Title: The Citadel of Death
Author: Selwyn, Carl
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Citadel of Death" ***


                         The Citadel Of Death

                            By CARL SELWYN

             Vulcan held the weirdest secret of the ages,
              one of eternal life that Rick Norman had to
            find to save his friend from death. But it held
             another secret, too--one that was so vicious,
             even knowing it meant Rick Norman was doomed.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Planet Stories Fall 1944.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"It's too risky for you to go alone, Johnny," Rick Norman said. "Wait
till I get through showing the Senator around the mine. Then if you
still think your gravity gadget can get us to Vulcan against Sun drag,
we'll go look into this Fountain of Youth business together." He knew
Johnny wasn't paying any attention to his argument, however, and as
he talked his big fingers were busy under the table unfolding the wax
paper from the two small green capsules--Martian knockout drops. Two
of them would be enough to put Johnny out for a week.

Johnny Gordon's black hair gleamed in the nightclub's orange light.
When he laughed, his tanned face was surprisingly boyish--surprising
because his name was linked with adventure in headlines on many
planets. "You think the patrol's going to be laying for me off
Mercury," he laughed. "Well, I'd like a little excitement."

Norman dropped the wax paper on the floor and hid the capsules in
his big palm. Johnny was right--they would've had a lot more fun if
they'd never bumped into that dead comet off Neptune. But how were
they to know that cold hunk of drift metal would turn out to be solid
platinum? That was three years ago and now their income was a number
like the circumference of Jupiter in feet. To him it was a devil of a
responsibility. To Johnny it was just plain boring.

But he couldn't let Johnny get himself killed running away from a full
dress suit. "Okay," he said, faking resignation. "You win." Roughly
handsome, Norman's hell or high water smile was as much a part of him
as his long legs. He filled their glasses as the orchestra started
moaning _Martian Moon_, dropped the capsules into the bubbly green wine
in Johnny's glass. "Here's to the Twenty-First Century Ponce de Leon,"
he smiled, raising his glass.

Johnny reached across the table and picked up the bottle. "Here's to
the boredom of a million dollars," he said and drank the toast straight
from the bottle. He wiped his chin, grinning. "You ought to know you
can't catch me on a Martian mickey. They stop the bubbles."

As Norman stared at the suddenly lifeless wine in Johnny's glass, he
realized there was only one thing left to do. He knew a couple of boys
who were pretty handy with a blackjack and he knew an old hunting lodge
in the Adirondacks where they could lock Johnny up for a week.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning as Norman was packing his bags, one of his "boys"
appeared at the door. His eyes were black and swollen. Embarrassed, he
held out an envelope. Norman tore it open.

"_You'll find your other playmate locked in my bathroom. I'll bring you
a jug full of the Fountain of Youth._" The note was written in Johnny's
careless scrawl! Norman flicked the ampliphone button in the little
table beside his bed.

"Interstellar Spaceport!" he ordered the invisible telemike as he
pulled a handful of bills from his pocket and shoved them at the
battered gentleman in the door. "Thanks for trying, Spike. Go kick
Johnny's bathroom door down. Joe's locked up in there--"

"Spaceport," the wall speaker said.

"John Gordon," Norman asked, waving Spike out, "has he been there?"

"Mr. Gordon took off half an hour ago, sir," said the ampliphone. "For
Mercury."

"Thanks...." As Norman clicked off the receiver, premonition crept over
him like a shadow. His hand moved to the receiver again--to call for a
ship and follow Johnny. Then the ampliphone buzzed under his hand.

It was the Senator. He was waiting at the capital.

As he started throwing shirts into his bag, Norman knew it was against
his better judgment. But after all, Johnny could take care of himself.
Spike's hamburger face proved that.

It was with this thought that he picked up the plump Senator and left
for the platinum comet. When the sleek private cruiser nosed into the
little world's artificial air three days later, the mine foreman met
them with a radiogram in his hand.

Silently cursing the static that had interfered with space reception
on the way over, cold fear clutched at Norman's heart as he read the
message. "The platinum's yours," he told the astonished mine foreman.
"Show the Senator around."

As their bewildered faces stared after him, he took off for Earth again
immediately.

The trip back was maddening and he ignored all speed laws as he roared
full-throttle into the bright mountain range that was New York City.
Newsboys were still shouting the headlines on the street when he
reached the hospital.

    "FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH IN TRAGIC REVERSE! JOHN GORDON FOUND IN
    DRIFTING SPACE BOAT! INVENTION MISSING!"

Norman shoved a bill at the driver, jumped out of the taxi and ran up
the hospital steps. The girl at the desk recognized him. "Room 947, Mr.
Norman. Dr. Smyth is expecting you."

He hurried to the elevator where a mob of reporters were also waiting.
"What do you think happened to him, Mr. Norman? Do you think he reached
Vulcan? What do you think became of his cruiser with the anti-gravity
invention?"

"Later, boys," Norman said, his familiar smile a little shaky now.
"I've got to see Johnny first."

A black-bearded doctor opened the door at his knock. From within the
room came an odd babbling sound like a child talking to itself. Looking
over the doctor's shoulder, Norman saw an old man lying on the white
bed. He stepped past the doctor into the room.

Propped up on pillows, the old man lay there like an ancient withered
mummy. Only his skull-like eyes were alive, yellow and wild as he
stared at his disfigured hands. His hands were more like paws for
each finger and thumb had been severed close to the palm, the scars
well-healed as if the mutilation had happened years ago.

"They found his pilot's license in his pocket," the doctor said, "and
the blood test proved his identity."

"No!" Norman said, turning back to the bed. "This is impossible!"

"I've given him a thorough examination," the doctor said. "He has every
condition of advanced senility. We can't say how he lost his fingers
nor how they healed so quickly. We only know this," his voice dropped
to a whisper, "that he is very near death of old age...."

Norman's eyes were damp. Through the window the afternoon sun lined the
old man's sunken cheeks with deep shadows, gleamed on his thin, white
hair. His voice was a high-pitched quaver. "My hands... my hands...."

Norman sprang to the bed, knelt beside the ancient creature. "Johnny!
It's me! Rick! Tell me what happened!"

But the old man stared at him blankly, then looked back down at his
hands again.

Norman got to his feet slowly. "Okay, Johnny," he said through tight
lips. "But I'll find out what happened to you. And I think I know where
to start."

Twenty minutes later, however, the pudgy Gorig Sade, Ambassador from
Mercury, could offer little information. He leaned back in his gilded
chair and raised his hand toward the sunset at the window. His right
hand was artificial, an electric member in flesh-like plastic. "Behind
that Sun," he said, a slight smile on his thick lips, "lies a planet
without a human footprint. Within the Mercurian Zone of Protection,
Vulcan is closely guarded by the Mercurian Zone Patrol. Vulcan is a
death trap--too close in the Sun's gravitational field. We cannot
answer to the safety of those who slip past the patrol and enter the
whirlpool."

Norman smiled, as a fighter smiles at his opponent when he comes out at
the bell. "That's enough of that line, Sade. When did your patrol last
see John Gordon? They were waiting for him off Mercury. You've had your
paid killers after him ever since he refused to sell out to you. Now
his gravitational counteractive turns up missing. It would have meant a
lot to Mercury--or to you, rather, since your rotten politics owns the
place."

Sade got to his feet like a disturbed bull. "Get out!" His electric
hand hummed as he raised it toward the door. "I shall see the Secretary
of State about your insult!"

Norman's left hand shot out like a striking snake, clutched the
Ambassador's collar and dragged him out of his chair.

"Okay, Sade," he smiled, "but there's one thing maybe you don't know.
Johnny built _two_ ships, a smaller one before he equipped the cruiser
he left in. I'm taking that ship to try to reach Vulcan. Johnny's
spectroscope proved a lot about this Fountain of Youth business and
now it's the only chance to save his life. Anyway, I'll find out what
happened to him, and if you had anything to do with it, I'm going to
tear your yellow throat out."

He slammed the sputtering Ambassador back into his chair, and left the
office. Now Sade would forget the Secretary of State and order his
patrol to be waiting for him. A burst of flame in desolate space and
who would know.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten minutes outside the Mercurian Zone of Protection, Norman welcomed
the misty glow as live nebulae engulfed the transparent dome
surrounding him. It brightened the monotonous blue light in the pilot
room and erased his lonely reflection in the foot-thick thermo-glass
that darkened the white-hot glare of space ahead.

Traveling near Mercury was like walking a tight rope. A few degrees
off course and the delicate balance between worlds would totter--jerk
him away to a charred plunge into the Sun. Also, Sade's wolves might
appear any moment now. But he'd get through them, he thought, slapping
the trigger grip of his panel guns. The picture of Johnny back there
in the hospital, however, was an ache in his throat that dulled his
excitement--an excitement reminiscent of hundreds of tight spots they'd
squeezed through together before they'd struck it right and traded
adventure for tea cups. Helpless, crazed, eighty years old before his
time--why hadn't Johnny waited! But he was bull-headed and bored,
anxious to prove what his spectroscope hinted--that Vulcan, close in
the arms of the mother Sun, was a spawning place for life itself. Ponce
de Leon again, in 2063....

Grinding out his cigarette, Norman glanced at the chart in his lap,
eyed the circle that was Vulcan, a white circle--_unexplored_. Deep in
the whirlpool of the Sun's gravitation, it had lured countless ships to
a hurtling destruction until a trade-wise Mercury placed guards around
the area and its siren world.

