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Title: Satellite Five
Date of first publication: 1938
Author: Arthur K. Barnes (1909-1969)
Date first posted: Feb. 26, 2023
Date last updated: Feb. 26, 2023
Faded Page eBook #20230241

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines

This file was produced from images generously made available by The Unz Review.




[Source: Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1938]




[Transcriber's note: a Contents has been added for reader convenience]




  A Complete Gerry Carlyle Interplanetary Novelet



  SATELLITE FIVE


  The Greatest Woman Explorer in the Solar System Embarks on
  Her Strangest Quest--and Makes the Most Hazardous
  Journey in the History of Rocketry!



  By ARTHUR K. BARNES

  Author of "The Hothouse Planet," "The Dual World," etc.




  Contents

  I. Cacus
  II. Flight of the Ark
  III. Outpost of Forgotten Men
  IV. Re-birth
  V. Duval the Magnificent




CHAPTER I

_Cacus_

Tommy Strike let out a startled squawk and tried to leap aside.  Then
suddenly his legs folded limply beneath him, and he crashed to the
floor.

"Blast it!" he howled at the man behind the desk.  "Turn that thing
off!  You've crippled me for life!"

The man behind the desk was past middle age, with rabbitlike eyes
staring through thick lenses.  On the desk-top before him rested a
lead-gray box, the interior of which consisted of a bewildering array
of weird tubes and coils.  There was a portable power unit, and a
cameralike lens now focused on Strike's lower body.  The man fumbled
for the activating switch, snapped it off.

"Oh--so sorry, Mr. Strike.  No harm intended.  Just checking
my--er--apparatus, seeing that it's in working order."  He said much
but explained nothing.

Strike reassured himself that his legs were still sound, then
advanced on the older man, who retreated around the desk in alarm
with apology very plain on his face.

"I've never struck a man as old as you," Strike said grimly, "but so
help me, I've a good notion to clip you down!"

Just then the office door slid noiselessly open, and all activity was
automatically suspended as an amazing girl entered.  The
golden-haired beauty who crossed the room was a lithe-limbed,
clean-striding American girl--a bit wilful, perhaps, to judge from
her firm chin and high-tempered arch of nostril.

Her simple presence in that office brought an elusive suggestion of
far-away places and unfamiliar, romantic things--a breath of the
thin, dry wind that combs the deserts of Mars, a faint memory of the
spicy scents that throng Venus' eternal mists.



For this was Gerry Carlyle, most famous Earth-woman in the System,
admired and beloved by millions for her exploits along the spaceways.

Admittedly she was the greatest of all that hardy band who roam the
distant worlds risking their lives in the toughest game of
all--capturing and bringing back alive the weird and monstrous
creatures that crawl their lethal way over the inhospitable surface
of the planets and their satellites, many of whose breath is poison,
and whose fangs are death, yet whose captive bodies are worth
thousands of dollars to the intrepid hunter who can sell them, alive
and kicking, to one of the great zoos of the world.

This slim girl, so charming, so feminine, was unquestionably tops in
the most dangerous profession that men can choose.

She dominated the room at once, compellingly.

"Tommy!" she snapped.  "That'll be enough!  This is the New York
office of the London Interplanetary Zoo, and was not designed for
brawling.  Now what's it all about?"

Strike pointed at the visitor.

"This crazy inventor crashed in here with his box full of junk,
acting mysterious about it and refusing to tell me what it's for.
Then all of a sudden he turned the darned thing on me and my legs
went out from under me--"

"Oh, my.  My, no.  Not a crazy inventor.  I am Professor Lunde, head
of the department of physics at Plymouth University."

"Oh!"  There was a wealth of intolerant scorn in Strike's voice, and
he glanced significantly at Gerry.  Lunde was well known as an overly
self-important and doddering old fool many years past his prime.  He
had contributed nothing to advance physical research for ten years,
hanging on at Plymouth by virtue of decades-old triumphs.

But, surprisingly, Gerry nodded.

"Sit down, Professor."  Turning to Strike, she explained, "Professor
Lunde has been sending me a letter each day for the past week,
cryptically reminding me that Rod Shipkey's broadcast tonight would
be of interest to me.  Very intriguing."

Lunde's cheeks became shiny red apples.  "Er--I must apologize for
the melodramatic manner in which your attention was solicited.  My
assistant's idea, really.  Trevelyan is invaluable.  Ambitious lad.
He felt a woman in your position could not be reached under ordinary
circumstances.  But my daughter-in-law works for Mr. Shipkey, and,
well, we got wind of tonight's broadcast.  I'd rather not explain the
purpose of my visit until after you've heard Mr. Shipkey, if you
please.  He's on now."

Strike moved across the room to the television set, careful to keep
out of range of Lunde's funny box.  He snapped the switch just in
time to catch the program highlight.



The image of Rod Shipkey faded in quickly.  Shipkey was speaking with
the easy smoothness that characterized this veteran explorer and
newsman's delivery.

"... and now for our five-star believe-this-if-you-can of space.
Around the largest of our planets, Jupiter, a whole host of
satellites of varying sizes are slung in their orbits, tied by the
invisible cord of gravity.  The closest of these--paradoxically known
as Satellite Five because it wasn't discovered until after some of
the larger ones--is a tiny bit of rock less than two hundred miles in
diameter.  It circles its primary some 112,600 miles away, hurtling
like a cannon-ball around Jupiter in less than twelve hours.
Incredible to think there might be anything on that barren and
useless ball of stone dangerous or even interesting to Man, lord of
the Universe.

"And yet--believe this if you can!--on Satellite Five there is a
strange form of life which has defied all efforts to kill or
catalogue it.  No man has ever set foot on Satellite Five and
returned alive!

"There are three authenticated records of space-masters who, either
by choice or force of circumstance, landed their craft on Five.  None
has ever been heard from again.  One of these cases was an expedition
especially equipped to take care of itself under any conditions.  It
was the space ship and crew of Jan Ebers, famous Dutch hunter of
extra-terrestrial life-forms, one of the earliest pioneers in that
romantic and dangerous business now epitomized by the greatest of
them all--our own Gerry Carlyle.

"What this strange creature, so inimical, may be, we can only
conjecture, aided by fragmentary notes of spacemen who passed briefly
in proximity to Satellite Five, and by telescopic observations from
Io, the next Jovian satellite outward.  These give us a curious
picture.  Four things we can say about it.  The thing is somewhat
saurian or wormlike in appearance, low on the evolutionary scale.  It
seems to be of a sluggish nature, which would be natural considering
what a limited supply of energy-building food elements there must be
on Five.  Not more than one has ever been seen at a given time.
And--believe this if you can!--the monster breathes fire!  Literally!"

Gerry and Strike exchanged tolerant smiles.  They had seen a lot of
incredible things, but a fire-breathing monster would require a good
deal of seeing to believe.

"... have precedent for this phenomena," Shipkey was saying, "in
classic mythology.  Cacus, from Vergil's Aneid, spouted fire...."
Here an attendant stepped into view with an artist's conception of
Cacus, the half-man, half-beast slain by Hercules.

"Well, tuner-inners, time's a-flyin'.  Which is just as well, for
there's not much more we can say about our mysterious fire-demon, the
Cacus.  Safe it is to say that Man, with his insatiable curiosity,
will not long let this remain a mystery.  Someone with courage and
facilities will dare death once again and tear out the black heart of
the secret that shrouds Satellite Five.  Indeed, it's a surprise to
me that the inimitable Carlyle has not already done so.  Can it
possibly be that at last there's something in the Universe that blond
dare-devil hesitates to tackle?  Believe that, ladies and gentlemen,
if you can!"

The too-handsome announcer with his too-suave voice slipped deftly
into focus, saying dulcetly, "This is WZQZ, bringing you Rod Shipkey
with the compliments of Tootsie-Tonic, that gentle--"  The screen
went dead.



Strike looked across at Gerry in surprise.

