The Creature from Beyond Infinity

CHAPTER XVII Marion

The cry had come from the hillside beyond the house. For a second, Stephen caught the glimpse of a white figure running toward him in the bright moonlight.

He raced to meet the girl. She collapsed in his arms, panting and disheveled. Her hair was a tumbled brown mass of ringlets. For several minutes she could only gasp inarticulately.

"Steve, thank God you're safe—I saw the headlights of a car—but I didn't know it was you—but I thought if you were alive—you'd come back to the lab—"

Looking down into her eyes, Court felt a queer tightness in his throat. He interrupted in a voice that was scarcely audible.

"Marion, I—I love you."

The girl caught her breath as she stared. Then suddenly she smiled with dazzling brilliance.

"'I'm glad," she whispered, and pressed her head against Court's chest. "I'm glad you're human, after all."

Yes, Court thought to himself, he was human. For years he had refused to admit it.

But now—a chuckle started behind his lips—he gloried in it!

The others came running up, staring at Marion. She drew away from Court.

"Thordred wrecked the lab," she explained. "Who are these men?"

She eyed them inquisitively.

"No time for introductions now," Court snapped. "Tell me what's happened. You've seen Thordred, or you wouldn't know his name."

She nodded. "He came here two hours ago and destroyed the house. I was the only one who got out alive. I saw the ship not far away. When I started to run, a beam of light flashed out and I was paralyzed! A huge bearded man came running and carried me into the ship. He seemed to know who I was."

"Of course," Court agreed. "He acquired all my memories with his damned machine."

"There was a girl called Jansaiya. She didn't say anything. She just watched. Thordred showed me dozens of men and women in the ship, asleep, cataleptic. He said he had captured them to start a new civilization. He was going to another planet—and he'd decided to take me, too. Since I'd been your assistant, Steve, he figured I'd be a good assistant for him. My scientific training would be invaluable to him. He told me you were dead, that he'd killed you with a ray in New York."

"So he thinks I'm dead," Court observed. "That means he didn't know the ray only paralyzed me."

Marion didn't look at him as she continued.

"I pretended to fall in with Thordred's wishes, said I'd go with him. So he didn't bother to put me into catalepsy. He started the motors and the ship began to rise. Then I—I—"

"Go on," Court said gently.

"He wasn't watching me. I saw what he was doing at the instrument panel, and I jumped at it. Somehow I pushed all the levers and buttons before he grabbed me. The ship crashed. I wanted to kill Thordred, Steve, because I thought he'd killed you. If you were dead, I didn't want to keep on living."

For answer, Court drew the girl closer. She went on talking hurriedly.

"The ship was wrecked completely. It's right over the ridge. All the prisoners were killed, and Jansaiya was hurt. I tried to help her, but Thordred dragged me away. I don't know how he got me out alive. He was like a madman. He salvaged some weapons from the wreck, and made me go with him— I don't know why, or what he intended. I think he wanted to kill me later, Steve. Slowly!"

Court's face was chalk-white. Clipping his words, he gave his orders.

"Let's find the ship. We may be able to salvage something, too. Li Yang, Scipio, watch out for Thordred, though I don't think he'll bother us now."

The four mounted the slope. At the top of the ridge they halted. In the valley before them lay the vast golden bulk of the space ship, near a streamlet that made a winding ribbon of quick-silver between its banks. There was no sign of life near the vessel.

They descended the slope. Suddenly Marion cried out softly and gripped Court's arm. The four halted abruptly.

A shining oval drifted into view from behind a bush. It was a Carrier, a glowing fog, fading toward its edges into invisibility. With more than human speed, it moved toward the group.

Court instinctively thrust the girl behind him. Scipio lifted his hard fist in futile defiance. Then he remembered the saber and drew it.

But there was no defense against a Carrier, Court knew. He opened his mouth to shout a command to flee. But for some reason that he could not define, he waited.

The shining thing had halted. It was motionless, and Court was conscious of an intent regard. The creature was watching him. Why? Such a thing had never happened before. Always the Carrier had leaped eagerly, avidly, upon then-prey. Why did this horror wait?

Court inexplicably felt something stir and move in his brain. Briefly the image of old Sammy, with his brown, wrinkled face and his mop of white hair, rose up vividly in his mind. Behind him, Marion's voice whispered like a prayer.

"Sammy!"

The shining thing seemed to hear. It hesitated and drew back. Suddenly it turned, speeding up the slope, and vanished over the ridge.

"Good God!" Court whispered through dry lips. "Marion, do you think that was—Sammy?"

White-faced, the girl nodded.

"Yes, Steve. And I think he knew us, remembered us. That's why—" She could not go on.

"Well," Scipio broke in roughly, "why do we wait? Let's go on."

In silence, Court led the way down the slope. Presently he shivered a little, and Marion glanced sharply at him.

"Do you feel that, too?"

"What? Wait a minute, yes. Some radiation—"

"There!" Li Yang said, pointing.

Court followed the gesture, saw the spot of light.

