Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Salvage in Space By Jack Williamson * * * * * [Sidenote: To Thad Allen, meteor miner, comes the dangerous bonanza ofa derelict rocket-flier manned by death invisible. ] His "planet" was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest, Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge, bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardlyin the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoriciron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodilyaway through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into the darkmystery of the void. His welding arc dangled at his belt, the electrode still glowing red. He had just finished securing to this slowly-accumulated mass of ironhis most recent find, a meteorite the size of his head. Five perilous weeks he had labored, to collect this rugged lump ofmetal--a jagged mass, some ten feet in diameter, composed of hundredsof fragments, that he had captured and welded together. His luck hadnot been good. His findings had been heart-breakingly small; thespectro-flash analysis had revealed that the content of the preciousmetals was disappointingly minute. [1] [Footnote 1: The meteor or asteroid belt, between the orbits of Marsand Jupiter, is "mined" by such adventurers as Thad Allen for theplatinum, iridium and osmium that all meteoric irons contain in smallquantities. The meteor swarms are supposed by some astronomers to befragments of a disrupted planet, which, according to Bode's Law, should occupy this space. ] On the other side of this tiny sphere of hard-won treasure, his Millenatomic rocket was sputtering, spurts of hot blue flame jetting fromits exhaust. A simple mechanism, bolted to the first sizable fragmenthe had captured, it drove the iron ball through space like a ship. Through the magnetic soles of his insulated boots, Thad could feel thevibration of the iron mass, beneath the rocket's regular thrust. Themagazine of uranite fuel capsules was nearly empty, now, he reflected. He would soon have to turn back toward Mars. Turn back. But how could he, with so slender a reward for his efforts?Meteor mining is expensive. There was his bill at Millen and Helion, Mars, for uranite and supplies. And the unpaid last instalment on hisOsprey suit. How could he outfit himself again, if he returned with nomore metal than this? There were men who averaged a thousand tons ofiron a month. Why couldn't fortune smile on him? He knew men who had made fabulous strikes, who had captured wholeplanetoids of rich metal, and he knew weary, white-haired men who hadbraved the perils of vacuum and absolute cold and bullet-swift meteorsfor hard years, who still hoped. But sometime fortune had to smile, and then.... The picture came to him. A tower of white metal, among the low redhills near Helion. A slim, graceful tower of argent, rising in afragrant garden of flowering Martian shrubs, purple and saffron. And agirl waiting, at the silver door--a trim, slender girl in white, withblue eyes and hair richly brown. Thad had seen the white tower many times, on his holiday trampsthrough the hills about Helion. He had even dared to ask if it couldbe bought, to find that its price was an amount that he might notamass in many years at his perilous profession. But the girl in whitewas yet only a glorious dream.... [Illustration: Gigantic claws seemed to reach out of empty air. ] * * * * * The strangeness of interplanetary space, and the somber mystery of it, pressed upon him like an illimitable and deserted ocean. The sun was atiny white disk on his right, hanging between rosy coronal wings; hisnative Earth, a bright greenish point suspended in the dark gulf belowit; Mars, nearer, smaller, a little ocher speck above the shrunkensun. Above him, below him, in all directions was vastness, blackness, emptiness. Ebon infinity, sprinkled with far, cold stars. Thad was alone. Utterly alone. No man was visible, in all the supernalvastness of space. And no work of man--save the few tools of hisdaring trade, and the glittering little rocket bolted to the blackiron behind him. It was terrible to think that the nearest human beingmust be tens of millions of miles away. On his first trips, the loneliness had been terrible, unendurable. Nowhe was becoming accustomed to it. At least, he no longer feared thathe was going mad. But sometimes.... Thad shook himself and spoke aloud, his voice ringing hollow in hishuge metal helmet: "Brace up, old top. In good company, when you're by yourself, as Dadused to say. Be back in Helion in a week or so, anyhow. Look up Danand 'Chuck' and the rest of the crowd again, at Comet's place. Whatprice a friendly boxing match with Mason, or an evening at theteleview theater? "Fresh air instead of this stale synthetic stuff! Real food, in placeof these tasteless concentrates! A hot bath, instead of greasingyourself! "Too dull out here. Life--" He broke off, set his jaw. No use thinking about such things. Only made it worse. Besides, howdid he know that a whirring meteor wasn't going to flash him outbefore he got back? * * * * * He drew his right arm out of the bulging sleeve of the suit, into itsample interior, found a cigarette in an inside pocket, and lighted it. The smoke swirled about in the helmet, drawn swiftly into the airfilters. "Darn clever, these suits, " he murmured. "Food, smokes, watergenerator, all where you can reach them. And darned expensive, too. I'd better be looking for pay metal!" He clambered to a better position; stood peering out into space, searching for the tiny gleam of sunlight on a meteoric fragment thatmight be worth capturing for its content of precious metals. For anhour he scanned the black, star-strewn gulf, as the sputtering rocketcontinued to drive him forward. "There she glows!" he cried suddenly, and grinned. Before him was a tiny, glowing fleck, that moved among the unchangingstars. He stared at it intensely, breathing faster in the helmet. Always he thrilled to see such a moving gleam. What treasure