"I bought one of those gadgets yesterday that automatically turns off
the radio when the commercials begin," she explained.  "All right,
Professor Lunde.  We've played ball with you.  We've granted you an
interview, listened to Shipkey.  Now let's have a look at a brass
tack or two."

Lunde hitched himself forward earnestly.

"I have invented a weapon, Miss Carlyle, that will render the monster
on Satellite Five helpless!" he proclaimed dramatically.  "A
paralysis ray!"

Gerry was dubious.  She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays
before.

"What's the principle?" she asked.

Lunde removed his glasses and used them to tap his fingers and
gesture with as he broke into a classroom lecture.

"The transmission of a nerve impulse along the nerve fiber is
provided by local electrical currents within the fiber itself.  But
the transmission of a state of activity from one nerve fiber to
another, as happens in the brain when sense organs are stimulated, or
from a nerve fiber to a muscle fiber, as happens in voluntary
movement, means transmission of excitation from one cell to another."

"Passage over the junction point between cells is effected by a
chemical transmitter, acetylcholine.  Every voluntary or involuntary
movement is accompanied by the production of minute amounts of
acetylcholine at the ends of nerve fibers, and it is through this
chemical agent that the muscle is set into action."

Tommy Strike stirred.

"Old stuff, Doc.  Sir Henry Dale and Professor Otto Loewi won the
Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine for that discovery
sixty--seventy years ago.  Nineteen-thirty-six, wasn't it?"

Lunde seemed vaguely annoyed by this display of erudition.

"Well!"  Professor Lunde was resuming.  "The acetylcholine is very
unstable, and breaks down into other chemicals as soon as its
function is completed.  There is a disease known as myasthenia
gravis, characterized by muscle weakness, in which there is too-rapid
destruction of acetylcholine.  Now, if a device could be built which
would decompose acetylcholine as fast as it is produced within the
body--you see?  The muscles would be unable to receive nerve
impulses, unable to act.  Paralysis!"

Lunde now exposed the interior of the leaden-colored box which had
caused Strike such distress earlier.  The interior showed a
bewildering array of tubes and coils, all in miniature; there was
also a portable power unit attached.  The lens was shutterlike,
similar to a camera lens.  It appeared extremely simple to operate.

"This, in effect," went on Professor Lunde in lecture style,
"produces a neutron stream.  We decided against a stream of
electrons, because they lack sufficient momentum; protons, too, can
be deflected.  But neutrons react with atoms at low energies.  And
the penetrating neutron blast destroys the acetylcholine by adding to
its atomic structure, thus making it so extremely unstable that it
breaks itself up at once.  It does not harm blood or lymph or bodily
tissues because they are essentially stable combinations, whereas
acetylcholine is not."

"Say!  That makes sense!  And I can testify the blasted outfit sure
works!  That means we can take a crack at this Cacus jigger on
Satellite Five and show Shipkey up for a dope!  How about it, Gerry?
Let's go!"



Gerry shook her head.

"Impossible, Tommy, and you know it.  I have lecture commitments
three weeks ahead, conferences with Kent on the autobiography,
business appointments, a hundred and one things to do.  No, the
Jupiter trip'll have to wait.  Sorry, Tommy...."  Then Gerry's voice
turned poisonously sweet.  "Besides, I have to run up to Hollywood on
the Moon day after tomorrow.  Special occasion at the Silver
Spacesuit.  Henri, the _maitre d'hotel_, is naming a sandwich after
me.  A double-decker: hard-boiled egg and ham!"

"Yow!"  Strike convulsed with delight, with one wary eye on Gerry as
if half expecting a missile; "That's good.  Y' know whose idea that
is?"

"Certainly.  Nine Planets Pictures runs the Moon as they please, and
this is that chimpanzee Von Zorn's idea of humor.  He put Henri up to
it.  But boy--will I make a speech that'll singe his ears!"

But Tommy wasn't to be put off by changing the subject; he was like a
small boy at prospect of a fishing trip.  "All right; you can't go.
But nobody wants to take my picture or get my autograph.  I'm not
tied down here.  Besides, I'm sick of sitting around.  There isn't a
reason in the world why I couldn't round up the crew and take the
_Ark_ myself!"

"I remember the last time you started out alone!  On Venus--"

Tommy Strike brushed this aside.

"That was different.  This'll be a cinch with the _Ark's_ equipment
and Lunde's ray and all the gang--"

"Well--"  Gerry was weakening.  "Might be arranged.  Before we decide
on anything definitely, though, there're three things I'd like to ask
Professor Lunde."

"Yes, Miss Carlyle?"

"First, have you tried your ray on extra-terrestrial animals?"

"Oh, yes, indeed.  The curator of the local zoo permitted experiments
on several Martian and Venusian specimens.  All creatures of our
Universe, it seems, transmit nerve impulses with the aid of
acetylcholine.  Provided this--this Cacus is not a vegetable, I'm
sure the ray will work on him, too."

"All right.  Secondly, what's in this for you?  Not money.  Even if
we found the ray practicable, you couldn't manufacture it for general
distribution because your only market would be hunters like myself
who wish to capture live specimens."

Lunde put on a vague dignity.

"Prestige, miss, is my sole motive.  Prestige for Plymouth University
and its faculty."

"I see.  And now tell me who put you up to this?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean whose idea was it to write me notes about the Shipkey
broadcast and so on?  You're not the type with nerve like that."

"Er--no.  Not entirely my idea.  Trevelyan's, really.  He's my
assistant, or did I tell you that before?  Smart lad--"

"Very well, Professor Lunde.".  Gerry cut the interview off abruptly.
"You've been very entertaining.  My secretary'll give you a written
authorization to install your apparatus in the _Ark_.  We may be able
to give it a trial."

As soon as Lunde had left, Gerry immediately snapped open a circuit
on the inter-office communicator.

"Barney Galt?  You and your partner come right in."



Two men promptly entered through another door.  Galt was tall and
lean with a face like a good-natured chow dog.  His partner was a
nondescript man of middle age.  Both were old-time policemen, retired
from public duty to act as private investigators for Gerry Carlyle.
She wasn't a girl to bother with bodyguards, but, a woman in her
position is besieged with all sorts of threats and rackets and
fraudulent charities and fantastic schemes; Galt invariably
discovered the good among the bad.

"Fellow named Lunde just left here, a little gray-haired chap with a
bundle under his arm.  Follow him, make a complete check.  Don't
interfere with anything he may do; just report anything phony."

The two detectives saluted casually and left on their unobtrusive
mission.  Strike snorted.

"Why set those bloodhounds on Lunde's tail?  He's all right.  A bit
of an old fool who has stumbled on something good, but too dumb to be
anything but honest."

"Just routine, Tommy.  I don't think there's anything wrong with
Lunde.  Just a hunch, or something.  If he gets a clean bill of
health, you can take the _Ark_ and go."

"Woman's intuition again?"  Strike spoke with tolerant condescension.

"So what if it is?  Tommy, I take lots more precautions than this
when I sign the lowliest member of my crew for a dangerous
expedition.  No doubt Lunde is all he appears, and I know you can
take care of yourself, but you can't blame me for wanting to make
sure when it concerns the man I love."

They grinned at each other like a couple of love-sick kids.

"Okay, fluff.  Snoop around while I rout the crew out of their sinful
pleasures and provision the ship.  That'll take several hours; you'll
know by then everything's on the up and up.  Call me as soon as Galt
okays Lunde, because Jupiter's nearing conjunction and I want to take
off as soon as possible.  'Bye."




CHAPTER II

_Flight of the Ark_

Events marched swiftly on their silent feet, moving inevitably into
place in the strange pattern that spelled disaster.  Tommy Strike was
busy over radio and telephone, giving forth the rallying cry that
brought the seasoned veterans of the _Ark_ rushing from all corners
of the state, dropping unfinished business or pleasures at once to
get to the space port in time to go on another adventurous journey.
They'd tell you, those tough space-hounds, that Gerry Carlyle's
expeditions were nothing but iron discipline and hardships and sudden
death waiting to pounce on the unwary; but you couldn't bribe one of
them with love or money to give up his berth on that famous ship.

