound of zirconium, of course. A silicate base creature could easilyhave formed a shell of it about itself.
Zirconia--one of the compounds he'd intended prospecting for on themoons of Saturn. Worth over a hundred dollars per pound. Because of itsresistance to heat, it was used to line the tubes of rockets; Terra'ssupply had long been used up. Here was a fortune all around him; butthat fortune was about to be destroyed, he along with it, if he did nothurry.
If he could only reach the timing mechanism to yank from it the wiresconnecting it to the other ships. It was at the other end of the line.He started in that direction, but a surge of fatal, thick acid rolledbefore him, reaching for him with hungry, questing tongues.
When it was almost touching his toes, he leaped. As he floated towardthe floor, he placed a chair beneath him so that his feet landed on theseat. The legs of the chair sank slowly into the liquid.
Again he leaped, his moment retarded by the fluid which now reachedhalfway up the chair legs, sucked and clung there. The sweetly-evilsmelling stuff was rising rapidly. But the next leap carried him intothe main cave. Abandoning the chair, he leaped once more, out throughthe cave's mouth, pursued by the waving tentacles of the sensoryspheres.
* * * * *
He had lost precious minutes eluding that deadly acid. It would takeat least five minutes to get his ship away from the asteroid; he musthurry before all those rocket motors were thrown into action, or itwould be too late.
Leap and leap again. It seemed ages, but he reached the ship, boltedthe door shut. Thumps against the door as the pursuing globes ran upagainst it. A thought came to him; swiftly he opened the door,permitted a few of them to enter, then slammed it shut. With the heatgun he sheared off their tentacles; he could sell the zirconia in theentities. Then he turned to the controls and the ship zoomed up andout.
Nat had barely raised his ship from the Asteroid Moira when he saw thesmall planetoid lurch suddenly, bounding off its orbit at almost aright angle. The sudden combined driving force of all the rocketswithin the cave had sent it hurtling away like a rocket itself.
The asteroid housing the monster was heading into the Flora group ofAsteroids. There the fifty-seven odd solid bodies of that group wouldgrind, crack, and rend that dangerous beast into harmless, deadfragments.
"A good job," said a weak, but softly friendly voice behind him. Hewhirled. The girl stood in the doorway of the pilot room, supportingherself against the door frame. Digger rubbed thoughtfully against herlegs.
"We'll just follow that asteroid, Miss," he said, "and see if we can'tpick up some odd fragment of zirconia when it's smashed in thegrindstone there. Then we'll light out for Terra."
She smiled. Earth, to him, seemed like a very good place to go as soonas possible.
Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Comet July 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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