itpromised! At first sight, it was impossible to determine size ordistance or rate of motion. It might be ten thousand tons of richmetal. A fortune! It would more probably prove to be a tiny, stonymass, not worth capturing. It might even be large and valuable, butmoving so rapidly that he could not overtake it with the power of thediminutive Millen rocket. He studied the tiny speck intently, with practised eye, as the minutespassed--an untrained eye would never have seen it at all, among theflaming hosts of stars. Skilfully he judged, from its apparent rate ofmotion and its slow increase in brilliance, its size and distancefrom him. "Must be--must be fair size, " he spoke aloud, at length. "A hundredtons, I'll bet my helmet! But scooting along pretty fast. Stretch thelittle old rocket to run it down. " He clambered back to the rocket, changed the angle of the flamingexhaust, to drive him directly across the path of the object ahead, filled the magazine again with the little pellets of uranite, whichwere fed automatically into the combustion chamber, and increased thefiring rate. The trailing blue flame reached farther backward from the incandescentorifice of the exhaust. The vibration of the metal sphere increased. Thad left the sputtering rocket and went back where he could see theobject before him. * * * * * It was nearer now, rushing obliquely across his path. Would he be intime to capture it as it passed, or would it hurtle by ahead of him, and vanish in the limitless darkness of space before his feeble rocketcould check the momentum of his ball of metal? He peered at it, as it drew closer. Its surface seemed oddly bright, silvery. Not the dull black ofmeteoric iron. And it was larger, more distant, than he had thought atfirst. In form, too, it seemed curiously regular, ellipsoid. It was nojagged mass of metal. His hopes sank, rose again immediately. Even if it were not the massof rich metal for which he had prayed, it might be something asvaluable--and more interesting. He returned to the rocket, adjusted the angle of the nozzle again, andadvanced the firing time slightly, even at the risk of a ruinousexplosion. When he returned to where he could see the hurtling object before him, he saw that it was a ship. A tapering silver-green rocket-flier. Once more his dreams were dashed. The officers of interplanetaryliners lose no love upon the meteor miners, claiming that theircollected masses of metal, almost helpless, always underpowered, aremenaces to navigation. Thad could expect nothing from the ship save aheliographed warning to keep clear. But how came a rocket-flier here, in the perilous swarms of the meteorbelt? Many a vessel had been destroyed by collision with an asteroid, in the days before charted lanes were cleared of drifting metal. The lanes more frequently used, between Earth, Mars, Venus andMercury, were of course far inside the orbits of the asteroids. Andthe few ships running to Jupiter's moons avoided them by crossingmillions of miles above their plane. Could it be that legendary green ship, said once to have mysteriouslyappeared, sliced up and drawn within her hull several of the primitiveships of that day, and then disappeared forever after in the remotewastes of space? Absurd, of course: he dismissed the idle fancy andexamined the ship still more closely. Then he saw that it was turning, end over end, very slowly. That meantthat its gyros were stopped; that it was helpless, drifting, disabled, powerless to avoid hurtling meteoric stones. Had it blundered unawaresinto the belt of swarms--been struck before the danger was realized?Was it a derelict, with all dead upon it? * * * * * Either the ship's machinery was completely wrecked, Thad knew, orthere was no one on watch. For the controls of a modern rocket-flierare so simple and so nearly automatic that a single man at the bridgecan keep a vessel upon her course. It might be, he thought, that a meteorite had ripped open the hull, allowing the air to escape so quickly that the entire crew had beenasphyxiated before any repairs could be made. But that seemedunlikely, since the ship must have been divided into severalcompartments by air-tight bulkheads. Could the vessel have been deserted for some reason? The crew mighthave mutinied, and left her in the life-tubes. She might have beenrobbed by pirates, and set adrift. But with the space lanes policed asthey were, piracy and successful mutiny were rare. Thad saw that the flier's navigation lights were out. He found the heliograph signal mirror at his side, sighted it upon theship, and worked the mirror rapidly. He waited, repeated the call. There was no response. The vessel was plainly a derelict. Could he board her, and take her toMars? By law, it was his duty to attempt to aid any helpless ship, orat least to try to save any endangered lives upon her. And the salvageaward, if the ship should be deserted and he could bring her safe toport, would be half her value. No mean prize, that. Half the value of ship and cargo! More than hewas apt to earn in years of mining the meteor-belt. With new anxiety, he measured the relative motion of the gleamingship. It was going to pass ahead of him. And very soon. No more timefor speculation. It was still uncertain whether it would come nearenough so that he could get a line to it. Rapidly he unslung from his belt the apparatus he used to capturemeteors. A powerful electromagnet, with a thin, strong wire fastenedto it, to be hurled from a helix-gun. He set the drum on which thewire was wound upon the metal at his feet, fastened it with itsmagnetic anchor, wondering if it would stand the terrific strain whenthe wire tightened. Raising the helix to his shoulder, he trained it upon a point wellahead of the rushing flier, and stood waiting for the exact moment topress the lever. The slender spindle of the ship was only a mile awaynow, bright in the sunlight. He could see no break in her polishedhull, save for the dark rows of circular ports. She was not, by anymeans, completely wrecked. He read the black letters