At the landing field itself, under the blazing carbon dioxide lamps,
a small man drove up in a surface car, showed an authorization to the
guard, passed into the burglar-proof enclosure.  He carried a bundle
to the _Ark_, again showed his pass, and went inside.  He came out
before long empty-handed.

Gerry Carlyle worked without cessation in her office, while outside
the city's lights went out one by one, and the muted torrents of
traffic in the canyons of the city street grew thinner and thinner,
dwindling away to trickles.  Presently a light flashed above the door
to the outer office.  Someone wanted admittance.  Gerry slid a
heat-ray pistol into plain sight, then tripped the foot-switch which
unlocked the door.

"Come in!" she cried.

It was Barney Galt.  One hand bulged suggestively in his coat pocket.
Before him, registering bewildered indignation, walked a short,
stocky chap of about thirty, with bold, dark eyes.  He strode
aggressively up to Gerry.

"I demand to know the meaning of this outrage!" he said.  "Your--your
hireling here has held me up at the point of a gun, without
authority, and forced me to come to this office against my will.
That's abduction, and I'll see this gangster go to the disintegrator
chamber for it!"

Gerry looked questioningly at Galt, who grinned faintly.

"My buddy's still on Lunde's tail.  We split when we seen this monkey
come out o' the prof's place.  He's the assistant, Trevelyan, an' he
looks an awful lot like a bird we picked up ten-fifteen years ago for
delinquency."  Galt was famous for his camera-eye.  "Anyhow, he took
the stuff to the _Ark_ and installed it.  Left instructions how to
work it, then beat it.  I had the space-port guards hang onto 'im
while I sniffed around.  Miss Carlyle, the junk he put into the _Ark_
wouldn't paralyze a beetle!  It's fake!  I tried it!"

Trevelyan sneered.

"You just couldn't puzzle out how to work it, that's all.  I
demonstrated it to a couple of the crew there.  They'll tell you it
was left in perfect shape.  I demand---"

"Shut up, you."  Gerry's voice was like a mallet.  The paralysis ray
had been extremely simple to operate; Galt could have managed it
easily.  Gerry remembered her vague suspicions at Lunde's carefully
arranged build-up, how he insisted on a certain order of events,
Shipkey's broadcast first, _then_ his apparatus, all designed to whet
her interest.

It had all seemed rehearsed, a routine entirely foreign to Lunde's
vacillating character.  And there had been the misty figure of the
assistant in the background, "clever" and "ambitious."  Trevelyan,
the motivating force behind the innocuous Professor Lunde.  There was
something off-color here.

"Then you wouldn't mind if we went back, picked up Lunde, and tried
the apparatus again?"



Trevelyan shifted uneasily.

"Why not?  Of course, the assembly is delicate, and the ray machine
can easily be jarred out of kilter."

"So that's what you did!  After the test, you knocked one of the
parts haywire so your superior would be blamed for sending men out to
risk their lives with apparatus so delicately and unsubstantially
built that it won't even last through an ordinary testing.  Why?"

"You're crazy, lady!  _I_ didn't do anything!  I just installed the
stuff Lunde told me to install.  If it's broken down already, that's
not my fault!"  He suddenly twisted free of Galt's grip.  "I insist
you allow me to go, or else suffer the consequences before the law!"

Silence, then, while Gerry pondered.  Finally she looked at Galt.

"Well, Barney, what does your detective instinct dictate?"

Galt laughed shortly.

"Police methods ain't changed much in fifty years, Miss Carlyle.
When we used t' want t' find out things in a hurry, we persuaded
people t' tell us."

"You mean scopolamine--the truth serum?"

"No, ma'am.  That ain't always reliable.  We used to use a rubber
hose 'cause it didn't leave no marks.  Science has give us gadgets
like the psycho-probe that beat the old hose all hollow.  They don't
leave no marks, either, but they sure get the truth out of a man."

Trevelyan's eyes held a horrified look of dawning comprehension.

"You can't third-degree me!" he shouted.  "It's unlawful!  I want--"

Galt clapped his powerful fingers across the man's mouth.

"Okay by you, Miss Carlyle?"

Gerry nodded.  She was a girl who had lived with blood and death and
wasn't the one to quail before a little necessary brutality.  When
there might be lives at stake, she could be as hard as any man.

"Shoot the works, Barney.  We'll use the back office.  The walls are
Vacuum-Brik with mineral fluff insulation, so we won't disturb
anyone.  And don't worry about the law.  If anything happens, all the
influence of the L.I.Z. will back you up."

Galt grinned ominously at the trembling Trevelyan.

"My buddy'll have a hemorrhage when he finds out what he missed!"
And they grimly forced Trevelyan into the tiny inner room, locked the
door behind.

It was mid-morning when those three staggered out of that little
black chamber.  Galt and Gerry Carlyle were drawn and haggard,
red-eyed from lack of sleep, grim-faced from the things they had had
to do to break Trevelyan down.  Trevelyan himself could scarcely
stand.  There was not a mark on his body; physically he was unharmed.
Trevelyan had been a tough nut to crack, but Galt had done it.  They
had the story.  The end had justified the means.

It wasn't a pleasant tale to hear--a recounting of ugly passion,
jealousy, treachery, hate.  Under the American university system, for
fifty years increasingly the centers of ultra-conservatism and
reactionary tendencies, Trevelyan, in common with many underlings,
had had no chance to express his own theories or receive credit for
his own calculations and inventions.  The silly and unjust ruling
that required all papers to be published--and all discoveries to be
announced--by the department heads only, regardless of who in the
department might have been responsible, had stifled Trevelyan's
restless soul too long.  He couldn't stand by and see fools like
Lunde take credit for scientific advances with which they had nothing
to do.  It galled him.



So he had planned to discredit Lunde completely, have him ousted, and
take what he felt was his rightful place as professor of physics at
Plymouth University.  If someone as famous as Gerry Carlyle tried out
a Lunde "invention" and found it a failure, with probable loss of
life, public indignation would ruin him.  Then Trevelyan, turning up
with the genuine paralysis ray and a story of Lunde's blind stupidity
and the fact that he had refused to take advice from subordinates,
would ride into office easily.  So he had egged the professor, with
plenty of soft soap about the glory of Plymouth U., into saddling
Gerry Carlyle with the paralysis ray.

The only thing Trevelyan didn't foresee was meeting an old-time
copper like Barney Galt, who wouldn't hesitate to go any length to
wrest the truth from a man he suspected.  That was where Trevelyan
had slipped.

Gerry picked up a visiphone and called the space-port.

"Put Mr. Strike on, please," she asked the attendant who appeared on
the screen.

"Mr. Strike, miss?  I'm sorry.  He left with the _Ark_ for Jupiter at
eight o'clock this morning."

"For Jupiter!" she screamed.  "That's impossible.  He promised to
wait until I okayed everything!"

"Well, miss, Mr. Strike and the crew were all ready to leave several
hours ago.  He became impatient and tried to get in touch you two or
three times.  Finally I heard him say everything must be all right
and you'd gone home to bed, and anyhow he wasn't going to wait while
some--er--"

"I know.  'Some dame in pants!'  Go on from there."

"Uh--exactly, miss.  While some dame in pants stalled around thinking
up excuses to spoil the trip.  And off he went."  The attendant's
face twisted slightly but remained heroically stolid.

"All right.  Don't stand there like a dummy!" Gerry snapped.  "Plug
me into the radio communications bureau!"  Once the connection was
made, she told the operator to get in touch with the _Ark_ at once.
Minutes passed.  At intervals the operator cut in to say,

"Sorry, Miss Carlyle.  The _Ark_ does not answer.  We'll keep trying."

After ten minutes of this, Gerry suggested they call some other ship
nearby and have her contact the _Ark_.

"We've already done so, Miss Carlyle.  The Martian freighter _Phobos_
is in the same sector as the _Ark_.  The _Phobos'_ signals are not
answered, either."

