Chapter II: Part 2

Ship of the dead! I took only one look at the dimly starlit deck triangle; the bodies lying strewn there. Little group of humans who had gathered there in a last frenzied panic, clinging to each other, falling one upon the other--suffocating, dying.

Nothing but the dead here.

But this tragedy had happened out in space! And we had seen the _Seven Stars_ calmly coming down, gracefully, skilfully landing!

I swung back to Brenda. I gasped, "Good Lord, we've got to get out!"

Too late a realization! I was aware suddenly of a dark glistening shape behind us in the corridor--a man in a sleek tight-fitting black robe. His white face, evil with a leer, grinned at us. Brenda screamed. I tried to defend us from another dark blob that leaped from a doorway beside me. And then something struck my head. I was aware only that Brenda was screaming as I felt myself falling, my senses hurtling off into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

I came at last into a dim half-consciousness in which I realized that I was being carried. I could feel the rhythmic step; and then I knew that I was slung over a man's shoulder and that he was walking with me on the rocks. Other dark forms were beside us. With blurred vague vision I could see the little _Seven Stars_ which we had left.

And near at hand another spaceship had landed now, here upon little Asteroid-9. I was being carried to it. I could glimpse it only vaguely as I hung inert on my captor's shoulder. It was a small ship, smaller than the _Seven Stars_, and of a type I had never seen before--barrel-finned and with a spreading fan-tail, somewhat in the British Earth-design. It rested on the rocks like a long, thin bird, with body puffed out underneath. Over it was the conventional glassite pressure dome, low-slung so that its top was no more than ten feet above the single deck. A dead-black bird. The starlight and mellow Earthlight were on it, but the black metal surface did not shimmer.

My senses wafted away again into another blank interval.... And then dimly my hearing came....

"We're glad to have you, little Brenda. You are a treasure indeed. A woman among us--to cook and sew with woman's duties. Your father will appreciate that. You do, eh Carson?"

Familiar, suave, ironic voice with a rich booming timber to it of assumed graciousness. I knew I had heard that voice before, but with my swimming senses now I could not quite place it. I felt my eyes opening to a blur of swaying outlines.

"You let her alone." The thin frightened voice of an old man. Brenda's father.

The dim scene clarified as my strength came. I was lying on the floor of a little circular control room, with a black shape beside me. And there were three other figures: Brenda, still garbed in her baggy deflated space-suit, with her white tense face staring in my direction; her gray-haired, thin father, in black trousers and black shirt, seated in a little metal chair beside her. And the other figure at the controls--a big, heavy-set man in tight-fitting black garment. Tubelight shone on his florid face. Arthur Jerome, Interplanetary traveler, Earth television lecturer on things astronomical! The man with the metal skull, unquestionably! Notorious chameleon of former years, and now the Phantom Raider!

"This Fanning comes to his senses," a voice beside me growled.

"Ah, so?" It brought Jerome with a leap, and then he bent over me. "So that blow on your head didn't kill you, Fanning?"

"No," I said. "You, Jerome. If only I had known--"

"Quite true," he chuckled. "Hindsight is very easy. And now we have you here. You will be useful, if you have any sense, A member of the Interplanetary Patrol, you should be skilled in many things of our adventuring in space. Romantic life, Fanning. Did you ever read of Captain Kidd, so long ago? One might say I am his modern incarnation. Romantic idea, eh Fanning?"

A little mad, this fellow. I could well imagine it. But a clever scheming, murderous villain for all that. "Much money for you," he added slyly. "I treat all my men well. There are fifteen of us here."

"I like money," I said with an assumption of sullenness. "But there are a lot of things I want to know."

I found that I was still garbed in the space-suit, but my weapon was gone. I was presently allowed to sit up in a chair beside Brenda and her father. But for all my assumption that I could be bribed, it did not deceive the wily Jerome. The two other black-garbed men here were closely watching me.

* * * * *

The Phantom flyer. From here in its tiny control room, it did not seem unusually weird. Its fittings a dead-black metal. Its men garbed in sleek, dead-black, close-fitting fabric suits with black fabric helmets dangling at the back of the neck.

