Frederic Arnold Kummer

Inside the crippled Comet, a hard-bitten
crew watched the life-giving oxygen run
low. Outside, on Ceres' fabled Darkside,
stalked death in awful, spectral form.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Comet's control-room was silent except for the monotonous beat of Ken Grant's restless pacing. Six months on Ceres' frigid, shadowy Darkside had driven the tan from his face, etched lines of worry about his mouth. Darkside had a way of doing that to people. A temperature of five above absolute zero, the grim, eternal darkness, the insane landscape, combined to give an impression of unreality that made one feel he was living some terrible nightmare.

From time to time Grant glanced at the sidereal chronometer, shook his head. Sixteen hours! Sixteen hours since Kennerly had left ... and the heating unit of his space-suit had been good for three! Kennerly had vanished, just as Allers had vanished before him! Two men had left the disabled ship to try and reach Bowman's Crater, that last tiny outpost only twenty miles away, and both men had disappeared. Had either Allers or Kennerly been successful, a rescue ship from Bowman's Crater must have come by now. But instead, the two spacemen had been swallowed up by the gloom, vanished, leaving no trace. The bitter silent darkness outside was like some yawning limitless void into which men went, and did not return. Their position was bad enough in any case, but with a woman in command....

Grant shot a glance at the stack of big lead chests in a corner of the cabin. Pitchblend—radium ore with an amazingly high metal content. The ore in those big chests, when refined, would yield over a million in the rare element. Not that a million would do them much good if they couldn't get it away. With the main fuel intake valve cracked, the motors, the radio, the air-regenerator, were all shut off. Death from lack of oxygen faced them unless word got through.

A click of the cabin's door broke Grant's thoughts. He turned; a slender girl wearing riding breeches and leather jacket appeared in the doorway. Pale, with deep smoke-gray eyes and auburn hair, she had a fragile transcendental beauty that was very appealing, but her chin was firm, determined.

"Any news, Mr. Grant?" she asked quietly, stepping into the control room.

"None." He shook a gloomy head. "I don't like it! There's something strange going on, Miss Conway! The trail's perfectly clear, there's no life on Ceres that we know of. One man might conceivably meet with some sort of accident, but not two! They tell stories about Darkside; queer stories! About alien, unknown creatures."

"I ... I know," the girl said tightly. "Dad used to hear those stories, too, when he and Allers were prospecting here. When Dad died he left me enough money to charter this ship, told me to come here to Ceres for my legacy. Gave me the chart showing where this pocket of pitchblend was located." She glanced at the lead chests. "Now Allers, Dad's closest friend, is gone. And Kennerly. And we're trapped, made virtual prisoners in this ship by something unknown—out there. We've got to get word through, Mr. Grant! It's death to stay here until our oxygen is gone. Death, maybe worse, waiting for us out there in the darkness...." She broke off, suddenly, swaying.

"Steady!" Grant gripped the girl's shoulder. "It's the bad air! I'll go tell Harris to crack open one of the emergency oxygen flasks. You'd better lie down."

Like a flash the girl's red head snapped up. "You're a romanticist, Mr. Grant," she said. "You seem to think I ought to be a languishing heroine. Well, I'm not. I'm in command of this expedition and if there're any risks to be taken, I'm taking them! Have Harris open an oxygen flask and then check over my space-suit! As soon as I get my breath, I'm going out and look for Allers and Kennerly!" She waved aside Grant's remonstrances. "Orders, Mr. Grant!"

Face stony, Grant left the control room, strode along the companionway to the fo'castle. The Comet's crew, perhaps half a dozen men all told, were stretched upon their bunks, faces drawn as they fought against the stale air. Grant motioned to Harris, the squat, ugly mate.

"Air's getting thick," he said. "Better crack an emergency tube."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Harris lifted a steel plate in the floor, swung down the iron ladder. Some moments later he emerged from the storehold, carrying an oxygen flask.

