Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net SARGASSO OF THE STARS By FREDERICK A. KUMMER, Jr. The Spot was the curse of the Universe--a drifting Sargasso of vanished spaceships and soul-lost men. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Haller watched silently as they crowded into the control room. His eyes were slivers of gray granite, but he didn't speak. There was a long moment of silence as the five men, scum of the space-ports, shifted uneasily, their faces strained, tense. Haller frowned; he'd been expecting something like this for the past few days. From now on it would be his nerve against their strength. "Well?" he snapped, whip-like. "What is it?" Carlson, the big engineer, shouldered to the fore. His massive frame and sloping skull betrayed his Jovian blood, even as the scars and purple ray burns on his bulging forearm betrayed a checkered, violent past. "We want to know where you're taking us!" he rumbled. "Seltzsky here, says it's off the regular lanes. If we're not heading for Jupiter, where're we going? We got a right to know." Icy as outer space, Haller surveyed them. The pilots at Mercis had likened him, since the _Cosmic_ affair, to a living robot, devoid of all feeling, all emotion. Now, as he stared at the sullen crew, this simile was especially apt. His lean, set face held a curious hardness, as if it had been hammered from steel, and one sensed about him a terrible determination, an unswerving singleness of purpose, found in men who pursue a self-imposed duty rather than the call of adventure. Haller's eyes made one think that he had gazed upon all the worlds, all things that lived, and found them dull, futile. "So you think you've a right to know where we're bound?" he said deliberately. "You'll recall that I chartered this ship, that you all signed on for three months, no questions asked. However," ... he smiled unhumorously ... "since you're so interested, I'll tell you." Haller turned to the big chart upon the control room's wall, pointed. "Our present position is about here ... ten days out of Mars and rather off the regular lanes. Our destination is this." He indicated a shaded area forming the apex of a vague triangle of which Mars and Jupiter were the other angles. "This area is known, for want of a better name, as the Magnetic Spot. Ships passing near it report radio disturbances, variations in their instruments. And that's where we're going! Any more questions?" "The ... the Magnetic Spot?" Seltzsky, the wizened little navigator, cried. "But.... Good God! Every ship that goes near it disappears! Dozens, hundreds of 'em! The _Valerian_, the _Explorer_, the _Io_! Warships, liners, freighters! You're mad! Only two months ago, the _Cosmic_...." At mention of the _Cosmic_ a bitter flame leaped in Haller's eyes. His hand shot to the atomite gun at his waist. "That's enough!" he barked. "You wanted to find out where you were going, and now you know! Get back to your quarters!" Carlson and Seltzsky leaned forward, their savage faces intent, fists knotted. Haller's cold gaze did not flicker. For a long moment the tension was like a dark bubble, growing, growing, as it approached the breaking point. Suddenly old Barger, the quartermaster, laughed. "You're licked!" he grated. "Just as I said you'd be! I'll take one _man_, like Cap'n Haller, to a dozen blustering bullies like you!" He touched his cap, submissively. "To the Magnetic Spot or to hell, sir, if you say so! Come along, you lily-livered space-rats! Back to your stations!" And then Carlson leaped, his face contorted with rage. Haller's hand gripped the atomite gun, jerked it from its holster, but before he could fire, the engineer's huge fist crashed against his jaw. One moment's glimpse, he had, of Barger going down under the assault of the other spacehands, and then the world went black. * * * * * Steve Haller came to, to find himself in the closet-like chart room. His hands were bound, and his jaw ached. Barger lay opposite him; the grizzled old quartermaster appeared to be still unconscious. Haller struggled to his knees, peered out of the small observation port. Space ... silent, intangible, unknown! Stars crawling painfully across the black void, and no one knew what mysteries lurking in the vast reaches between worlds. Like the Magnetic Spot.... Haller turned from the port, his face more like steel than ever. No chance of helping Barger as long as his hands were tied. The ship was silent, and without apparent motion in spite of the speed she was making; it gave one the impression of falling through a dark bottomless pit. Impossible to tell how long he'd been out, but they should be nearing the Magnetic Spot. He swore helplessly. Might have known that crew of space-rats would turn yellow, mutiny. Not that he blamed them so much, after the tales that were told about the Spot. Hundreds of ships, in the course of the past two centuries, had entered it, some fleeing meteor storms or enemy ships in time of war, others deliberately, in hopes of learning its secret. And none had ever returned. The whispered yarns told in spacemen's dives were lurid in their speculations about that strange unknown area. Haller's thoughts turned to the _Cosmic_, and his eyes grew tortured. Fay Carroll had been aboard the liner. Fay of the sleek, bronze hair, the laughing blue eyes, the curved red lips that were scarlet scimiters, stabbing at men's hearts. Reckless, madcap, with just enough of the devil in her to add piquancy to her charm. And now she was gone. He, Haller, had been to blame. He'd radioed her from Jupiter to meet him there, and she'd taken the first out-going ship, the _Cosmic_. And the _Cosmic_, driven off her course by a meteor storm, had last been reported on the outskirts of the Spot. Haller moved restlessly, straining against his bonds. The lines about his mouth deepened as the old self-accusation returned to plague him. If he hadn't sent Fay that radiogram, urging her to come to