Norman glanced up from his musings as the filter's blue light darkened
the room again. The nebulae outside had vanished. Almost human, that
glass! The hotter it became outside, the darker the glass became--not
only shielding the pilot's eyes but perfectly maintaining the
insulation of the control room. Suddenly he jerked his head up, chilled
as he stared at the mirrored wall in front of him.

Reflected in the glass, a ghostly figure stood behind him in the galley
door.

"Hello."

It was a feminine voice. Slowly, Norman swung his long legs around
and stared at the girl, too astonished to speak. She was just a kid,
about fifteen years old, wearing baggy white coveralls. A mop of
honey-colored hair framed her pert freckled face.

She held up her hands as if to keep him away. "Now don't get excited."
Her blue eyes were like a kitten's. "I'm Dorothy Gray. My father owns
the _Daily Times_ and I work on the paper during vacation. I played
stowaway because you're on the trail of the news story of the century.
While you were checking out with the dispatcher," the girl grinned,
"I emptied your food locker and crawled in myself. I know you must be
trying to find out what happened to your friend. You're the type that
gets things done."

Grinding his teeth, Norman turned back to the control panel and
reached for the turn lever. Now he had to take this brat to Earth--when
Johnny's life depended on haste in the opposite direction. No! He'd put
her in a space suit and kick her out. Johnny was his best friend. His
anger hovered an instant over the decision. And in that instant he saw
the girl step aside. His mouth fell open as _another_ figure appeared
from the galley.

       *       *       *       *       *

This time it was a grown woman--breath-takingly grown. She walked in
like she owned the place, smoothing a tweed skirt above bare legs
that could have graced a glassilk hose advertisement. Above a crimson
blouse, her hair was black as sunless space against her cloud-like
skin. She was obviously Venusian, with the orchid-like beauty of all
women of the emerald planet. In her hand was a stubby jet of a pistol,
the round hole of its barrel staring into Norman's bewildered eyes.

"Hello, handsome," she said, ignoring the girl beside her. "I was in
your ammunition locker. I'm Keren Vaun. Just stick at those controls.
I'm here to make sure that the patrol gets you." She sat down on the
metal box beside the galley door. She crossed her trim legs and held
the pistol steady on one rounded knee.

"Okay," Norman smiled. "If that's the way you want it." He turned
around, clamped his long legs under the control seat, and flipped the
stabilizer switch. Their little world turned upside down, sprawling
both females across the floor in a mass of contrasting legs and arms.

When the switch flipped back into contact, the ship righted itself
instantly and Norman stepped across the room and picked up the pistol.
He stepped back and squeezed his panel triggers. Dead guns. "So you've
carted out all my ammunition and Sade is really after me."

The Venusian woman pulled herself up off the floor. "You'll find out
when the patrol sights you." Her black eyes looked as deadly as her gun
had.

"Let 'em come," Norman said.

As if his words were a cue, a bell tinkled in the room. He jumped to
the panel and turned a dial, lighting the blue filter to scan the void
outside. The magnetic detector warned of something outside--a patrol
cruiser!

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman fingered his triggers instinctively, then left the dead guns in
a rage as black as the Venusian's hair. The only thing he could shoot
at the patrol were his hull fire extinguishers. He clicked on the rear
view screen--he had to see the patrol first now--outmaneuver them
somehow. But behind him was only the blackness of space.

The raven-haired woman's sparkling eyes grew nervous. "If those fools
shoot--" She lit a cigarette, exhaling quickly.

The bell rang frantically. Something was coming at them, fast. He
traversed the screen again but around them was no visible thing. The
sun was too bright. There was only one thing to do. His hand fell on
the wheel, twirled it around to swoop off course--try to dodge the
patrol, wherever they were--take a chance on fighting his way back
against Sun drag.

A flash of red light burst into the room. The pilot room keeled over.
He fell to the room's glass ceiling that had suddenly become the floor.
The women landed in a perfumed heap on top of him.

He stood on the slick curve of glass, eyeing the cut-off on the control
panel which was now overhead. A patrol boat had come in from the Sun's
blind spot. They'd chanced a long shot. Jammed the exhaust tube and
thrown the stabilizer off balance. Seconds off course. Norman could
perhaps have brought her back. Minutes--the Sun was an inexorable pull.

Madly, Norman jumped to reach the cut-off--to cut the unbalanced rocket
blast that held the ship on its back in the increasing speed of their
dive. Out of control, they were streaking toward the Sun under full
power.

The diameter of the Sun is 108 times that of Earth. Its mass is 324,000
times as great. Mathematics could calculate easily the speed of falling
into that molten inferno but Norman knew only the thundering of his
heart in that silent room. He jumped three times for the cut-off
lever--and fell back. Then with fear like steel coils in his legs, he
floundered up once more, leaped from the glass and the tips of his
fingers brought down the clutch.

The room slowly moved out from under him, sliding the girls across the
smooth glass. He was at the controls before the ship righted itself.
Sweeping the panel, he jerked every rocket into reverse.

And nothing happened. The power of his blasts was nothing against the
direct pull of the Sun, this close. The ship hurtled toward its fiery
mass at terrific speed.

Among the battery of instruments on the panel was a small stratometer,
calibrated in seconds. Norman saw the pointer moving with the speed of
the second hand on a watch. With each jump of the pointer, they fell
thousands of miles. Despite the thermo-glass, heat grew in the room
like a live thing. In less than three minutes, he realized, the ship
would begin to _melt_. He sprang from the controls, bent over the long
coffin-shaped box beside the galley door. His fingers were frantic
thumbs as he set the dials. It wasn't merely a test of the gravitation
counteractive now. The mechanism _had_ to work or they would boil like
lobsters in the steam of the very air they breathed.

Dorothy Gray stood sensibly out of the way, watching his frenzied hands
switch the delicate instrument. The Venusian woman cursed softly,
straightening her twisted skirt. "Wait till I see Sade again!" she
said. "Ordering his men to fire when he knew I was in here--Hey!" she
demanded. "Why's it getting so hot in here?"

Dorothy pointed toward the instrument panel. "See that little clock,"
she said, oddly observant for one of her few years. "That's a
stratometer. My dad's shown 'em to me on the big passenger lines. It
says we're falling mighty fast. It's getting hot in here because we're
falling into the Sun."

Seconds thundered by as Norman twirled the rheostat knobs in the
counteractive, fighting to bring the delicate focus of its power
into play against the dread suction that was dragging them down. The
thermo-glass was jet black now against the solid heat outside. With
apparently a knowing hand, Dorothy set the air conditioning unit up to
maximum as drops of moisture formed on the ceiling and dampened the
pilot room like hot dew. The thermo-glass began to bulge slightly at
its invisible seams, first in thin ridges around the ceiling, jutting
out more and more as the mad heat increased. Protection against the
extremes of temperature in space, it was constructed to follow these
lines of expansion. But for how long?

Keren screamed, razor-edged above the electric tension in the room.
"Give me a parasuit!" she cried. "Get me out of here!"

Norman's fingers played the rheostats like a piano. Suddenly an
electric eye blinked red as the counteractive fell into focus on the
true gravity force sector of the Sun. As he leaped to the controls, his
eye caught a glimpse of the stratometer's small death-white face. They
were sixty seconds from cremation....

Slowly, with nerve-tight slowness, he turned the brake wheel a fraction
of an inch as the hand of the clock moved on. The room was dim, the
panel lights casting weird shadows along the black ridges in the seams
of the thermo-glass. The ridges jutted inward over an inch now, spaced
two feet apart like braces or rafters around the room.

Suddenly Keren threw herself upon Norman, locked her arms around
his neck, dragging his sweaty hands from the wheel. "Stop us!" she
whimpered hoarsely. "Stop us, handsome! I don't want to die!"


                                  II

Norman tried to fling her away from him but the fear-crazed woman
clutched his hair as he took the wheel again and he was almost dragged
from his seat as he turned the wheel another notch. The wheel blistered
his fingers, but he turned it with will-screaming slowness, ignoring
Keren's clawing hands. The pointer on the stratometer climbed up the
dial in short, inexorable jerks. Tick-tick-tick-tick! Tolling their
funeral march at a thousand fiery miles per second ... per second....

In the nightmare of those moments, Norman saw Dorothy's reflection
in the fog-smeared glass, tugging at the frantic brunette, trying to
pull her away from him. He saw her hand rise, a wrench in it. She
brought it down on the Venusian's dark head as the clock swept to its
nerve-breaking jump and he spun the wheel with all his strength.

It was a timeless instant. His hand lay limp on the wheel, his eyes on
Dorothy's dim figure in the foggy glass. She stood there like a bad
camera shot of a little girl dressed up in her papa's overalls. Then,
slowly, he realized that what he thought was the reflection of one
of her blue eyes was instead a small, luminous globe suspended in the
bright nothingness of sunlight ahead. He rubbed his sweat-burning eyes.

The blackness of the glass was fading quickly, the seam bulges
sinking back with the contraction. Without the slightest tremor, the
counteractive had stopped their plunge into the Sun, and the reverse
rockets had taken over. They were headed out again. The blue globe
grew swiftly as they approached. Source of a thousand tales of terror,
Vulcan sped toward them out of the distance.

