The Metal Moon by Everett C. Smith and Roman Frederick Starzl (early reader chapter books txt) 📗

flee, but, as if realizing the uselessness of flight, she faced them again, defiantly;

"I don't care what happens to me!" she declared desperately. "I've told the truth at least once. Jovians call this place The Pleasure Bubble, but they don't have to live in the black half. Now tell them what I have said."

"We will not tell anyone what you said, child," Lents rumbled comfortingly. "But tell us. You don't look like the Mugs we've seen so far—nor like the poor fellow we saw put through the airlock. They seemed—a different race. But you—why—on Earth we could hardly tell you from any other kid of your age."

A flash of spirit illuminated the girl's tragic, immature face.

"They call us a different race!" she exclaimed. "True—but not an inferior race! They are the inferior race, though the stronger. They depend on our knowledge, our labor, to live! My father told me so!"

Kass, who had been studying her silently, asked, "Your father?"

"Yes. The technic in charge of the machinery below. He was ordered to escort you around. But his scars from the rays make it hard for him to breathe today. He is in his bunk. So he sent me in his place."

Sine wondered if life under such unnatural and destructive conditions would some day reduce this graceful girl to a horrible parody of humanity. He asked;

"Do you work below?"

Her clear gray eyes fell on him.

"No. I was selected by the Committee to work in the Baths when I am sixteen. I am fifteen now."

"Holy twisted nebulae!" Sine swore under his breath. "The kid doesn't know what her work in the Baths is going to be! So the Committee selected her for the Baths!" He felt suddenly a violent dislike for the very rich Jovians, a feeling of fraternity with the Mugs.

"We will be very glad to have you guide us," he said formally. "What is your name?"

"Proserpina. My father said it is fitting for one who lives where we do."

Strange anachronism! That name from the mythology of Earth's youth. Like that goddess of the underworld from misty antiquity, she led them down, down, until it seemed they must be near the bottom of the black hemisphere. It was a world of dim distances, of shadows, of pipes and girders, or grisly abysses from which came mysterious sounds; of locked chambers in which ghastly fires flared.

Now and then they met the inhabitants of the place; misshapen Robolds going about unknown tasks. They stumbled suddenly out of unnoticed passages, carrying burdens, grotesque, apelike, weary. Most of them were hideously deformed.

Several times, when their journey led them into a certain part of the hemisphere where they felt strange tingling of their nerves, the girl led them away.

"We must not go there," she told them. "The integrators are there. There my father received the scars of his chest that keep him from breathing. Most of those who are blind worked there."

The Earthmen had already heard hints of the atomic integrators from which the Jovians obtained endless power. They had no desire to get too near those searing by-products of power.

"Do you mean to say," Lents asked, puffing a little from their exertions, "that people down here live here all their lives?"

"I will show you our home," Proserpina said simply.

They came to it presently. A niche, a metal-laced nook, deep in the hull. Gigantic girders formed one side of it. On the other side enormous air conduits. It was clean, bare, not as depressing as they had expected. It was more like a gallery, long and narrow, sparsely furnished.

Something rolled out of a bunk at the farther end. Something like a great spider. A man, stooped over, his once powerful body doubled, so that his knuckles almost dragged on the floor-plates. He came toward them, fierce gray eyes looking out at them under bushy brows. So formidable that Sine's muscles tensed.

"Are these the visitors, Proserpina?" His voice was husky, as though his constricted chest with difficulty performed its function. He looked at them intensely.

"They tell me you are from Earth. Are you with us or against us?"

"Father, be careful!" She put her hand over his mouth, to be shaken off impatiently. But the girl's warning had taken effect. The man—it was impossible to tell if he were old or young—looked at them broodingly.

"My mother died here," Proserpina said. "And I am afraid he will. His mind is not as clear—"

Lents, distressed to the bottom of his generous soul, helped the victim of the Jovian pleasure moon back to his bunk. "This girl," he muttered to Kass, "can't we get her out of here?"

He had not meant for her to hear, but her quick ears caught his words, and a ray of hope illuminated her features. She was standing beside Sine, and her thin fingers gripped his hard bronzed arm;

"Oh, could you take me away? I will be your slave!"

Sine gently disengaged her fingers. He was strangely embarrassed.

"I'd like to. But I'm a bachelor man. No place for you, you know."

She did not persist. No doubt she realized that she could not leave that gaunt parody of a man who was her father.

When they bid farewell to Proserpina they were steeped in profound depression. Alone in their room, they talked over what they had seen, but they could think of no way to save Proserpina from her fate. They were still discussing their visit when the manager of this satellite of delights called on them and informed them that Governor Nikkia of Jupiter awaited them in the capital city, Rubio. A space ferry was even then clamped to the locks to take them to the mother planet.

CHAPTER III The Coming of the Teardrops

Governor Nikkia was like the majority of the First Race. Although he was not large of stature, his powerful muscles bulged impressively under his clothing. The two relatively slender Earthmen, naked save for their trunks, looked almost ridiculously puny. Lents' portly figure was more impressive, but the big scientist had all he could do to carry his weight, so uncomfortably augmented by Jupiter's great mass. The unaccustomed thickness of the atmosphere, too, made the Earthmen uncomfortable. The heat was excessive, for although the outer cloud masses had been determined by photometric telescopic examination to be near the freezing point of hydrogen, Jupiter's enormous store of internal heat made its surface temperature average around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The humidity was high, and the explorers from Earth were distressed.

