The Three Planeteers

CHAPTER XVIII Damned Souls of Erebus

Thorn could not believe his eyes. The sight of men, living men, whose bodies were composed of radioactive matter that glowed with its own spontaneous energy, was, brain-shattering. He and his comrades stood rigid, staring at the two glowing men.

The radioactive men returned their gaze with weirdly glowing eyes. And now Thorn saw that in their shining faces was a tragic sadness and deep despair. The radiant countenance of the taller man, the strong, thin face that seemed vaguely familiar to Thorn, was a shining mask of haunting horror.

"They're men like ourselves — but men made radioactive by the terrific radiation here!” Sual Av exclaimed hoarsely. “Induced, radioactivity, working somehow, upon living beings!"

The Venusian's words carried by vibration of his helmet through the hazy air to the two glowing men. For the taller, the one whose face seemed vaguely familiar, answered.

"You are right,” he said slowly, in a deep, strangely husked voice. “We are men like yourselves, who came to this hellish world in the past. And it made us into what you see."

"How is it possible for you to live, when your body has been changed into radioactive matter?” Thorn asked wildly. “It has never been dreamed that there could be radioactive life!"

"Life,” said the tall glowing man heavily, “is dependent upon energy. Your bodies draw energy from their chemical processes. But my body needs now, no. chemical consumption of air and food to give it energy, for every atom of it now flames with the energy which itself radiates. Nothing can halt that spontaneous flow of energy from the atoms of my body. It will go on for ages until every atom has completely lost its energy and has been transmuted into elements lower in the atomic scale. I cannot die, until then."

A sound of bitter laughter tore from his lips as his glowing eyes held the three horror-stricken Planeteers.

"I cannot die, do you hear? Though I were to cut my own limbs off, though I were to hack my body, it would still live, for each atom of each fragment would still emit ceaseless energy. My brain — my consciousness — would still remain living! And even if my brain were cut to bits, each bit of it would retain the flame of my life and consciousness."

"God!” muttered Gunner Welk thickly. “Then this is what has befallen all the explorers of the past who came here to Erebus!"

The tall radioactive man nodded his glowing head somberly.

"Aye, it has befallen hundreds of others who came here, as it did me. I did not dream of the nature of this devil world when I came here. How could I? I thought the shining hazes a mere phosphorescence. I landed my ship, and at once my ship crumbled as certain of its metallic elements were swiftly disintegrated by the radiation. And then the radiation quickly changed my body — into this.

"And I have dwelt here ever since, as you see me now. A travesty of life, a mockery of a human being living on and on, unable to die, unable even to kill myself!"

"How long?” Thorn asked hoarsely. “How long have you two lived thus on this world?"

At this the tall radioactive man pointed to his companion. “This is Chan Gray, who came from Mars to explore Erebus five centuries ago—"

"Five centuries ago!” Thorn cried dazedly. “You mean that he's been living here, in that horrible state, for five hundred years?"

"The thing's not possible” exclaimed Gunner Welk thickly.

The taller radioactive man answered heavily. “He has been living thus five centuries, yes. I was here when he came. For I have dwelt, as you see me now on, Erebus for nine centuries. I landed on this devil world in two thousand and six."

"That can't be!” objected John Thorn. “Why, in two thousand and six interplanetary travel was only a few years old! The only men who had made space-flights by that date were Robert Roth himself, the first of them all, and his lieutenant, Clymer Nison."

Thorn's voice broke off as he stared in shaken horror and recognition into the glowing face of the tall radioactive man.

"God above!” Thorn choked. “Your face! I thought it was familiar from pictures. You — Clymer—"

"I am Clymer Nison, yes,” answered the tall glowing man dully.

A spell held the Planeteers, a trance of stupefaction and awe, as they stared at the man before them. A man whose name had been famous in the system's history for nine hundred years, whose name stood second only to that of Robert Roth in the great roll of the space-pioneers.

"Clymer Nison!” said Gunner hoarsely, unbelievingly. “The man who helped Robert Roth build the first space-ship of all, the man who was first of all men to visit Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and who—"

"— and who wanted to be the first man to visit Erebus, also,” Nison finished heavily, “And who has remained here ever since, in living death, the most horrible of dooms."