In a few moments, washed air cooled the pilot room as the air
conditioning unit purred full speed. Its soft whistle, the brighter
light and Norman's instruments were the only evidence that they swam
effortlessly in a wild current that swept into the gates of the solar
hell.

"If we had enough insulation," Norman said, "we could go into the very
flames of the sun. Like we almost did anyhow." Johnny's counteractive
had given the universe new eyes--to seek an elixir to save his life.

Keren moaned.

Dorothy held a glass of water to Keren's scarlet lips. "There's a
mirror in the galley," she told her. "Go freshen up before we land."
Keren looked like a wilted orchid and Norman smiled, finding it
difficult to hate anyone after the ordeal they had just survived.

Keren's eyes raised to him with an unexpected softness as she stood up.
"I'm sorry I acted like an idiot," she said coolly. "You saved my life
and you won't regret it." She shook her sleek hair and turned to the
galley. "Get out of my way, brat!" she snapped at Dorothy and left the
pilot room.

Norman grinned at Dorothy. "You wield a wicked wrench," he said. "I'm
glad you're on my side."

The fifteen year old fugitive from a high school journalism class
grinned back, wrinkling her freckled nose. "You wield a wicked heart
attack," she said. "Miss Vaun's on your side now if not on mine."

He turned back to the controls. They were but a few minutes from the
unexplored planet. There was nothing he could do now but take the girls
along with him. A junior miss and a Venusian beauty queen, landing on
an unknown world.

As they approached, Vulcan filled their window, a great smooth
curve, its blue color lightening to green. Norman switched off the
counteractive and cut in the landing rockets.

When Keren's exotic perfume entered the room again, the land below was
a map of verdant plains, rolling mountains and glassy seas. Quickly it
swelled to jungle and flashing water and, with a champagne tingle in
his blood, Norman dropped toward an open well of meadow in the trees.

His excitement, however, was tinged with sadness. Johnny should be
here now. They had dropped upon a score of unknown worlds together.
Now he landed without his partner, in a last-hope venture to save that
partner's life.

The green vegetation was a colorful contrast against the bright yellow
of dead grass. They would have to be careful about fire, Norman knew.
He'd seen that thick grass on other Sun-tropical worlds; it burned fast
as gunpowder.

This close to the Sun, Vulcan probably had a constant wind. The
gravity seemed approximately the same as Earth's. He plugged in the
spectroscope to test the air and as he glanced out the window at the
intake valve a slow chill trickled down his back.

It wasn't only the wind moving the grass outside. The grass was
_growing._

Dorothy and Keren came to the window. As they watched, the grass beside
the hull rose two inches.

"It's horrible," Dorothy whispered. Then, "Look!" she shrilled,
pointing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman shook his head as if recovering from a blow, the words of the
Mercurian Ambassador ringing in his ears: "Vulcan is a planet without
a human footprint...." All science knew of this supposedly untrod
planet was suddenly a lie. There, beside the ship, was the unmistakable
imprint of a human foot.

As Norman looked up he saw a man step out of the jungle and walk toward
them across the grass. A jet gun bounced on the stranger's hip. He wore
high-top boots, a checkered hunting shirt and his black-mustached face
was heavily tanned. Norman tore himself from his bewilderment and
turned on the outside speaker. "Who are you! How did you get here?"

"Same way you did," the receiver brought the fellow's voice inside.
"Think you're the only one with a counteractive?"

To Norman's verified knowledge, Johnny's counteractive was the only one
listed under inter-planetary patents. He turned on Keren. "What do you
know about this?" But she held her carmine lips tight, staring out the
window.

"The air must be all right," he said. "Let's go." He took his jet gun
from the compartment in the control panel and strapped the holster
close to his right hand. Hot sunlight burnished the room as he threw
the panel switch opening the space port.

He walked to the door. The stranger waited below, hairy hands on his
hips. "I hope you've got an Earthian cigarette. They're scarce around
here."

Norman dropped the folding steps and Dorothy, curiosity bright in her
kitten-blue eyes, walked out into the windy sunlight. As Norman started
out, the port clanged shut in his face, hurtling him back into the
middle of the room. Rockets hummed as the ship leaped ten feet in the
air.

Keren stood before the panel with her hand on the rise lever. Norman
sprang across the room and jerked her aside as the ship sailed out of
the clearing and plowed through the tree tops. "I've had enough of your
tricks, lady!" he said through clenched teeth.

"No, handsome!" Keren cried. "You've got to get us away from here!"
Before he could right the ship she took him from behind and pinned his
arms to his sides.

"You fool!" Norman yelled, twisting her hands from him. "We're going
to crash!" But the woman fought like a panther, black eyes blazing.
Controls gone wild, the ship rolled over on its side, and bumped
heavily down into the shadowed mire and ground to a halt.

"You crazy witch!" Norman got to his feet, eying the sloping floor and
the smoke curling up from the leaves under the ship. The rockets had
set the woods on fire. His port rise-rockets dangled, a twisted mass
of tubes. "Why'd you do this?" he demanded, facing her with itching
fists. "Who was that fellow back there? Talk," he ordered, "before I
slap your painted face off!"

Her eyes were like a half-tamed cat's. "I'm not talking, handsome."

Norman looked into her black eyes and ice formed in his heart. "So that
was one of Sade's men back there."

The outside speaker was still on and in the silence came the crackle of
flame as the wind fanned the jungle fire into a rage of orange tongues
around the ship. The thermo glass instantly turned black and its
faithfully expanding seams began pushing inward against the heat.

Into the room came the hissing of a giant snake. The glass was suddenly
drenched with a misty green liquid.

_Antipyrol!_

The fire went out as Norman jumped to the window and a silvery bulk
floated down into the jungle beside them.

It was a space cruiser, a late model. Twin burnished coils encircled
its silvery hull-counteractive coils. Norman knew that, beginning now,
was an ordeal that could end only in death for himself or whoever
manned that ship. It was Johnny's ship. Inside it could not be a friend.

Through the filter glass, lighted with the fire gone, he could see out
but they couldn't see in. A port opened in the cruiser's glittering
side, steps fell to the jungle floor and three men stepped out.
Norman was not surprised. Two of them wore the fiery red uniform of
the Mercurian patrol and Norman's eyes narrowed when he saw their
companion. Fat, clad in a silk shirt with his electric arm swinging
jerkily, down the steps came the Mercurian ambassador, Gorig Sade.

He and his patrolmen strode through the muddy ashes with their guns
drawn. Norman's fingers itched for the triggers of his starboard guns.
With one burst--! But the guns were empty. Cursing the Venusian woman,
he reached for his pistol. He'd shoot it out point blank from the door.
Then as his hand moved toward the panel switch to open the door he
barely felt the needle enter his back. He saw Keren jump away with the
hypodermic needle in her hand.

If she had been a man Norman would have shot her on the spot. Instead,
he just looked at her with all the hate in his soul, feeling now the
stinging sensation in his back, knowing that _something_ was already
seeping into his veins--to knock him out, paralyze him, kill him--just
when he had a chance at Sade, just when he had a chance to solve the
mystery of Johnny's death sentence and perhaps find something here to
save him.

"The crash must have shook 'em up pretty bad," said a voice outside.
"We'll have to cut the door open."

Oddly, as Norman stared at the hypodermic syringe in Keren's hand he
remembered a trick he'd once pulled on Jupiter. A last ditch trick.

       *       *       *       *       *

His hand jumped to a lever on the panel and jerked it down. He heard
an oath mingled with the hiss of antipyrol as his full extinguishers
spurted their jets into the jungle for fifty yards around the ship.
When he looked out, he saw Sade and the two red-uniformed patrolmen
staggering about blindly in the green rain with their hands covering
their eyes.

"They'll be blind as bats for half an hour," Norman laughed, cutting
off the spray. He jerked a coil of rope from the panel compartment. "I
don't know what you stuck me with," he told Keren, "but if I go out,
you are going to be tied up till I come to." In a moment he had her
wrists securely tied behind her. Keren remained silent, staring at him
with black-cat eyes half closed.

Throwing the door switch, he stepped to the port and found the three
men standing in the ashes between the ships, digging at their swollen
eyes. "Get out," he ordered the sullen Venusian and she walked down the
steps ahead of him.

As he went out a streak of flame hissed over the woman's head and
splattered on the metal hull beside his shoulder.

He jumped backward into the cabin, behind the protecting wall. Peering
out carefully, he saw a gun barrel glinting in the cruiser's door. He
smiled. "Sade!" he yelled, loud enough for the blinded Mercurian on the
ground to hear. "I'm giving you five seconds to tell whoever's in that
cruiser to come out. Then I'm shooting you in the legs--then your good
arm--then your yellow belly!"

The fat man groped about wildly, helpless and confused.

"One!" Norman counted. "Two ... three ... four--"

"Come out, Swart!" Sade shouted. "He'll kill me!"

"Throw down your gun and come out with your hands in the air," Norman
ordered and to his surprise the dark-mustached man of his first
acquaintance appeared in the door with his hands upraised as a pistol
plopped into the mud. "Who else's in there?" Norman was taking no
chances.

"Nobody, Mr. Norman. That's all of 'em." With excitement in her voice,
Dorothy appeared behind the dark-faced Swart and Norman felt a warmth
of relief that she was safe. "They picked us up right after you left,"
she said.