Jupiter, she'd be alive today. For months that one thought had beat like a rocket-blast through his mind. It had changed him from a gay, happy-go-lucky space-pilot to a living robot, had driven him to resign from Trans-Jovian, sink his savings, the money he'd hoped to spend on a home for Fay, in chartering this old tub, the _Lodestar_, and setting out on this vain hope. He'd recruited his crew from the space-dives of Mars, loaded the ramshackle tramp with fuel, and headed for the Magnetic Spot. Not that he'd believed there was any chance of finding Fay, but he'd felt that if he could discover the secret of the Spot, he'd have done his bit toward atoning. Now, thanks to the mutinous crew, even that poor consolation was denied him. Yellow scum of space, without enough guts to venture into the unknown area! A click of the chart room door drew Haller's gaze. Carlson appeared in the entrance, his great hands gripping an atomite gun, a broad grin on his brutish countenance. "All right, you two," he grunted. "Come on out! We're going to have a little bull session! Up, you _molat_!" He prodded Barger not too quietly with the toe of his boot. The quartermaster groaned, swayed to his feet. Dazed, he followed Haller out into the control room. Seltzsky, Wallace, and Kindt stood grouped about the navigator's table, their faces flushed with triumph. A bottle of fiery Martian _tong_, half-empty, stood before them. "Okay," Carlson barked. "Now you listen to us! If you think we're going into the Magnetic Spot, you're nuts! But long's you're so anxious to see what it's like, you and Barger can go, in one of the life rockets! We'll take this packet to Jupiter, sell it, and whack up the dough! And you can run around the Spot in the life rocket to your heart's content, while your fuel holds out!" "Life rocket!" Barger growled. "You dirty dogs! They don't carry enough fuel to get us a quarter of the way back to Mars! You can't...." Carlson laughed, deep in his hairy chest. "Right!" he said. "We'll be rid of both of you! An unfortunate accident, o' course. We'll be so sorry when we reach Jupiter! We'll think of you cruising around the Spot until you run out of tri-oxine!" He motioned to the companionway. "We got the life rocket all ready! Get going!" Haller glanced through a port at the bitter darkness of space. Sent out in a life rocket! No chance of even reaching the ship-lanes in one of the little cylinders! Doomed to drift without control in the void until lack of food, oxygen, brought death! "Come on!" Seltzsky dug a gun into his back. "Step on it!" "Wait a minute!" Haller's gaze shifted to the control panel. Suddenly he laughed. "So you're heading for Mars after you get rid of us? Going to try it without instruments?" "Without instruments?" Seltzsky's beady eyes swung to the illuminated board, and his face went white. The gravity compass and spaceometer were swinging back and forth crazily until they seemed like metronomes! "The controls! They've gone haywire!" Carlson dropped the bottle of _tong_, made a dive for the radio. "We'll call Mars, pick up a beam." His voice trailed away. The screen of the televisor was a haze of fantastically dancing dots, the speaker gave off a fierce and uninterrupted crackle of static! "Beginning to enjoy yourselves?" Haller queried lazily. "That's how it got the name of the Magnetic Spot! You waited just a trifle too long before putting the ship about!" "Huh!" Carlson sprang to the controls. "The forward rockets'll throw us in reverse! Once we're out of the field, the radio and dials'll come back to normal!" He tugged at levers and the stuttering roar of the forward rockets shook the ship, while through the observation port they could see red flame enveloping her nose. * * * * * Slowly Carlson drew back on the lever, to ease the shock of deceleration. The cabin was silent, tomb-like, the pressure of braking squeezed the breath from them. Long minutes passed, as notch by notch, the big half-breed drew back the lever. Speed dropped from the _Lodestar_ until it merely crept across the heavens. Now the forward rockets were open full, and in another moment the ship should have lost all forward momentum, commenced gathering speed in reverse. Minute after minute passed, but the _Lodestar_ continued on ahead at approximately landing speed. Sweat broke out on Carlson's sloping brow. "Rockets on full!" he muttered. "And she's still going forward! We ... we're caught in some sort of current, being drawn along." "Into the Spot!" Haller cried. "Might as well take these ropes off Barger and me, we're all in this together! And if you hadn't slugged me, you might not be in this mess right now!" The four mutineers were thoroughly cowed, sober, now, their coarse faces drawn with fear. Suddenly Seltzsky gasped. The pocket of his coat was bulging out as though a live thing were in it! He reached down, drew out a pocket knife ... and the knife showed an amazing inclination to move toward the front of the ship! Seltzsky had all he could do to hang onto it; invisible strings seemed to be trying to tug it from his hand! The others, too, were finding key-rings, metal buckles, drawing toward the front of the ship. A cloud of instruments from the navigator's desk flew forward and plastered themselves against the front wall of the cabin! Carlson's gun popped from its holster, crashed against the wall, stuck there! "It.... It's screwy!" Kindt whimpered. "It ain't human!" "Simple!" Haller laughed unhumorously. "Magnetism! Magnetism stronger than any ever imagined! It's got the ship in its grip!" He twisted his bound hands. "Let us loose, you fools! We're all in the same boat!" With an effort Seltzsky cut the two men's bonds. A moment later as he relaxed his grip, the knife clanged against the forward wall of the cabin. At that instant, Carlson, peering through the glassex port, gave a fierce, terrified cry. Ahead and below them, weird in the light of the flaring red rockets, was a rocky rubble-strewn plain! Only