of her name. _Red Dragon. _ The name of her home port, below, was in smaller letters. But in amoment he made them out. San Francisco. The ship then came from theEarth! From the very city where Thad was born! * * * * * The gleaming hull was near now. Only a few hundred yards away. Passing. Aiming well ahead of her, to allow for her motion, Thadpressed the key that hurled the magnet from the helix. It flung awayfrom him, the wire screaming from the reel behind it. Thad's mass of metal swung on past the ship, as he returned to therocket and stopped its clattering explosions. He watched the tinyblack speck of the magnet. It vanished from sight in the darkness ofspace, appeared again against the white, burnished hull of the rocketship. For a painful instant he thought he had missed. Then he saw that themagnet was fast to the side of the flier, near the stern. The linetightened. Soon the strain would come upon it, as it checked themomentum of the mass of iron. He set the friction brake. Thad flung himself flat, grasped the wire above the reel. Even if themass of iron tore itself free, he could hold to the wire, and himselfreach the ship. He flung past the deserted vessel, behind it, his lump of iron swunglike a pebble in a sling. A cloud of smoke burst from the burnedlining of the friction brake, in the reel. Then the wire was all out;there was a sudden jerk. And the hard-gathered sphere of metal was gone--snapped off intospace. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, torturedarms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; whatif the wire broke, and left him floating helpless in space? * * * * * It held, though, to his relief. He was trailing behind the ship. Eagerly he seized the handle of the reel; began to wind up the mile ofthin wire. Half an hour later, Thad's suited figure bumped gentlyagainst the shining hull of the rocket. He got to his feet, and gazedbackward into the starry gulf, where his sphere of iron had long sincevanished. "Somebody is going to find himself a nice chunk of metal, all weldedtogether and equipped for rocket navigation, " he murmured. "As forme--well, I've simply _got_ to run this tub to Mars!" He walked over the smooth, refulgent hull, held to it by magneticsoles. Nowhere was it broken, though he found scars where smallmeteoric particles had scratched the brilliant polish. So no meteorhad wrecked the ship. What, then, was the matter? Soon he would know. The _Red Dragon_ was not large. A hundred and thirty feet long, Thadestimated, with a beam of twenty-five feet. But her trim lines bespokedesign recent and good; the double ring of black projecting rockets atthe stern told of unusual speed. A pretty piece of salvage, he reflected, if he could land her onMars. Half the value of such a ship, unharmed and safe in port, wouldbe a larger sum than he dared put in figures. And he must take her in, now that he had lost his own rocket! He found the life-tubes, six of them, slender, silvery cylinders, lying secure in their niches, three along each side of the flier. Nonewas missing. So the crew had not willingly deserted the ship. He approached the main air-lock, at the center of the hull, behind theprojecting dome of the bridge. It was closed. A glance at the dialstold him there was full air pressure within it. It had, then, lastbeen used to enter the rocket, not to leave it. * * * * * Thad opened the exhaust valve, let the air hiss from the chamber ofthe lock. The huge door swung open in response to his hand upon thewheel, and he entered the cylindrical chamber. In a moment the doorwas closed behind him, air was hissing into the lock again. He started to open the face-plate of his helmet, longing for a breathof air that did not smell of sweat and stale tobacco smoke, as that inhis suit always did, despite the best chemical purifiers. Then hehesitated. Perhaps some deadly gas, from the combustion chambers.... Thad opened the inner valve, and came upon the upper deck of thevessel. A floor ran the full length of the ship, broken with hatchesand companionways that gave to the rocket rooms, cargo holds, andquarters for crew and passengers below. There was an enclosed ladderthat led to bridge and navigating room in the dome above. The hullformed an arched roof over it. The deck was deserted, lit only by three dim blue globes, hanging fromthe curved roof. All seemed in order--the fire-fighting equipmenthanging on the walls, and the huge metal patches and welding equipmentfor repairing breaks in the hull. Everything was clean, bright withpolish or new paint. And all was very still. The silence held a vague, brooding threat thatfrightened Thad, made him wish for a moment that he was back upon hisrugged ball of metal. But he banished his fear, and strode down thedeck. Midway of it he found a dark stain upon the clean metal. The black oflong-dried blood. A few tattered scraps of cloth beside it. No morethan bloody rags. And a heavy meat cleaver, half hidden beneath a bitof darkened fabric. Mute record of tragedy! Thad strove to read it. Had a man fought hereand been killed? It must have been a struggle of peculiar violence, tojudge by the dark spattered stains, and the indescribable condition ofthe remnants of clothing. But what had he fought? Another man, or something? And what had become of victor and vanquished? He walked on down the deck. The torturing silence was broken by the abrupt patter of quick littlefootsteps behind him. He turned quickly, nervously, with a hand goinginstinctively to his welding arc, which, he knew, would make a fairlyeffective weapon. * * * * * It was merely a dog. A little dog, yellow, nondescript, patheticallydelighted. With a sharp, eager bark, it leaped up at Thad, pawing athis armor and licking it, standing on its hind legs and reachingtoward the visor of his helmet. It was very thin, as if from long starvation. Both ears were raggedand bloody, and there was a long, unhealed scratch across theshoulder, somewhat inflamed, but not a serious wound. The bright, eager eyes were alight with joy. But