The Planeteers could not speak. They could only stare at the glowing man in stricken awe.

To them, as to all who sailed space, this man ranked almost as a demigod. He and the immortal Robert Roth had statues in their honor on every inhabited planet. And now they had found him on this far mystery world, not really living, yet not dead!

"So long — so long ago it was that I came here,” Clymer Nison was saying in his heavy voice, his shining eyes staring tragically into the haunted past. “So long, since I left Earth on that fatal outward voyage that brought me to this doom.

"And yet there are times when all the long centuries of long death here seem but a moment, when it seems that it was only yesterday that I sailed with such high hopes. When it seems only yesterday that I toiled with Robert to build that first ship of his, and watched him roar out into space to glory."

"You say there are others like you two on this world?” John Thorn asked unsteadily.

Nison nodded heavily. “Aye, there are several hundred of us radioactive men wearily roaming this hellish world. All of them men who have come here in past centuries’ and have been trapped, as I was trapped, by the deadly radiation. You are the first men I have ever seen come here and escape the doom that seized us."

"We landed on that black meteorite mountain of asterium,” Thorn told him. “And we ray-proofed our suits with the metal."

"Ask him about the radite, John,” muttered Sual Av tensely. Jerkily, Thorn told the two glowing men what had brought them to Erebus. There was a brooding silence before Clymer Nison spoke.

"And you say that this radite will save the inner planets from dreadful conquest, if you can take it back?” he asked.

"We hope it will,” Thorn answered tensely. “If Blaine's secret weapon is effective—"

"I do not see,” said the glowing man slowly, “what weapon or invention could ever defeat such a fleet as you say the outer planets have gathered."

The old doubt and fear that Thorn had felt increasingly as the days went by, tautened his voice as he answered.

"We don't know either how Blaine can hope to do that, what the nature of his mysterious weapon is,” Thorn admitted. “Yet, that secret of his is the one last possible chance to prevent the conquest of the Alliance."

He voiced a desperate appeal to Nison. “Earth is your native world, as Mars is that of your companion. It's to prevent the wreck and ruin of those two worlds, and of Venus and Mercury too, that we're asking you to help us find the radite."

"I will help you,” Clymer Nison said slowly, his tragic radiant face heavy with thought. “Though the Earth you serve cannot be the Earth of nine centuries ago from which I came, yet it is still Earth."

His glowing companion, the little Martian, Chan Gray, slowly nodded his head, and spoke to the Planeteers for the first time.

"Aye,” he said huskily. “And I remember the Mars of five centuries ago — the pleasant desert cities, the sun shining on the polar snows. I would not want the hordes of the outer planets to devastate that."

"You know where the radite lies?” Thorn asked Nison eagerly.

The glowing space-pioneer inclined his bead.

He turned and pointed westward through the swirling blue haze.

"In the mountains yonder, a lump of it lies. But it will be dangerous to try to take it,” he explained. “The terrific emanations that stream from that mass of radite are more penetrating than any other. To the bodies of us radioactive men who wearily wander immortally over this planet, those powerful emanations of the radite are stimulating, as sunlight is to you. There are always some of us radioactive men gathered about that radite, basking in the grateful radiation from it.

"And all these poor creatures like myself will resist your taking the radite. For to bask in its emanations is almost the only pleasure they have in this terrible mockery of existence. Yet, with the safety of Earth and the inner worlds at stake, I will help you attempt to take the radite."

Nison turned heavily, and he and his radiant companion looked back at the Planeteers.

After a moment, he spoke to Thorn. “Follow us,” Nison's voice reached them. “We will lead you to the radite."

As they started on westward across the shining desert, forging through the luminous blue haze beneath the dark, star-studded sky. An unearthly party — the three Planeteers in their grotesque black ray-proof space-suits, led by the two glowing radioactive men.

"It's like a nightmare” Gunner's voice reached Thorn, the Mercurian gripping his arm as they trudged along. “This hellish world, haunted by these pitiful ghosts of men."

"No wonder Martin Cain wouldn't tell anyone about what he'd seen here, when he got back,” muttered Sual Av.