I could see that we were in space. Through the pressure dome the stars were glittering in a black firmament. Where were we going? Jerome had not the slightest objection to telling me. Perhaps in the back of his mind there was the idea that ultimately he could bribe me, make me one of his band of cutthroats, useful to him. He was a genial, triumphant villain now, flushed with his success, pleased to boast of it before his men and before Brenda.

Old Professor Carson had not intended that his children come to Asteroid-9 and try to rescue him. That furtive message he had found opportunity to send was intended to bring the Interplanetary Police. Jerome had discovered that the message was sent. On the _Seven Stars_ he had thrust Philip out through the porte; and had been searching Philip's stateroom, fearing that some incriminating evidence might be there, when I assailed him.

"You were using an X-ray screen?" he jibed at me now. "My metal headplate? Much good will it ever do you now to know that I was the Chameleon. A clever fellow, that Chameleon--but I like the Phantom bandit better, don't you?"

And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to don a pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked the air-valves and let the air out of the doomed _Seven Stars_. Ship of the dead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raider had come with a boarding party. Then the _Seven_ had been taken to Asteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arriving X-flyer, and here we were.

"Headed for Deimos," he chuckled. "How glad they will be to see us! A million decimars of Interplanetary currency, Fanning. You'll want some of it, surely. And then we'll go looking for another adventure. Romantic life, eh?"

I tried, during those following hours, very cautiously to convince Jerome that at heart I might be a villain like himself. Perhaps to some extent, I succeeded. At all events, there came at last a brief interval when the controls were locked and Brenda, her father and I were out on the tiny forepeak in the starlight, momentarily alone. I had found now that a little freedom of movement was given us. After all, there was nothing that we could do, trapped here.

"You know where the exit porte of this ship is?" I murmured.

"Yes, yes, of course." Professor Carson was a confused, dazed old man; his life among these cutthroats for so long now had cowed him. "But what--what do you think you could do?"

In truth I had no possible idea. But if ever a chance should come for escape--

"In the pressure chamber," I whispered, "would there be pressure suits? One for you--"

"Yes. Yes, there are."

A commotion up at the control turret interrupted us. The black-garbed man at the electro-telescope there was shouting. Jerome came running; and we followed him up into the turret. He was grim, but ironically smiling.

"Interplanetary Patrolship off there," he said. "Patrolship-3."

Sister ship of my ill-fated vessel.

"Sighted us?" I murmured.

He shrugged. "Probably. Only three thousand miles away--probably did." His mouth was set into a grim hard line. In his eyes I saw that gleam of fanatic irrationality. "Unfortunate, for them. This little vessel of mine has never been sighted before, you know." His lips twitched with a grin. "You see how we are dressed here? Why, we've even been down into Earth's atmosphere--we've landed and made away without discovery. We'll do that on Deimos. And now this Patrolship--no one on it will ever live to tell that even for a moment they sighted the Phantom raider!"

He turned to an intricate bank of levers, dials and tiny vacuum globes that were ranged on a table here at the side of the control room. Separate from the space-flying mechanisms. The controls of the mechanical electronic invisibility.

"You'll see us go into action now, Fanning. It should be interesting."

He swung the dials. I felt my senses reel with a weird shock. Brenda gave a little gasp. There was a momentary quiver of all the ship; a momentary current-hum. And then silence.

My head cleared; the shock was passed. I gripped the arms of my chair and stared.

* * * * *

A glow like an aura of green radiance suffused the control room. A green glow of unreality throughout all the little ship. I could see it out on the forepeak triangle--the black-garbed figures like wraiths out there in a luminous green gloom. The glassite bull's-eye portes seemed now to have a green film on them. The stars outside were shut away. The transparent glassite dome was spread with the same dull-green opaqueness now. And then I saw, here in the turret walls, in the dome and in the center of each of the bull's-eyes, little holes through which a tiny segment of the starfield still was apparent--windows like dull little eyes puncturing our barrage of invisibility so that we could see outward through them.

Here in the control room the dull radience shone upon Jerome's grinning, triumphant face; it was tinted ghastly, putty-colored by the strange light. And the light glistened on his eyeballs, glowing like phosphorescence--like the eyes of an animal in a hunter's torchlight at night.

