The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith
pallor overspread the normally ruddy face of the Valerian and an uncontrollable tremor shook his giant frame. But as he considered the implications resident in Helmuth’s concluding phrase he licked his lips and spoke.
“I hate to say no, sir, if you order me to and if there was any way of making my crew do it. But we were near there once, sir, and we . I . they . it well, sir, I saw things, sir, and I was . was warned, sir!”
“Saw what? And was warned of what?”
“I can’t describe what I saw, sir. I can’t even think of it in thoughts that mean anything. As for the warning, though, it was very definite, sir. I was told very plainly that if I ever go near that planet again I will die a worse death than any I have dealt out to any other living being.”
“But you will go there again?”
“I tell you, sir, that the crew will not do it,” Gildersleeve replied, doggedly. “Even if I were anxious to go, every man aboard will mutiny if I try it.”
“Call them in right now and tell them that you have been ordered to Arisia.”
The captain did so, but he had scarcely started to talk when he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by his first officer—also of course a Valerian—who pulled his DeLameter and spoke savagely:
“Cut it, Gil! We are not going to Arisia. I was with you before, you know. Set course within five points of that accursed planet and I blast you where you sit!”
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!” ripped from the headquarters speaker. “This is rankest mutiny. You know the penalty, do you not?”
“Certainly I do—what of it?” The first officer snapped back.
“Suppose that I tell you to go to Arisia?” Helmuth’s voice was now soft and silky, but instinct with deadly menace.
“In that case I tell you to go to the ninth hell—or to Arisia, a million times worse!”
“What? You dare speak thus to me?” demanded the arch-pirate, sheer amazement at the fellow’s audacity blanketing his rising anger.
“I so dare,” declared the rebel, brazen defiance and unalterable resolve in every line of his hard body and in every lineament of his hard face. “All you can do is kill us. You can order out enough ships to blast us out of the ether, but that’s all you can do. That would be only death and we’d have the fun of taking a lot of the boys along with us. If we go to Arisia, though, it would be different—very, very different. No, Helmuth, and I throw this in your teeth: if I ever go near Arisia again it will be in a ship in which you, Helmuth, in person, are sitting at the controls. If you think this is an empty dare and don’t like it, don’t take it. Send on your dogs!”
“That will do! Report yourselves to Base D under .” Then Helmuth’s flare of anger passed and his cold reason took charge. Here was something utterly unprecedented; an entire crew of the hardest-bitten marauders in space offering open and barefaced mutiny—no, not mutiny, but actual rebellion—to him, Helmuth, in his very person. And not a typical, skulking, carefully-planned uprising, but the immovably brazen desperation of men making an ultimately last-ditch stand. Truly, it must be a powerful superstition indeed, to make that crew of hard-boiled hellions choose certain death rather than face again the imaginary—they must be imaginary—perils of a planet unknown to and unexplored by Boskone’s planetographers. But they were, after all, ordinary space-men, of little mental force and of small real ability. Even so, it was clearly indicated that in this case precipitate action was to be avoided. Therefore he went on calmly and almost without a break. “Cancel all this that has been spoken and that has taken place. Continue with your original orders pending further investigation,” and switched his plate back to the department head.
“I have checked your conclusions and have found them correct,” he announced, as though nothing at all out of the way had transpired. “You did well in sending a ship to investigate. No matter where I am or what I am doing, notify me instantly at the first sign of irregularity in the behavior of any member of that ship’s personnel.”
Nor was that call long in coming. The carefully-selected crew—selected for complete lack of knowledge of the dread planet which was their objective—sailed along in blissful ignorance, both of the real meaning of their mission and of what was to be its ghastly end. Soon after Helmuth’s unsatisfactory interview with Gildersleeve and his mate, the luckless exploring vessel reached the barrier which the Arisians had set around their system and through which no uninvited stranger was allowed to pass.
The free-flying ship struck that frail barrier and stopped. In the instant of contact a wave of mental force flooded the mind of the captain, who, gibbering with sheer, stark, panic terror, flashed his vessel away from that horror-impregnated wall and hurled call after frantic call along his beam, back to headquarters. His first call, in the instant of reception, was relayed to Helmuth at his central desk.
“Steady, man; report intelligently!” that worthy snapped, and his eyes, large now upon the cowering captain’s plate, bored steadily, hypnotically into those of the expedition’s leader. “Pull yourself together and tell me exactly what happened. Everything!”
“Well, sir, when we struck something—a screen of some sort—and stopped, something came aboard. It was . . . oh . . . ay-ay-e-e!” his voice rose to a shriek, but under Helmuth’s dominating glare he subsided quickly and went on. “A monster, sir, if there ever was one. A fire-breathing demon, sir, with teeth and claws and cruelly barbed tail. He spoke to me in my own Crevenian language. He said .”
“Never mind what he said. I did not hear it, but I can guess what it was. He threatened you with death in some horrible fashion, did he not?” and the coldly ironical tones did more to restore the shaking man’s equilibrium than reams of remonstrance could have done.
“Well, yes, that was about the size of it, sir,” he admitted.
“And does that sound reasonable to you, the commander of a first-class battleship of Boskone’s Fleet?” sneered Helmuth.
“Well, sir, put on that way, it does seem a bit far-fetched,” the captain replied, sheepishly.
“It is far-fetched.” The director, in the safety of his dome, could afford to be positive. “We do not know exactly what caused that hallucination, apparition, or whatever it was—you were the only one who could see it, apparently; it certainly was not visible on our master-plates. It was probably some form of suggestion or hypnotism; and you know as well as we do that any suggestion can be thrown off by a definitely opposed will. But you did not oppose it, did you?”
“No, sir, I didn’t have time.”
“Nor did you have your screens out, nor automatic recorders on the trip. Not much of anything, in fact . I think that you had better report back here, at full blast.”
“Oh, no, sir—please!” He knew what rewards were granted to failures, and Helmuth’s carefully chosen words had already produced the effect desired by their speaker. “They took me by surprise then, but I’ll go through this next time.”
“Very well, I will give you one more chance. When you get close to the barrier, or whatever it is, go inert and put out all your screens. Man your plates and weapons, for whatever can hypnotize can be killed. Go ahead at full blast, with all the acceleration you can get. Crash through anything that opposes you, and beam anything that you can detect or see. Can you think of anything else?”
“That should be sufficient, sir.” The captain’s equanimity was completely restored, now that the warlike preparations were making more and more nebulous the sudden, but single, thought wave of the Arisian.
“Proceed!”
The plan was carried out to the letter. This time the pirate craft struck the frail barrier inert, and its slight force offered no tangible bar to the prodigious mass of metal. But this time, since the barrier was actually passed, there was no mental warning and no possibility of retreat.
Many men have skeletons