"Come here and hold this gun, honey," Norman said. "Miss Vaun sabotaged
our ship but we've captured a whole herd of pigs and we're going to
have a barbecue." Dorothy ran across the mud to him. "Keep this gun
pointed at the fellow with the mustache. If he tries anything while I'm
tying his hands, pull the trigger."

In a moment, Swart was firmly bound and sitting on the cruiser's steps.
Sade and the patrolmen stood, rubbing their blind eyes and cursing.
"You slimy hog," Norman said, jerking Sade around as he kept an eye on
the patrolmen. "If I didn't want you to do a lot of talking first, I'd
tie this rope around your neck instead of your hands." It was the first
time Norman had ever tied up an artificial hand but he only pulled the
rope the tighter. Then he sat the unholy group down on the steps of the
ship and surveyed them with a wide grin.

"All right," he said, "who's talking first, before I start skinning
each one of you with a pen knife."

"There's a notebook in the cruiser, Mr. Norman," Dorothy said. "I heard
the fat one talking about it. They've found something here and the
notebook tells all about it."

"So it's all written down for me," Norman laughed. "Watch 'em, Dorothy.
If they get fidgety, call me." He entered the snug, well-remembered
cabin. Keren's hypo must have been pretty weak. He still felt nothing.

He frowned, puzzled to see a narrow tank built around the cushioned
wall. Pushing aside the space units--life preservers--hanging on their
customary hooks, he rapped the tank with his knuckles. It was heavily
insulated, a liquid of some sort sloshing inside. Shaking his head, he
went on into the pilot room where his eyes immediately fell on a small
black notebook lying on the control panel. He picked it up eagerly.

"_Complete life cycle accelerated_," he read on with an eerie thrill.
Then, abruptly universal scientific language. "_One year equals
approximately twenty minutes_...." Remembering the quick growing grass,
he read on with amazement. Then, abruptly the page became a cross-word
puzzle of chemical symbols--it would take time to figure them out--

"I don't want to stay out there, Mr. Norman," a voice interrupted him.
It was Dorothy standing in the door. "They're saying such bad words."

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman grinned. "Point your gun at 'em to hush," he said. She grinned
back, wrinkling her freckled nose and went outside again as he returned
to his perusal of the symbols.

They were a description of the elements in _something_, in a very
unusual combination. Then slowly his eyes raised from the notebook
again. Something deep in the shadows of his mind was trying to
speak--not about the symbols--about something else. Something he had
done? Something he had seen? Anyhow, Norman had been in enough bad
spots to pay attention when that ghostly feeling sounded its alarm.

Closing the notebook, he stepped across the pilot room and walked into
the cabin, into a pistol's point blank explosion.

The burst of flame seared Norman's left side. In the same second,
as his hand came up to grab the gun, he realized the impossibility
of getting it in time. Swart was too close. His hand dropped to his
blistered side. Swart had him between death and surrender.

"You're lucky," Swart's mustache wiggled as he spoke. "Get outside."

Dazed at the unbelievably swift change of events, Norman obeyed. And
as his foot hit the first step he knew what had called him from the
notebook.

Dorothy--_was no longer Dorothy_....

       *       *       *       *       *

She had been changed when she entered the ship a moment ago but he
hadn't realized it. Staring at her full lips, her higher cheek bones,
her snub nose that had straightened into a smooth profile--he forgot
the sudden switch of gun authority until Swart jabbed him in the back.

He went down the steps, his eyes on what had been the fifteen year old
fugitive from a high school journalism class. Just out of pig-tails and
giggles--Dorothy Gray was suddenly a woman. Her freckles were weirdly
absent now, her blond hair was longer, her arms were more full--her
legs--her--! Her white coveralls had shrunk on what was now a slim,
lithe figure. But it was really Dorothy--the same pert face, the same
kitten-like eyes, wide with an astonishment as great as his own.

Sade's laughter broke Norman's blank stare. "Next time you tie up a man
with an artificial arm make sure it isn't electric. It's easy to cause
a short circuit when you're soaked with fire extinguisher fluid and
when they short circuit they burn through rope very easily."

But Norman barely heard him, barely saw Swart untying the patrolmen
whose swollen eyes were beginning to see again. He was remembering!
"_Complete_ life cycle _accelerated. One year equals approximately
twenty minutes._" He offered no resistance as Swart jerked the notebook
from his hand. As the grass grew, so had Dorothy--so had Johnny, to the
horrible near-completion of his life cycle. But why wasn't Sade, Keren,
the others affected? Why not himself?

"Let's get in the ship," Keren broke into his thoughts. "There's no
sense wasting the best years of this girl's life out here." With an
unholy smile she walked up the steps into the cruiser.

"Get in the ship, Norman," Sade said, smiling like a puddle of oil.
"You've got a lot more to see before we waste the best years of your
life."

Inside the cruiser, Dorothy sank into a pillowed chair and jerked a
small pocket mirror before her blue eyes. She seemed unable to decide
whether to laugh or cry. Sade, Keren and the patrolmen left for the
pilot room, leaving Swart on guard. Immediately, the green foliage fell
away from the windows as the ship climbed out of the jungle.

There were tears in Dorothy's eyes but her newly red-bloomed lips were
tight. There was horror in this thing that had happened, years of her
life whisked away--she must be eighteen now, and she had the radiant
loveliness of clear sunshine.

But Norman's thoughts dwelt little on the heart-quickening results of
her sudden change. He pondered the change itself. Again he calculated
the time she had been exposed to whatever grim atmosphere enveloped
Vulcan--she couldn't have been out there more than a few minutes. And
in those few minutes she had raced through two long years.

"But why wasn't I affected?"

Swart sat across the cabin with his pistol in his lap, hungrily nursing
a cigarette he had bummed from Keren. "You were in the ship," he
squinted his amusement through a smoke ring. "She was on the ground."
He grinned, eyeing Dorothy. "Shows up better on her too."

So that was it--something in the dank soil. But what about the others?
He asked Swart, who only shook his head. "The boss'll tell you all
you need to know." And Norman knew there were many questions yet
unanswered. Johnny hadn't been one to fall into a trap laid by nature
alone. There was something going on here, more than he knew yet, and
something told him that he was on the right track--that in Vulcan's
strange power that dealt both beauty and decay, there was power here
that might save Johnny....

Finally Dorothy decided to laugh. "I don't know what happened," she
said, her voice no longer a child's, "but there seems nothing to do
about it--except to start running around with an older crowd when I get
back home."

_If_ we get back home, Norman thought mirthlessly. If he knew Sade, he
and Dorothy were both in the same boat, a boat that would not be long
afloat. "I'm sorry, Dorothy," he said. "It's my fault you're here."

"Wrong," she shook her blonde head. "I wanted to come with you." He
looked away, sensing for the first time that now, somehow, they were on
a different basis. Dorothy was no longer a child and her girlish hero
worship was apparently replaced by something more mature.

He felt the cruiser nose down. They were landing again.

Norman reached up and yanked a space suit from its wall hook, threw it
to Dorothy. "Put this on over your coveralls." As he jerked another
suit down for himself, he caught a glimpse of a jungle-walled clearing
with a peculiar shaped building at the end of a small landing field.

As they slid to a quick stop, the port opened and Sade and his little
group appeared again. The fat Mercurian laughed as he saw Norman and
Dorothy buckling on the stiff garments. He made no move to stop them.
"Keren tells me you're very interested in our little world," he said.
"That tank along the wall there holds what you're looking for, but
first we must show you around."

Encircled by the four patrolmen, Norman and Dorothy were hustled out
of the ship and across the landing field. The odd, light-house-like
building stood at the end of the field, a large windowless structure
with a conical tower on top. They were led to the building in silence,
ushered into a huge room and the door closed behind them. Venusian
mahogany paneled the tapestry covered walls and heavy carved furniture
was scattered about the room's creamy white floor. Sade opened a heavy
door at the side and motioned his prisoner-guests in.

"I haven't time to talk now," he said. "Here's something to entertain
you until I return." He flicked a button outside the door, then closed
the door, leaving them alone in the small room.

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman glanced at Dorothy, then turned to examine the place as he took
off his helmet. The room was small, dark paneled and windowless like
the one outside. A furry _zhak_-skin rug covered the black floor. He
started to speak, but a panel at the end of the room suddenly glowed
with the transparent clearness of a window. A television screen--what
was Sade up to!

Then Norman sucked in his breath through his teeth as Dorothy
clutched his arm. Not the withered creature of the hospital but the
tousle-headed guy he'd grown up with--Johnny's image appeared on the
screen.

Johnny stood in what at first appeared to be a clearing in the jungle
but as he kicked at some invisible obstacle, Norman realized a wall of
glass separated him from the surrounding field outside. The scene was
sparkling clear, as if they were watching through a window Johnny's
futile efforts to scale the smooth wall. His path around the enclosure
proved it to be circular, about eight feet in diameter. Norman ground
his teeth. So Johnny _had_ been Sade's prisoner!

Johnny took off one of his metal-soled shoes and started hammering the
fine glass as if something whipped him into a frantic effort to escape.
Dorothy silent beside him, Norman watched the black-haired boy rub his
eyes wearily as he pounded with the shoe. How had Sade gotten this
picture? What was his purpose in showing it now? The glass of Johnny's
prison must have been superbly invisible but soft for slowly he ground
a shallow niche at the base of the wall, a foothold.