Thad thought he sawfear in them. And even through the stiff fabric of the Osprey suit, hefelt that the dog was trembling. Suddenly, with a low whine, it shrank close to his side. And anothersound reached Thad's ears. A cry, weird and harrowing beyond telling. A scream so thin and sohigh that it roughened his skin, so keenly shrill that it tortured hisnerves; a sound of that peculiar frequency that is more agonizing thanany bodily pain. When silence came again, Thad was standing with his back against thewall, the welding arc in his hand. His face was cold with sweat, and aqueer chill prickled up and down his spine. The yellow dog crouchedwhimpering against his legs. Ominous, threatening stillness filled the ship again, disturbed onlyby the whimpers and frightened growls of the dog. Trying to calm hisoverwrought nerves, Thad listened--strained his ears. He could hearnothing. And he had no idea from which direction the terrifying soundhad come. A strange cry. Thad knew it had been born in no human throat. Nor inthe throat of any animal he knew. It had carried an alien note thatovercame him with instinctive fear and horror. What had voiced it? Wasthe ship haunted by some dread entity? * * * * * For many minutes Thad stood upon the deck, waiting, tensely graspingthe welding tool. But the nerve-shattering scream did not come again. Nor any other sound. The yellow dog seemed half to forget its fear. Itleaped up at his face again, with another short little bark. The air must be good, he thought, if the dog could live in it. He unscrewed the face-plate of his helmet, and lifted it. The airthat struck his face was cool and clean. He breathed deeply, gratefully. And at first he did not notice the strange odor upon it: acurious, unpleasant scent, earthly, almost fetid, unfamiliar. The dog kept leaping up, whining. "Hungry, boy?" Thad whispered. He fumbled in the bulky inside pockets of his suit, found a slab ofconcentrated food, and tossed it out through the opened panel. The dogsprang upon it, wolfed it eagerly, and came back to his side. Thad set at once about exploring the ship. First he ascended the ladder to the bridge. A metal dome covered it, studded with transparent ports. Charts and instruments were in order. And the room was vacant, heavy with the fatal silence of the ship. * * * * * Thad had no expert's knowledge of the flier's mechanism. But he hadstudied interplanetary navigation, to qualify for his license to carrymasses of metal under rocket power through the space lanes and intoplanetary atmospheres. He was sure he could manage the ship if itsmechanism were in good order, though he was uncertain of his abilityto make any considerable repairs. To his relief, a scrutiny of the dials revealed nothing wrong. He started the gyro motors, got the great wheels to spinning, and thusstopped the slow, end-over-end turning of the flier. Then he went tothe rocket controls, warmed three of the tubes, and set them tofiring. The vessel answered readily to her helm. In a few minutes hehad the red fleck of Mars over the bow. "Yes, I can run her, all right, " he announced to the dog, which hadfollowed him up the steps, keeping close to his feet. "Don't worry, old boy. We'll be eating a juicy beefsteak together, in a week. AtComet's place in Helion, down by the canal. Not much style--but theeats! "And now we're going to do a little detective work, and find out whatmade that disagreeable noise. And what happened to all yourfellow-astronauts. Better find out, before it happens to us!" He shut off the rockets, and climbed down from the bridge again. When Thad started down the companionway to the officers' quarters, inthe central one of the five main compartments of the ship, the dogkept close to his legs, growling, trembling, hackles lifted. Sensingthe animal's terror, pitying it for the naked fear in its eyes, Thadwondered what dramas of horror it might have seen. The cabins of the navigator, calculator, chief technician, and firstofficer were empty, and forbidding with the ominous silence of theship. They were neatly in order, and the berths had been made sincethey were used. But there was a large bloodstain, black and circular, on the floor of the calculator's room. The captain's cabin held evidence of a violent struggle. The door hadbeen broken in. Its fragments, with pieces of broken furniture, books, covers from the berth, and three service pistols, were scattered aboutin indescribable confusion, all stained with blood. Among thefrightful debris, Thad found several scraps of clothing, of dissimilarfabrics. The guns were empty. * * * * * Attempting to reconstruct the action of the tragedy from those grimclues, he imagined that the five officers, aware of some peril, hadgathered here, fought, and died. The dog refused to enter the room. It stood at the door, lookinganxiously after him, trembling and whimpering pitifully. Several timesit sniffed the air and drew back, snarling. Thad thought that theunpleasant earthy odor he had noticed upon opening the face-plate ofhis helmet was stronger here. After a few minutes of searching through the wildly disordered room, he found the ship's log--or its remains. Many pages had been torn fromthe book, and the remainder, soaked with blood, formed a stiff blackmass. Only one legible entry did he find, that on a page torn from the book, which somehow had escaped destruction. Dated five months before, itgave the position of the vessel and her bearings--she was then justoutside Jupiter's orbit, Earthward bound--and concluded with a remarkof sinister implications: "Another man gone this morning. Simms, assistant technician. A fine workman. O'Deen swears he heard something moving on the deck. Cook thinks some of the doctor's stuffed monstrosities have come to life. Ridiculous, of course. But what is one to think?" Pondering the significance of those few lines, Thad climbed back tothe deck. Was the ship haunted by some weird death, that had seizedthe crew man by man, mysteriously? That was the obvious implication. And if the flier had