Thunder in the void by Henry Kuttner - HTML preview

CHAPTER FOUR

The Destroying Avenger

Named after the Greek god of the underworld, desolate, lifeless and forbidding as Hell itself, Pluto revolved in its tremendous orbit, between thirty-seven hundred million and four thousand million miles from the Sun. Such distances are staggeringly inconceivable when we attempt to use human yardsticks. Men cannot stand the strain of such voyages without special precautions. Suspended animation is usual on the long hops, and Duncan had made use of the cataleptic drug he found at hand in the cruiser’s emergency supply locker.

For a long time the three men had been unconscious as the ship, with increasing acceleration, hurled itself toward Pluto. Duncan had carefully measured the Sherman units of the drug, calculating so that he would awaken hours before the others. But he forgot one thing—the terrific resistance khlar builds up within the human body.

So it was Rudy Hartman who first opened his eyes, groaned, and stared uncomprehendingly about him. He was strapped in a bunk, Duncan and Olcott near by. Memory came back.

Sick and weak from the long period of catalepsy, Hartman nevertheless forced his aching limbs into motion. Staggering, he presently reached Duncan and took the latter’s gun. That done, he searched for a means of binding his captive securely.

The bunk-straps were of flexible metal—not long enough, but they might serve a purpose. Hartman, scarcely conscious of his actions, fumbled at a panel and slid it back. Within the cubicle space-suits were stacked, each with its Varra Helmet, Olcott had ordered them removed when Hartman was repairing the vessel, but the scientist had not obeyed. He had not felt entirely certain that the cruiser would not be detected by the Plutonians, and perhaps he had felt a twinge of compunction at the thought of sending a helpless man to possible suicide, if his theory proved wrong. So he had concealed the Helmets behind a panel. Now he blessed the lucky chance that had made him do so.

Duncan was still unconscious. Hartman rolled him out of the bunk and dressed him in a suit, fitting the Varra Helmet in place. With the flexible straps he bound Duncan’s arms to his side; a makeshift job, but it would serve. Finally he pried the intertron knob from the Helmet and sighed with relief.

Hesitantly he went to the controls. The star-map told him little, except that they were approaching Pluto. Should they begin deceleration? Hartman’s fingers hovered over the studs—Damn! He dared not alter the course. He wasn’t a pilot, and it took trained hands to control a spaceship.

Well, that didn’t matter. There was another way—with the Varra Helmets.

He broke an ammonia capsule under Olcott’s nose and applied artificial respiration. After a time Olcott stirred.

“Hartman?” His tongue was thick. “Where—what’s happened?”

“A great deal. Lie still and get back your strength. I’ll tell you—”

But Olcott struggled to rise. “Duncan!”

“He’s safe.” Hartman nodded toward the bound figure. Then he sucked in his breath and sprang up. Duncan’s eyes were open.

“Stay where you are,” Hartman said, showing the gun. “I won’t hesitate to kill you, you know.”

Duncan grinned. “Go ahead. You can’t pilot this ship. I can wait.”

Olcott got up unsteadily. “You’ll pilot it—back to Earth. Damn you, Duncan—”

“I’ll pilot it to Pluto. Nowhere else.”

Hartman intervened. “Wait. Listen, Duncan. We have several Varra Helmets aboard. You didn’t know that.”

“So what?”

“We do not need you as a pilot. If we make connections with the Varra, we can chart a course back to Earth by letting them instruct us.”

Duncan’s eyes changed.

He said, “You’re crazy.” But his voice lacked conviction.

“The Varra!” Olcott scowled. “But—”

Hartman whirled on him. “I know! It will mean giving up the radium. But there’s no other way. We’re near Pluto. The Plutonians may detect us at any moment. If they do—” He shrugged. “We can keep the radium and die here. Or we can use the Helmets, summon the Varra, and have them guide us back to Earth.”

“Can they do that?”