Norman felt like yelling a cheer but he whispered an oath as he
watched Johnny grind out a higher foothold. Trying to carve a niche
higher still, his fingers stained the glass red. Quickly the glass
was dripping with blood. "Look at his hands!" Dorothy whispered. In
Johnny's efforts to cling to the wall, the ground glass was eating away
the tips of his fingers.

And Norman shuddered to see the gray change creeping over Johnny's
face. Before his eyes, Johnny's dark hair became streaked with gray
and his ashen face became furrowed with wrinkles. Horror-ridden years,
swiftly heaped upon him.

Dorothy covered her face with her hands. But Norman couldn't tear his
eyes from the luminous screen. The film had been cut to speed it up.
Johnny had hacked five slits in the glass now. His fingers and thumbs
were ragged stumps as he hung on the splintered glass, ten feet up the
blood-smeared wall. And in his terrible fascination, Norman saw that
Johnny's hands healed almost as fast as they were torn. As the dry
flesh of age withered his face, as he sacrificed his hands in a mad
struggle to escape the invisible terror in Vulcan's sunlight.

Norman slammed his fists against the locked door. "Sade! You scum of
the universe!" But there was no answer as his eyes were drawn back
to the screen to see Johnny's fingerless paws grasp the rim of his
prison. A wrinkled, animal-like thing, eyes yellowed and wild, he drew
up his gnarled legs and fell over the glass wall into the gravel on the
other side. Half crawling, half running, he disappeared quickly into
the trees.

As though a prolonged roar of sound had suddenly ceased, the panel
darkened, leaving only Dorothy's muffled sobs.

But in Norman's brain was a numb hate that froze his reason. He didn't
hear the door open behind him.

"Interesting, wasn't it?" It was Sade's voice. "But in a moment an even
more interesting experiment will take place in my laboratory."

Norman turned slowly. Swart and the two patrolmen stood with the fat
man at the door. Norman took one quick step forward. His right hand
shot out. His fingers sank like spikes into the flabby skin of Sade's
throat. Another split second and Norman's fingers would have met behind
the Mercurian's windpipe and ripped it out, but in that split second
the patrolmen were on him. Then he was on the floor, fighting silently
in the blackness of his fury. A heavy boot caught him behind the left
ear and the blackness engulfed him completely.


                                  III

Battered and bruised, he found himself on his feet when he came to.
Sade stood in the door, his good hand fingering the blue welts on his
throat. His shirt was in shreds, exposing the white blob of flesh that
was his body and the helpless sausage-end stump that was his right arm.

"If I could get my hands on you--" Norman whispered.

"You won't again," Sade said hoarsely. "You're in my hands now. And
within the hour I shall have _two_ of them. With them I shall keep you
alive forever while you die a thousand deaths. I hold the key to life
and death, on Vulcan...." He whirled again and left, followed by his
henchmen and the door locked again behind them.

The silky _zhak_-skin rug was worn with Norman's pacing when he heard
the key click in the lock again. The door opened to Keren Vaun. Ghostly
beautiful against the soft light outside, her starry loveliness meant
nothing to Norman. He sprang to the door and covered her scarlet lips
with one hand, closed the door quickly. "Tell me how to get to Sade,"
he demanded, "or I'll wring your neck right here!"

Keren remained rigid until he loosened his grasp. Then: "Shut up," she
whispered. "I came to help you escape." She didn't look at Dorothy. "I
came to help you on one condition. That you take me with you--alone."

Norman hesitated three heart beats. "Let's go," he said. He heard
Dorothy gasp behind him but he didn't even look back as Keren opened
the door, finger to her lips, and led him out.

Locking the door behind her, she led him down a dim, white-floored
corridor. Norman walked carefully, the baggy suit rustling as he moved.
Keren halted before a door at the side of the passage. Glancing up and
down the vacant hall, she opened the door quickly and went in. Norman
followed.

The room was bare with another closed door on the other side. "You
don't need that space suit," Keren ordered. "Take it off." Norman
peeled the suit off obediently. It was no time for questions. "When I
jabbed you with that hypo before Sade found us, it immunized you. It's
a vaccination Sade discovered; we're all protected here."

As Norman marveled at this strange woman, understanding now that fact
of his own salvation from the powers of Vulcan, she motioned toward
the door opposite the one through which they had entered the room.
"Sade's--John Gordon's cruiser is outside where we left it, about a
hundred yards from this door. It's unguarded but there's a guard in
the tower. He'll shoot when he sees you so you must get to the ship
quickly. The cruiser's guns are loaded. If you make it, take off and
blast this building. I'll run for the woods." Keren's heavy-lashed eyes
met his. "When they are dead, Vulcan will be ours."

Norman smiled. "What if I don't come back? What if I pull out and radio
Earth for help?"

Keren returned his smile, her eyes like a moonless night. "If you don't
come back, I'll kill the Earth girl inside." She threw back her head,
hair swirling at her pale throat like the flow of black oil. "Now kiss
me--and go."

It was a choice; Keren's life or Dorothy's. If he got the ship and
Keren ran for the woods, his guns would have to find _her_ before they
turned on the house. Then he could bargain with Sade by radio. "I'll
owe you a thousand kisses," he said, opened the door, and darted out
into the sunlight. Then it was raining red heat as liquid fire spurted
around his pounding legs.

A bare twenty yards ahead, the cruiser waited, glinting silver in the
sun. His pants leg caught fire and he could feel its blistering heat,
fanned by the wind, as he streaked across the gravel.

Then he saw it too late. A sheen of crimson in the air. Streaks of
red, painted on nothing. _Johnny's blood!_ Flame from the guns behind
him sizzled on the invisible glass as Norman, unable to check the
piston power of his legs, crashed into the invisible wall of what had
been Johnny's prison. His forehead hit the glass with a hollow ring.
Clutching the wall with both hands, he slid down to the gravel and into
darkness for his second failure that afternoon.

Roughly, they dragged him back to the house. But he wasn't out. Through
the searing pain in his head he had fought back to consciousness as
the patrolmen touched him. His mind limped through the pain, trying to
figure out what to do now as they dragged him into the big front room
and dropped him on the floor.

"Imbeciles! Careless fools!"

The voice opened Norman's eyes, banished the throbbing in his head as
he struggled to his feet. But the two patrolmen locked his arms behind
him.

"How did he get out!" The fat man glared from Norman to the patrolmen.
Swart stood beside him.

"There were only two keys to that room," Swart suggested.

Sade's florid face paled, then his button eyes flickered with the cold
cruelty of a wild animal. "Find Keren," he said softly. "Bring her to
my laboratory."

Rick's eyes showed helpless fury as his arms tightened in the
patrolmen's grasp. "Keren had nothing to do with it," he said. "I
picked the lock."

Sade reached out and slapped his face repeatedly with his open palm.
Hands clamped behind him, Norman took it, barely feeling the stinging
blows, their impact light under the impact of what he saw.

"Yes! It's real!" Sade halted his slapping and, laughing like a fiend,
rolled up his sleeves. He held his hands up close before Norman's eyes.
Norman shuddered, staring at Sade's right hand. Slightly smaller,
ghastly white but firm, where the stump of Sade's right arm had been
was now flesh. Blood coursed through the bulging veins, a pale hand
extended pudgy fingers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sade howled with laughter as Norman drew back from the thing as from a
snake. "It's real!" Sade shouted, gleefully. "Flesh and blood! I have
two hands now!" Exultantly, he held his clenched fists before Norman's
white face. "In these hands I shall hold the pulse of the universe,
to let it throb or halt at my will. I shall be neither king nor
dictator--I shall be a god! The power of life and death in the universe
is mine!"

Lifting his gaze from the hands, Norman met the fat man's eyes coldly.
"How'd you do this, Sade?"

Sade's laughter dwindled to a greasy smile. "After seeing what the
power of Vulcan did to your friend, perhaps it is fitting that you
should see this power in reverse." He nodded at the patrolmen. "Bring
him along."

In an arm-lock on both sides, Norman was dragged down the same corridor
where he had followed Keren in his futile attempt to escape. They
halted at a door at its far end. Sade opened the door and Norman was
shoved in.

The place was white-walled and bare, like a hospital room but without
the usual furniture. On a four-legged platform in the center of
the room lay a large porcelain cylinder, like a chamber used for
sterilizing surgical instruments, but the surface of the cylinder was
smooth, without gadgets, only a heavily bolted cap at one end. Sade
patted the cylinder as a sculptor might admire the work of his chisel.
"This holds what John Gordon sought and what you seek now to save his
life," he smirked. "This container holds fluid from Vulcan's Fountains
of Youth!"

Standing before the cylinder, Norman's mind's eye searched the
situation for some chance of escape. Here was what he had come so far
to obtain and he was powerless to take it. But perhaps it wasn't time;
there was much he needed to know.

"Vulcan's power is a radiation," Sade said, "but not from the Sun. It's
a liquid under the ground, like Earthian oil--a radioactive element
such as science has only found traces of in the cosmic rays. More
powerful than radium, it exudes an exciter to growth--a living force."

"How'd you discover it without being affected by it?" Norman asked.

"Your friend Gordon was the guinea pig," the Mercurian said. Norman
kept still. "After we took him and his cruiser when he entered the
Protection Zone, we came here immediately. Working in space suits
until my technicians on Mercury discovered an immunization, we brought
Vulcan's strange liquid in like an oil gusher. The effect of the pure
liquid is instantaneous; its effects on the surface of the ground
outside are greatly diluted. While we built this house round the well,
we watched Vulcan's milder effects on your friend in the glass cage."