been still outside Jupiter's orbit when thosewords were written, it must have been weeks before the end. A lurking, invisible death! The scream he had heard.... * * * * * He descended into the forecastle, and came upon another such silentrecord of frightful carnage as he had found in the captain's cabin. Dried blood, scraps of cloth, knives and other weapons. A fearfulquestion was beginning to obsess him. What had become of the bodies ofthose who must have died in these conflicts? He dared not think theanswer. Gripping the welding arc, Thad approached the after hatch, giving tothe cargo hold. Trepidation almost overpowered him, but he wasdetermined to find the sinister menace of the ship, before it foundhim. The dog whimpered, hung back, and finally deserted him, contributing nothing to his peace of mind. The hold proved to be dark. An indefinite black space, oppressive withthe terrible silence of the flier. The air within it bore still morestrongly the unpleasant fetor. Thad hesitated on the steps. The hold was not inviting. But at thethought that he must sleep, unguarded, while taking the flier to Mars, his resolution returned. The uncertainty, the constant fear, would beunendurable. He climbed on down, feeling for the light button. He found it, as hisfeet touched the floor. Blue light flooded the hold. It was filled with monstrous things, colossal creatures, such asnothing that ever lived upon the Earth; like nothing known in thejungles of Venus or the deserts of Mars, or anything that has beenfound upon Jupiter's moons. They were monsters remotely resembling insects or crustaceans, but aslarge as horses or elephants; creatures upreared upon strange limbs, armed with hideously fanged jaws, cruel talons, frightful, saw-toothedsnouts, and glittering scales, red and yellow and green. They leeredat him with phosphorescent eyes, yellow and purple. They cast grotesquely gigantic shadows in the blue light.... * * * * * A cold shock of horror started along Thad's spine, at sight of thoseincredible nightmare things. Automatically be flung up the weldingtool, flicking over the lever with his thumb, so that violet electricflame played about the electrode. Then he saw that the crowding, hideous things were motionless, thatthey stood upon wooden pedestals, that many of them were supportedupon metal bars. They were dead. Mounted. Collected specimens of somealien life. Grinning wanly, and conscious of a weakness in the knees, he muttered:"They sure will fill the museum, if everybody gets the kick out ofthem that I did. A little too realistic, I'd say. Guess these are the'stuffed monstrosities' mentioned in the page out of the log. Nowonder the cook was afraid of them. Some of then do look hellishlyalive!" He started across the hold, shrinking involuntarily from the armoredenormities that seemed crouched to spring at him, motionless eyesstaring. So, at the end of the long space, he found the treasure. Glittering in the blue light, it looked unreal. Incredible. A dazzlingdream. He stopped among the fearful things that seemed gathered as ifto guard it, and stared with wide eyes through the opened face-plateof his helmet. He saw neat stacks of gold ingots, new, freshly smelted; bars ofsilver-white iridium, of argent platinum, of blue-white osmium. Manyof them. Thousands of pounds, Thad knew. He trembled at thought oftheir value. Almost beyond calculation. Then he saw the coffer, lying beyond the piled, gleaming ingots--ahuge box, eight feet long; made of some crystal that glittered withsnowy whiteness, filled with sparkling, iridescent gleams, and inlaidwith strange designs, apparently in vermilion enamel. With a little cry, he ran toward the chest, moving awkwardly in theloose, deflated fabric of the Osprey suit. * * * * * Beside the coffer, on the floor of the hold, was literally a mountainof flame--blazing gems, heaped as if they had been carelessly dumpedfrom it; cut diamonds, incredibly gigantic; monster emeralds, sapphires, rubies; and strange stones, that Thad did not recognize. And Thad gasped with horror, when he looked at the designs of thevermilion inlay, in the white, gleaming crystal. Weird forms. Shapesof creatures somewhat like gigantic spiders, and more unlike them. Demoniac things, wickedly fanged, jaws slavering. Executed withmasterly skill, that made them seem living, menacing, secretlygloating! Thad stared at them for long minutes, fascinated almost hypnotically. Three times he approached the chest, to lift the lid and find what itheld. And three times the unutterable horror of those crimson imagesthrust him back, shuddering. "Nothing but pictures, " he muttered hoarsely. A fourth time he advanced, trembling, and seized the lid of thecoffer. Heavy, massive, it was fashioned also of glistening whitecrystal, and inlaid in crimson with weirdly hideous figures. Greathinges of white platinum held it on the farther side; it was fastenedwith a simple, heavy hasp of the precious metal. Hands quivering, Thad snapped back the hasp, lifted the lid. New treasure in the chest would not have surprised him. He wasprepared to meet dazzling wonders of gems or priceless metal. Norwould he have been astonished at some weird creature such as one ofthose whose likenesses were inlaid in the crystal. But what he saw made him drop the massive lid. A woman lay in the chest--motionless, in white. * * * * * In a moment he raised the lid again; examined the still form moreclosely. The woman had been young. The features were regular, good tolook upon. The eyes were closed; the white face appeared verypeaceful. Save for the extreme, cadaverous pallor, there was no mark of death. With a fancy that the body might be miraculously living, sleeping, Thad thrust an arm out through the opened panel of his suit, andtouched a slender, bare white arm. It was stiff, very cold. The still, pallid face was framed in fine brown hair. The fair, smallhands were crossed upon the breast, over the simple white garment. A queer ache came into his heart. Something made him think of a whitetower in the red