Everyone here, the same. And I saw old Professor Carson's face--the face of a dead man. His expression was stamped with his mixed emotions. This, his science of which he had been so proud, perverted now into murderous, ghastly warfare by the villainous Jerome.

Then Jerome moved to his space-flight controls; through the tiny windows in the barrage I could see that our ship was swinging, heading for the oncoming patrolship. Only three thousand miles apart. They would be upon each other in a few minutes.

Jerome's footsteps as he moved across the room faintly sounded on the metal floor-grid. Toneless footsteps in this eerie radiance. Unreal--they might have been tinkling bells, or harsh thuds. All timbre had gone from them so that they had lost their identity completely.

"Not long now, Fanning," Jerome said. "You'll see that ship go to its death." Ghastly dead voice. Every overtone had gone from it. It could have been a man's voice, or a woman's. The voice of a dead thing in a hollow tomb.

"Weird--" I muttered. My own voice the same. And Brenda's, as she murmured something in horror. All dead, indistinguishable one from the other.

Down on the forepeak in the sodden dull-green light, I could see the crew raising the electronic gun-carriages into position now. They were quite evidently of the most modern Edretch type, squat projectors with grid faces fitted into vacuum firing portes on each side of the forepeak. Guns undoubtedly with an effective range of some five hundred Earth-miles.

X-flyer going into action. The crew, with their dead putty-colored faces, moved, silently in the soundless ship. Up here in the turret with us, Jerome's hollow voice was gloating:

"That fool patrolship--they have seen us vanish. They know now who their adversary is. Want to see them, Fanning?"

There was no need of a telescope now. A magnified image of the oncoming patrolship as seen through one of the little barrage-vents on our bow, was spread here on a grid-screen in the control turret. Fascinated with horror, I watched it--the foreshortened looming bow of the patrolship clearly outlined against the black velvet of the firmament. It had seen us vanish, had turned and was heading straight for where it had last seen us! Even as I watched, the image of it was visibly enlarging. A thousand miles away now, probably. But almost in a moment it would be within range!

Then the wily Jerome abruptly swung us sharply. He was still at his gravity-control levers. The starfield rolled sidewise as we turned in a great hundred-mile arc. The maneuver was obvious. The patrolship had marked our position. Jerome quite evidently was not sure what range-guns his adversary had. He was taking no chances that a premature shot, aimed by calculation at where we might be, would strike us.

Patrolship-3 had guns very similar to these which I saw now being erected here on the X-flyer. It could have been a fairly even battle, a test of electronic battery-strength, of astronomical skill, of reckless daring--and yet, against an invisible enemy it could be no fight at all! I knew the commander of Patrolship-3 well. A stalwart, youngish fellow named Rollins. A man of infinite skill, reckless daring. I could picture him now in the turret of his ship, with his mouth set grim and his eyes flashing as he hurtled his little vessel forward. At what? Nothing but an apparently empty starfield from some unknown quarter of which a sudden stab of bolt would leap to strike him! I knew what Commander Rollins was thinking now. He would watch for that first bolt, and if it did not wreck his ship he would fire at the blankness from whence the shot had come. His only chance. An almost hopeless one. And yet he had done his best to hurl himself at us.

* * * * *

We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an invisible soundless wasp encircling it.

One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome.

"Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must not even be a chance of an answering shot."

Maneuvering for the kill. Fascinated, silently I watched as again we were heading for Rollins' ship. And within me a vague, desperate thought was growing: There are things through which one has no right to live. If only I could contrive it.

Jerome was absorbed at his controls, his range-finders and his calculations. My hand touched Brenda's arm where she sat beside me. I whispered:

"Brenda, we may not live through this."

"I know."

"I mean, if we were to die, to help that other ship."

She stared at me, and then at her father. Jerome had called the old man, ordered him to the mechanisms of the vessel's invisibility, where he sat checking the dial-readings of his intricate apparatus.