“Easily. If they had tangible bodies, they could pilot spaceships as well as Duncan, or anyone else. As it is, they can tell us how to handle the controls.”

“We’ll lose the radium. It’ll mean prison too.”

“Not necessarily. Our lives are worth more than the radium—eh? And the Varra can’t read minds. Suppose we have a convincing story to tell? We planned this space-flight as a scientific expedition, nothing more. We didn’t know Duncan was an escaped convict. We didn’t know he planned to hi-jack the Maid—”

Olcott rubbed his mustache. “Plenty of holes in that. But you’re right. We can fix up some sort of story. And there’ll be no legal proof—”

He looked toward the helpless Duncan. “Except him. We don’t want him talking.”

Hartman touched the gun, but Olcott shook his head. “No. Listen. Duncan. You’re licked. We can get back to Earth, with you or without you. But if we get the Varra to help, we lose the radium. Why not be smart? Play along with us, and you’ll still get your half a million credits.”

“Go to hell!” Duncan suggested.

Hartman said, “We’ve no time to waste. We’re not far from Pluto—” He didn’t finish, but there was a suggestion of panic fear in his voice.

“Right. This ship’s got an escape hatch, hasn’t it? Good.” Olcott hurriedly began to don spacesuit and Varra Helmet. At a gesture, Hartman followed his example.

“Don’t use the power yet. Help me.” Olcott picked up Duncan by the shoulders. Grunting and straining, the two men carried their captive into the air-tight bow chamber, sealing the valve behind them. The magnetic projector, looking like an oversized cannon, faced the circular transparent port through which they could see the starry darkness of empty space.

“Know how to work one of these?”

“They’re simple,” Hartman said. “This switch—” He indicated it. “Obviously it closes the circuit. Yes, I can operate this.”

Duncan remained silent as he was roughly thrust into the projector’s gaping muzzle, feet-first. Olcott bent over him.

“You’ve got auxiliary-suit rockets and enough oxygen. And you can untie yourself, if you work fast, before you hit Pluto. You can make a safe landing—till the Plutonians find you. Well?”

Duncan didn’t answer.

Olcott said, “Don’t be a fool! You’ll die rather unpleasantly on Pluto. You know that. Will you take us back to Earth?”

There was a long silence. Abruptly, with a muffled curse, Olcott snapped Duncan’s faceplate shut, and then his own. Hartman did the same, and, with a wry face, touched the power-button on his Helmet that would summon the Varra.

In a moment the intertron knob began to glow, with a cold, unearthly brilliance. Olcott hastily turned the power on in his own Helmet. Now there was no time to waste. Soon the Varra would come....

Cold eyes dark with fury, Olcott gestured. Hartman, in response, swung the projector’s muzzle into position; both men closed their faceplates. The transparent shield of the bow port slid aside, and the air within the escape hatch blasted out into space.

Hartman moved a lever. Electro-magnetic energy blasted out from the projector, blindingly brilliant. One flashing glimpse the men had of Duncan’s bound, space-suited body hurtling into the void—and then it was gone, racing toward Pluto at breakneck speed.

Hartman closed the port and pumped air back into the tiny chamber. Abruptly a voice spoke within his brain.

“Who are you? Why do you summon the Varra? And why are you so near to Pluto?”

Olcott had heard the message too. He framed the thought: “You are a Varra? We need help.”

“We are Varra. What help do you require?”

Olcott explained.

He had fallen for many minutes. Beneath him the jagged darkness of Pluto lay, cryptic and forbidding. It was time to use the rockets, but still Duncan hesitated, though he had freed himself from his bonds. The flares would certainly attract the attention of the Plutonian mind-vampires, and then—

A shadow occulted the stars. For a moment Duncan thought it was a meteor; then he recognized the cruiser. Jets screened, almost invisible, it was still driving on its course toward Pluto!

