The Revolt of the Star Men, Raymond Z. Gallun [best value ebook reader txt] 📗

mechanisms. Getting those thousands of tons of metal safely lowered into a space ship's cradle on the landing stage, was a difficult task, but the experience and efficiency of the two men was quite competent to cope with it.

Far below was a vast sea of winking lights—Chicago, its colossal skyscrapers looming up severe and white and beautiful in the glow.

The pilot's nimble fingers turned a small horizontal wheel at his side. The liner dipped and dropped slowly earthward toward an area of white light. A mass of cloud poured over the huge hull for an instant and then passed by. The outer shell of the great silvery whale which had been chilled to a degree from absolute zero, by the cold of space had been warmed but slightly by the rapid passage through the atmosphere and now gleamed with jewel-like hoar frost.

Down, down it floated until it was only three hundred feet above the landing stage. A red signal light gleamed suddenly on a panel within the control room, and the wizard of that eerie chamber shifted a tiny lever. The space ship halted and hung motionless supported by its repulsion plates. On the ground in the glare of floodlights white-clad men hurried about. Four mighty arms of metal groped upward from a mass of heavy framework. They clutched the craft with a grating noise, and then, with the slow deliberation of a sleepy giant, they drew it gently down into its cradle.

Within the Ekova all was abustle. Its doors, built solidly like the breeches of big cannons, swung open, permitting the cool night air to enter the ship, which for seven days had been a world sufficient unto itself. Gangplanks were let down, and the passengers, jesting gaily with one another began their leisurely descent to the ground. Customs officials worked feverishly. A webby derrick arm pointing out from an opening in the side of the liner, was unloading mail and costly material and equipment sent to Earth from the Red Planet.

The routine processes of debarkation over, Shelby and Janice Darell entered the covered causeway which led to the great terminal building of the Space Travel Company.

The two had caught but a fleeting glimpse of Hekki. He was talking earnestly to a white-clad official, and had not seen them; nor had they tried to attract his attention. Conspicuous among the Martian's numerous possessions was a large basket of metal wickerwork, such as were commonly used to convey dogs and similiar pets from place to place. The sight of that basket had aroused again in Shelby's mind that peculiar sense of the presence of something sinister. Was the monster he had seen in Hekalu Selba's company hidden within that case of woven wire?

Within the causeway was a moving walk which carried Shelby and his companion to the depot. Here the intermittent whirring of pneumatic tube-cars operating in a vast network throughout the city was audible. The young Earthian pair, and the two attendants bearing their light luggage entered an elevator, which carried them swiftly to the landing platform for atmospheric craft on the roof of the building.

Shelby presented his identification tag and gave the number of his plane to the official in charge. The man led the way to a hangar at the side of the platform. Shelby had sent an order by radio to the Sutherland Aircraft Company a few hours before, and, complying with his request, a bright new flier had been delivered and housed here, awaiting his arrival.

The official closed a switch on the wall of the building, and the hangar door rolled open. While the two Earthians were entering the craft the attendants quickly placed the luggage into the load compartment.

Shelby fumbled with the destination mechanism and pressed the starting lever. The propellers, whirled at high speed by the soundless atomic motor, thrummed softly. In a moment, the plane, unguided by human hands, hoisted itself almost vertically into the night and was off. Unerringly it would carry its occupants to their destination.

CHAPTER II A Strange Story

Shelby looked down at his companion. For a time she had been strangely quiet. Could it be that there was just a hint of a troubled look on her beautiful face? The young engineer felt himself drawn to her more than ever. He wanted to know more about his new Martian acquaintance, but he disliked to ask a direct question concerning him, for he feared vaguely that it might give her offense.

"Jan," he said, "you look worried. Is anything wrong?"

She shook her head, slowly, absently, without looking at him. "No, I was just thinking." She paused, and then in the same absent manner she continued: "Only Hekalu Selba is back, and I thought I was rid of him."

Reassured somewhat by her words, but still taking care to conceal any hint of the menace he had sensed about the Martian, Shelby asked: "What possible difference can his presence in Chicago mean to you? He seemed to me to be a very ordinary Martian nobleman—evidently supplied with plenty of money, and having no other motive in life than to enjoy himself, and perhaps to help others enjoy themselves. A perfectly harmless individual."

Janice's face grew serious. "You say those things because you do not know Hekki," she said. "Shall I tell you about him? It would relieve me to share my knowledge with someone."

The young man nodded but made no comment.

"Two years ago," she began, "I went to Taboor on Mars to study sculpture. Not long after my arrival at school, in the company of a number of other art students, I attended a ball given at a glorious old palace in the heart of the ancient Martian quarter. Our gracious host was Hekalu Selba himself. I met him, danced with him, and talked with him. From the first he was attracted to me and I to him, and so we were often together.

"Though some of his peculiar affectations were obnoxious to me, I thought that his good qualities far overbalanced his failings. He seemed always kind and considerate in his dealings with all about him; he was well informed on almost every possible subject; he painted pictures and played various musical instruments with a skill that was little short of genius, and his tales of his travels and adventures in the little-known region beyond the orbits of the minor planets could not fail to delight any listeners. Dreamer and brilliant artist—that was Hekki as I saw him then. Effeminate—yes, but brave and resourceful too.

