The Star Kings

18: Monster Men

Gordon came to himself, dazed and shaken, to find that it was Lianna's anxious voice that had aroused him.

The girl was leaning toward him from the chair in which she was bound. Her face was worried.

"Zarth, I thought for a moment you were really hurt! Your recoil-chair almost broke loose completely."

"I'm all right," Gordon managed to answer. His eyes swung to take in the scene. "We've landed, all right!"

The Dendra was no longer a ship. It was now a twisted, wrecked mass of metal whose voyaging was forever ended.

Walls had bulged like paper, metal girders and struts had been shorn away like cardboard, by the impact of the crash. Hot coppery sunlight streamed through a gaping rent in the cabin wall. Through that opening, Gordon could glimpse the scene outside.

The wreck lay amid towering ocher jungles of strange trees whose broad leaves grew directly from their smooth yellow trunks. Trees and brush and strange shrubs of yellow-and-black flowers had been crushed by the fall of the wreck. Golden spore-dust drifted in the metallic sunlight, and strange webbed-winged birds or creatures flew through the ocher wilderness.

To Gordon's ears came the ragged hum of atomic turbines and generators, close to them in the wreck.

"Durk Undis' men have been working to start the two generators," Lianna said. "They were not badly damaged, it seems."

"Then they're going to send a call back to the Cloud," Gordon muttered. "And Shorr Kan will send another ship here!"

The officer Linn Kyle came into their cabin, no longer wearing a space-suit.

"You can take the suits off the prisoners," Linn Kyle told their guard. "Keep them fettered in the chairs, though."

Gordon was relieved to get rid of the heavy suit and helmet. He found the air breathable but laden with strange, spicy scents.

Just across the corridor from their prison was the stereo room. They heard a transmitter there soon begin its high-pitched whine. Then the taut voice of Durk Undis reached them.

"Calling headquarters at Thallarna! Dendra calling!"

Lianna asked, "Won't their call arouse attention? If it's heard by Empire warships, it will."

Gordon had no hope of that. "No, Durk Undis mentioned a secret wave they would use. No doubt that means they can call Thallarna without being overheard."

For minutes, the calls continued. Then they heard Durk Undis order the transmitter turned off.

"We'll try again," they heard him say. "We've got to keep trying until we reach headquarters."

Gordon hitched his recoil-chair around by imperceptible jerks of his body. He could now look across the shattered corridor into the stereo-room, whose door sagged from its frame.

In there, two hours later, he saw Durk Undis and his operator again try to reach Thallarna with a call. As the generators astern began humming, the operator closed the switches of his transmitter and then carefully centered a series of vernier dials on his panel.

"Be careful to keep exactly on the wave," Durk Undis cautioned. "If the cursed Empire ships get even a whisper of our call, they'll run a direction-fix on it and be here to hunt us."

Then, again, began the series of calls. And this time, Durk Undis succeeded in obtaining a response.

"Dendra calling, Captain Durk Undis speaking!" he exclaimed eagerly into the transmitter. "I can't go stereo, for lack of power. But here's my identification."

He uttered a series of numbers, evidently a prearranged identification code. Then he rapidly gave the space coordinates of the planet inside the nebula where the wreck lay, and reported the battle and its sequel.

Shorr Kan's ringing voice came from the receiver of the apparatus.

"So Zarth Arn tried to sabotage the mission? I didn't think he was such a fool! I'll send another phantom-cruiser for you at once. Maintain silence until it arrives, for the Empire fleet mustn't suspect you're in their realm."

"I assume that we will not now be continuing the mission to Earth?" said Durk Undis.

"Of course not!" snapped Shorr Kan. "You'll bring Zarth Arn and the girl back to the Cloud. Above all, he mustn't get away to carry any news to Throon!"

Gordon's heart chilled, as he heard. Lianna looked mutely at him.

Durk Undis and the other Cloud-men were jubilant. Gordon heard the fanatic young captain give his orders.