an instant's glimpse of it, Haller had, before the loud, grinding crash, throwing him heavily to the floor! * * * * * It was some minutes before the stunned Haller picked himself up. The _Lodestar_ was bumping about, tossing, like a ship at sea. A scraping, crashing sound filled her hull, and the roar of the exhausts sounded like continuous thunder. Barger got unsteadily to his feet and staggered to the controls. "It ... it's a planetoid of some sort!" he muttered. "The magnetism holds us down, but the force of the rockets is grinding us forward over the rocks! It'll rip open our plates!" He made a grab for the rocket-control, but the rolling, tossing motion of the _Lodestar_ balked him, throwing him against the wall. Suddenly Haller, peering through the port, gave a cry of wonder. The blinding glare of the forward rockets, driving them in reverse across the rubbled plain, prevented him from seeing anything nearby, while further off, the darkness hung like a pall. In the distance, however, a line of light had become suddenly visible ... pale, orange light, stretching across the close horizon! Brighter and brighter it grew, as the shuddering, bumping vessel ground over the little planetoid's strangely rough surface. "What ... what is it?" Seltzsky muttered. "It's like a great fire across half of this crazy world!" His face showed fear. Haller stared, then realization gripped him. They were on the unknown world's darkside, and the line of light indicated its sunside. His face cleared. "Sunlight!" he exclaimed. "That's the day side of this chunk of rock! Leave the rockets on, 'til we reach it, Barger! Another mile won't make much difference now, and if we can see where we are, we may be able to do something about it!" Barger nodded doubtfully and the _Lodestar_ continued to grind ahead toward the line of sunlight. The four mutineers had lost all their bluster; cringing against the wall, they gazed at Haller as though expecting him to find some way out of this mad place. They had been brave, out in open space, but now, face to face with the unknown, they instinctively sought his leadership. Onward the _Lodestar_ ploughed, held down by the strange magnetism, driven forward by her rockets. At the edge of the dawn-like light, however, there came a staggering shock, as the vessel glanced against a mammoth boulder, and one of the stout glassex ports starred, and then shattered. "God!" Carlson gave a rising, bubbling cry of terror. "Broken! Our air...." But there was no hiss of escaping air, no awful suffocation. Haller, who had torn off his coat to stuff into the gap, paused, eyes narrowed. A strange sharp odor had permeated the control room, and he felt an odd exhilaration. "Air!" Kindt muttered. "Air! Thin, but with a high oxygen content! It's safe out there! Safe!" "Right!" Old Barger cried exultantly. "We can go out, have a look around!" He snapped shut the flaring exhausts, sprang quickly toward an airlock. "Come on! Let's go!" "Wait a minute!" Haller turned to the wall against which the atomite gun had been held. Now that the magnetic center was beneath them, the collection of iron and steel objects had fallen to the floor. With an effort Haller wrenched the gun free, thanking his stars that only the trigger and recoil mechanism were of steel. Even so, the weapon, drawn groundward, seemed to weigh pounds. Gripping it, Haller opened the massive doors of the airlock, swung through. The sight that greeted his gaze defied comparison. The entire surface of the little world was deep with uneven, jagged rocks, roughly spherical in shape. Some of vast size, larger than a spaceship, some no bigger than marbles, they appeared to have fallen like hailstones upon the asteroid's surface, covering it to an unknown depth. Peering between two of the larger stones, Haller could see a crevasse of appalling deepness, and below it, more of the loose rounded rocks. How large the original planetoid was, he could not imagine, but it was evident that for millenniums its magnetic attraction had been collecting about it meteors, most of which have a high ferrous content, drawing them to it and increasing its size. The little world was like a spider ... a spider of space ... catching all ferrous objects in its magnetic field, sucking them to it, fattening on them! Meteors, spaceships, iron-permeated cosmic dust ... all were drawn inexorably to it! Queer as was this great top-layer of meteoric stone, it received only a passing glance from the crew of the _Lodestar_. Their gaze was fixed on the gleaming, cylindrical shapes that lay scattered over the rocky, gray plain. In the weird half-light dozens of them could be seen, large and small. Spaceships! Spaceships of every size, sort, and description! The surface of the tiny world was littered with them, some half-buried beneath meteoric stone, some hopelessly wrecked, some, like the _Lodestar_ intact. Haller and his companions stared in awed wonder at the scene. Space-craft of every type, every era. Great liners, all burnished chrome and glass; sleek cruisers, heavily armored, their big ray-guns peeping through open ports; rusty, battered freighters; old vessels of the design of a century, two centuries before, with their archaic wind-vanes and detachable rockets. The names inlaid upon their sides were keys to countless mysteries of the void. Here was the long-lost _Tycho_, vanished off Jupiter with a billion dollars' worth of polonium in her holds; here, the ancient _Explorer_ which had headed for the outer planets two hundred years before, and never returned; here, the battle-cruiser _Valiant_, long since given up for lost, and upon which the last remains of Commander Lane, hero of the Venusian wars, must lie. Ship after ship, venturing too near the Spot, caught in its magnetic field, drawn to the tremendously magnetized surface of this grasping, spider-like little world. "The Isle of Lost Spaceships!" Barger gasped. "Great Cosmos! Must be hundreds of 'em, scattered