He did not stop to ponder the reason. Instinct sent his gloved fingers to the studs built into his suit. The tiny emergency rockets burned white in the darkness of space. Duncan was hurled toward the cruiser. Involuntarily he held his breath, looking downward at the vast circle of Pluto. Would he die now?

The rockets had flared only briefly; perhaps they had not been noticed. He did not use them again. Instead, he waited, moving steadily onward with no atmosphere to slow him down by its friction. The gravitation of Pluto pulled at both man and ship, but each fell at the same rate—no! The cruiser was pulling away! That meant its masked tubes were still on.

Duncan risked another jet. This time his space-boots thumped solidly on the hull. He levered himself toward the side port, which could be opened from without, unless it had been locked. True, when the valve slid aside, the ship’s air would be lost in space, and anyone within the cruiser would die. Duncan grinned savagely. Bracing himself awkwardly, he tugged at levers.

The port opened. Duncan was almost flung away from the ship by the blast of air that gusted out. He recovered his balance, swung himself across the threshold—

At his feet lay two space-suited bodies, Olcott and Hartman. The faceplates of their Varra Helmets were open, but they had not died of lack of oxygen. That was evident. The frozen, strained whiteness of their features told a different story that Duncan read instantly. The Plutonians had brought death to Hartman and Olcott; they had died in the same manner as Andrea.

Duncan closed the port behind him, his face expressionless. Inwardly he was tense as wire, in momentary expectation of cold fury striking at his brain. He stood waiting.

The star-map on the instrument panel flared. That meant atmosphere ahead. Duncan was at the controls in two strides. His number might be up, but he had no intention of dying in a crash—not while there was still a possibility of revenging himself on the Plutonian creatures.

He checked the ship’s course, decelerating as much as he dared. So keyed-up were his nerves that he jumped sharply when a voice spoke inside his brain.

“Who are you, Earthman? Why are you here?”

Before Duncan could frame a response, he felt a thrill of sudden urgency flame through him. Something, cold and deadly as space itself, reached into his mind. There was an instant of sickening giddiness—

It was gone. The sky-screen flamed crimson. The cruiser was within Pluto’s atmosphere blanket.

Duncan gasped for breath. He was scarcely conscious of manipulating the cruiser, leveling off into a long, swooping glide. Death had touched him very nearly—and had been avoided miraculously by a fantastically small margin. The implications of what had happened turned Duncan white with incredulous shock.

For the thing that had been en rapport with his mind had tried to kill him. And that thing had been not a Plutonian, but a Varra! Duncan was certain of that. In his space-piloting days he had been in close touch with the Varra, and had learned the distinctive feel of the creatures—there was no other word—within his mind.

But the Varra were friendly to Earthmen!

The rough terrain of Pluto lay below. A cold, bluish radiance, almost invisible, seemed to flicker here and there. Duncan set the ship down with trained skill, landing on a broad plateau at the base of a high range of alps.

He was on Pluto, shunned and feared by Earthmen for a hundred and fifty years. He was in the very lair of the mind-vampires.

And nothing happened.

Slowly Duncan rose and turned the valves on the oxygen tanks. He divested himself of his spacesuit and made a careful examination of the two bodies. Both Olcott and Hartman had been killed, apparently, by the Plutonians. They had the stigmata.

But Duncan was thinking a rather impossible thought—that there were no Plutonians.

With half of his mind he made tests. There was atmosphere, almost pure chlorine. Nor was it unduly cold. An electroscope gave him the answer. Pluto was a radioactive planet, warmed from within by the powerful radiations of the ore.

Duncan took the dead Olcott’s helmet and adjusted it upon himself. Turning on the power made the intertron knob glow, but there was no other result. The Varra, of course, could not safely venture within the Heaviside Layer of any planet, and Pluto had a Layer, since it had an atmosphere. Chlorine—radium—Duncan shook his head, trying to fit the puzzle together.

There were no Plutonians. Why, then, had the Varra fostered the legend of the mind-vampires? Creatures composed of pure energy could not exist on a radioactive planet; the radiations would be fatal to their complicated electronic structures.