"We'll maintain sentries around the wreck. We don't know what kind of creatures are in these jungles. Linn Kyle, you command the first watch."

Night swept upon the ocher jungles as the coppery sun sank. The dank breath of the forest became stronger.

The night was like one of wondrously glowing moonlight, for the flaring nebula sky dripped strange radiance upon the brooding jungles and the wreck.

Out of the nebula-illuminated jungle there came a little later the echo of a distant cry. It was a throaty, bestial call, but with a creepy human quality in its tones.

Gordon heard Durk Undis' sharp voice. "That must be a beast of some size! Keep your eyes open."

Lianna shivered slightly. "They tell strange tales of some of these lost worlds in the nebula. Few ships ever dare to enter these dust-whorls."

"Ships are going to enter this one, if I can bring it about," muttered Gordon. "We're not going back to the Cloud!"

He had discovered something that gave him a faint hope. The recoil-chair in which he was fettered had suffered like the rest of the wreck from the shock of the crash-landing. The metal frame of the chair was slightly cracked along the arm to which his wrist was fettered.

The crack was a slight one, not affecting the strength of the chair. But it presented a slightly raised and ragged edge. Against this roughened edge, Gordon began secretly rubbing the plastic fetter on his wrist.

Gordon realized the improbability of this small abrasion severing the plastic. But it was at least a possibility, and he kept it up by imperceptible movements until his muscles ached.

Toward morning, they were awakened from doze by a repetition of the weird, throaty call in the distant forests. The next day, and the next, passed as the Cloud-men waited. But on the third night, horror burst upon them.

Soon after nightfall that night, a yell from one of the Cloud-men sentries was followed by the crash of an atom-pistol.

"What is it?" cried Durk Undis.

"Creatures that looked like men-but they melted when I fired at them!" cried another voice. "They disappeared like magic!"

"There's another! And more of them!" cried a third Cloud-man. "See!"

Guns went off, the explosion of their atomic pellets rocking the night. Durk Undis yelled orders.

Lianna had swung her chair around on its pedestal, toward the porthole. She cried out.

"Zarth! Look!"

Gordon managed to hitch his chair around also. He stared at the unbelievable sight outside the porthole.

Out there, manlike creatures in scores were pouring out of the jungle toward the wreck. They looked like tall, rubbery human men. Their eyes were blazing as they charged.

Durk Undis and his men were using their atom-pistols. The blinding flare of the atomic pellets darkened the soft nebula-glow.

But wherever those pellets blasted the strange invaders, the rubbery men simply melted. Their bodies melted down into viscous jelly that flowed back over the ground in slow retreat.

"They're coming from the other side too!" yelled the warning of Linn Kyle.

Durk Undis' voice rang imperatively. "Pistols won't hold them off long! Linn, take two men and start the ship's generators. Hook a jet-cable to them and we can spray these creatures with pressure-rays!"

Lianna's eyes were distended by horror, as they witnessed the rubbery horde seize two of the Cloud-men and bear them back into the jungles.

"Zarth, they are monsters! Not men, yet not beasts-"

Gordon saw that the fight was going badly. The rubbery horde had pressed Dick Undis' men back close against the wreck.

It seemed that the weird attackers could not be harmed. For those who were hit simply melted to jelly and flowed away.

The generators in the wreck began humming loudly. Then Linn Kyle and his two men emerged dragging a heavy cable. At the end of this they had hastily attached one of the pressure-ray jet projectors that ordinarily propelled the ship.

"Use it, quickly!" shouted Durk Undis. "The brutes are too much for us!"

"Stand clear!" yelled Linn Kyle.

He switched on the heavy ray-projector he held. Blinding beams of force leaped from it and cut through the rubbery horde. The ground instantly became a horrible stream of creeping, flowing jelly.

The monstrous attackers sullenly retreated. And the viscous slime upon the ground retreated also toward the shelter of the jungle.