hills near Helion, and a girl waiting in its fragrantgarden of saffron and purple--a girl like this. The body lay upon a bed of blazing jewels. It appeared, Thad thought, as if the pile of gems upon the floor hadbeen hastily scraped from the coffer, to make room for the quiet form. He wondered how long it had lain there. It looked as if it might havebeen living but minutes before. Some preservative.... His thought was broken by a sound that rang from the open hatchway onthe deck above--the furious barking and yelping of the dog. Abruptlythat was silent, and in its place came the uncanny and terrifyingscream that Thad had heard once before, on this flier of mystery. Ashriek so keen and shrill that it seemed to tear out his nerves bytheir roots. The voice of the haunter of the ship. * * * * * When Thad came back upon the deck, the dog was still barkingnervously. He saw the animal forward, almost at the bow. Hacklesraised, tail between its legs, it was slinking backward, barkingsharply as if to call for aid. Apparently it was retreating from something between Thad and itself. But Thad, searching the dimly-lit deck, could see no source of alarm. Nor could the structures upon it have shut any large object from hisview. "It's all right!" Thad called, intending to reassure the frightenedanimal, but finding his voice queerly dry. "Coming on the double, oldman. Don't worry. " The dog had reached the end of the deck. It stopped yelping, butsnarled and whined as if in terror. It began darting back and forth, moving exactly as if something were slowly closing in upon it, trapping it in the corner. But Thad could see nothing. Then it made a wild dash back toward Thad, darting along by the wall, as if trying to run past an unseen enemy. Thad thought he heard quick, rasping footsteps, then, that were notthose of the dog. And something seemed to catch the dog in mid-air, asit leaped. It was hurled howling to the deck. For a moment itstruggled furiously, as if an invisible claw had pinned it down. Thenit escaped, and fled whimpering to Thad's side. He saw a new wound across its hips. Three long, parallel scratches, from which fresh red blood was trickling. Regular scraping sounds came from the end of the deck, where no movingthing was to be seen--sounds such as might be made by the walking offeet with unsheathed claws. Something was coming back toward Thad. Something that was _invisible_! * * * * * Terror seized him, with the knowledge. He had nerved himself to facedesperate men, or a savage animal. But an invisible being, that couldcreep upon him and strike unseen! It was incredible ... Yet he hadseen the dog knocked down, and the bleeding wound it had received. His heart paused, then beat very quickly. For the moment he thoughtonly blindly, of escape. He knew only an overpowering desire to hide, to conceal himself from the invisible thing. Had it been possible, hemight have tried to leave the flier. Beside him was one of the companionways amidships, giving access to acompartment of the vessel that he had not explored. He turned, leapeddown the steps, with the terrified dog at his heels. Below, he found himself in a short hall, dimly lighted. Several metaldoors opened from it. He tried one at random. It gave. He sprangthrough, let the dog follow, closed and locked it. Trying to listen, he leaned weakly against the door. The rushing ofhis breath, swift and regular. The loud hammer of his thudding heart. The dog's low whines. Then--unmistakable scraping sounds, outside. The scratching of claws, Thad knew. Invisible claws! He stood there, bracing the door with the weight of his body, holdingthe welding arc ready in his hand. Several times the hinges creaked, and he felt a heavy pressure against the panels. But at last thescratching sounds ceased. He relaxed. The monster had withdrawn, atleast for a time. When he had time to think, the invisibility of the thing was not soincredible. The mounted creatures he had seen in the hold wereevidence that the flier had visited some unknown planet, where weirdlife reigned. It was not beyond reason that such a planet should beinhabited by beings invisible to human sight. Human vision, as he knew, utilizes only a tiny fraction of thespectrum. The creature must be largely transparent to visible light, as human flesh is radiolucent to hard X-rays. Quite possibly it couldbe seen by infra-red or ultra-violet light--evidently it was visibleenough to the dog's eyes, with their different range of sensitivity. * * * * * Pushing the subject from his mind, he turned to survey the room intowhich he had burst. It had apparently been occupied by a woman. Afrail blue silk dress and more intimate items of feminine wearingapparel were hanging above the berth. Two pairs of delicate blackslippers stood neatly below it. Across from him was a dressing table, with a large mirror above it. Combs, pins, jars of cosmetic cluttered it. And Thad saw upon it alittle leather-bound book, locked, stamped on the back "Diary. " He crossed the room and picked up the little book, which smelledfaintly of jasmine. Momentary shame overcame him at thus stealing thesecrets of an unknown girl. Necessity, however, left him no choice butto seize any chance of learning more of this ship of mystery and herinvisible haunter. He broke the flimsy fastening. Linda Cross was the name written on the fly-leaf, in a firm, clearfeminine hand. On the next page was the photograph, in color, of agirl, the brown-haired girl whose body Thad had discovered in thecrystal coffer in the hold. Her eyes, he saw, had been blue. Hethought she looked very lovely--like the waiting girl in his old dreamof the silver tower in the red hills by Helion. The diary, it appeared, had not been kept very devotedly. Most of thepages were blank. One of the first entries, dated a year and a half before, told of aparty that Linda had attended in San Francisco, and of her refusal todance with a certain man, referred to as "Benny, " because he had beenunpleasantly insistent about wanting to marry her. It ended: "Dad