over the surface, caught by the chunk of lodestone that's at the center of these ferrous meteors!" Haller nodded. "Steel ships and magnetic field," he said somberly. "The asteroid proper, within this layer of steel and iron it's attracted, must have tremendous power. Still, even back in the 20th century they had alloys which, when permanently magnetized, could do fancy tricks. A piece the size of your thumbnail would support two hundred pounds. Plenty powerful. And this planetoid must be of similar stuff." He grinned crookedly. "Seems as if the secret of the Magnetic Spot's solved. Not that we'll ever get back to tell it. We're caught like the others." Haller glanced at the battered, dust-covered ships strewing the rubbled plain, and then suddenly the set, robot-like look faded from his face. Pale, tense, he stared at a big liner that bulked against the horizon. Wheeling, Haller sprang into the ship, returned with a pair of powerful field-glasses. For a long moment he focused them upon the vessel when he spoke, his voice shook. "It's the ... the _Cosmic_! And Fay...." Abruptly he spun about, barking orders. "I'm going to find out if anyone's left alive aboard her. Barger, you and Kindt'll come with me! You others stay here and keep watch over the ship! No telling what dangers we're liable to run into in this screwy world! All set? Let's go!" Followed by Barger and Kindt, he set out toward the wrecked liner. The going was rough, uncertain, over the great jagged meteors. They were forced to leap from rock to rock, skirt huge meteorites. Small stones rolled and slipped under their feet and once Barger fell through a space between two of the dark ferrous rocks, was saved only by gripping a projecting ledge, hanging on with torn hands until the others dragged him up to safety. * * * * * Sliding, stumbling over the rubble, Haller kept his gaze on the _Cosmic_. The liner was badly battered, her nose crumpled as if she had crashed on landing. Haller forged ahead grimly through the gray half-light of the twilight zone that lay between darkside and sunside of the mad little world. Past ship after ship they toiled, rusty freighters, queer century-old exploring craft, gaunt skeletons of vessels half-buried in the débris. No signs of life were visible aboard the _Cosmic_ as they drew near. Haller's face was a strained mask. "Cap'n!" Barger paused, his gray-stubbled face drawn. "Look! Out there!" Haller turned, staring, but there was nothing to be seen except the shattered rocks, the desolate, silent ships. "Well?" he said sharply. "What was it?" "Thought I saw something moving over yonder," Barger muttered. "Queer-looking figure that was human and still wasn't. Nerves, I guess, or this damned shadowy light." "Sure. Nerves." Haller moved ahead impatiently. What would he find aboard the _Cosmic_? What had happened to those on the wrecked vessel? The silent, dust-shrouded liner loomed above them, now. One of her airlocks was curiously fused, blackened, and nearly twisted from its massive hinges. Haller seized the flush-sunk ring bolt and, followed by his companions, drew himself into the ship. The _Cosmic's_ main saloon was a scene of desolation. The crash landing had hurled furniture, bric-a-brac, luxurious decorations into a jumbled heap. Amidst this shattered débris lay several gaunt skeletons, clad in the uniform of the Trans-Jovian line. "Funny!" Kindt muttered. "Look!" He pointed to the atomite guns clutched in the bony hands. "Why guns?" "Mutiny, maybe," Haller said with grim emphasis. "Common failing, it seems! Let's go on!" They moved along the companionway, toward the rear of the ship. Dark, silent, there was something eerie about the deserted vessel. Like a ghost ship, it seemed, a weird metal tomb. Already rust was beginning to flake the walls, and a moldering smell of decomposition filled the air. The footsteps of the three men echoed hollowly along the dank corridors, and in the light of Barger's _astralux_ torch, grotesque shadows slid along the walls. Death, decay, hung like a pall about the _Cosmic_ and Haller, thinking of Fay, was a tight-lipped specter. "Kind of gives me the creeps, this packet," Barger muttered. "We...." He broke off, listening. "Did you hear something just then? Like soft footsteps?" "More nerves," Haller grunted. "Come on!" Onward they went, examining staterooms, engine-rooms, galley. All at once Haller began to realize that things were missing from the ship. Here, a skeleton stripped of its garments; there, a bed minus its mattress and covers; there, sections of wire, lighting equipment, removed. Reaching the ship's storeholds, they found the shelves swept bare of food. "She's been cleaned out," Barger said hoarsely. "Looks like the survivors took everything they might need, lit out for parts unknown." "Maybe," Haller was doubtful. "But from the number of skeletons, there weren't many survivors. And where'd they go?" A picture of Fay crossed his mind as he spoke. Was hers one of these whitened, grinning skulls, or had she been among those who for some reason had abandoned the _Cosmic_? Memory of the girl's slender loveliness tortured him. "Might's well go back," Kindt said uneasily. "I don't like this ship. There's something damned wrong here." * * * * * Kindt's voice trailed off into silence. At one end of the storeroom were several barrels, empty, their contents of wine having apparently been used by the passengers of the _Cosmic_ on the trip out. And from behind these barrels a faint, strange babbling sound came, as of a mad delirious thing, haunted by fear. For just a second the voice rose, shrill, eerie, then ceased abruptly as though choked to silence. Listening, Haller felt the hair at the back of his neck stiffen. Then he leaped forward, tugged the barrels aside. Deep in the shadows was a small door. Muscles standing out in ridges, Haller ripped it open. The space thus revealed was a small airlock, perhaps four feet square, through which refuse was