Norman's jaw paled, but he kept his head. "How did Johnny get off the
planet after he escaped?"

"Fool!" Sade laughed. "He didn't escape. We could stay and watch him
every minute--that's why we left the automatic camera to record his
reactions. He did contrive to get out of the cage but when we found
him in the jungle we simply took him off the planet and dropped him in
space in a life boat where he'd be picked up." Sade laughed again. "Did
you think I didn't know he built two ships with counteractives! John
Gordon's return was merely a message to you--to come here in that other
ship. Now we have the only counteractives in existence. Vulcan is an
utterly impregnable fortress. No army in the universe can interrupt my
plans."

Norman realized that everything Sade said was true. No power could
approach Vulcan without a counteractive. "What are your plans, Sade?"

The fat man held up his new right arm, his small eyes glowing. "My
technicians obtained for me the hand-bud of an unborn child. It was
embedded in the stump of my right arm." He stared at his hand stretched
its white fingers, his thick lips smiling. "With but a brief exposure
of my arm to a spray of Vulcan's liquid in full strength, I _grew_ the
hand of a thirty-year-old man!" He banged the cylinder with his fist.
"What would happen if I sprayed this life-death fluid in a city street!
It can be placed in a shell and fired from a gun. I have here a _Force_
that can cause the most horrible of wounds--quick decay. It can utterly
destroy or immediately heal. How I use this power depends upon how
quickly the governments of the universe submit to my wishes in a new
stellar order."

But Norman had a question stronger than his hopelessness at what he'd
just heard. "Could this liquid help John Gordon now?"

Instead of replying, Sade smiled. He stepped over to one of the
room's blank walls and pressed a small button. A wide panel slid back
revealing several tiers of wire cages containing monkeys, rabbits,
and white rats. Sade scooped a plump slick rat out of its cage and
and closed the panel again. Walking back to the cylinder, he slapped
the helpless creature's head against his wrist and stunned it. Then,
drawing a flat shelf from the cylinder's platform, he dropped the
unconscious rat on it and threw the heavy bolts on the cylinder's cap.

       *       *       *       *       *

Inside the thick-walled container, Norman discovered, were neatly
coiled tubes hanging on pegs. Sade grabbed one of the small hoses,
pulled it out and squeezed a button on the little nozzle. A fine,
blood-red spray hissed from the nozzle and he directed the red mist
upon the limp body of the white rat. The damp liquid had barely touched
the rat's fur when instantly its small face wrinkled, its fur grew
coarse and thin and it assumed the appearance of a very old animal.

Still smiling, Sade glanced at Norman's troubled gaze, then shut off
the hose, stuck it back in the cylinder and drew out another. The spray
that dampened the rat this time was light pink. The rat's coarse coat
thickened, its sides swelled before Norman's eyes and youth was born
anew in the little animal's very brain as it leaped to its feet and
scurried around the shelf with all the energy of fresh strength.

"It's like many poisons," Sade said. "Full strength, its effect is
death. Greatly diluted--with mere water--its miracles make it an elixir
supreme...."

The door opened to Keren, followed by Dorothy and Swart. Keren's poise
little hinted she'd plotted Sade's death less than an hour ago. Dorothy
had removed her space suit; her eyes were red from crying. Keren took a
cigarette from her loose blouse. "You sent for me, Sade?"

The Mercurian's eyes were like a rattlesnake's as he held out his two
hands for her to see. "I have these now," he said softly. "Soon I shall
have every world at my command. Will you marry me?"

The dark-haired woman lit her cigarette calmly, her hand steady. "Yes,"
she answered simply.

Sade laughed. "You say yes now because your life is at stake--because
you tried to aid the Earthman. But for that you won't lose your life,
Keren. You will lose something you value more than your life, Keren.
You will lose--your beauty. Get a rope, Swart."

Keren flicked her cigarette into Sade's face. Quick as a whip, her hand
entered the throat of her blouse. Norman saw the glint of naked metal
flash in an arc toward Sade's chest. Dorothy gasped.

[Illustration: _Keren whirled and lunged at the screaming Mercurian._]

The silver dagger sank into Sade's chest just over his heart. The fat
man staggered back. But before he could fall, Swart acted, as quick as
a ferret, clipped Keren's chin, and as she crumpled silently to the
floor, he caught the gasping Mercurian and eased him down.

From Sade's chest blood spurted higher than the dagger's hilt as Swart
yanked one of the hoses from the cylinder and directed its crimson
spray on Sade's wound. Slowly, Swart drew out the dagger's sticky blade
in the spray. When the dagger was out of Sade's chest there was no
visible sign of a wound. Sade opened his eyes and looked up at them.

"What shall I do with her?" Swart said.

Sade got to his feet. He stood there, panting a moment. "The rope," he
said. Swart pushed a wall button, extracted a length of cord from a
panel compartment and returned. "Tie her to the cylinder," Sade hissed,
"and tie the nozzle of the hose in her hair."

In a moment, the unconscious Keren was hanging by her backward-bent
arms from the cylinder. The cord was tight from her wrists, around
the cylinder and under to her slim ankles. In her hair was fixed the
slowly oozing hose. A rivulet of red trickled down her smooth cheek.

"What about these two?" Swart said, motioning toward Norman and Dorothy.

"While we go to repair the new counteractive ship which Mr. Norman so
kindly brought us," Sade said, "we can leave him and his girl in the
glass cage."

As they were marched across the field, Norman remembered Johnny's
face on the hospital pillow--tragic, old. Now, in the green beauty of
this time-thundering world, this same fate reached for them as it was
caressing Keren's cheek in the white-walled room in the tower. Norman
put his arm around Dorothy's shoulder.

She drew away. "You deserted me for Keren once. Worry about her now,
not me."

Swart grinned. "You can argue that out while you grow old together," he
said. The patrolman who had come out with them picked up a metal ladder
beside the invisible wall and leaned it against the rim of the glass.
Then, smiling, he walked back and grabbed the collar of Dorothy's
coveralls. "We sealed up the chinks to keep 'em from pulling the same
trick Gordon did but hadn't we better strip 'em to make sure?"

Norman's fists tightened but he felt the barrel of Swart's pistol dig
into his side. Then, on a quick thought, he drew a half-empty pack
of cigarettes from his pocket. "Leave her alone, Swart. We haven't
anything to escape with. Take these cigarettes for our clothes."

The dark man's hand snatched them greedily. "I don't know why I don't
take both." But he stepped away from the ladder and waved his pistol at
them. "All right. Get in there. In ten seconds I'm shooting."

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman followed Dorothy up the rungs of the ladder, climbed around her
and--as Swart raised his gun menacingly--hung on the rim of the glass
and dropped the twenty feet to the gravel inside their prison. Dorothy
climbed over and dropped into his waiting arms.

As the patrolman took the ladder down, Sade and the other red-uniformed
gorilla left the house and walked toward them across the field. They
came up and halted before the glass, staring in at them and laughing.
Dorothy stood beside Norman and he took her hand tightly.

"When they leave we'll start to work," he whispered. "We've got to get
you out of here quick."

"Why only me?"

He told her about Keren's hypodermic work. "But first you've got to
believe me," he said. "I didn't desert you when I left with Keren. It
was our only chance to escape. I was coming back for you. You've got
to believe me." He turned and took her shoulders in his hands, looking
into her blue eyes.

She bit her lips, staring at him. Then, "I don't want to believe
anything else."

Norman squeezed her shoulders, then glanced up to see Sade and his men
walking toward the cruiser, leaving the house deserted except for Keren
chained to a doom of unspeakable horror inside. The cruiser leaped from
the field and floated past them over the jungle. Eying the high rim
of the glass wall, Norman waited until the ship disappeared over the
horizon, then backed against the glass quickly and held out his hand.

"Quick!" he told Dorothy. "Stand on my shoulders and try jumping!"

Dorothy placed one small foot into his hand and swung up to his
shoulders. Norman raised to his tiptoes--every inch counted. "Jump!
High!"

Her fingertips missed the rim of the glass two full feet and clawing
the slick surface, she slid back down into Norman's arms. "Try again!
We've got to get you out of here!"

Again and again she placed her foot in Norman's hand, swung up, leaped
high--and fell back again, her forehead bruised from bumping the glass,
her fingernails broken.

"You'll never make it," Norman said wearily. "We've got to think of
something else." Hammering his fist into his palm, he started pacing
the wall. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and started clawing the
gravel. But he hadn't dug six inches when he scraped against concrete.
Several different holes proved the ring of glass rested on what had
been a refueling platform. "Sade would have thought of that."

He started pacing the wall again, running his hand around the smooth
glass. There _had_ to be a way out! The glass had been the pilot-room
shell of a ship, its tapering nose sliced off. He thought of trying to
rock it back and forth to turn it over. But the glass weighed tons.

He turned and stared at Dorothy helplessly. She had scratched her
finger in one of her falls. Proving again that only her body had grown,
she immediately stuck her finger in her mouth upon the discovery of the
scratch. Norman's brain seethed. He couldn't let this girl die here.