They forged on for hours, ever west across the dim desert. The Planeteers followed closely behind their glowing guides, but the three comrades were beginning to tire from the weight of their asterium-coated space-suits, while the two radioactive men showed no sign of fatigue.

"Damn the gravitation of this world!” Gunner gritted. “It's as strong as Earth's, and it shouldn't be half that strong on a little planet like this."

"The huge radioactive core of this world gives it its unusual mass,” Sual Av declared. “And the radiation from it is responsible for the warmth that permits a gaseous atmosphere here,"

Thorn's heart quickened as he saw beyond their radiant guides, a low, barren dark range of mountains looming up through the haze.

"We're getting there!” Thorn cried eagerly.

Clymer Nison and his radioactive Martian comrade led them on through a pass between two peaks. The mountains towered a few thousand feet on either side, somber, bare rock slopes faintly luminous with the emanations throbbing from their radioactive atoms.

On into the tumbled peaks, through valleys thick with the shining blue haze, over long ridges, Nison led the way. For the space-pioneer who had wandered this dreary world for nine long centuries seemed to know each square yard of its surface.

They entered a deep chasm, a gloomy gorge with precipitous shining walls and a floor strewn with fallen masses of radiant rock. Along this the two radioactive men led the way. The shimmering sand of the chasm floor was deeply marked by a path, that had been trodden by many men coming and going in past times.

To the Planeteers, this gorge was an awesome and uncanny place. The great shining boulders through which the path wound, the feebly radiant cliffs that towered on either side, the strip of starry black sky far overhead, all combined to depress the spirit by their alien, forbidding atmosphere.

Through the blue, shimmering hazes that floated thick in the chasm, Clymer Nison and his companion led the way. At last Nison turned.

"The radite lies in a niche in the side of the cliff, just ahead,” he said heavily to the Planeteers. “We must be careful now, for there are almost sure to be some of my poor fellow sufferers near it, bathing in its rays."

"I hope not,” Gunner Welk muttered. “If these radioactive men can't be killed, they'd be tough customers."

They moved on, Nison and the glowing Martian leading, going more slowly and cautiously now.

As they rounded a turn in the crooked chasm, they saw ahead a place where the sand had been beaten down by many feet, over a long time. There was a small natural niche in the chasm wall there-but there was no radite in it.

"The radite's gone!” cried Clymer Nison in amazement, staring unbelievingly at the empty niche in the rock.

"Gone?” exclaimed John Thorn. His heart sank with despair. “Then Cheerly has been here ahead of us. He's taken the radite, and—"

"Listen!” Sual Av cried, turning his helmeted head sharply. “Hear that?"

"They heard, then. A dim uproar of raging voices from farther along the chasm, punctuated every few moments by the rumbling thunder and crash of great rocks falling.

"What can it be?” Nison wondered, his radiant face perplexed.

"I have an idea what it is!” Thorn cried. “Come on!"

They pressed on along the gloomy gorge. In a few minutes they had rounded another turn in it, and stopped short, petrified by the astounding scene ahead.

A few hundred feet ahead in the chasm was gathered a mob of dozens of glowing men. Radioactive men like Nison and the Martian, garbed in ragged remnants of clothing that showed they were of every time in the last nine centuries, of every world. Glowing men who had come to Erebus in past centuries and had been trapped here, transmitted into radioactive beings!

This crowd of glowing men was wildly seeking to storm a narrow ledge that jutted from the chasm wall a dozen feet up from the floor. With shrill, raging cries, the radioactive mob would scramble up to win the ledge, but would be repelled by the rocks rolled down upon them by the defenders.

The defenders of the ledge were three men clad in asterium-coated space-suits like those of the Planeteers. Behind them was another figure in a coated space-suit, but with arms bound together. And also on the ledge was a rude sledge of black asterium, upon which was tied a small mass of something that had been carefully wrapped in thick sheets of asterium.

"It's Cheerly and his men, and the bound figure is Lana!” Thorn exclaimed hoarsely. “And that mass on the sledge—"

"Must be the radite!” Gunner Welk cried. “Cheerly got the stuff from the niche, but the radioactive men caught him taking it!"