Gerry hung up abruptly as comprehension dawned on her.

"That louse Trevelyan!" she cried aloud, wishing momentarily Galt
hadn't taken the fellow away so she'd have something more satisfying
than the desk to pound.  "He wrecked the radio receiver, too.  If
Tommy tests the ray apparatus before reaching Jupiter, that reckless
guy will be so far along on the trip that he won't want to come back."

Quickly Gerry got busy on the phone, calling the major space-ports of
the Earth, asking the same question over and over:

"When does your next ship leave for the vicinity of Jupiter?"

Luck was against her.  Every passenger clipper in service was either
out along the spaceways or undergoing repairs.  Frantically, then,
Gerry got in touch with those private concerns that had ships
comparable in speed and power to the _Ark_.  There were only a
few--one or two utility companies, the big exploitation concerns.
Again she failed.  Sudden fear loosed ice in her veins.  The fact had
to be faced: nowhere on Earth was there a ship available to overtake
Tommy.

Gerry wasted no tears over spilt milk.  She did the next best thing,
buying passage at a fabulous price on a fast freighter leaving for
Ganymede within the hour.  She barely had time to see Lunde and
explain what had happened, bully him into parting with the only
remaining model of the paralysis ray--a miniature low-power set for
small-scale experimentation--rush to the port in an air-taxi and dash
through the freighter's air-lock ten seconds before deadline.

Only when she was safely ensconced in one of the foul-smelling holes
these freight lines used for cabins was Gerry able to relax and give
vent to a whole-hearted, old-fashioned, mule-skinner cussing of
everyone and everything connected with this ghastly game.




CHAPTER III

_Outpost of Forgotten Men_

On Ganymede, fourth satellite outward from Jupiter, is the strangest
little community in the System.  It is the center, in a way, of the
vast mining activities that go on throughout practically every Jovian
satellite, except Five, large and small.

It would be impracticable for the freighters which periodically bring
supplies and take away the accumulated ores and concentrates to make
the rounds of each individual satellite, scattered about Jupiter in
different positions as they are.  So a single base was established on
Ganymede.  Earth freighters stop only there to leave supplies and
equipment; and all shipments are brought to the Ganymede depot by a
local transport system.

It is the pilots of these local transport ships that compose this
unique little village.  Not ordinary pilots, these men, but the
toughest, most hard-bitten crew of rocket-busters that ever spat into
the teeth of Death herself.  Gutter scrapings, many of them,
society's outcasts--men with ugly blots on their records such as
drunkenness on duty that cost the lives of passengers--criminals,
murderers.

There is a reason for this: the job these hardy men undertake
requires that they take their lives in their hands every time they
leave the rocky soil of Ganymede.  The terrible iron fingers of
Jupiter's gravity threaten every instant to drag their puny ships
down, down, to plummet into the heart of that pseudo-sun.  Great
magnetic storms tower high above the limits of Jovian atmosphere, the
slightest breath of which would ruin the firing system of a rocket
ship and leave it to spin disabled to destruction.  Unrelaxing
vigilance and incredible reserves of fuel--the one god of these
godless men--is the price of survival.

Wages are high here, but none but those who have little to live for
consider the job.  The law shuts its eye to criminals who take refuge
there, because they are doing valuable work.  Besides, just as surely
as if they had been sentenced in a tribunal of law, they are men
condemned.

Yet this lonely little outpost with its heavy-fisted, bragging,
hard-drinking ruffians was Gerry Carlyle's only hope of reaching
Strike in time to help him.  When, after several restless days and
sleepless nights during which the so-called "fast freight" seemed to
crawl among the stars, it finally reached Ganymede, Gerry was first
out of the ship.  The place was unprepossessing, simply a barren
landing field pitted and scarred from rocket blasts.  The thin air
was bitterly cold, and ugly yellow Jupiter-glow lighted the scene
badly.

While the crew unloaded the cargo, Gerry turned to a young
under-officer.

"Looks like this place was wiped out by the plague.  Where is
everyone?"

The officer smiled.

"Pretty self-important bunch, these bums.  Act as if they were lords
of creation and us ordinary mortals are only born to cater to their
vanity.  Here come a few of them now."

There was a cluster of three or four barracks in the near distance.
Out of the most pretentious of them, a half dozen men sauntered
casually.  They were hard-faced, dressed in furs.  The officer met
them halfway.

"Got a passenger for you this time.  Wants to see your chief."

One of the pilots, a huge hulk of a fellow, grinned.

"You don't say!  We ain't got any chief.  We're all equals here;
everybody's just as good as everybody else."



The freighter officer bit his lip indecisively, but before he could
speak, Gerry's temper slipped its leash a trifle.

"Nonsense!" she cried sharply.  "A blind man could see that you and
this bunch of down-at-heel underlings aren't equal to anything.  You
must have a leader, someone to tell you what to do.  Without a chief
you wouldn't know enough to come in out of a meteor shower!"

There was dumfounded silence as the pilots all gathered close for a
good view of this phenomenon.

"Well, split my rocket-tubes if it ain't a dame!" the big fellow
exploded.

"I'm Gerry Carlyle," the girl announced imperiously, "and I'm in a
very great hurry.  I insist upon seeing your chief at once!"

The giant opened his mouth to bellow in Gerry's face, but something
changed his mind at the last instant.  He shut his mouth, scratched
his chin in bewilderment.

"Maybe we better let Frenchy figure this one out," one of the others
suggested.

There was general assent, and the party moved across the field to the
men's living quarters.  A blast of warm air struck their faces as the
door opened, and everyone shucked off his furs.  There were four more
men inside and one of them, with black spade beard and dark, flashing
eyes, was obviously a Frenchman.

"Hey, Frenchy, there was a passenger landed today," the big man said.

The Frenchman was busy with something in his hands and did not look
up.

"So, my good Bullwer?  And this passenger, what is it that he
wishes?"  His grammar, syntax, and accent were definitely French.

"Wants to see our chief.  Ain't that a laugh?"  Bullwer looked around
and saw it was no laugh.  It was obvious everyone in that room
accepted the mild-looking little Frenchman as nominal leader.

The latter looked up, handling Bullwer with his eyes.

"So you bring this passenger to see Louis Duval, is it not?"

Bullwer squirmed.

"Okay.  No need to get sore.  The passenger's here, but it's just a
dame."

Duval looked around, startled, saw Gerry.  For a moment of breathless
silence he stared as if it had been given to him to see a vision.
Then he sprang to his feet.

"A dame, yes!" he breathed.  "But a dame of the most magnificent, is
it not?  Louis Duval, mademoiselle, at your service!"  And he bowed
low over Gerry's hand in the fashion that only a Frenchman can bow to
a beautiful woman.

Suddenly Duval glared about him.

"Swine!" he roared.  "Take off your hats!  A chair for the lady!
Refreshments!  _Vite!  Vite!_"

But Gerry was not to be swerved from her purpose.  She stepped close
to the Frenchman, turning loose the full battery of her eyes.

"Monsieur Duval," she said tensely, "I'm here for a reason.  Every
minute that passes may mean the difference between life and death to
many men.  I must, at the earliest possible moment, get to Satellite
Five.  The only men in the System with the courage and skill to get
me there in time are right in this room.  Will you aid me?"

The pilots, who had lounged about in interested silence while Duval
held the floor, now burst into concerted, ironic laughter.

"The dame don't want much," one said.  "Just a mass suicide!"

"Satellite Five!" ejaculated a second.  "There ain't two dozen ships
in the System could make Five.  And they ain't none of 'em anywheres
near this dump of a Ganymede!"



Duval's eyes darkened with genuine regret.

"Mademoiselle," he declared earnestly, "there is nothing on this
world or any world we would not do for you gladly--if it can be done.
But the journey to Satellite Five--it is not possible."

He took Gerry gently by the arm, led her to a window.

"Look.  There is one of the vehicles so splendid in which we make our
trips regular to the other satellites."