Blazing like the heart of a blue sun, flaming with a fierce and terrible radiance, the light-speck glowed upon the hull of the ship. Instantly Court guessed what it was. The atomic energy that powered the huge motors had broken free. No longer prisoned by its guarding, resistant sheath, it was sending its powerful vibrations out like ripples widening on a pool.

"Don't go any closer!" Court clutched Scipio's arm, halting him. "That's dangerous. It can fry us to a crisp."

"Gods!" The Carthaginian stared. "Is that true? A mere glow of light?"

In theory Court knew something of atomic energy, though it had never been achieved practically on earth. In the old days, men had feared that unleashed atomic energy would destroy the whole planet, its fiery breath spreading swiftly like a poisonous infection. But Court knew there was no danger of that. The rate of matter-consumption was far too slow. In a thousand years, the valley might be eaten away, but not in five years or five minutes.

"Scipio!"

The faint cry came from nearby, startling them. The Carthaginian's hand flew to his sword as he whispered.

"Jansaiya!"

And again came the cry, plaintive, gull-sweet, infinitely sad.

"Help me!"

With a muttered oath, Scipio whirled and ran. Court followed at his heels. A mound of bushes clustered a hundred feet away, and in its shelter lay Jansaiya. The fading moonlight washed her hair with gold.

She lay broken, dying…

"Jansaiya," Scipio said tonelessly.

He dropped to his knees beside the girl and lifted her in his mighty arms. With a tired sigh, she let her head fall on his bronzed shoulder.

"My—my back—"

After Court completed a hasty examination, his eyes met Scipio's. He did not need to speak, for the Carthaginian nodded slowly. Jansaiya's torn gown and bruised limbs told how she had dragged herself toward safety.

"Thordred left you?" Scipio asked in a queer, hoarse voice.

The strangely beautiful green eyes misted with pain as she held herself close to Scipio's barrel chest. The Carthaginian's gargoyle face was the color and hardness of granite in the moonlight.

"I—I think—I might have loved you—warrior," Jansaiya murmured.

Then she sobbed restrainedly with unbearable agony. The golden lashes drooped to shield the sea-green eyes. The tender lips scarcely moved as the girl whispered.

"There was not ever—any pain—in old Atlantis—"

Her head drooped on his arm and was motionless…

Gently Scipio laid her in the shelter of the bushes. He touched her hair, her eyes, then tenderly he touched his lips to those red, silent ones, from which even the faint hint of cruelty had gone.

As he drew back, the last glow of the sinking Moon failed. The eternal dark accepted Jansaiya and shrouded her.

The starlight was cold as glittering ice on Scipio's savage eyes as he rose. He stood towering there, motionless, staring at nothingness. Slowly he turned to face the west.

"Court," he rumbled distantly, "you heard her?"

"Yes," Court said in a low, tense voice.

"He left her to die…"

Abruptly the Carthaginian's face was that of a blood-ravening demon. The mighty hands flexed into talons.

"He is mine to slay!" Scipio breathed through flaring nostrils. "Remember that— He is mine to slay!"

But Jansaiya could no longer hear. She lay limp, slim and lovely and forever untouchable now, shielded from all hurt. She slept as a child might sleep.

"You wish to kill me?" a harsh voice asked mockingly. "Well, I am waiting, Scipio."

From the shadows of the bushes, Thordred's giant form rose into view.

Startled bewilderment momentarily paralyzed Court. He cursed himself for a fool. He might have expected this, but finding Jansaiya had made him relax his vigilance. Glaring at Thordred, he stepped aside to stand in front of Marion.

Li Yang's fat yellow face was expressionless.

Scipio, after one hoarse oath, had drawn his saber. He was walking forward, his eyes burning with blood-hunger.

Thordred's hand dipped into his garments, came up holding a lens-shaped crystal that shot forth a spear of green light.

It touched Scipio. The Carthaginian halted in mid-stride with the saber lifted, a grin of fury frozen on the gargoyle face.

Court leaped for Thordred, but the green ray caught him, too. The life was drained from him in a shock of icy cold. He stood motionless, paralyzed as the ray darted aside.

From the corner of his eye, Court saw Marion and Li Yang stiffen into immobility. The four stood helpless, while Thordred tossed his crystal from hand to hand and grinned.

"You fools!" his harsh voice grated. "So I did not kill you that other time, did I, Court? Well, I shall rectify that omission now. If not for the interference of all of you, I should never have lost the ship. Yet I can still have my vengeance."

He glanced down significantly at the lens he held.

"You shall die slowly, in the utmost agony. You shall burn gradually as I increase the strength of the ray. After that, I do not know what I shall do. Perhaps I can build another space ship. The knowledge I have stolen should enable me to do that. But that comes after my revenge."

The bearded face was murderous in the moonlight. The crystal flashed a ray that struck Court on the chest. The green light turned yellow. Simultaneously blinding pain racked the man. He smelled the odor of his own burning flesh.

"You shall die," Thordred gritted. "All of you. This is my vengeance."