J. Harvey Haggard

“ Now the surrounding walls, glowing with light of their own, flickered. An ovoid opening in solidity appeared, forced by the mental-push of the approaching person. The figure of an old man, venerable of appearance, stooped and robed in the gold-mesh-cloth of the Galax-Mentor, floated into the room. The wisdom of ages lay imprinted on the face that was like wrinkled parchment beneath the blue emerald set in a forehead band, denoting his rank in the Supreme Council of Seven. The face lost its strain of menta-portation, and the old man landed gently at his side. ”

“ Frenchy Logrieux's blade was out of reach now, but he took a chance, poised for a moment, and hurled his weapon in a glittering streak. Expecting this move, young Rufus dragged his toe in the rugged slope, fell to his hands and knees. The blade clattered off into lower depths.
It is the unexpected that counts for most in a struggle. That was why Rufus Thallin spun around and again leaped the gulf between the twin glassy spires that overlooked the precipice. As he landed, his big fist shot out like a hammer, landing squarely on the swarthy chin. ”

“ Grunting reluctantly, Lonny got up and stretched, cursing in a fervent undertone, at which Baron Munchy looked hopeful.
"Good Lord, Munchy," he growled. "Why I ever put up with you and your stirring up trouble is more than I know." Yet he knew that the little creature's chatter had helped to break the deadly monotony of the long winter hours in which he had managed to teach pidgin English to the Uranusian.
He climbed up the ladder, through the hatch, just as a rocking movement was apparent in the hull of the mud-submarine. ”

“ As the blinding ball seared across the room and dispersed its energy into the old scientist’s body, Mea-Quin staggered to his feet, stiffened, his body writhing in horror as he collapsed in a state of moveless but animate paralysis upon the floor. At a gesture from the Wrongness of Space, the giant naked men picked up the bodies of Dos-Tev and Bullo, filing down toward the pool of radiance in the center of the floor, while the maddening chatter of insane laughter filled the chamber and re-echoed hollowly. ”

“ Seized with unbearable emotions of delight, he grabbed the controls and sent the space-flyer in dizzy spirals and crazy patterns while the girl lay sleeping.
His scheme had been triumphant, though not as he had expected. A tiny mechanism, unrolling a strip of celluloid film, had been buried on the space-wireless, and a beam of light had carried his clever imitation of voices from the supposed broadcast.
The spark of life was being fanned, not by an emotion aroused from the sound of a familiar voice, but from hate. ”

“ Uranus is all mud—just plain fluid mud!"
"Or that's what we've thought, up to now," said Lonny significantly.
"What do you mean?" demanded Lana. "You can't mean that we're trapped here with a fortune just in our grasp."
The whine of the lower motors mounted, and as a result the mud-submarine began spinning around like a top. Yet the depth pointer had not moved.
"It means that there's some sort of a skeletal core to Uranus after all," said Lonny with a vanquished sigh, snapping off the motors and pushing back from the controls. "Add what's more, it means that we've bumped into it." ”

“ As the old scientist pronounced the title, the man who had been deposed drew slowly erect. Whirling from an abyss of conflicting emotions, he was deposited once more on firm ground. It had been the first time that he had been addressed in exactly that manner. It meant that no matter what happened to Mea-Quin, and to Lemnis, he was the true prince, the only one upon whom they depended. Their only hope. The single symbol of promise for the future.
He was calm now, not at all possessed with the feverish excitement which had led to his original outburst. He felt self-control now. Stronger. ”

“ Spurts of flame came from smoky rear jets. A sound like thunder rolled into being, shaking the house and rattling the windows. For an instant the space-flyer was cushioned on a turmoil of flames. Jets beneath the prow tilted the nose upward. Then it darted swiftly into the heavens.
People over the solar system called the grizzled old man a dictator of the spacelanes, yet it would have been hard, even for a close acquaintance, to recognize Keith Randolph Marshall in the broken man who now stooped over the tele-panels, pleading for a wireless connection with the Space Police Bureau. ”

“ No braver man was made in Lemnis than the ex-spy when it came to hand-to-hand conflict, but when invisible dangers threatened, his superstitious nature asserted itself.
Indeed it had been an eerie experience, Dos-Tev reflected. He had felt about as bodiless as a wraith when he and Bullo had crawled out of the space ship upon the unseen force-beam plane exerted from the projector at the craft’s nose. ”