Duncan thought for a long time. At last he had the answer, so astoundingly simple that he found it difficult to believe. But it checked. And that meant—

He rose and went slowly to where Andrea’s body lay, still in the spacesuit, her face composed and lovely in death. Duncan’s lips twisted. He knelt.

“Andrea—”

She was trying to tell him something, he thought. What?

“Tell Earth what I’ve found out? Is that it?”

He hesitated. “It’s no use. We’re forty thousand million miles from the Sun. The radio won’t carry that far, even if it’d get through the Heaviside Layer on Pluto. There’s no way to send a message back.”

There was no way. Nor could the cruiser retrace its course. There was not enough fuel left. The jets would be exhausted before Saturn’s orbit was reached, and the speed would increase as the ship plunged Sunward, increase to a point where deceleration would be impossible.

“There’s no way, Andrea. I can’t send the message—”

Duncan stopped. There was a way, after all, though it meant death.

He seated himself before the radio-recorder and adjusted it to automatic-repeat. His message would be imprinted on metal wire-tape, and continue to be sent out into the void till the ship itself was destroyed.

Duncan pulled the microphone toward him. His voice was coldly emotionless.

“CQX. CQX. Recorded on Pluto. All ships copy. Relay to proper authorities. Pluto is uninhabited. Its atmosphere is pure chlorine. No life-form known to science can exist in a chlorine atmosphere or on a radioactive world. The Plutonian mind-vampires do not exist. The legend was created by the Varra for their own purposes. The actual mind-vampires are the Varra themselves.”

Now it would be theorizing, but Duncan was certain that his guess was correct.

“The Varra live on life energy. When man conquered space, they foresaw danger to themselves. They are vulnerable, and if Earth suspected their motives, they’d be relentlessly destroyed. So—as I see it—they pretended to be friendly, and blamed the mind-vampirism on imaginary creatures living on Pluto. The Varra can communicate with us without the need for Helmets. They can kill too. But they seldom do that. Instead, pretending to protect space-travelers from the Plutonians, they drain a certain amount of life-energy from each person wearing a Helmet. We’re like cattle to them. We think they’re friendly, and so far we haven’t suspected the truth. As long as we didn’t suspect, the Varra were safe, and could keep on vampirizing us, without our knowledge. Once in a while a Varra badly in need of energy would drain too much, which would kill its host.”

That was what had happened to Andrea. The Varra had tried to stop her from wrecking the Maid’s radio, and—Duncan’s teeth showed.

He went on telling his story, explaining what had happened. He made no excuses; there was no need for them now.

Finally he said: “The Varra can be destroyed. And we can protect ourselves against them. That’ll be up to the scientists. If this ship gets through, it will mean that the Varra couldn’t stop me. I’ve got radium aboard. So I’ll put a Heaviside Layer around the cruiser—and blast off Sunward.”

Duncan clicked the switch. No need to say more. Earth would understand, would believe.

But now—

He opened the port, after donning a suit and Helmet, and let the ship fill with the chlorine atmosphere. It would be better than oxygen, for his purposes. Iodine vapor would be even more effective, but he could not create that. If only he were a scientist, a technician, he could probably discover some other way of creating an artificial Heaviside Layer.

But it didn’t matter. This way was surest and quickest, and there would be no machinery to fail him.

Sealed within the ship once more, Duncan found the shipment of Martian radium, hi-jacked from the Maid, and removed it from its thick leaden container. He left it exposed, and went to the controls.

The cruiser lifted from the surface of the plateau. It slanted up through the chlorine atmosphere, rockets bellowing.

There was no need for split-second timing or unusual accuracy—within certain limits. He was heading Sunward. Nothing more was necessary. Except power—

The tubes thundered with ravening fury. The cruiser blasted up, acceleration jamming Duncan back into his seat. Then they were out of the air-envelope, in free space, controls locked. There was nothing more to do now but to drive on. The rockets would blast their fury into the void till the fuel was exhausted. Even then, the ship would speed on, into the tracks of commerce and the orbits of the inhabited planets.