Now, he realized, he faced the same problem that had been Johnny's. And
he knew what withering shadow would claim Dorothy's lips if he failed.
Vulcan was a hell of priceless, fleeing moments; each heartbeat a drum
sounding a sickening doom of decay. Each tick of his watch was the
footfall of death one step closer. The invisible terror that hovered
over Vulcan was beyond the grasp of imagination--but it was real! As
real as Keren's pale face under that trickle of red horror, as real as
Dorothy's fresh loveliness which would soon be eaten away--unless he
could get her away from here.

Neither he nor Dorothy had any metal with which he might attempt
Johnny's mad feat. Standing there, looking about the enclosure,
Norman's heart beat quicker with each second as each second took its
unseen toll upon the girl who was his responsibility. Looking at her
golden hair glinting in the sunlight, Norman suddenly realized she was
more than a responsibility.... Quickly he turned away.


                                  IV

The glass was thick, perfectly clear. Only its glimmer in the sun said
they were imprisoned. Beyond the field, the ever dying and growing
jungle undulated like a green sea. Just outside the glass, the ladder
lay on the gravel where the patrolman had dropped it--within arm's
reach and it might as well have been light years away.

"Look!" Dorothy cried. "The scratch on my finger's already healed."
She held up her finger and there was no mark on it. Vulcan's power
was working, building a life then to tear it down. Each soul-wringing
second created beauty, clear blue-eyed, honey-haired beauty--to
transform it as swiftly into ugliness....

It was the first time in Norman's eventful life that he had ever stared
defeat in the face. He had met death before and he had been in some
pretty tight spots but always there had been some way out. Not here.
There was no possible way to climb a twenty-foot wall of perpendicular
oil-slick glass.

"I'm afraid I've failed you, Dorothy," he said. In his mind now was
only the thought of something he must _not_ do. He couldn't allow her
to go through the horror he had seen on Johnny's gray face. After two
hours, when he saw the first gray hair--he looked down at his hands.
They were his only weapons against a longer torture. Could he kill
Dorothy with his own hands...?

"Well," Dorothy broke in on his thoughts. "Sade wins; and when we go,
the whole universe is next." Her voice was a full octave lower than
Norman had first heard it when she appeared at his galley door.

Norman walked over and stood before her. "Whatever happens," he said,
"I want you to know this--that I've fallen in love with you. You're the
bravest woman I've ever known and the most beautiful. That combination
usually doesn't go together."

She looked up at him with very blue and serious eyes. "I've been in
love with you for a long time," she said. "Ever since I first saw your
picture in the paper. That's why I came with you."

Her words were cut off by Norman's lips. Then quickly he left her and
walked back to the glass, staring out at the wind-whipped jungle. Why
wait? Why go through this torture any longer? Get it over with now!

"Gods of the universe, forgive me," he whispered and turned to take her
throat in his hands.

Light flashed across his face. It was Dorothy's mirror. She held
it, smoothing her sun-burnished hair. A thought burst into his
consciousness like a butterfly from a cocoon.

He jumped over and snatched the mirror from her hand, ripped his watch
from his wrist and flipped off the crystal with his thumbnail, letting
the watch drop to the ground.

"What're you doing!"

He didn't bother to answer. His pulse was liquid fire as he held the
watch crystal close to the glass wall with one hand and focused the
rays of the sun into it with the mirror. A thin curl of smoke rose from
the jungle across the field. Then where the smoke had been an orange
flame licked up from the dry grass. He dropped the mirror and the watch
crystal and grabbed Dorothy close to him in the center of their prison,
holding her tightly.

"Why! Why!"

"You'll see!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lashed by the wind, the fire spread like a flood. A blast of smoke
engulfed the glass obscuring their view with its swirling whiteness.
Then bits of flaming ashes dotted the smoke as the flames found new
fuel in the rotted trees. Standing there, holding Dorothy in his arms,
Norman saw the glass around them slowly darken. Quickly, as the wind
brought the increasing heat upon them, the glass turned black and all
he could see was the wild smoke rolling across the hole at the top
of their stifling cage. He felt Dorothy coughing. Heat swam in the
blackness about them.

Then almost as suddenly as it had begun, the wind swept the smoke away
and Norman tore himself away from Dorothy and sprang to the glass wall.
Without waiting till the glass lightened, he ran his hand across its
blistering surface. When the thermal quality of the glass permitted
the passage of light and the sight of the smoldering forest across the
field, Norman was half way up the slick side, climbing like a ladder
the bulging ridges that encircled the glass at its invisible seams.

As Dorothy stared at him, unbelieving, he vaulted over the rim and
jolted with stinging feet to the hot gravel outside. The metal ladder
was like a live coal in his hands but he barely felt it as he threw it
against the wall and ran up it like a squirrel. Sitting on the cooling
rim, he drew the ladder up after him and dropped it inside for Dorothy.

Soon they were streaking across the steaming gravel toward the house,
Dorothy's hair streaming in the smoky wind.

Norman burst into the big front room with Dorothy behind him. Their
running feet were loud in the silent house as they sped down the
corridor, Norman dreading what he would find tied to the cylinder where
they had left Keren. "You don't want to see this," he said, halting at
the closed door. "Try these other doors and find a gun. Sade may be
back any moment!"

Dorothy obediently turned away as he went in and the sight that met his
eyes was to figure in many a future nightmare. Half way between the
door and the cylinder, Keren lay on the floor, more like some hideous
reptile than a human being, staring up at him, her eyes two black
holes, hate alive in them, the only life in what was left of her face.

Norman stepped over and picked her up, his fingers recoiling from
the touch of leathern skin and bone. Her luxurious hair had vanished
leaving a skull, cracked skin tight across her cheek bones. The rope
that had held her to the cylinder had slipped from her shrunken wrists
and how she had crawled this far, Norman couldn't tell.

He carried her to the cylinder, opened the heavy cap and drew out
the small hose that Sade had used to restore to youth the white rat.
Quickly, he sprayed the pink liquid upon her face and body--a treatment
that was to rewrite all of medical science. Her cheeks swelled again
to the form of a living face and like a trick of superimposed motion
picture work, before his eyes Keren's skeletal structure became covered
again with firm, rounded flesh, and on her head wispy black threads
appeared and extended again into a silken sable mass.

To save the spark of life that remained with Johnny, Norman knew he had
to get this material back to Earth now; which meant a finish fight for
a space ship. "Are you strong enough now? We've got to ambush Sade."

It was an effort for Keren to reorganize her forgotten coordinations
which enabled her to speak. Her lips moved soundlessly as he carried
her to the door and down the passage. He explained quickly how he and
Dorothy had escaped.

"There are guns in the tower," she managed to whisper as they entered
the front room.

Dorothy stood at the door with two jet rifles, peering out at the still
deserted field. "I found these in their bedroom," she said, handing
Norman one of the guns. "Is she all right? I thought--"

Norman told her what he had done to revive Keren. "But here's what we
do," he said, lowering Keren to a sofa. "Sade will see the empty cage
and know there's something wrong when he comes in to land. He will
probably attack the house. We've got to get back in the cage. Keren can
vaccinate you," he nodded to Dorothy, allaying her hesitation. "When
they land, I'll jump out and take care of as many as I can. Keren can
get the rest from the tower."

"There's a glass cutter in the store room," Keren said, nodding her
approval of the plan. Her cheeks were white as paper but she got up and
walked unsteadily from the room.

"The liquid brought her back from the grave," Norman whispered to
Dorothy, watching Keren walk up the hall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Keren returned immediately, and gave Norman the glass-cutter, which was
an instrument shaped like a small riveting hammer. "One promise," she
asked. "Sade's mine. I'll be in the tower. You've got to save him for
me."

Keren took her hypodermic from her pocket and, at Norman's smile,
Dorothy permitted the needle to enter her arm. "All right. Let's go."

With the cutter in one hand and the rifle in the other, Norman left the
house again with Dorothy running beside him.

At the glass cage again, it was short work to cut a narrow door at
the base of the smooth wall. With an eye on the horizon, Norman
quickly covered the cutter with gravel, then motioned Dorothy into the
invisible enclosure that had been their prison and so nearly their
mausoleum. "We'll play dead," he explained, stretching out on the
gravel with the two rifles hidden under him. Dorothy lay down beside
him. "When they leave the ship and come over here, I'll jump out. You
stay inside in case they get a chance to shoot back."

Suddenly the air hummed with the flow of rockets. "Here they are!" But
the sound told Norman that his job was doubled in danger. There were
two ships now, the other, his own. They'd repaired it.

Rockets idling, they hovered over the field and slowly settled. Sade's
group was now split in two parties--he couldn't surprise them both....

"Don't move!" Norman whispered, feeling Dorothy's soft hair against his
cheek. His fingers tightened on the guns under his body. His pulse was
loud in his ears. If they suspected something? But it was too late for
worry now. He heard footsteps on the gravel as the sound of the rockets
sputtered and died away.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next second was a lifetime. Then suddenly he was on his feet. He
whirled, ducked out through the hole in the glass. The guns in his
hands were spitting their red streams, before his eyes found the men
before him, and he played the guns like two garden hoses, spraying
death. The two patrolmen fell, charred and black. But the two groups
had ruined his ambush. Swart sprang aside, behind the glass wall as the
flame streaked past him. Norman saw Sade standing in the door of the
ship, staring at the wild scene. The door was slammed shut as Norman's
guns splattered the hull with fire. Then the fight was between him and
Swart alone.