Gerry stared.  The ship was an ancient iron hull.  Its rocket
exhausts were badly corroded; the plates were warped and buckled,
roughened by the relentless pelting of thousands of wandering
meteorites.  A far cry from the _Ark's_ streamlined power which would
take it anywhere in the System.

"That wreck!" Gerry ejaculated.  "Why, that's a condemned crate if I
ever saw one!  That thing wouldn't last thirty minutes in space!
It'd fall apart!"

"Frequently they do fall apart, Mademoiselle.  For example, Scoffino
is two days overdue from Io.  Soon we will drink the toast."

Gerry's eyes followed Duval's to a shelf which ran across the rear of
the room.  On it were ranged a row of shattered goblets; etched in
acid across each was a name.

"Great heavens!"  Gerry was indignant.  "That's criminal!"

"But no one can blame the company.  They would be very foolish to
risk ships valuable, costing many thousands of dollars, on these
routes hazardous.  Besides, there is genius--I, Duval, admit
it--among the mechanics.  They continue to patch and to patch and
somehow most of us we manage to return alive with our cargoes.  But
to journey to Five--"  Duval hunched his shoulders in the inimitable
shrug with which a Frenchman can express so little or so much.

Something rose suddenly in Gerry's throat, chokingly.  Was it to be
failure this time?  And what about Tommy Strike, facing some alien
horror with empty weapons?  He was so quixotically reckless that he
would never consent to turn tail and flee, even when his own life was
in danger.  Was he, too, to die with succor so near at hand because
Gerry Carlyle couldn't dig up transportation to bridge a little gap
of a few hundred thousand miles of space?

Not while the strongest in Gerry's arsenal of weapons was yet unused.
She had a hypodermic tongue, and the knack of injecting caustic,
rankling remarks.  She whirled on the group of lounging pilots, fire
in her eye.

"That's a laugh!" she cried in piercing tones.  "That's a real laugh!
My fiancé is down there on Satellite Five right now, fighting it out
with some monstrous thing no man has ever seen to tell of.  There's
nothing the matter with _his_ insides; he's got what it takes.  But
because of a scheming rat back in New York, he's out there
defenseless with a weapon that won't work.  I have the real one, and
I came to the only place in the entire System where I could find men
supposedly with the skill and guts to pilot me to Satellite Five.

"And what do I find?  A bunch of no-good tramps, half-baked
defeatists playing cribbage for matches!  Telling each other what
tough guys they really are, living perpetually in the shadow of
death!  Dramatizing themselves!  Breaking a two-bit goblet every time
one of their worthless carcasses takes a dive into Jupiter--the
cheapest kind of theatrics!  If the whole lot of you were laid end to
end, it would be a darned good job!  All told, you couldn't muster up
the courage of a sick rabbit!"



It was a cruel, bitter indictment, completely unjust; but it was the
last trump in Gerry's hand.  If it failed to take the trick, she was
through.  With a final sweeping glance of unutterable scorn, she
strode out of the barracks and slammed the door behind her.

There was thick silence in the pilots' quarters after the girl left,
broken finally by sheepish stirrings and a muttered, "Whew!"

Of all the men gathered there, Gerry's denunciation affected Duval
most poignantly.  He was French, and had always had all the
Frenchman's traditional romanticism and chivalry and love of beauty.
For three seemingly endless years he had been a lonely exile on
Ganymede, far from the beloved Gascony of his birth.

Paris was a dim memory; he had not seen a single woman in years.

All the ideals in his romantic soul had become magnified to an
unnatural extent.  Despite the fact that he dominated this hardy
crew, he was a misfit.  By nature he was cut out to be a
reincarnation of the chevalier Bayard, _sans peur et sans reproche_;
cruel circumstance had made him--what he was.  And now this flame of
a girl had poured salt on his wounds.  Boy and girl in love, and in
need.  It meant everything such a situation means to any Frenchman, a
hundred times keener.  And he with opportunity to make his worthless
life meaningful again.

Purposefully Duval strode to a cupboard, yanked out a handful of
charts, pored over them.  He sat down with pencil and calculator,
muttering to himself, figuring.

"Name of a pipe," he whispered presently.  "It might be done."

Duval hurried out after Gerry and found her by the freighter, which
was now taking on its load of ore concentrates, trying bitterly and
hopelessly to argue its commander into attempting to make Satellite
Five.

"Mademoiselle!" called Duval breathlessly.  "Mademoiselle, I believe
there is a possibility of the faintest--"

"Duval!" Gerry cried, her face lighting like a torch from within.
"You mean you'll try it?  Oh, that's marvelous!  You're perfectly
grand!  And I'll see you're properly rewarded, too.  I have
influence.  Plenty.  I don't know what you did back home, but if it
can be fixed--"

Duval brushed this aside.

"We have perhaps one chance in the hundred to arrive safely.  After
that is time to talk of the rewarding.  Fortunately, the Satellite
Five is almost directly opposite Ganymede, on the other side of
Jupiter--"

They were moving rapidly across the field tarmac toward the battered
rocket ship in its starting cradle, Duval's feet fairly twinkling to
match Gerry's eager strides.  The paralysis ray swung at her side.
She nodded incisively.

"I see what you mean.  We dive straight into the heart of Jupiter to
gather terrific momentum, then cut over in a hump and utilize our
speed to draw clear and make our objective.  Splendid!  I knew there
must be some rocket-buster around here with the stuff to make this
trip."

Duval beamed.

"You are willing to risk the life with me?"

"Perfectly."

Drawn by curiosity, some of the pilots drifted around as Duval made a
swift final check-up before taking off.  A few, a bit embarrassed by
anything like a display of emotion, diffidently shook the Frenchman's
hand in a manner clearly indicating they never expected to see him
again.  Just before they sealed the entrance porte, Bullwer poked his
head inside.

"Say!  You really gonna shoot for V, Frenchy?" he asked incredulously.

Duval drew himself up to every inch of his five feet.  "And why not?
If there is anyone who it can achieve, I, Duval, am he, is it not?"

Bullwer grinned.

"Maybe so.  But I'll lay a week's pay you can't."

"Done!"  And Duval slammed the porte shut, nearly decapitating
Bullwer.  Flames spewed from the rocket-tubes in tenuous streamers
along the ground; thunder shook the ship.  Scarcely waiting for the
motors to warm up properly, Duval poured on the power, and the
strangely assorted couple took off on perhaps the most hazardous
journey in the history of rocketry.




CHAPTER IV

_Re-birth_

Gerry always remembered that trip with the breathless terror of a
nightmare.  Once in the ship, there was no time to adjust herself to
the danger, none of the usual hours of preparation, of preliminary
approach, during which one can screw up courage to the sticking
point.  Instead, one instant the clang of the porte was ringing in
her ears, the next, the booming of the engines, and all at once they
were dropping like a plummet straight into the maw of the gigantic
golden bubble of Jupiter, which burgeoned before them like a mighty
blossom of disaster.

Duval was a grim little figure strapped in the pilot's seat, his
magic hands flying over the control board, delicately probing,
guiding the old cracker-box ship miraculously, wary of indications of
Jovian magnetic storms which would mean destruction for them.
Completely ignoring the physical effects of acceleration, Duval soon
had the rocket ship hurtling down at speeds she had never achieved
before, and for which she was never built.

Soon the sinister, swirling globe of Jupiter filled every corner of
the visi-screen.  Duval spoke sharply without turning his head.

"The straps, mademoiselle!  Make certain they are tight!  Soon we
must make our move!"

Gerry set her teeth grimly, watching with almost impersonal
admiration the skill of Duval.  Too late to turn back now; already a
faint scream was audible as they bulleted through the extreme upper
reaches of the Jovian atmosphere.  Then Duval's fingers plunged
downward on the firing keys, and the under-rockets flowered crimson
petals of flame.

The ship lurched, groaned hideously in every joint as if in some
strange cosmic labor, striving to tear itself free.  Instantly the
steely fingers of Jupiter's gravity wrenched powerfully at the
ancient hull.  Seams squealed, ripping open as the rivets sprung; the
plates twisted torturously under the unprecedented strains.  Air
pressure dropped as the precious mixture whistled out through a dozen
tiny vents.  The obsolete air-o-stat pumped valiantly in a grim
losing battle.