"Funny!" The mate rubbed his stubbly chin. "I coulda swore we had twenty emergency flasks below. But there's only five more down there."

"Five!" Grant's eyes narrowed. "There were twenty when we left earth! I counted 'em!"

"That's not all," Harris muttered. "There's other stores missing! Wire, tools, batteries, spare plates for repairing the hull!" His eyes flicked toward the darkness beyond the portholes. "There were plenty of times we were all down at the mine working when whatever it was that got Allers and Kennerly might have entered the ship, taken those things. I've seen shadows out there sometimes. Shadows that weren't just right, sliding among the rocks. And ... and it's bad luck to have a woman aboard ship."

A silence fell over the cabin. Grant frowned. Five flasks of oxygen ... and the air-regenerator useless without power! Nothing could save them unless word got through to Bowman's Crater, on the edge of the Cerean Darkside. Two men had tried to get through, and those two men had vanished. To permit Joan Conway to attempt the trip was unthinkable. Grant reached for one of the bulky space-suits that hung on the wall.

"All right, men," he grated. "We're going to get to the bottom of this! Here's the plan! I'll take the trail to Bowman's Crater; the same trail Allers and Kennerly took! If there's anything lying in wait out there, it ought to attack me, and I'll be armed! At the same time I want you, Harris, and you, Miller, to go out also, to climb the other side of the crater and circle about, picking up the trail to Bowman's a mile or so from here. I'll draw It's attention, while you try to get through and take word to the outpost. Got it?"

The three men nodded, climbed into the heavily insulated space-suits. Electric heating wires ran through the lining, from portable batteries good for several hours, enabling the men within them to maintain comfortable warmth even though the soles of their thick lead gravity shoes, in contact with the icy ground, were within a few degrees of absolute zero. Gloves of heavy lead, a part of every radium miner's equipment as protection against the highly concentrated ore he was forced to handle, covered the asbestoid "hands" of the space-suits. Grant paused before snapping his transparent plastic helmet into place, turned to the men who were to remain aboard the Comet.

"Miss Conway's feeling a little ragged because of the air," he said, unsmilingly. "When she's better, tell her where we've gone."

The men grinned understandingly. They knew that the girl, in spite of her frail form, felt that command of the expedition required her to share in all its dangers. And Grant, like most men who had spent their lives on far-flung frontiers, seeking adventure in the woman-less outposts of terrestial civilization, had curiously archaic ideas of chivalry, to say nothing of deep-rooted convictions that a woman's place was on earth. Disregarding the grins of the men, he closed his helmet, opened the valve of his oxygen tank.

"Ready?" he barked into the mouthpiece of his radio communications set.

Two space-suited figures nodded grimly behind their helmets, followed Grant through the airlock. In the clean, airless void the stars shone like white beacons, shedding a thin eerie light over the barren plain. A dark inferno worthy of a Dore's brush, it seemed, malevolent, intangibly evil. Tortured pinnacles of rock, jagged spires stabbing at the sable sky; deep craters, dug by countless meteors, pock-marking the bleak terrain; yawning crevasses, towering cliffs, jagged, sharp-angled blocks of stone, for Darkside had neither sun, air, nor rain to round them, soften their weird outlines.

Grant loosened his heat-gun in its holster, glanced about. Up the side of the big crater, in which the mine-shaft and the space-ship lay, was a poorly defined trail, winding in and out among the towering rocks. This was the way to Bowman's, the little mining town situated in the twilight zone between Ceres' bitter Darkside and its blazing Sunside. Allers and Kennerly had taken that rude trail. Grant waved Harris and Miller to the right.

"You'll make a long half-circle," he announced. "It'll be tough going, but with my following the trail, I should draw any attack and enable you to pick up the trail further along, and reach Bowman's. Okay, now. Let's go!"