There came then a raging chorus of unhuman, throaty shouts from out in the ocher forest.

"Quick, rig other jet-projectors!" Durk Ungis ordered. "It's all that will keep them off. We need one on each side of the wreck."

"What in the name of all devils are the things?" cried Linn Kyle, his voice shrill with horror.

"There's no time for speculating on that!" rapped the other. "Get those projectors ready."

Gordon and Lianna witnessed another attack, a half-hour later. But this time, four jets of pressure-rays met the rubbery horde. Then the attacks desisted.

"They've gone!" sweated a Cloud-man. "But they carried off two of us!"

As the generators were turned off, Gordon heard a new sound from the distance.

"Lianna, hear that?"

It was a pulsing, throbbing sound like the deep beat of distant drums. It came from far westward in the nebula-lit jungle.

Then, breaking into the throbbing drumbeat, there came a faint, agonized series of human screams. There swelled up a triumphant chorus of throaty shouts, then silence.

"The two Cloud-men who were captured," Gordon said sickly. "God knows what happened to them out there."

Lianna was pale. "Zarth, this is a world of horror. No wonder the Empire has left it uncolonized."

The menace to themselves seemed doubled, to Gordon. Almost, to assure Lianna's safety from the nightmare terrors of this planet, he would have gone willingly back to the Cloud.

But his determination returned. They'd get away, but not to go back to the hands of Shorr Kan if he could help it!

He forced himself to continue the slow, squirming movements that rubbed his plastic fetter against the rough crack in the chair-frame. Finally in weariness he slept, to awaken hours after dawn.

In the coppery sunlight, the ocher jungles were deceptively peaceful looking. But captives and captors alike knew now what weird horror brooded out in those golden glades.

Gordon, through the long day, continued to squirm and hitch to increase the abrasion on the fetter. He desisted only when the eyes of their guard were upon him.

Lianna whispered hopefully, "Do you think you can get free?"

"By tonight I should be able to wear it through," he murmured.

"But then? What good will it do? We can't flee out there into the jungle!"

"No, but we can call help," Gordon muttered. "I've thought of a way."

Night came, and Durk Undis gave his men sharp orders. "Two men on each of those jet-projectors, ready to repel the creatures if they come! We'll keep the generators running continuously."

That was welcome news, to Gordon. It made more possible the precarious scheme he had evolved.

He felt that by now the tough plastic must be abraded halfway through. But it still felt too strong to break.

The generators had begun humming. And the worried Cloud-men had not long to wait for the attack they dreaded. Once more from the nebula-illumined jungles came the weird, throaty shouts.

"Be ready the minute they appear!" called Durk Undis.

With a chorus of throaty cries, the rubbery horde rolled in a fierce wave out of the jungle. Instantly the jet projectors released beams of the powerful pressure-rays upon them.

"It's holding them back! Keep it up!" Durk Undis cried.

"But they don't die!" cried another man. "They melt down and flow away!"

Gordon realized this was his opportunity. The Cloud-men were all engaged out there in defending the wreck, and the generators were running.

He expanded his muscles in an effort to break his fetter. But he had misjudged its strength. The tough plastic held.

Again he tried, straining wildly. This time the fetter snapped. Hastily, he unfastened the other fetters.

He got to his feet and quickly freed Lianna. Then he hurried across the corridor toward the stereo-room just opposite.

"Watch and warn me if any of the Cloud-men come back in here!" he told the girl. "I'm going to try to start the transmitter."

"But do you know enough about it to send out a call?" asked Lianna.

"No, but if I can start it up, any untuned wave will direct instant attention to this planet," Gordon explained swiftly.

He fumbled in the dimness of the room for the switches he had observed the operator use to start the transmitter.

Gordon closed them. The transmitter remained dead. There was no whine of power, no glow of big tubes. A baffled feeling grew in him as he realized the failure of his plan.