Temperature suddenly rose, rapidly becoming intolerable as the outer
air became thicker and friction heated the hull.  Sweat poured into
Gerry's eyes, but she maintained her stoic calm.  The picture of
Jupiter on the visi-screen was shifting erratically; a matter of a
few seconds would tell the story....

They made it.  Their incredible velocity defeated the greedy powers
of Jovian gravity.  One final burst in which the rocket-tube flames
burst completely around the ship's nose, obscuring everything, and
they had cleared the "hump," missed the surface of Jupiter cleanly
and burst through the layers of upper atmosphere into open space
again.  Ahead, moving round to its assignation with the ship, was
Satellite Five, barren and bright in the Jupiter-glow.

The rest was comparatively simple.  Jupiter's gravity still had a
strong claim on them; it was as if they were chained to the giant
planet by a cosmic rubber band, which tightened inexorably the
further they coasted away.  Handling this mighty force with
dexterity, Duval jockeyed the ship so it was barely moving when it
reached the appointed spot in space.  They came to rest with a jar
that completed the wrecking of the ship, but they were safe.

Gerry took Duval's hand man-fashion and squeezed hard.

"You were magnificent, Duval; I'll never forget it.  But now we've
got work to do.  Ready?"



They piled into space-suits, Gerry seized the paralysis equipment,
and the two left the wreckage.  There was nothing moving in sight on
the fairly level plane, spauled off by Jupiter's fierce heat when the
System was young, whose horizon was a scant mile away.  So they
started walking.  Gravitation was surprisingly strong, indicating
unusual density.  This fact, plus the intense cold which slows down
the dance of the atoms, accounted for the fact that Five still
retained remnants of an atmosphere.

The hikers even saw traces of water vapor, in form of frost.
Occasionally they passed clumps of mossy or lichenous growth.  Twice
they observed colonies of sluglike creatures growing, reproducing,
and dying with amazing rapidity.  And then, like an enormous silver
cigar looming over the horizon, the _Ark_ came into view.  It looked
almost as large as the satellite itself, and there was furious
activity going on.  A half-dozen suited figures scurried about the
nose of the _Ark_.  From the pilot house another figure was throwing
out instruments to those below.

Gerry and Duval drew quickly near, and the girl shouted into her
head-set, "Hey, Tommy!  Tommy Strike!"

All the moving figures turned sharply, in varying attitudes of
astonishment.  Then one of them gestured sharply and came lumbering
over the plain as fast as possible.

As the two from Ganymede moved forward, Duval tripped and sprawled
ludicrously, though harmlessly, on his face.  He scrambled carefully
to his feet and bent over to see what had caused his humiliation.  He
uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Name of a pipe!  What a monster of the most incredible!"

Gerry, too, stopped to examine the thing stretched out on the rocky
ground.  It was something beyond even Gerry's vast experience in
extraterrestrial life.  From tip to tip it might have measured as
much as twenty feet, and its ugly, warty gray hide was divided into
armored sections along its entire length with soft spots between the
plates.  It was oval-shaped in lateral cross-section, something like
a gigantic cut-worm that has been stepped upon but not quite
squashed.  Duval was for leaving the nauseous horror strictly alone.

Gerry's clinical instinct, however, prompted her to turn it over with
her foot.  About a fourth of the way along the under side were six
short legs, arranged with no particular symmetry, just stuck here and
there.  Sprouting about the front end of the thing was a forest of
what looked like dead gloved fingers--sensory organs of some kind.
The mouth parts resembled a funnel, much like the proboscis of the
common house-fly.  Two eyes set on either side of the head were
glazed in death.  While the entire lower half of the abdomen was slit
wide open; inside was nothing but a sickening mess of half-devoured
vitals.

At that moment Tommy Strike finally galloped up, spluttering.

"Gerry!  How the dickens did you ever manage to get here?  And why?
And--"

"Never mind all that!" interrupted Gerry.  "Duval here brought me
from Ganymede by rocket.  He's the greatest pilot in the System.  And
I came because the paralysis ray equipment you have is no good."

"No kidding!"  Strike was bitterly sarcastic.  "You came a long ways
just to tell us that.  We found it out a few hours ago.  It cost us
two lives.  Leeds and Machen are gone, burnt to cinders."

"Burned!"  Gerry rocked back on her heels, stunned at the loss.
"Then this--this Cacus really does breathe fire?"

"And how it does!  You've never seen anything like it.  But what I
want to know is about the ray apparatus.  What--"



Gerry quickly explained about Trevelyan's treachery.  "I have the
genuine article with me now."  She displayed Lunde's other model.

Strike seized it avidly.

"Then let me have it!  Will we give that monkey what-for!"'

"But wait a minute, Tommy.  What about this thing here?"  She kicked
at the empty dead thing at their feet.  "Is this the Cacus?"

"Well, it _was_ the Cacus."  Strike looked a bit befuddled.  "Though
now the Cacus has helped himself to the _Ark_.  Just walked in and
took over.  The pilot-house and engine rooms are locked, keeping him
out of there, but the boys trapped in the nose of the ship are
jettisoning the valuable stuff in case the Cacus decides to burn his
way in there."  He swore.  "It's a mess!"

Gerry shook her head.

"Then you mean there's more than one Cacus; you killed this one, but
another showed up.  That it?".

"No, that isn't it!  There's only one Cacus.  He--he--"  Strike
stopped and drew a deep breath.  He rolled the carcass over on its
side and began again.  "See that heat-ray burn?  Well, here's what
happened.  When we found the paralysis apparatus on the blink, we
were practically here already, so we figured we'd take this freak
with our regular equipment.  We found him crawling around with little
jets of fire occasionally licking out of his mouth or snout or
whatever it is.  He was burning this mossy junk that grows all over,
and also toasting plenty of these snail-like things, and then
siphoning them up.  Omnivorous.

"Well, it looked like a cinch, so I creased him across the spine with
a heat-ray, just enough to double him up while we doped out a muzzle
to cap that fiery mouth of his.  It twisted him into a knot, all
right, but then the damnedest thing happened.  He split down the
middle like an over-ripe fruit and another Cacus popped out almost
full-born.  He spouted a terrific blast of fire at us, and while we
ducked out of range, the new Cacus just sat down and made a meal off
his mother's--or is it his father's--insides.  You could see him grow
by inches till he got about the size of the original.  Then he made
for the ship.

"Leeds and Machen were guarding the air-lock, and they gave the
second Cacus full-power heat-ray.  It never bothered the thing.  It
just burned the two of 'em to so much charcoal with a single breath
and pushed on inside the ship."  Strike's mouth twisted bitterly at
the memory.  "Most of the gang escaped, though a few are still in
there, safe behind the emergency bulkheads and with some of the air
still preserved.  Don't think anyone else was hurt."

The trio hurried toward the _Ark_.

"So the Cacus is bi-sexual," said Gerry wonderingly.
"Self-fertilizing.  That's amazing.  And only one of him on the whole
satellite!  That's really amazing."

Strike looked at her queerly.

"You don't grasp the truly amazing part of it--the Cacus'
imperviousness to Leeds' and Machen's heat guns.  Don't you see,
Gerry?  When Cacus number one was attacked by the heat-ray, it
promptly transferred all its life and intelligence to the youngster
in its womb.  But it also transferred the power of unbelievable
adaptability, so when Cacus number two was born it was completely
defended against that heat-ray forever henceforth.

"It'd be the same for any other weapon we have for capturing an
animal alive; it would simply let itself be born again fully adapted
and protected.  The only way we can stop this monstrosity is by
suspending instantly all its vital functions, or by killing it
outright."



The girl thought for a moment.

"Well, why worry?" she said finally.  "A cathode gun will always do
the trick."