On the opposite sides of the ring of glass, Dorothy standing there
horrified between them, it was one of the strangest situations in
Norman's experience. The glass was impervious to jet fire. Dorothy was
perfectly safe. But as Norman moved around the wall to get a shot at
Swart, the dark little man also moved, keeping the arc of glass between
them. It couldn't continue. A sudden sheet of flame rushed past one
side of the glass, Sade firing from the ship. Swart was not slow to
take advantage of the opportunity. Quickly he slid around the wall to
corner Norman against Sade's fire.

Norman stood waiting, rifles poised to blast Swart's gun barrel as it
nosed past the curve of glass. But Swart was no fool. He was playing
for time. Norman heard the throbbing as Sade started his rockets. Sade
was moving the ship to trap him between their guns.

Norman started to jump back through the hole in the glass. But that
would be suicide; while Swart guarded the door, Sade could pick them
off from above in the ship. Then an idea whispered in Norman's mind.
If he could lure Swart from the protection of the glass into Keren's
sights in the the tower--if he could trust Keren--but there was nothing
else to do. He ducked into the enclosure beside Dorothy.

Swart laughed. Norman could hear it inside the glass. Quickly, Swart
stepped to the edge of the hole, his pistol covering their exit,
smiling at them through the wall. "You ain't very bright, Norman." It
was the last breath that ever passed his lips, for a long, thin line of
flame suddenly stretched from the tower to the small of his back. Swart
dropped without a sound, surprise on his dead face.

But Sade's ship was already in the air.

"He'll come and strafe us!" Norman shouted to Dorothy above the roar of
the rockets. He took her hand, dragged her out of the cage past Swart's
body. They had to get to the cruiser; their only hope was a fight with
Sade in the air. But the sound of Sade's rockets stopped Norman in his
tracks as he started to dash for the cruiser. Sade's ship was skimming
the field, twenty feet off the ground, his rockets sputtering like a
gasoline engine with a broken piston.

The ship was headed directly toward the house, apparently unable to
rise. Then Norman saw what had happened. Keren's rifle had hit the
rise rocket tube. The heavily repaired solder work had burned through.
Unable to gain altitude, the ship hurtled into the house like a freight
plane gone wild. The plastic walls ripped like tinfoil as the ship's
heavy nose plowed into the building just below the tower.

There was no explosion. The impact killed the rockets. Dust plumed
up like a geyser, disappeared swiftly in the wind, leaving the ship
hanging there tail out, stuck in the building like an arrow.

Norman and Dorothy were at the door before the debris stopped falling.
The front room was choked with dust and bits of torn plastic rained
from the ceiling as they ran down the shadowy corridor. The door
leading to the tower stairs hung on its hinges, admitting a beam of
sunlight from the demolished upper story. They ran up the broken
stairs, swaying precariously. The cracked hull of the ship lay in the
debris of what remained of the tower. The wall had been sheared off
level with the floor on one side and swaying out from the foundation
below a misty rainbow sparkled its colors in the sunlight, hissing
softly as the red fluid escaped from a pipe hidden in the wreckage.
Sade's well around which the house was built had split in the crash.

Leaving Dorothy at the top of the stairs, Norman climbed over
the chunks of plastic into the tower room. Then he realized his
foolhardiness. Too late. A chill tingled the back of his neck as he saw
the ship's port hanging open.

He heard Dorothy's warning cry behind him as he turned around slowly.

Sade's grimy bulk stood beside a chunk of plastic at the edge of the
littered floor. The sunlight glistened on the pistol in his hand, as it
squirted a stream of red flame upon the barrel of Norman's rifle. The
gun dropped from Norman's blistered fingers.

"You thought you could escape what Vulcan and I can do," Sade said.
"None can escape us, for Vulcan and I control the universe from now
on." He pointed his pistol to the floor at Norman's feet and pulled the
trigger. Norman stepped back as the flame licked up around his shoes.
"Keep walking until you fall into that rainbow down there!"

"Wait, Sade!" Norman stepped back again as the line of fire followed
him. "There's no time for this. That pipe's going to burst wide open
any moment!" He shifted from one foot to another, the soles of his
shoes burning.

"Jump," Sade said quietly. He raised the gun higher.

       *       *       *       *       *

Norman retreated another step. Two feet lay between him and the edge
of the sheared wall, the end of the floor, and then the misty lethal
colors hissing ten feet below.

Dorothy scrambled over the plastic wreckage and threw herself at Sade,
but the flat of his palm met her face and hurled her aside. The line of
fire moved to Norman's toes again, and he stepped back his last step.
Like a cobra wavering before its prey, the flame swept back and forth
across the floor, inches from Norman's toes, scorching the floor under
his feet. He glanced down at the crimson mist, leaping like a fountain
under the splinters of plastic jutting out over it. Then he realized
that fate had given him his chance--for a price.

He had come to Vulcan to find something to save Johnny's life. In
the tank in the cruiser out on the field was the fluid that could do
that. On the broken wall below him, just over the fountain of death, a
piece of the wreckage jutted outward two feet--he could leap to that,
swing clear of the mist and reach the ship and be free. He could save
Johnny--by leaving Dorothy behind.

There could be no compromise. He had no doubt that Sade would kill her
the instant he realized the trick.

Norman glanced back into Sade's triumphant smile. Suddenly he returned
the smile and laughed out loud. "When'd you take your last vaccination,
Sade!" he laughed. "Did you know your hair had turned white?"

Sade held his smile as steady as his gun. "I'm not leaving you and look
for a mirror," he said. "No tricks will save you this time. Those shots
are good for 24 hours."

"Not with all this raw stuff in the air," Norman laughed. "Look how
your hands have withered."

"What matter," Sade said, "my Fountain of Youth can restore me again."
But his smile loosened, and quick as light his glance dropped to his
hands. Norman's knees straightened like steel springs. The length of
flame seared his hip as he sprang. Then his fist piled into Sade's
heavy jaw.

The gun flew out and down into the mist. Sade hit the floor rolling and
struggled to his feet as Norman was on him like a hurricane. He crossed
jabs into his face with both fists then stepped back and swung a long
arc that crushed the big man's nose. Sade stumbled backward, screamed,
arms flailing the air wildly, and fell backward off the edge of the
floor.

Norman stepped over and looked down. Deep in the eery rainbow mist
that swirled around him, Sade scrambled to his feet and looked around
frantically, confused with the colors. His hair turned snow white, his
round cheeks tightened across the bones of his face and his big belly
vanished in his baggy clothes. He held his hands up before his face
and forgot Norman to stare at his skeleton-like fingers. Then, his
hands still raised before his eyes, he sank to the ground as his legs
collapsed. The shoes fell off his bony feet as he lay there writhing.

Norman shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Sade wasn't writhing. It was
the wind rustling his clothes.

Norman found Dorothy's sunlit head pressed against his shoulder as
she cried like a baby. He touched her hair gently, then turned to the
wreckage of the tower.

A moment's search in the debris disclosed Keren's broken form. He
lifted her dead weight in his arms and with Dorothy behind him went
quickly down the stairs. In the front room, he laid Keren on the sofa
and, risking one moment more, jerked a tapestry from the wall and
gently covered her body. Then they ran out of the house and across the
field to the cruiser.

As he helped Dorothy through the port he heard a cyclone roar from the
house. He shoved Dorothy in, jumped in after her and slammed the door.
Through the glass, they watched the house fly to pieces like a bursting
bomb as a giant flower of red spouted high over the field. Then, where
the house had been, stood a wavering red column, feet thick, towering
above the green jungle. It sprayed down upon the cruiser like a scarlet
rain.

They stared at the vivid scene until the red film covered the cabin
windows. Then Norman thumped the tank around the cabin wall, heard
its dull fullness, and walked into the pilot room and sat down at
the controls. "There's plenty in the tank for Johnny," he said, "and
there's plenty on Vulcan for the Universe."

"What shall we name it?" Dorothy said.

As they soared away from the planet and their increasing speed washed
the red film from the glass. Norman looked at the dwindling green
globe that was Vulcan and lived again, swiftly, all that had happened
there. And strangely, now that it was over, one phrase whispered in his
mind. _I'll owe you a thousand kisses_....

"Let's name it 'Kerine,'" he said. "We owe her more than we can ever
repay."

       *       *       *       *       *

The word "Kerine" was being shouted in every street and across every
backyard fence in the universe two days later and it was a tense moment
outside a closed white door in a hospital in New York City. Although
the surgery was on the fifteenth floor, Norman and Dorothy could
hear the clamor in the street below as thousands halted traffic for
blocks around and the policemen stood by with folded arms, smiling.
Downstairs, the lobby was packed with photographers and reporters,
waiting.

As the white door opened, Norman and Dorothy jumped to their feet.
Norman could hear his heart thumping above the noise from the street as
he looked down at the sheet-covered stretcher the nurses rolled out the
door. As the stretcher rolled into the hall, the face appeared and deep
within his pounding heart, Norman yelled his joy. Johnny's face was
pale and thin, as if recently recovered from a long illness, but it was
Johnny's face, his barber-shy black hair tousled on his forehead.

"Hello, chum," Johnny said. "The doc told me all about it." Then he
glanced at Dorothy. "So that's her."

"She's got exclusive rights to the story," Norman grinned.

"I can't wait to get back in a full dress suit," Johnny said. "For the
wedding."





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Citadel of Death" ***

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