expelled. In its chamber two indistinct forms were huddled. One was a girl, and the other a gray-bearded man, his hand over his companion's mouth. As the door opened, the man plunged forward, his face contorted in desperation, in frenzy, as if he had determined to go down fighting. Catching sight of the spaceman, however, a look of stunned disbelief crossed his countenance, his arms dropped to his sides. "Earthmen!" he croaked. "Earthmen!" Then something seemed to snap within him and he began to sob like a weary child. Haller paid scant heed to the man. Pale as a ghost, he stared at the girl. Emaciated, she seemed feverish, but in spite of her changed appearance, there was no mistaking that bronze hair, blue eyes, and slender form. Haller felt as though he had swallowed a lump of lead. "Fay!" he whispered. "Fay!" The girl swayed to her feet, gazed at him a moment, then gave a queer high laugh. "But it's a dream," she said slowly. "I know it's another dream. Because Steve is on Jupiter where there're houses, people." Abruptly the girl's voice broke; her knees buckled and she collapsed in a heap on the store-hold floor. Haller picked the girl up, turned to Barger. "Got to get her to the _Lodestar_," he snapped. "Needs food and water. Here, you," rather abruptly he shook the bearded man, "what's this all about?" "About?" the man repeated dully. "We were hiding from Them. All the other men went down fighting, and the women were taken prisoner. I was unarmed and there wasn't any use fighting so many. This girl and I ran down here to the hold, hid in the airlock. For weeks and weeks. At first we could slip out and get food from the shelves but every day They came and carried some away and now there isn't any more." His voice trailed off into a senseless, tuneless crooning. "They?" Haller shook him again. "Who're They?" "Beasts, ghosts, devils." The man shuddered. "I don't know. They come shining, shining through the darkness and their eyes...." "Nuts," Barger said succinctly. "Help him, Kindt. I'll carry the girl, Cap'n, long as you've got the gun. May need it if this guy's anywhere near the truth." "Right." With the heavy magnetized flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, Haller led the way from the hold, followed by Barger, carrying Fay, and Kindt, aiding the bearded man. At the base of the ladder leading to the main deck, Haller froze in his tracks. Above them, in the cabin, the sound of running footsteps was audible along with queer, inhuman voices. Others had boarded the wrecked _Cosmic_, were rushing down the companionway! "Quick!" Barger roared. "Get that door!" Hardly had Barger's voice died away when there came a series of wild howls, a thud of racing feet. The door leading from the upper deck burst open and a score of nightmare figures leaped into the room. Human, they were, yet at the same time, grim travesties on human beings. Clad in rags, hair long and matted, beards streaked with filth, they seemed the most degenerate, revolting dregs of mankind. More beasts than men, they rushed forward with hoarse shouts of triumph. What shook Haller more than anything else was the queer aura of light that appeared to emanate from their bodies! The attackers were vaguely phosphorescent! With an effort Haller swung up the magnetized atomite gun, fired. The blue bolt of energy tore through the ranks of the insane attackers and three of them slumped to the floor, charred, blackened corpses. Smoke and a stench of burnt flesh filled the storeroom. The maddened figures also had ray guns; the bearded man who had been in hiding with Fay toppled backward, torn by an atomite blast. Like hideous, human wolves, the phosphorescent figures swept on, bearing Kindt and Barger to the floor. As Haller's flash fell to the floor, shattered, the greenish light from their bodies lit up the hold with a queer, eerie luminescence. Two of the wild-eyed specters plunged at Haller. The atomite gun blasted one of them to bits, but the other's clutching, taloned hands locked about his knees in mad fury, sent him reeling to the floor. Haller's head banged against the steel plates, the gun fell from his grip, and the gnarled, steely hands shifted from his knees to his throat. Dazed, he tried to fight back, but found he was no match for the other's inhuman strength. The distorted eldritch face, with reddened eyes peering through a tangle of hair, began to blur before his gaze, fire-flecked darkness slowly engulfed him. Faintly he could hear Kindt and Barger making strangled, choking sounds, realized that he was doing the same. No escape now, he realized. In another minute.... * * * * * A million miles away Steve Haller heard the deep guttural voice, and miraculously the pressure on his windpipe ceased. As vision returned, he could see a huge, scarred man with an embryonic degenerate face, standing on the bottom step of the ladder. Vaguely glowing like the others, he made a ghostly figure in the darkness. "Let them live," he grunted. "We got things to find out." He bent, dragged the dazed Kindt to his feet. "Which ship is yours?" "The ... _Lodestar_," Kindt whispered through bruised lips. "She lies over that way about a mile. The magnetism caught us." "So." The big man's sub-human face expressed satisfaction. "More food and fuel. This has been a good time, eh, Doul? First this liner with food and women, now another ship and" ... he glanced at Fay's inert form ... "another woman. Take six men with guns and see how strongly this new arrival is held." Watching the six repulsive figures depart, Haller felt suddenly sick. The liner, the big man said, had furnished them with food and women. Fay.... Weakly he swayed to his feet. "What's this all about?" he demanded. "Who are you?" "Castaways, or their children's children." The huge figure looked spectral in the weird light that emanated from his skin. "No one leaves the Island of Lost Spaceships. I'm Orth. My people were wrecked many lifetimes ago, mated with the female