"That's just it," said Strike with melancholy triumph.  "The door to
the arsenal was open when the Cacus entered the ship.  Everyone ran
out of there in a hurry, and there isn't a cathode gun in the crowd."

Gerry snorted.

"You certainly have a genius for getting into trouble.  But it can't
be as bad as you say.  For one thing, this business about instant
adaptability is so much moon-truffle.  It's fantastic.  Leeds' and
Machen's guns simply failed.  Or maybe they shot wildly."

Strike expressed unutterable scorn.  Gerry Carlyle's men were all
sharpshooters, and they simply never got rattled.

"You'll soon see for yourself," was all he said.

When the three of them approached the _Ark_, the men gave a ragged
cheer for their famous leader and rallied hopefully around, visibly
heartened.  Nothing in their experience had ever completely baffled
Gerry Carlyle, except the strange case of the Venusian murri, and
they had confidence she would get them out of this predicament.

Gerry looked over the familiar faces with relief--Kranz, Barrows,
Michaels--most of her veterans were all right.

"Let's find out about this adaptability stuff first of all," she
decided.  "Anyone got a hypo rifle handy?"

The original hunting party had carried several, and presently one of
the men cautiously approached the open porte of the _Ark_ to act as
decoy while Gerry stood within easy range, rifle ready.  The decoy
peered gingerly inside the ship, passed the two grim chunks of seared
flesh and fabric that marked the pyres of two brave men, then finally
vanished inside.  Minutes dragged by.  Then a faint shout rang in the
watchers' helmets, and suddenly the man tore out of the _Ark_ as fast
as he could run.

Once outside, he gave a tremendous upward leap many feet high, and
just cleared a sizzling tongue of hot flame that belched out of the
door behind him.

The Cacus, bulgy-eyed and hot-breathed, crouched angrily at the door.
Quickly Gerry drove home three hypodermic bullets in the creature's
soft flesh in the crevices between the armor-like coverings.  They
took quick effect.  The Cacus' head drooped sleepily, and he moved
uncertainly as if undecided whether to come out or stay in.

Then suddenly a series of hideous abdominal convulsions wracked him.

The monster rolled over, still inside the ship; as if an invisible
surgeon slit the Cacus open for two-thirds its length, the abdomen
parted.  Like some strange phoenix of terror, a new Cacus struggled
out of the dying body of the old, stood defiantly with the upper half
of its body raised on the six legs.

Unerringly and with no sign of nerves, Gerry deliberately emptied the
hypodermic rifle into the new Cacus.  The creature lowered itself to
the metal floor, hunching along like a caterpillar.  Then it turned
and commenced ravenously to devour the soft inner parts of its host's
anatomy.

Jerkily it seemed to increase in size, like a speeded-up motion
picture of subaqueous life.

The hypo slugs had absolutely no effect upon it.



Petulantly Gerry slammed the rifle to the ground, where it bounced
lightly.

"That's impossible!" she cried.  "I've never heard of such a thing
before in the entire Solar System!"

"Maybe it got here from some other System, Lord knows how, and isn't
native here.  But that won't help subduing it."

"Rats!  How about anaesthetic gas?  Any bombs available?"

A dozen were turned up.  The Cacus having disappeared from view,
Kranz daringly ran up to the _Ark_, threw several of the bombs in,
and shoved the porte partly closed.  In less than five minutes the
porte was nudged wide open again, and the Cacus, ugly and
flame-wrapped, glared challengingly at the little group of scattered
humans.  Everyone saw instantly that the new Cacus was slightly
smaller than the one before, and was still growing.  The amazing
re-birth had defeated the anaesthetic gas as well.

"Well," said Gerry cheerfully, "I guess we'll just have to quit
playing games."




CHAPTER V

_Duval the Magnificent_

She quickly set up Lunde's model paralysis ray machine.  It worked
successfully on Kranz, to everyone's amusement, and Gerry advanced on
the _Ark_.  Instantly the Cacus, watchfully guarding the porte,
emitted a tremendous streamer of fire close to the ground, curling up
at the end like an enormous prehensile tongue.  Gerry marked the
limit of that flame and stopped outside it.  Aiming the paralysis ray
at the Cacus, she flipped the activating switch.

Nothing happened.  Gerry fiddled with the lens to no avail.  She
moved closer, only to be forced to scamper out of range of the breath
of fire.  Then she remembered.  Lunde had told her this was a
small-scale model, with less than half the power of the working
model.  The Cacus out-ranged them; they couldn't get close enough to
allow the smaller ray machine to take effect.

The Cacus blew another fiery lance at the crew, as if in derision,
then turned at some vibration within the ship and moved into its
depths.  Abandoning its sluggish mode of crawling, the Cacus coiled
and raised its tail over its back much in the manner of the scorpion,
and trotted off on its six curious legs in search of some incautious
engineer who was seeking, perhaps, to sneak out to safety.

Gerry wore a baffled expression.

"That," she pronounced, "beats me.  It looks like stalemate."

"Pardon, mademoiselle.  Not stalemate."  Everyone turned to look at
Duval, who had been completely forgotten in the excitement.

"No?" said Strike.  "Then it's a pretty good imitation of stalemate.
He can't catch us in the open; we can't do anything to him.

"But, monsieur, every second that passes works in favor of the enemy.
Our oxygen supply grows short.  It is a situation of the most
desperate.  I, Duval, say it."

Immediately, though no one had noticed the mustiness of their air
before, every person there gestured toward his throat and fumbled
quickly with the oxygen valves.  Breathing became consciously
shallow, slow.  There was no sign of panic among these veterans, but
uneasiness was a definite presence among them.

Gerry bit her lip.  "Any suggestions, Duval?  You've played aces
every trick so far."

"_Merci bien_.  Yes, mademoiselle, I have the suggestion to offer.
To combat our enemy, it is necessary that we study him, find his
points vulnerable, if such he has."

"And how'll you get that monstrosity under your microscope?"

Duval's teeth flashed.  "Ah.  To study the present Monsieur Cacus,
that is not possible.  But his ancestors--eh?"

Startled looks were exchanged.

"Say, that's a thought!" Strike cried, and led a rapid trek across
the plain to where the carcass of the first Cacus lay disemboweled.
While not scientists in the strict sense, all the Carlyle crew had
had scientific education and training.  Almost at once a remarkable
discovery was made by Kranz.

"Captain, will you take a look at this?"  He was holding up the dead
creature's funnel-shaped mouth, spreading it wide apart with his
hands.  Instead of true teeth, the entire inner mouth was composed of
a sort of flexible horny growth which probably served for mastication
when and if necessary.  But the extraordinary thing was that every
available crevice was veined with a gray, spongy mass.

"That," said Kranz, "is spongy platinum!"

"And say!" someone chimed in impressively.  "The whole satellite must
be rank with platinum if there's enough to impregnate the system of
any animal life."



Excitement over a possible bonanza discovery stirred them
momentarily.  Then Duval's ringing voice held them all again.

"Ah!  But more important, I believe, it is that we have here the
explanation of the breath of fire!  One may read in any textbook of
chemistry elementary that when hydrogen or coal gas is made to pass
over spongy platinum, it makes of fire, is it not?  Well!  One may
also read that anerobic bacteria, acting upon matter of decomposition
in swamps, generate methane, which is one of the constituents--as is
hydrogen--of coal gas.  Now!  All the world knows we have in our
digestive tracts many bacteria.  Surely, Monsieur Cacus, within,
contains anerobic bacteria, which act on the decaying matter animal
and vegetable, of which a decomposition product must be gas similar
to coal gas.  Thus the breath of fire!"  Duval finished with a
flourish.

Everyone agreed: the Frenchman had something there.  But how to turn
it to advantage?  Strike screwed his face up thoughtfully.

"Spongy platinum, then," he groped hesitantly, "is a catalyst--"

Instantly Gerry took him up.

"Of course!  A catalyst!  And there are several things which, in
combination with it, kill its action as a catalytic agent.  The
halogens, for instance--bromine, fluorine.  Or hydrogen cyanide--"

Everyone looked at everyone else, eager to advance Gerry's idea,
uncertain just how to go about it.