Harris and Miller disappeared among the up-thrust monoliths, Grant swung along the trail. In spite of his heavy space-suit and his thick lead-soled gravity shoes, he was able to move at a brisk pace, hand on his gun, eyes probing the gloom to right and left. Onward he went, steadily, skirting craters, leaping narrow crevasses, squeezing through rocky defiles whose overhanging ledges often met to form a dark passageway. For all the heating wires within his suit, he could feel the cold; the utter silence was maddening.

Grant stared at the murky shadows with narrowed eyes. What was it that had spirited away Allers and Kennerly, two brave men, well armed? Some unknown force of nature, or something more tangible? Superstitious spacemen whispered of monstrous reptilian beasts, of space-pirates' hide-outs, of strange, spectral Shapes. Drink-inspired hallucinations, Grant had said scornfully. Now he was not so sure. So little was known of Darkside.

Suddenly Grant froze in his tracks. In the middle of the path, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, was a strange, grotesque figure. Swathed in a bulky space-suit, it crouched ape-like on the ground, feet flat against the rock, hands touching the trail as though to balance itself. Motionless as some robot it crouched there, in a patch of white frost, seemingly poised to spring.

Grant's heat-gun rose to cover the strange figure. His voice shook as he spoke into his communications set.

"Who's there? What'd you want?"

The crouching figure made no reply. Very deliberately Grant pressed the trigger of the heat-gun, aiming it at the motionless form's feet. Dirt, chips of stone, flew up, but the crouching form did not move. Muscles tense, Grant moved forward. Pale starlight winked on the unknown's helmet. All at once Grant gasped. Behind the transparent glass of the headpiece, the man's features were visible. Distorted, despairing features set in an expression of ghastly, appalling horror! Kennerly ... dead!

Grant bent over the grim figure, tried to lift it. One of Kennerly's fingers, frozen solid, snapped within the space-suit like brittle glass. Grant glanced warily about. If he could get the body back to the ship, find out how Kennerly had died, there might be a chance of overcoming the menace that lurked on this shadowy insane world. All at once his eyes caught queer dark streaks on a rock not far from the inert figure ... letters, words, that looked as if they had been made by a heat-gun's blast. Slowly he deciphered the scrawled sentences. "Allers dead. No hope. Unknown forces. Doomed."

Grant's jaw tightened. Kennerly's last message! And somehow he had known that Allers was dead, that there was no hope. Face set in harsh lines, Grant swung the body over his shoulder, set out along the trail to the Comet.

The silence in the space-ship's control-room was thick, breathless. A frail figure against the rivet-studded bulkhead, Joan Conway stared with horror-filled eyes at the grim figure on the floor. They had removed Kennerly's space-suit, and with the warmth of the cabin the stump of the frozen finger which Grant had inadvertently broken off was beginning to seep blood. The girl forced her voice to remain steady.

"Under the circumstances, Mr. Grant," she said tightly, "I have decided to overlook your disobedience of orders until we return to earth ... if we do. Are there any clues on Kennerly?"

Grant, kneeling beside the dead man, examining him carefully, shook his head.

"Nothing," he muttered. "No holes in his suit, no signs of anything that might have killed him other than the cold. The battery of his heating unit's run down. And he had a full charge when he left. We checked it. Why he should follow the trail a mile or so from the ship and then sit there for hours, until the failing battery brought death by freezing.... It's suicide!"

"Maybe he got lost, wandered around until he died," one of the space-hands suggested.

"No good." Again Grant shook a somber head. "The trail's perfectly clear. I found him in a deep patch of hoar frost, like snow. Condensed moisture from the escape valve of his helmet. An extraordinarily large patch of 'snow.' Get what that means? Frost patches in this airless void can only mean the moisture from a space-suit's exhaust. And a pile of 'snow' like that about him, could only be the result of remaining hours in one spot. Kennerly left this ship for Bowman's Crater, got about two miles away and then crouched down to wait for death. Crouched there for hours, until his heating unit ran out of juice and he froze. Why?" Grant motioned to the inert form' with its terrified countenance. "He had sustained no injury, could have followed a perfectly clear path back to the ship, and instead he crouched there until he died!"