passengers of the refugee ship, _Transvalia_. We rule here." He motioned his savage followers forward. "We will go now." Half-strangled, throat aching, Haller felt himself seized by two of the savage beings, dragged along with Kindt and Barger to the upper deck. One of the phosphorescent figures had thrown Fay over his shoulder, was carrying her like a sack of meal. Through the airlock they were forced and out onto the rough, meteor-heaped surface of the planetoid. "Haller! Look!" Barger turned toward the distant _Lodestar_; three figures, hands raised, were emerging from the metal hull. "The yellow rats! Not even putting up a scrap! They might have held the ship indefinitely against these brutes!" Orth, the semi-simian leader of these denizens of the asteroid, was waving toward the band which had taken the _Lodestar_. These returned across the rubbled plain shouting jubilantly, with their captives. Carlson, Seltzsky, and Wallace were pale phantoms, cringing under the blows that urged them forward. Joining forces, the two parties set out across the rocky surface, led by the giant Orth. Stumbling along between his captors, Haller found it hard to believe that this was not some mad dream. A magnetic asteroid, an Isle of Lost Spaceships, and humans who had degenerated into beasts. Covertly he studied their guards. Most of them were unnaturally squat, bow-legged, and were a startling example of how swiftly evolution can retrogress. Millenniums of progress, all the civilization so painfully acquired by man, had dropped from them. Faces crude and unintelligent, they spoke in hoarse gutturals, hardly intelligible. And even here, in the half-light of the plain, the uncanny green glow, like fox-fire, hung about their forms. Living ghosts, they seemed, walking through a twilight zone of death and desolation. Over the rough terrain they led their captives, skirting crevasses, craters, leaping sure-footedly from rock to rock. And on all sides lay the battered hulks, looted of their food and cargoes by these strange beings, left to rust away or be buried by new rains of meteors. The barren melancholy of the scene pressed like leaden weights upon the captured earthmen. At a mound of huge meteors rising above the plain, Orth, the herculean leader, turned. A narrow gap was visible between two great stones. Into this he plunged, his faintly glowing body giving wan light. "Caves," Kindt muttered, glancing about. "Some job, too. Wonder why they didn't just live in the spaceships outside?" Haller studied the passages. They had been made by removing loose fragments of the meteors, and were clumsily shored up by plates and girders from the wrecked ships. Enormous effort must have been required to drag the steel supports across the surface of this magnetized world, though perhaps by heating them it might have been possible. But why, when the ships offered luxurious accommodations, was it necessary to dig this rabbit-warren into the layer of meteors that covered the surface? Downward they went, the bodies of their captors lighting up the rocky galleries. Now voices were audible ahead, the corridor was widening. Rounding a bend in the passage, Haller drew a sudden sharp breath. * * * * * Before them lay a vast cavern, crowded with bizarre figures. There were at least half a hundred of the bearded savage men, their skin giving off the greenish luminescence. Among them were four or five less uncouth looking individuals, wearing the uniform of Trans-Jovian. Some of the _Cosmic's_ crew, apparently, had joined the renegades. What struck Haller, however, was the difference among the women. Some were ragged, dirty creatures, almost as neanderthal in appearance as the men, clutching ugly children to their breasts. But the other women huddled in the cavern brought harsh lines to Haller's face. Earthwomen, these, and of pure blood, some young, some approaching middle age, but all with horror stamped upon their features. As Orth and his men swaggered into the cavern, an admiring throng ran to greet them. "Another freighter caught in the field," he grunted. "More food aboard her! No shortage, now! And a new woman for one of us!" He motioned toward Fay, a wan, pale figure in the sickly glow that issued from her captors' fetid bodies. "For one of you!" Haller hardly recognized his own voice. For months he had been a living robot, condemning himself for the girl's death, and now that miraculously he had found her, she was to be claimed by one of these degenerate sub-men! Suddenly all the pent-up emotion of those long months burst its bonds; he felt himself surging forward, a red mist before his eyes. Lean and muscular as he was, Haller was no match for the mighty Orth. A glowing hand shot out, gripped him, held him as helpless as a child. And Barger, who had followed blindly at his heels, was seized by another of the sub-men. The other four men of the _Lodestar's_ crew made no move to join in the hopeless struggle and Haller, berserk, cursed them in the worst language of six planets. "Fools, these two," Orth grunted. "Take them away!" Helpless in the grip of the green-glowing creatures, Haller and Barger were dragged from the big cavern, along passages that wound deep into the heap of meteoric stone. Here and there, in the weird light, they could see other caves, apparently sleeping, living quarters, furnished with equipment taken from stranded ships. Once again Haller found himself wondering why these people buried themselves deep in the ground when they might have lived aboard one of the big luxury liners. Then thoughts of Fay crossed his mind again and he struggled vainly to be free. At the end of one of the passages a large tank, perhaps ten feet in diameter, was sunk flush in the loose rubble. A circular iron plate in its top, sucked down by the inexorable magnetism, required the combined efforts of four of the sub-men to remove. The plate at last dragged aside, they motioned their two captives forward. For just a moment