"That's smart brain-work, Gerry," said Strike, "but our supplies
might as well be on Sirius for all the good they can do us.  Where'll
we get any of the things you mentioned?"

"If it pleases you, mademoiselle--"  It was Duval again, and hopes
soared at the confidence in his voice.  "I, Duval, can perhaps solve
this problem.  You see these blossoms, so tiny, so unimportant?"  He
toed one of the little groups of close-clinging growths with the
colorless, star-shaped blooms.  "They are found, I believe, in one
species or another, on all the satellites of Jupiter.  We know them
well.  They are related, one might say, to the nightshade of Earth,
because they have poison within them.  It is, as you have said it,
hydrogen cyanide."

Without the necessity of a single command, the crew went to work.
Three of them got furiously busy picking great handfuls of the plants
which offered them salvation.  Another ran back to the prow of the
_Ark_, from which the man in the pilot-house had dropped the
important instruments, and had him toss out a space-suit helmet; it
would make a perfect pot for boiling.

The little remaining drinking water left in the pilot-house was also
lowered.  A pair of low-power heat beams was arranged under a tripod
made of three of the useless hypo rifles.  In a very few minutes the
mixture was bubbling merrily--it came to a boil quickly in the
absence of much pressure--brewing a vengeful hell-broth for the Cacus.

By the time it cooled to a scummy liquid with a brown substance
deposited from the solution, the whole party was laboring for breath,
with the exception of Gerry and Duval, who hadn't been in their
space-suits as long as the others.

Gerry peered around the row of blue-lipped faces; what she had to do
now was hard.  Someone had to be chosen to try conclusions with the
Cacus: someone had to risk his life, perhaps lose it, in a desperate
effort to introduce, the HCN into the monster's mouth.



True, it had to be done at close range; so why not try the paralysis
ray?  But Gerry had come to distrust the ray machine, which was the
cause of all the trouble.  Perhaps it didn't have the proper power
even at close range.  If a life had to be lost, it would simply be
thrown away if the paralysis ray failed to work.  But it might do
some good if lost while putting into effect Duval's textbook
chemistry.

The men would never under any circumstances allow Gerry to try it, so
she was forced to call for volunteers.  To the last man, they all
stepped forward.

But Tommy Strike stepped farthest, taking the bowl of deadly juice
from Gerry's hands.

"My job," he said briefly.  "I'm sort of responsible for this mess.
It's up to me to straighten things out."

Gerry's eyes misted.  She had no right to refuse him.  Someone had to
go and Strike, as co-captain, had authority to choose himself.  And
rigid discipline of the Carlyle expeditions insisted on no needless
sacrifice of life or limb.  Strike would go alone.  Gerry needed all
her iron control at that moment.

Strike opened one of the meta-glass gas bombs to allow the gas to
disperse, then filled it with most of the poison solution, saving a
little for a second try in case he failed.  With a crooked grin he
waved salute and started toward the _Ark_.  Deftly, and before anyone
had the slightest inkling of what was happening, Duval slipped up
behind Strike, tripped him, and threw him easily to the ground.  He
caught the meta-glass ball as it floated downward.

Gerry yelled at him.

"Duval!  Stop it!  You've done enough already; besides, you're not
properly one of us at all.  Put that down!"

Duval's smile gleamed brightly.  "But I have just made a flight
impossible from Ganymede to Satellite Five in a scrap heap.  Today is
my day of luck!  I cannot fail!"

"Duval!  Come back!  We want no quixotic foolishness.  If you
understood our discipline you'd realize we just don't do things that
way."

And Duval of the empty life, whose passing none would mourn, who
burned to do heroic things in the grand manner, said soberly:

"And if you, mademoiselle, but understood the French, you would
realize that we Gascons do things this way."

And he was gone, running rapidly toward the _Ark_.  Strike floundered
finally to his feet, snarling.  He seized the paralysis ray model and
set out after Duval as fast as he could go.  In a flash the entire
crew made a concerted rush in the same direction.  Only Gerry's
savage commands halted them reluctantly.

Duval reached the porte, peered cautiously in, then vanished inside.
Strike followed him less than a half minute later.  Then nothing.
The watchers outside listened intently at their helmet ear-phones,
but no word came from either Duval or Strike.  They got in touch with
those still trapped in the ship, but the latter reported nothing.
That was natural, as the lethal game being played between Duval,
Strike, and the Cacus was taking place along nearly airless passages
where sound would not carry well.



Presently the listeners were shocked to hear a high-pitched squeal
like that of a wounded horse coming faintly through the ear-phones.
It was nothing human; it must have been picked up by someone's helmet
mike at a point very close to the screamer.  At that, all restraint
was flung aside and the crew, with Gerry in the lead, pounded
pell-mell over the solid terrain and recklessly into the _Ark_.

They burst in gasping on a climax of terrible ferocity.  It was so
swift, so savagely sudden, that it was all over before they could
throw their feeble powers into the balance.

The Cacus had evidently been prowling down a side passage, and Duval
had attracted its attention, then ducked around a corner into the
main corridor; when they met, it would be at close quarters where
there was no chance for the Frenchman to miss.  As the crew tumbled
in, Duval was crouching by the passage corner and had just finished
yammering at Tommy Strike to stay back and not be a fool.  Strike had
apparently started in the wrong direction and had just located the
real theater of action; he was running purposely along the corridor
to back up Duval's play.

And then everything happened at once, like a badly-rehearsed bit of
stage continuity in which the actors rush through their parts almost
simultaneously.

The Cacus, tail curled up and running on his six legs, skidded
furiously into the main corridor of the _Ark_.  At once he spied
Duval and emitted another of those hideous shrilling sounds.  Duval's
arm went back, whipped forward.  A glittering arc made a line
straight for the ugly, horn-like snout of the beast.  Strike, off to
one side and several feet behind Duval, dropped to his knees and
fumbled with the ray-box.  A terrific blast of flame belched, out
from the Cacus to envelop head and shoulders of the doughty Frenchman.

For a moment it appeared that the fiery stream had caught the
container of HCN and demolished it.  But no--the Frenchman had been
the quicker; he had scored a bull's-eye.  By the time the Cacus
turned to annihilate Strike, the hydrogen cyanide had entered into
combination with the spongy platinum, and nothing but a burst of gas
came forth.  From that moment the monster was through.  Strike
brought the miniature paralysis ray to bear, and instantly the Cacus
collapsed in a twitching mound of nauseous flesh.

Cathode guns were brought from the arsenal, and the Cacus was
ruthlessly blasted out of existence.  Then Gerry and Strike hurried
to Duval's side.  The Frenchman was terribly burned, his face a
blackened, blinded travesty of a man.  The spark of life was almost
extinguished.  But as the two knelt beside him, Duval's cracked lips
managed a feeble grin.

"Mademoiselle," he whispered, "will have to collect that wager I have
won from the good Bullwer.  We made the flight.  He has lost a week's
pay, that one."  Something like a laugh bubbled up from his seared
chest.

Gerry groaned in anguish,

"Duval!  Oh, you magnificent fool, Duval!  Why did you do it?
Because of me, you must die.  That's wrong--"

"Death?"  Duval somehow managed a shrug.  "Death, yes.  But what a
death of the most heroic!"  And with supreme courtesy to the last,
Duval carefully rolled over to face the wall, that a lady might not
have to suffer the unpleasant sight of a dying man.

Somberly, Strike helped Gerry to her feet, and she clung to him
tightly.  For a while they said no word.  All about them, throughout
the ship came the noises of normal life being resumed.  The entrance
porte clanged shut.  Voices rang out.  Distantly a generator began to
hum.  Bulkheads rumbled open again.  Oxygen hissed into the airless
passages.  Feet drummed faintly.

Then Gerry Carlyle gave Louis Duval, his epitaph.

"There lies," she said, "a very gallant gentleman."


[The end of _Satellite Five_ by Arthur K. Barnes]