"Maybe something held him," Joan suggested. "Magnetism."

Grant picked up the asbestoid space-suit. "Fiber, glassex helmet, rust-proof copper fittings, lead gravity shoes. No iron or steel on it. Another thing. How did he know Allers was dead? What did he mean by 'unknown forces' and 'no hope?' There's something devilish, unreal, out there. Something that's determined to keep us from getting word through, determined to keep us here until we die from lack of oxygen! Just like Kennerly died from lack of heat. It's afraid to attack us, but tries to trap us, until we die."

Again silence fell over the cabin. The remaining space-hands glanced from Kennerly's body to the windows, the clinging darkness outside. Joan's gaze sought the leaden chests; she laughed unhumorously.

"Pitchblend! A million in radium! And what good is it? All our work here to get it and now no chance of ever reaching earth."

"We'll get word through somehow." Grant squared his shoulders. "Maybe Harris and Miller...."

As Grant spoke, a furious tocsin of blows sounded upon the main airlock. The spacemen whirled, groping for guns. Face set, Grant stepped toward the inner door of the lock.

"Keep me covered," he snapped, drawing the massive pneumatic bolts.

As the heavy steel door swung open, Joan gave a sudden gasp. Standing in the air-chamber was a stocky, space-suited figure, face paper-white. Harris, looking as though he were pursued by a legion of devils!

"Good Lord!" Grant exclaimed. "What's wrong? Where's Miller?"

Harris pushed back his helmet, slumped onto a bench; drops of sweat beaded his face, his eyes were tortured.

"It ... it's screwy!" he muttered. "It ain't human! Miller standing there, jumping up and down."

Grant took a bottle of fiery Martian long from the table, poured out a tumblerful.

"Drink this," he said. "And tell us what happened."

Harris downed the drink with a shudder.

"We made the detour like you said," he whispered. "Fighting our way over rocks, around craters. Tough going. About three miles from here our half-circle brought us back to the trail. All okay. Miller was ahead of me by maybe a hundred yards. We kept our guns in our hands, and a sharp lookout. Then ... then ... all of a sudden I heard Miller yelling in my earphones. He was hopping up and down ... straight up and down, half-crazy with fright.... Just as I was running toward him, he told me to stay back, that he was trapped. Trapped!" Harris choked. "He could hop up and down all right, but he couldn't move in the horizontal! Nothing around him, nothing to be seen anywhere, but he could only move one way! Up and down! It ain't human, I tell you! Ain't natural! How...."

"Miller could move only in the vertical?" Joan echoed. "But ... but ... no comprehensible force on earth...."

"This ain't earth, miss," Harris muttered. "And Miller's out there, three miles up the trail, trapped...."

Grant reached for his space-suit. "Come on!" he exclaimed. "We're going out! Harris, you'll stay here with Miss Conway...."

"No!" The girl shook her head, eyes like gray steel. "I'm in command of this expedition ... and I'm going along! Danger or no danger! I got you men into this mess, and I'm going to help you get out!"

"Sorry." Grant shook his head. "I admire your courage, but we're up against something unknown, something dangerous. You'd be more of a hindrance than a help. Call me old-fashioned, romantic, anything you please, but you're staying here. Harris, I'll be responsible for any charges of insubordination. See that she stays here. We're going to rescue Miller."

Lips pale, head high, the girl watched them clamber into their space-suits. Her pride, Grant realized, was cut deeply at having the command of the expedition thus taken from her. But this was no time for pride with Miller trapped by some mysterious force. Motioning to the others to follow, Grant sprang into the airlock.