Haller hesitated, but with an atomite gun digging into his back, there was no choice. Gripping the edge of the opening he lowered himself into the tank. The drop of about six feet was jarring and he had just time to move aside as Barger landed beside him. A moment later the glowing sub-men had dragged the magnetized iron plate over the opening. * * * * * The interior of the metal tank that served as their prison was dark, except for a faint greenish fluorescence, like that which emanated from the renegade earthmen, visible in one corner. Moving toward it, Haller saw a copper vessel filled with water, apparently for the use of prisoners. "Barger!" he exclaimed. "That's why they give off that green light! It's the water! Phosphorescent water! We've seen it on earth often, caused by microscopic animal life! Only this is so full of the stuff that by drinking it, a living person becomes phosphorescent also! Like the deep-sea fish on earth! The human body's over eighty per cent water, remember!" "Interesting," the old quartermaster grunted, biting off a quid of blue Jovian _tole_. "But hardly helpful." He spat noisily. "What next?" Haller disregarded the question. "I'm beginning to get a clear picture of this," he announced. "For millenniums this little asteroid drew about it ferrous meteors. Then, two hundred years ago, man perfected the spaceship. Since then, this has become the Isle of Lost Spaceships. Hundreds of vessels, venturing too near, were caught in the field, drawn down. I can imagine the men on the first ship, half-mad, starved, before another was drawn down by the field, plundering the new arrivals of their food and supplies, killing their crews. Orth mentioned the _Transvalia_. She was the ship chartered by some fanatical religious sect who were going to found a new world. Also, she had women aboard. That was the start of this degenerate race. Two centuries of savagery, piracy, and we've seen the result." He paused grimly. "They're strong but stupid. That's our only chance. Also we haven't drunk any of this water and aren't fluorescent. That means we've a good chance of getting by unseen in these caves, once we get out of this tank." "And then, I suppose," Barger grinned, "we build an aluminum spaceship that isn't affected by magnetism and take off. Or do we thumb a ride on a comet?" By way of answer Haller commenced to examine their prison. A large cylinder, of a bronze-like alloy, it had no openings except the one at the top, covered by the steel plate. "Thought this had a familiar look to it," he announced. "It's the fuel tank of an old-style rocket-ship. Here! Climb up on my shoulders and have a look at the top. Might be an intake valve or loose plate up there. Can't see in this light." "The optimist," Barger grunted. "Steady now! Ah! Wait'll I light a match." A match flared in the darkness above and Barger shook his head. "Not a sign of an out up here," he muttered. "Looks like we're in storage for keeps. We.... Look out!" Barger leaped, and Haller fell in a heap upon the floor. Something small, flaring white-hot, had dropped from the top of the tank, was sputtering on the floor plates. A moment later it winked out, but where it had lain, a small hole, the size of a man's finger, was visible. "A hole!" Barger exclaimed. "Burnt right through the metal! What in hell...." "Don't you see?" A tight-lipped grin crossed Haller's face. "This was, as I said, a fuel tank. Little drops of tri-oxine have dried on the top, years ago when it was drained, and your match ignited one! When you think how the toughest steel rocket tube linings burn through in a year or less, it's no wonder this bronze alloy melts!" He snatched up the jar of phosphorescent water, held it near the wall of the tank. Here and there tiny brown globules were visible, dried rocket-fuel, like sap on a tree's bark. "Okay," said Barger, unimpressed. "But how are you going to hold it against the top while it's burning through? Soon as it's lit, it falls ... and I don't want to be beneath, thanks." "What's wrong with the floor?" Haller was already scraping the bits of dried fuel from the walls. "The whole top strata of this asteroid is like a heap of stones. The small fragments we can lug into this tank through the hole, and the big ones don't fit so close that we can't squeeze between them! Get busy!" Slowly from walls and roof they collected the bits of long-dried fuel. A globule here, a flake there, it was painfully slow work. At the end of an hour they had a double handful of the brown crystals. "Enough for a try, anyhow," Haller muttered. "Let's see!" He arranged the brown grains in a circle perhaps two feet in diameter. "Stand clear! Here goes!" A match flickered in the darkness, described a short arc as Haller tossed it toward the circle. At once a ring of lurid fire flared up and a searing gust of heat swept through the metal tank. For only a moment it burned, then died away, leaving the floor plates around it a cherry red. Barger, staring, gave a cry of triumph. "Worked!" he exclaimed. "Burned through!" He poured a portion of the phosphorescent water on the bronze, watched clouds of steam arise. "Now the work starts!" Haller's grin was fierce. Kicking aside the metal disc that had been melted from the floor, he peered into the opening. Small stones, chunks of meteoric rock, lay beneath. * * * * * Largely ferrous, the stones were caught in the grip of the asteroid's magnetic core. It required the combined efforts of both men to lift them through the opening into their prison. At the end of half an hour they were drenched with sweat, and the hole beneath was only four feet deep. "No ... no use!" Old Barger panted. "We can go on like this indefinitely. And if we try to tunnel sidewise it'll fall on us." "But we ought to reach the big meteorites soon," Haller muttered. "They'd have settled lower and will have open spaces between them. And the sub-men have this place honeycombed with passages. If we hit one...." "About