Briefly, its operation involved three scientific factors: De-electronization, thus to create around any metallic object a barrage of magnetic field of a new type to any previously developed; color-absorption, by which there can be no reflected light from the de-electronized object; and the Albert Einstein principle of the natural bending of light-rays when passing through a magnetic field. In effect then, the total color-absorption into the de-electronized object would make it, when viewed externally, a _nothingness_ to see. A blankness, like an outlined dark hole. But that in itself is not invisibility--merely a silhouette. The background would be blotted out, so that the invisible object would be perceived by the background it obscured. The magnetic field, however, by natural law which Einstein discovered, bends the light-rays from the background, _around_ the intervening object. The background thus seems complete. The intervening object has vanished!

Simple in theory; but it was an intricate little apparatus here which now old Professor Carson was attending. I stared at him as he bent so earnestly over it. His beloved brain-child.

For that moment Brenda tenderly regarded him. And then she turned to me. Her eyes were misted.

"Whatever you think best," she murmured.

Tensely I was waiting my chance. That tiny row of fragile vacuum tubes.

My heart pounded suddenly as Jerome locked his space-controls and darted down to the forepeak to consult one of his men at a gun-range finder. I muttered:

"Brenda take your father and get out of here quickly!" A burly, black-garbed guard was coming in from the turret balcony to watch us in Jerome's absence. I added in a swift undertone: "Go down with Jerome. Find some pretense to help him."

They would escape Jerome's wrath and there was just a chance that they might live through this.

They had only reached the little balcony outside the turret when the guard came in. I was on my feet.

"Sit down," he commanded.

He was between me and the little table where Carson's tiny row of vacuum tubes glowed dull-green. And in that second I leaped, head down like a battering ram. With my skull striking his middle he went backward, spun as he tried to get his balance. And he landed, sprawled forward on Carson's little table.

There was a tinkling crash as the de-electronizers short-circuited. A hiss of neutronic flame which in that second with its half-million ultra-pressure oscillating volts, electrocuted the luckless villain who was sprawled there.

I was down on the floor, crawling in the chaos. Amazing, electronic turmoil. The shock of it swiftly spread around the little vessel; made the senses of everyone on board momentarily reel. I was aware of thin slivers of neutronic fire darting upward from the cooking flesh of the sprawling man's body. Neutronic fire that all in that second of deranged current darted throughout the ship. A split second of flash; but in that second the darting tiny slivers of light-fire everywhere were drinking up the weird green glow. The muffled ghastly, toneless sounds of the ship's interior were brought to life. Down on the forepeak Jerome gasped a startled curse. One of his men fell with reeling senses.

And light was here. Normal celestial light, streaming down through our transparent dome where the blazing firmament of stars was now clearly to be seen. We had lost our invisibility! Gone. Irrevocably gone. At least this combat would be upon an equality! Rollins at last had his equal chance with the Phantom raider!

Patrolship-3 was clearly apparent now through our forward dome. I saw Rollins swing his bow toward us. There was a tiny violet flash from his forepeak. The first shot!

It came like a great violet lightning bolt hurtling at us!

* * * * *

There was a puff of electronic light up at our dome-peak. A shower of red-yellow sparks. I held my breath as Rollins' little circle of violet beam struck us full, and clung. A second. Ten seconds, while the shower of sparks sprayed like a little fountain of light-points. Would the outer shell of our dome crack?

It seemed to hold. Ten seconds, and then Rollins' ray snapped off and vanished. A test shot. I knew it was not a weakness of his electronic power. A great, long-range space-gun with a single snap-bolt ordinarily can do little damage. It is the duration of seconds over which the bolt can cling, eating its way with generated interference-heat, fusing and breaking its opposing armored substance.

And this was Rollins' first tentative test. Verifying his range, and our ship's resistance. A conservation of his electronic power. In space-gun battle, the available reserve of battery strength is vital. A long-range gun, with ten seconds of sustained voltage, drains any battery-series faster than the whirling electro-dynamos can build them up. Then there must be an interval of replenishment.

My heart pounded with exultation as the thoughts swept me. Rollins had been grimly desperate, undoubtedly, against an invisible enemy. But his adversary was visible now. An equality of battle; and so Rollins would use his wits, his skill of judgment. This damned murderous Jerome would have all he could do to match tactics with the skilful commander of Patrolship-3!