said to-night that we're going off in the _Dragon_ again. All the way to Uranus, if the new fuel works as he expects. What a lark, to explore a few new worlds of our own! Dad says one of Uranus' moons is as large as Mercury. And Benny won't be proposing again soon!" Turning on, Thad found other scattered entries, some of them dealingwith the preparation for the voyage, the start from San Francisco--anda huge bunch of flowers from "Benny, " the long months of the tripthrough space, out past the orbit of Mars, above the meteor belt, across Jupiter's orbit, beyond the track of Saturn, which was thefarthest point that rocket explorers had previously reached, and on toUranus, where they could not land because of the unstable surface. * * * * * The remainder of the entries Thad found less frequent, shorter, bearing the mark of excitement: landing upon Titania, the third andlargest satellite of Uranus; unearthly forests, sheltering strange andmonstrous life; the hunting of weird creatures, and mounting them formuseum specimens. Then the discovery of a ruined city, whose remains indicated that ithad been built by a lost race of intelligent, spiderlike things; thefinding of a temple whose walls were of precious metals, containing acrystal chest filled with wondrous gems; the smelting of the metalinto convenient ingots, and the transfer of the treasure to the hold. The first sinister note there entered the diary: "Some of the men say we shouldn't have disturbed the temple. Think it will bring us bad luck. Rubbish, of course. But one man did vanish while they were smelting the gold. Poor Mr. Tom James. I suppose he ventured away from the rest, and something caught him. " The few entries that followed were shorter, and showed increasingnervous tension. They recorded the departure from Titania, made almostas soon as the treasure was loaded. The last was made several weekslater. A dozen men had vanished from the crew, leaving only gouts ofblood to hint the manner of their going. The last entry ran: "Dad says I'm to stay in here to-day. Old dear, he's afraid the thing will get me--whatever it is. It's really serious. Two men taken from their berths last night. And not a trace. Some of them think it's a curse on the treasure. One of them swears he saw Dad's stuffed specimens moving about in the hold. "Some terrible thing must have slipped aboard the flier, out of the jungle. That's what Dad and the captain think. Queer they can't find it. They've searched all over. Well.... " Musing and regretful, Thad turned back for another look at the smilinggirl in the photograph. What a tragedy her death had been! Reading the diary had made him likeher. Her balance and humor. Her quiet affection for "Dad. " The calmcourage with which she seemed to have faced the creeping, lurkingdeath that darkened the ship with its unescapable shadow. How had her body come to be in the coffer, he wondered, when all theothers were--gone? It had shown no marks of violence. She must havedied of fear. No, her face had seemed too calm and peaceful for that. Had she chosen easy death by some poison, rather than that otherdreadful fate? Had her body been put in the chest to protect it, andthe poison arrested decomposition? Thad was still studying the picture, thoughtfully and sadly, when thedog, which had been silent, suddenly growled again, and retreated fromthe door, toward the corner of the room. The invisible monster had returned. Thad heard its claws scratchingacross the door again. And he heard another dreadful sound--not thelong, shrill scream that had so grated on his nerves before, but ashort, sharp coughing or barking, a series of shrill, indescribablenotes that could have been made by no beast he knew. * * * * * The decision to open the door cost a huge effort of Thad's will. For hours he had waited, thinking desperately. And the thing outsidethe door had waited as patiently, scratching upon it from time totime, uttering those dreadful, shrill coughing cries. Sooner or later, he would have to face the monster. Even if he couldescape from the room and avoid it for a time, he would have to meet itin the end. And it might creep upon him while he slept. To be sure, the issue of the combat was extremely doubtful. Themonster, apparently, had succeeded in killing every man upon theflier, even though some of them had been armed. It must be large andvery ferocious. But Thad was not without hope. He still wore his Osprey-suit. Theheavy fabric, made of metal wires impregnated with a tough, elasticcomposition, should afford considerable protection against the thing. The welding arc, intended to fuse refractive meteoric iron, would beno mean weapon, at close quarters. And the quarters would be close. If only he could find some way to make the thing visible! Paint, or something of the kind, would stick to its skin.... His eyes, searching the room, caught the jar of face powder on the dressingtable. Dash that over it! It ought to stick enough to make the outlinevisible. So, at last, holding the powder ready in one hand, he waited until atime when the pressure upon the door had just relaxed, and he knew themonster was waiting outside. Swiftly, he opened the door.... * * * * * Thad had partially overcome the instinctive horror that the unseenbeing had first aroused in him. But it returned in a sickening wavewhen he heard the short, shrill, coughing cries, hideously eager, thatgreeted the opening of the door. And the quick rasping of naked clawsupon the floor. _Sounds from nothingness!