as much chance as a snowball on Mercury," the quartermaster wheezed. "Hold the water jar near. I'm going to have a look." Haller held the jar close to the opening so that its green glow faintly illuminated the pit they had dug. Barger, his face red from exertion, jumped into the excavation. "Stones and more stones," he grunted. "Might dig the rest of our lives before we struck anything. I...." A rumble of rock, a smothered cry, and the grizzled quartermaster disappeared from view! "Barger!" Steve shouted. "What happened? Are you hurt?" "Bruised up a bit." The answer echoed hollowly. "And I can't see where I am!" "Okay, sit tight." Haller knotted his belt to his leather jacket, lowered the half-empty jug of phosphorescent water into the opening. When Barger announced its safe arrival, he made one end of the improvised rope fast, climbed down it. In the faint green glow a hollow, between two immense meteorites, was visible. Barger, dirty, disheveled, glanced about. "The opening seems to run back aways," he announced. "Want to try it?" "Right." Haller led the way, testing each step carefully. As they moved on, the tunnel narrowed, and they were forced to crawl. Haller, creeping under the overhang of a huge stone, felt like an ant moving through the spaces in a mound of cannon-balls. Now they were forced to dig again, dragging aside the magnetized rocks, holding their breaths for fear of a cave-in. They had made their way perhaps a hundred feet when Haller pulled up short. His hands had encountered something smooth, cold! "Metal!" he exclaimed. "Wait!" Quickly he raised the vessel of luminous water. Before them, buried beneath massive rocks, was a rusty, ancient spaceship! "Lord!" Barger stared at the archaic forward rocket tubes. "The great grand-daddy of all spaceships!" He pointed to a gaping crack in the battered hull. "Let's see what's inside!" Squeezing through the crack, they found themselves in a dusty, old-fashioned cabin. Two skeletons lay sprawled upon the floor, moldering clothes hanging on their bones. Haller picked up a yellowed book, studied the all but illegible writing. "... caught on the barren sargasso-like world. Magnetism holding us here. Radio blanketed, last food eaten three days ago. No hope. Jameson died today. Too weak to write more. Donovan closing this log. July 17, 1994." "Poor devils!" Haller muttered. "But," ... he thought of their savage captors, of Fay, and his face hardened ... "maybe they were lucky! Nineteen-ninety-four! That'd be before Orth's forefathers, before the _Transvalia_! No wonder it's been completely covered by meteors!" Barger, poking about the cabin, suddenly gave a grunt, came up with two L-shaped black objects. "Guns!" he exclaimed. "Old-time lead-throwers! But they'd be better than nothing!" Rather curiously Haller examined the weapons. Scraping dried oil from the mechanism, he thrust one into his belt. "May help," he murmured. "If we ever get out of here. Maybe if there's any fuel left, we may blast our way through to one of the caves." Haller moved to the rear of the ship, studied the rusty engines. The fuel tanks were empty, every drop apparently having been used in a vain effort to break the magnetic grip. "Nothing here," he muttered. "Dead end. Might as well go back and try these lead throwers on our guards when ... and if ... they open the top of that tank. Unless ..." Suddenly Haller broke off, leaning forward, face intent. Very dimly, far away, the sound of hoarse, shouting voices was audible! "Orth and his gang!" Barger muttered. "But it's not coming from the passage we made! Seems to be in that direction!" He motioned toward the rubble behind the ancient ship. "We're near one of their caves!" Haller leaped toward the rear rocket tubes, forced open a massive breech-block. "Come on!" Into the big exhaust tube he dove, crawling through it as though it had been a drain pipe. "Take the rocks as I pass them back," he ordered. Then, chuckling grimly, "Makes you feel like Dante's tunneling under the Chateau D'If. Here comes a big one!" He shoved a chunk of meteor back along the tube. The heap of stones in the old engine room had grown large when Haller saw the light ahead. A pale trickle of illumination, it filtered through the loose rocks. Haller wormed his way nearer, peered through the opening ... and his face went gray. * * * * * A cave, its brilliant lights dimming the glow of luminous bodies, lay before them. Well furnished from looted ships, auxiliary engines from some plundered liner, run by rocket fuel, supplied electricity to power the great arc lights that hung from the ceiling. One entire end of the room was an Aladdin's cave of treasures. Bars of gold, from the mines of Saturn, stacked in towering heaps ... leaden chests of radium, uranium, polonium, a nation's ransom of the stuff for which men died in the great fields of Venus ... and jewels, huge Martian rubies, big as pigeon's eggs, flame-colored _karnites_ of Io, even the rare _crystolex_ that collects, absorbs, light, until it gives off a diffused pink aura. Loot of a hundred vessels that had met their doom on this Island of Lost Spaceships, utterly worthless on the barren asteroid, yet hoarded because of the legend that they were prized on other worlds, because lure of treasure lingered in the savage minds of the sub-men. Incalculable as was this treasure, Haller gave it but a passing glance. His gaze was fixed on the glowing, hideous figures grouped about the cave. With them were Carlson, Seltzsky, Wallace, and Kindt ... renegades, joining these inhuman brutes, fearing the consequences of refusal. In the center of the cave stood Orth, a gigantic, semi-simian figure, his herculean body shining like a cat's eye, and beside him stood Fay. All the joyousness, the gayety, the beauty, that had bedeviled Haller's memories, were gone from the girl. Pale, emaciated,
{'title': 'Sargasso of the Stars by Frederic Arnold Kummer', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}