In those chaotic seconds I was still on the floor near the door of the control room. Inside it the dead, roasted body of my guard lay sprawled face down upon the wreckage of the invisibility-controls. The current there was shut off now. The slivers of light-fire were gone. Down on our forepeak Jerome and his gunners were recovering. Jerome was gazing up, wildly cursing.

I staggered to the little turret-balcony, where Brenda and her father, white-faced, were clinging to its rail.

"That damned fool!" I shouted. "In there--in the turret. He stumbled and fell on the control table."

Would it serve as an excuse? Would the raging Jerome stab at me now with a heat-bolt? Or would he believe me? I felt sure that no one actually had seen what had happened.

"You damned--why--why--" Jerome for that instant glared up at me, his hand instinctively reaching for his belt. But in all the chaos, turning his wrath upon me must have struck him as futile. And it was stricken from his mind by the confusion around him. Acrid choking fumes were swirling through our little vessel, fumes from the deranged current of the de-electronizers. One of Jerome's men dashed up to him.

"A fire on our stern-deck. I put it out."

"Go back to your post." Jerome shoved him away impatiently; turned, came up and went into his turret, and seated himself at his gravity controls.

Through the dome-peak I could see Rollins' ship, going in the opposite direction from us, hurtling past us. Two hundred miles off. In a moment it had passed and was out of range. Then it was turning, mounting in a great arc and hurtling back at us!

* * * * *

Jerome stabbed first. A hit! The violet sword dimly glowing, luminous as it ignited the motes of intervening star-dust, leaped across the narrowing angle and struck with a puff of glare. Jerome held it, clinging. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. I could hear the throb and whir of our dynamos as they struggled with the load. The big dial levers on Jerome's desk quivered, slowly turned backward toward zero as our batteries drained.

For those seconds Rollins took it with no answering shot. Would his forepeak dome hold? I could see the tiny puff of fountain-light there where the violet beam was boring. And then Rollins answered! From his stern-peak this time diagonally away from us, his beam shot out. Not directly at us, but at our bolt-stream. Two great violet rapiers in space, sliding one upon the other. Midway between the vessels they clashed. The interference cut our beam from Rollins' vessel. Out there in space for breathless seconds both the beams held firm. Amazing sight of pyrotechnic beauty, that area where the beams clashed.

Another ten seconds, each of them an eternity. The giant circle of the interference area slowly was backing toward Rollins' ship! Our beam, at reckless full-power now, was pushing it back. Only twenty or thirty miles now from its target.

A buzzer sounded at Jerome's elbow. He reached for his audiphone. The panic-stricken voice of our controlman in the ship's hull sounded:

"Chief! Dynamo bearing running hot! An' we're almost at zero in the main battery."

Jerome disconnected with a grim curse. Another few seconds. The narrowing angle of the hurtling ships had brought them within a hundred miles of each other. And then suddenly, again it was Rollins who was the more cautious. From the tail of his vessel a stream of burning gas suddenly was issuing. A widening fluorescent comet-tail streaming out behind him. And then he was turning, heading away from us! In retreat! The interference area of the two clashing sword-beams broke. The great prismatic spark shower died. Our bolt, plunging through, for a second may have struck the turning, retreating Rollins. No one here could say. Rollins' bolt had snapped off. The image of his ship merged with the gas cloud. Vanished behind its masking cloak.

Jerome snapped off our beam. His face was triumphant; his enemy fleeing, trying to mask his retreat with a cloud of burning gas.

"By Heaven, I've got him!" Jerome was muttering. "Damn' fool, trying to fight the Phantom."

The starfield swung as we turned, headed at the gas-cloud where it hung in a vast luminous fog of prismatic color as though a comet had burst there. Triumphant pursuit of our enemy. But I held my breath.

I found Brenda beside me. Her hand, cold dank, gripped mine. Our eyes met. There was nothing to say. Surely we both knew what little chance we had of coming out of this alive.

The luminous gas-cloud swarmed to the sides as our ship plunged headlong into it. And then we were through it.