_ He flung the powder at the sound. A form of weird horror materialized before him, still half invisible, half outlined with the white film of adhering powder: gigantic andhideous claws, that seemed to reach out of empty air, the side of ahuge, scaly body, a yawning, dripping jaw. For a moment Thad could seegreat, hooked fangs in that jaw. Then they vanished, as if an unseentongue had licked the powder from them, dissolving it in fluids whichmade it invisible. That unearthly, half-seen shape leaped at him. He was carried backward into the room, hurled to the floor. Claws wererasping upon the tough fabric of his suit. His arm was seizedcrushingly in half-visible jaws. * * * * * Desperately he clung to the welding tool. The heated electrode wasdriven toward his body. He fought to keep it away; he knew that itwould burn through even the insulated fabric of his suit. A claw ripped savagely at his side. He heard the sharp, rending sound, as the tough fabric of his suit was torn, and felt a thin pencil ofpain drawn along his body, where a claw cut his skin. Suddenly the suit was full of the earthy fetor of the monster's body, nauseatingly intense. Thad gasped, tried to hold his breath, andthrust upward hard with the incandescent electrode. He felt warm bloodtrickling from the wound. A numbing blow struck his arm. The welding tool was carried from hishand. Flung to the side of the room, it clattered to the floor; andthen a heavy weight came upon his chest, forcing the breath from hislungs. The monster stood upon his body and clawed at him. Thad squirmed furiously. He kicked out with his feet, encountering agreat, hard body. Futilely he beat and thrust with his arms againstthe pillarlike limb. His body was being mauled, bruised beneath the thick fabric. He heardit tear again, along his right thigh. But he felt no pain, and thoughtthe claws had not reached the skin. It was the yellow dog that gave him the chance to recover the weapon. The animal had been running back and forth in the opposite end of theroom, fairly howling in excitement and terror. Now, with the madcourage of desperation, it leaped recklessly at the monster. A mighty, dimly seen claw caught it, hurled it back across the room. It lay still, broken, whimpering. For a moment the thing had lifted its weight from Thad's body. AndThad slipped quickly from beneath it, flung himself across the room, snatched up the welding tool. In an instant the creature was upon him again. But he met it with theincandescent electrode. He was crouched in a corner, now, where itcould come at him from only one direction. Its claws still slashed athim ferociously. But he was able to cling to the weapon, and meet eachonslaught with hot metal. Gradually its mad attacks weakened. Then one of his blind, thrustingblows seemed to burn into a vital organ. A terrible choking, strangling sound came from the air. And he heard the thrashingstruggles of wild convulsions. At last all was quiet. He prodded thething again and again with the hot electrode, and it did not move. Itwas dead. The creature's body was so heavy that Thad had to return to thebridge, and shut off the current in the gravity plates along the keel, before he could move it. He dragged it to the lock through which hehad entered the flier, and consigned it to space.... * * * * * Five days later Thad brought the _Red Dragon_ into the atmosphere ofMars. A puzzled pilot came aboard, in response to his signals, anddocked the flier safely at Helion. Thad went down into the hold again, with the astonished port authorities who had come aboard to inspectthe vessel. Again he passed among the grotesque and outrageous monsters in thehold, leading the gasping officers. While they marveled at thetreasure, he lifted the weirdly embellished lid of the coffer of whitecrystal, and looked once more upon the still form of the girl withinit. Pity stirred him. An ache came in his throat. Linda Cross, so quiet and cold and white, and yet so lovely. Howterrible her last days of life must have been, with doom shadowing thevessel, and the men vanishing mysteriously, one by one!Terrible--until she had sought the security of death. Strangely, Thad felt no great elation at the thought that half theincalculable treasure about him was now safely his own, as the awardof salvage. If only the girl were still living.... He felt apoignantly keen desire to hear her voice. Thad found the note when they started to lift her from the chest. Ahasty scrawl, it lay beneath her head, among glittering gems. "This woman is not dead. Please have her given skilled medical attention as soon as possible. She lies in a state of suspended animation, induced by the injection of fifty minims of zeronel. "She is my daughter, Linda Cross, and my sole heir. "I entreat the finders of this to have care given her, and to keep in trust for her such part of the treasure on this ship as may remain after the payment of salvage or other claims. "Sometime she will wake. Perhaps in a year, perhaps in a hundred. The purity of my drugs is uncertain, and the injection was made hastily, so I do not know the exact time that must elapse. "If this is found, it will be because the lurking thing upon the ship has destroyed me and all my men. "Please do not fail me. Levington Cross. " Thad bought the white tower of his dreams, slim and graceful in itsMartian garden of saffron and purple, among the low ocher hills besideHelion. He carried the sleeping girl through the silver door where thegirl of his dreams had waited, and set the coffer in a great, vaultedchamber. Many times each day he came into the room where she lay, tolook into her pallid face, and feel her cold wrist. He kept a nurse inattendance, and had a physician call daily. A long Martian year went by. * * * * * Looking in his mirror one day, Thad saw little wrinkles about hiseyes. He realized that the nervous strain and anxiety of waiting wasaging him. And it might be a hundred years, he remembered, beforeLinda Cross came from beneath the drug's influence. He wondered if he should grow old and infirm, while Linda lay stillyoung and beautiful and unchanged in her sleep; if she might awake, after long years, and see in him only a feeble old man. And he knewthat he would not be sorry he had waited, even if he should die beforeshe revived. On the next day, the nurse called him into the room where Linda lay. He was bending over her when she opened her eyes. They were blue, glorious. A long time she looked up at him, first in fearful wonder, then withconfidence, and dawning understanding. And at last she smiled. * * * * *