"Our intimacy grew. He made frequent proposals of marriage to me, but I put him off, saying that I was not sure I loved him. I informed Father back here in Chicago of our friendship. His next letter showed plainly his enthusiasm over the idea of the possible marriage of his daughter with this young noble of the ancient Martian house of Selba. 'Get him, Jan,' he wrote. 'He'd be the catch of a lifetime. Why, his total assets would make the treasure of Crœsus look like a little piece of twisted copper wire.' Poor practical old Dad! For once his business judgment was in the wrong. It was well that I did not follow his advice."

At this point Jan's story was interrupted by the sudden dropping of the plane. They had reached their destination. The craft descended vertically and landed with a light impact in the center of a small private roof garden at the summit of a great apartment building.

"Dad won't be home now," said Jan. "He was delayed in New York, and will not appear until tomorrow. There isn't anyone else around here except old Rufus, so we needn't go down stairs. Let's sit over there instead." She pointed toward a quaintly wrought bench beside a splashing fountain. The moon was shining, and the solitary cypress tree cast a spear-like shadow over the pool. There was a faint fragrance of flowers in the night.

Janice and Shelby seated themselves and the girl continued:

"Shortly after my meeting with Hekalu Selba rumors began to come to me. Men died mysteriously, and there were people who made vague hints that my noble friend was responsible. An uncle of Hekki's had made him the principal heir to his fortune—shortly afterward the uncle contracted a virulent disease and passed away. On both planets men that were obnoxious to Hekki were murdered—capable business rivals and people who perhaps 'knew too much.' Always the circumstances of their deaths were peculiar. Frequently they were found in locked rooms to which an assassin could scarcely have gained entrance without breaking his way. But such violent methods had not been used. Never was there a shred of evidence to implicate the noble.

"But I was beginning to see Hekalu's true color. The lavish display of his wealth—his estates and his art treasures, and the endless round of good times he sought to provide, were merely an attempt to cover up his wickedness. One afternoon that I was with him, he was under the influence of the Elar drug. His face was red and his eyes gleamed with a wicked light. He proposed to me again, and when I made an angry refusal he threatened me—said that if there was another whom I loved he would destroy him and me too.

"That, I assured myself, was the end. Hekki tried to make up, but when he found that I would have nothing to do with him he vanished. I think he went off into the outer regions of the solar system again. He was gone for a long time, and I devoted myself entirely to my studies.

"Then suddenly, out of the blue, I received a letter from Hekki. It came from a small village far to the west of Taboor. A gift accompanied it. Hekki informed me that in a valley far out in the unexplored Taraal desert he had run across a ruined city built by the Melbar kings some seventy-five thousand years ago. He hoped to make an enormous fortune from the art treasures he had found there.

"The gift and the small photograph he sent me, I shall show you at the first opportunity. They are packed away now. The former is a dagger with a flexible blade of a shiny black substance unknown to me. It does not seem to be metal. The hilt is a lump of platinum. It is carved to represent some strange animal with scores of coiling tentacles. Hekki says that the object is one of his treasures, found on the site of the ancient city. But I have doubted this. I know something of the art of the Melbar kings, and certainly the dagger does not resemble the products of their craftsmen. The same is true of those wares of Hekki's which my friends have bought. They are strange—belonging neither to Earth nor Mars.

"The picture too is equally puzzling. It depicts a night scene in a desert valley. Jagged hills in the distance and the nearer moon of Mars in the sky. The floor of the valley is in shadow and things there are indistinct. There are shapes there—vast shapes, odd and grotesque. And there is something in the foreground which might be almost human!

"In his letter Hekki asked if he might see me again, and I immediately wrote and told him that I would. To you, Austin, this probably seems a crazy thing to do, but like most everyone who is young, I had a genuine love for intrigue and mystery, even though they might be dangerous things to meddle with.

"Hekalu came to Taboor, but I saw comparatively little of him. He seemed always to be tremendously busy. Sometimes he would be extravagantly jubilant, as though he had met with some tremendous success, or again he would apparently be worried almost to the point of madness. What these emotional changes meant, he would never tell me.

"Several times old Alka, his favorite slave, spoke to me. 'The Master is not as he used to be, Miss Darell,' he would say. 'He works feverishly with odd mechanisms, and every night when he is at home he stares out into space toward the farther planets with his new super-telescope. Always, what he sees makes his face turn white and hard; sometimes, he smiles and sometimes his features look like a devil's mask.'

"And still Hekki's weird treasures continued, and still continue to come from the Taraal.

"A group of men was sent by the heads of the Place of Knowledge out into the desert to investigate. They disappeared. The officials of the Planetary Patrol made only a hasty and unsuccessful investigation.

"On the day of my departure from Mars, after having finished my course, I saw Hekki, believing that it was for the last time. He said he was going back into the Taraal. And then he popped up on the liner. And that, Austin, is all I know about Hekalu Selba. What do you make of it? What