On the visiplate specks of light glimmered, resolving themselves into a nebulous cloud—the Varra.

It was the final proof. Duncan was the first man who had ever landed on Pluto. The Varra intended to destroy him, giving him no opportunity of telling what he knew to Earth.

Duncan checked the radio. It was repeating his message, sending it steadily into space. At this distance from the Sun there was no chance that it would be picked up. But later—

He clicked the power on in his Helmet. There was no response. The Varra, as he had thought, could not penetrate his artificial barrier, his pseudo-Heaviside Layer.

It was nothing, actually, but a blanket of ionization. But the Varra could not break through it. Duncan glanced at the exposed radium on the floor. A pound of it, sending out its powerful emanations, gamma, beta and electrons, ionizing the chlorine even more effectively than it would have affected oxygen—invisible armor, protecting Duncan from the Varra.

They were massing ahead, determined to stop him. Thoughts began to penetrate his mind, furtive, random, but indications that the group power of the Varra was stronger than he had expected.

Duncan seated himself at a panel, the one controlling the blaster cannons. His face, haggard and strained, twisted in a bitter smile.

“Okay, Andrea,” he whispered. “I’m taking the message back for you. But I’m doing this—for myself! Because they killed you, damn them—”

The chill tentacles probed deeper into Duncan’s brain. He swung a cannon into position, pressed a stud, and watched a streak of electronic energy go blasting across space, silent thunder in the void, smashing relentlessly at the Varra. It struck in a maelstrom of flame.

“Vulnerable!” Duncan said, “Yeah, they’re vulnerable as all hell!”

The Varra closed in. Through their massed ranks the cannon blazed and pounded, till space seemed afire. The rocking recoil of the blasts, mingled with the booming of the rockets, thudded in Duncan’s ears even through the Helmet.

And he fought them. There were no witnesses to that battle, none to see the black cruiser plunging on through the cloud of attackers, belching Jove’s lightning, shaking with the vibrations of its murder-madness. For the spaceship was mad, Duncan thought, a relentless, destroying avenger, a dark angel bringing the terror of Armageddon to the Varra. And the energy-beings never paused; their life and their future was in the scales. If Duncan broke through, they were doomed. He must be stopped.

They could not stop him! Almost blind with the agony burning within his brain, Saul Duncan nevertheless hunched over the controls, while the cannons thundered their demoniac message into space. By dozens and hundreds the Varra died, their energy-matrices wrenched and broken by the electronic bolts. Duncan and the ship were one—and both were mad.

He got through. He had to. Nothing could have stopped Saul Duncan, not even the Varra. In the end, the black cruiser raced Sunward, cannons silent, for the Varra were scattered.

Duncan got up wearily. He stood above Andrea’s body, watching the still features, the long lashes that would never rise.

“It’s done,” he said. “Finished. Earth will get the message—”

Earth would get the message. The Varra could not stop the cruiser now, and the radio would continue to send out its signal till the fires of the Sun swallowed the black ship.

Duncan knelt. His legs were weak. The radium, of course. His suit could not protect him from the fatal radiations of a pound of the pure ore. But the stuff had served its purpose. It had kept the Varra at a distance till Duncan could fulfill his vengeance.

And now it would kill him—unless he replaced it in the leaden casket. But even that might not work now.

Duncan shrugged. It was better to die of radium burns than by the power of the Varra.

He would be dead long before then.

But the Varra would be hunted down, ruthlessly slain, their power broken forever. Earth-science would destroy them, as they themselves had slain so many, as they had killed Andrea.

The bellow of the rockets died. The ship held true to its course, plunging on faster and faster toward the sunlit worlds where men knew joy and laughter and happiness. It would go on, to the funeral pyre of the Sun.

But it would leave a message in its wake.