Nikkia was a good host, however. He ordered out one of the government cars, luxurious conveyances supported by gravity repulsion buttons, and personally accompanied his guests on a tour of inspection through the murky fog. They rode interminably over wet, domed roofs, down through gloomy arcades. Thunder rumbled incessantly, and occasionally there came a lurid glow of lightning.

For a city of Rubio's extent, they saw very few people. Occasionally they saw the erect, confident figure of a member of the First Race, tending some mighty engine whose purpose they could only guess. The inhabitants preferred to stay indoors, if they could not afford to dally in The Pleasure Bubble.

Nikkia listened with interest to the voyagers' account of their journey through space. But he did not respond with much enthusiasm to the suggestion that interplanetary commerce be resumed.

"We are comfortable," he said good-naturedly. "Besides, I'm not sure that the Mugs could build ships suitable for such long trips. They're getting lazier every day!" He shook his head regretfully.

"What do you expect?" Sine blurted. "You treat them like slaves, ruin their lives, and then you're surprised because they lack ambition!"

Nikkia looked at him in mild astonishment. "But they have to be kept in their place! If we gave them free hand they'd soon run us out. Why, not fifty years ago——"

He told again of that uprising that had resulted in the breaking of the Second Race's pretension. "We have to control 'em," he ended smugly.

The Earthmen were baffled by the bland indifference of the Jovians to their mother planet. They met many of the First Race in the next few days, but none seemed interested but the so-called Mugs, the Second Race, and their interest was wistful akin to nostalgia.

But the three scientists were to learn that the First Race were good fighting men, regardless of their short-comings in other lines.

The glowing "teardrops" appeared a little over a week later. They were so called because of their shape, but the Jovians knew as little about their nature as did their guests. They appeared early one murky morning, as Kass, Sine and Lents sat at breakfast with Governor Nikkia. The servants, comely, characterless specimens of the Second Race who held themselves snobbishly above their fellows, came panic-stricken;

"Your Supremacy!" called one, making a low obeisance. "There are strange lights hanging over the palace!"

Nikkia brushed the slight fellow aside, dashed up a stairway to a terrace on the roof, closely followed by his guests. In a few moments they were all soaked by the warm downpour as they stood on the terrace, like an island in a sea of brown fog.

There were three of them, roughly egg-shaped, but with an elongated tail. More like tadpoles, save that the tail was rigid and emitted a fiery streak. Obviously they were propelled by a new adaptation of the old rocket principle. They swam back and forth slowly, as if questing for something, leisurely selecting their victims. The strangest thing about them, however, was the light. A brilliant red, almost pink, like the glow of a neon tube, it penetrated the fog. Its pulsations even penetrated brain and body, so that the watchers became unpleasantly conscious of it.

Nikkia, watching tensely, turned suddenly on his guests;

"Damned funny! Barely you show up, and now this! I don't like it. Are they from the Earth?"

Lents swelled in slow and ponderous anger.

"Do you think, sir, that we are of the sort to abuse your hospitality by spying on you? We don't know any more about those things than you do!"

"Damned funny!" Nikkia repeated to himself. "Wonder if there's any of them left?"

"Your Supremacy!" a servant interrupted. "Call from the war office!" He was carrying a drum-like contrivance, carried on a stand, and set it down in front of the governor.

"Well?" Nikkia snapped impatiently.

The screen which formed the drumhead glowed into life. A Jovian officer, looking exceedingly efficient and warlike in his armor uniform, stood at salute, which Nikkia returned impatiently.

"Who are those flyers, Sonta?" the governor snapped.

"I don't know, Your Supremacy," the officer growled. "They fail to answer our challenge, and none of the men have seen anything like them."

"Then why don't you turn the heat on them?"

"We have. Our heat-rays have no effect on them. That pinkish light is a reflector wave of some sort. Several of our beam projectors were burnt up by the kick-back."

"Ram 'em then! Ram 'em! Sacred Ganymede! Is our Defense Service degenerating into a crew of Mugs?"

The officer's image on the screen was seen to flush, to draw itself up resentfully.

"We have sent ships up to ram them, Your Supremacy. Three of them have been destroyed."

"I was watching. I saw nothing."

"The visibility is worse than usual. They are half a mile high. Our own ships are invisible at a hundred yards. It's that cursed light."

Nikkia shut him off peremptorily.

"Never mind the conversation, Sonta. Get out every available defense craft. Box those teardrops. Ram them. Destroy them—I don't care how!"

The screen was suddenly dark, and Nikkia gazed angrily up at the mysterious glowing craft overhead. So far they had done no damage except to the city's fighting ships.

"Listen!" Sine exclaimed. His body glistened like wet bronze as he stood in the half darkness and strained to catch some sound over the steady patter of rain. "Lents, quit puffing!"

From high overhead, some sounds were coming to them. A steady, droning rush, like the sustained exhaust of rockets. That must be from the visitors, for the official ships were equipped with the gravity buttons. Now and again one of the glowing teardrops would be thrown violently from its course, evidently the effect of impingement of the gravity beam. But not one was disabled. The defense ships were not faring so well. Every little while there would be a fog-muffled crash as one of them crashed, throwing a stone roof into the street. But none fell near the governor's palace.

It was uncanny. No sound save that low, sibilant roar, and an occasional crash out there somewhere in the darkness. The mysterious attacking ships so plainly visible and so immune, and the defensive fighting craft, flying in silence and invisibility—crashing anonymously.

Nikkia had dropped his air of assurance and calm superiority. He was frankly worried, and still a little suspicious of his guests. This attack—it did seem rather a coincidence. What would Sonta have to report now?

He twisted a dial on the side