Leaving the ship, the six men raced at top speed along the trail. Around crevasses and craters, past insanely sculptured rocks, through narrow passes. When they reached the spot where Kennerly's body had been found, Grant suddenly paused, staring. The patch of hoar-frost had been scraped away, a small hole perhaps a foot deep was exposed. Something previously buried in the ground had been removed! Grant shook his head. A bizarre, fantastic idea was beginning to take form in his mind. In a temperature close to absolute zero....

"Come on!" he exclaimed. "We've got to reach Miller! Hurry!"

The spacemen redoubled their efforts, bounding along the narrow path. Onward, desperately, the sound of their heavy breathing filling their helmets. At length they reached a low rise of ground commanding a view of the trail ahead. Very faintly a despairing cry echoed in their earphones.

A hundred or so yards before them, a vague form in the gloom, stood Miller. His head twisted crazily from side to side, his body writhed frantically, as if seeking to break some invisible grip. Several times he leaped upward like some grotesque jumping-jack, only to settle down in the exact same spot as before. It was as though the trapped man were confined in an invisible cylinder which permitted him to move only in the vertical plane!

"Look!" Grant muttered. "So it's true! That's what happened to Kennerly until his heating unit gave out! And Allers, too, I suppose!" He raced down the slope toward Miller, heat-gun in hand.

As they neared the trapped man, he gave a cry of warning. "Stay back! You'll get caught!" His voice rose despairingly. "No ... no way to get free! Hands and feet stuck! Better to shoot me, now, than let me stay here till my heat-unit gives out!"

Helplessly they stared at the doomed man. To approach him meant they, too, might be trapped. But to stand there, useless, while his heating unit gave out, bringing death, as it had brought death to Kennerly! And what power known to man would permit a living being to move only in the vertical plane but not the horizontal? All at once Grant recalled the hole in the trail at the spot where he had found Kennerly. Dropping to his knees, he began very cautiously to circle Miller. All at once he found it, a copper wire concealed beneath dirt, pebbles. One jerk of his gloved fingers snapped the wire. A sudden cry broke from the trapped man. Weakly, uncertainly, he stepped forward.

"Free!" Miller cried. "I ... I can move my feet and hands any way I want, now! Thank God! The thought of staying there until I froze to death...!" He shuddered.

Grant was following the wire to where Miller had stood, was digging away a covering of earth. All at once he gave an exclamation of wonder. In the wan starlight a tangle of wires, wrapped about iron cores, lay exposed!

"Looks like a magnet!" A burly space-hand grunted, shaking a dazed head. "But there's no iron on our suits! And no magnet permits you to move only one way!"

"I don't know." Grant frowned. "But whatever this force is, it's got a clever, devilish mind behind it! This is the same kind of thing that trapped Kennerly, only we didn't reach him in time. When I first spotted Kennerly crouching in the trail, I didn't know who he was. Fired a warning shot at his feet. That must have fused the wires of the apparatus! And so I was able to approach Kennerly's body without being trapped myself! While I was taking his body back to the ship, the killer must have dug up the wrecked mechanism, planted this magnet further down the trail! If Harris hadn't been lagging a considerable distance behind Miller, they both would have been caught!"

"Sounds logical," one of the men nodded. "But why all these traps? And who's setting them?"

Grant picked up the broken end of the wire.

"That," he said grimly, "is what we're going to find out. At the other end of this wire is the source of power for these traps. And that's where we'll find the person or being who's setting them! Let's go!"

The spacemen nodded, faces tense behind their helmets. Leaving the trail, they struck out across the rough terrain, following the thin thread of wire. The scenery grew wilder and wilder as they progressed, until they seemed spectres in some gehenna of weird, jagged rocks, grasping shadows. Suddenly Grant, in the lead, drew a sharp breath.

Ahead, the copper wire passed between two basalt walls, less than four feet wide. And at the other end of this passage was a portable radite lamp, its bluish beams revealing a small motor, a row of tall oxygen flasks, wires, metal plates, the missing equipment from the Comet's storehold. And bent over the motors was a powerful space-suited figure!