* * * * *

There was no warning as Rollins' bolt struck us! He had not tried to escape but was poised here in ambush, bow toward us, no more than fifty miles away, off to one side by skilled calculation so that there was only his narrow bow as our target and we were almost broadside to him!

The bolt struck us midway of the hull in a shower of sparks that mounted up and clouded our instruments. Clinging, full-power beam. Rollins at last striking for the kill! Wildly our guns tried to intercept it. One of our forepeak guns went out of commission with a back-firing burst which shattered it and killed the man at its controls. The fumes of the explosion came wafting up, acrid, choking.

There was a sudden panic of confusion here, but Jerome leaped to his feet with his roaring voice steadying his men. Then two of our guns, stem and bow, stabbed beams that struck the patrolship's bow and clung. But still that blast at our hull persisted. Eating, fusing the metallic hull-plate.

Weird, transfixed drama as the seconds passed. I knew that Rollins now would never yield. This bolt would cling to the limit of his batteries.

The audiphone beside Jerome was screaming with the hull-controlman's panic-stricken voice: "Chief--hull plate is bending--bulging--"

Then I saw, through the shower of sparks outside, that Rollins' ship was edging even closer. One of our two bolts had wavered and broken, with exhausted battery. The other, weakened by all Jerome's reckless firing, was futilely clinging to its target with a shower of sparks paling now by diminished voltage.

And then from the patrolship, little blobs were popping out. Catapulted bombs, hurtling at us with this close, twenty-mile range. Some exploded in mid-space fired by the free electrons which hung heavy here around us. And then one struck us, exploded with a dull concussion against our stern. And then another, and another.

"Jim--Jim dear--goodbye."

Brenda's murmured words brought me suddenly to myself. Only sixty seconds had passed since we burst out of the gas-cloud and Rollins had jumped to finish us. Sixty seconds, but it had brought chaos here on the Phantom ship. My chance! Old Professor Carson beside us was in a daze; white-faced, numbly staring.

"The exit-porte," I muttered. "Brenda, make your father hurry."

Fumes of green-yellow chlorine mingled with oil-smoke, were surging around us as we staggered up the little catwalk from the balcony to the dome-top. Jerome may have seen us. His voice was shouting desperate orders, and curses, but whether at us or not I never knew. A gunner down on the deck fired at us with a hand-ray, but it missed.

"Brenda, hurry! Get your father into a space-suit."

She and I still were garbed in the space-suits from the _Seven Stars_. In the tiny exit-porte, one of Jerome's crew, himself trying to escape, lunged at me, but I felled him with a blow of my fist into his face. The closing slide-door of the tiny pressure chamber shut away the chaos. Then our suits were inflated; our helmets fixed and we catapulted into the glare of outside space. I flung on my rocket-stream; clung to Brenda and her father. My metal-tipped fingers on the metallic plate of her shoulder made audiphone contact.

"Hold tight, Brenda."

"Yes, Jim."

"I'll tow us."

Horrible, chaotic seconds as the showering electronic sparks from the doomed phantom flyer enveloped us. Indescribable glaring confusion of deranged electricity and fusing, bubbling, flying metal-fragments. Prismatic light that blinded.

We came through it in a moment, out into the starlight with the glaring, staggering vessel, receding behind and above us as my rocket-stream and gravity-plates drew us out of the line of fire. The patrolship was hardly ten miles away now. I signalled with a helmet-flare. Interplanetary Code signal. Rollins saw it; recognized it; answered it!

We hurtled forward. Behind us, well overhead now, Jerome's harried, wavering ship suddenly cracked. With a great burst of interior pressure the dome, to which Rollins' main beam had shifted, abruptly exploded outward. Ghastly, silent explosion. It spewed wreckage. Little hurtling dots of shattered glassite and metal and mangled humans--blobs that spewed out, were caught by the vessel's attraction, finding their orbits so that they circled, gruesome satellites of their convulsed world.

Then the last of Rollins' blasting beams snapped off. Back there the broken ship hung leprous, with fused, still bubbling dome. Like a bent finger of colored light for a moment more it glowed. And then it went dark.

Dead X-flyer among the stars. The end of the dreaded Phantom of the Starways.

End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom of the Seven Stars, by Ray Cummings