“ His father's arm was about his shoulders now.
"Come, Ilon," said Nyo. "The variable-star Necktor has changed three times. Another moment, and your union with Nyrilla will have been recorded. You must go to meet her. It is the time-old custom of the Galax."
"But the girl, father, the girl of the silver sphere...."
"I disobeyed the laws of the Galax, son, and brought her here for an instant, so that you might understand. Our race of beings is a glorious race, son. It has come across vast universes, across unthinkable aeons of time, and across unmeasurable dimensions of space. ”

“ With the table cleared, Lana's good spirits had taken another slump. She went gloomily with Raeburn to check the air, food, and water supplies of the strange craft. When they returned Lonny Higgens was curled up on a couch, snoring lustily.
"I don't get it," said Raeburn, throwing up his hands in despair. "He isn't like a man any more. He isn't like anything living. It's his ship, and he ought to know more about it than anyone. Oh well, if everybody else is going to give up the ghost, why should I worry?"
"Sure," said Lana. "Why should we worry. ”

“ He had seized upon her and the sickness that lay prey to her body as a means toward an end. He felt that there was a good chance of her being cured when exposed to the healing rays of the void. He was gambling not only her life, but his own as well. For if he failed in his mission the Space Police would hound him to an eventual ignoble end.
In the visor screens, earth was falling away swiftly. As he watched a scattering of dots appeared, drifted slowly across the face of the globe, into space. Police craft, of course. ”

“ Slave and workers – obeying a superior command.
Overhead, more than two hundred miles of solid rock-strata lay like a thick shell – an exuviate – as tho this alien bit of spake were animate, and the moon-matter a shell over its pulsating being. The crater-shaft itself, like a huge gaping aesophagus, was drawing into the Hemisphere a current of rarefied air, and like corpuscles the disc-shadows flickered upon their endless journeys. Yet herein lay the stronghold, the natural habitat, of the Wrongness of Space. ”

“ The sight of old Nyo, kneeling now, brought a vibration of despair from Ilon's inner being. If they discovered his father, the Galax-Mentor, breaking the law....
Energy came back out of nothingness. Again he flung himself into the struggle with forces interlocked in the etherical strains of matter. For a long moment he tensed, denying them any thought entrance. And he held! He held! And the lightning forces that had leaped from Nyo's brain across the universe were creating a white nimbus entirely around the girl—the girl of the silver sphere. ”

“ They would die from starvation here. The gun in Raeburn's hands would be merciful, if it relieved them from the more hideous death that was certain to come.
The hull shuddered, slipped against a rocky outer substance that seemed to give way suddenly. He felt the relaxation of the outer barrier through the controls, knew that the propellers were driving it out and into the true bed of the Uranusian ocean. The needle indicator paused uncertainly, started to rise. By the expression on Raeburn's face he knew that the other had not guessed that their trap was behind them. ”

“ He was glad that his score was even with Frenchy Logrieux.
Ahead of him, a black planet was swimming out of the void. Dark and foreboding, that lustreless sphere had an evil repute throughout the solar system. It was a barren, lifeless world, and one to be avoided by living creatures. Rufus Thallin headed the spacer in that direction. He knew that it was Pluto.
Repairs were made, and Pluto was far in the shimmering wake of the improved radiotron—again an opalescent beam of pure radiation hurled the space-flyer into the astral depths at speeds his accelerometer was incapable of registering. ”

“ Fearing to believe, Bullo staggered out into the center of the room with arms outstretched like a man playing blind man’s buff, and rather to his amazement he encountered something solid where everything looked so empty, which shoved him in the nose so forcefully he was sent stumbling backward. A nebulaeic formation in the center of the room suddenly appeared, coagulating swiftly, and before the startled giant appeared the well-known proportions of the young deposed Emperor, Dos-Tev of Lemnis, wearing a peculiar jutting harness, who was convulsed with laughter. ”

“ Plumbing the universe, seeking contact with life in lesser forms. Don't you realize the gravity of this offense? Don't you realize you may lose your princeship, be banished from the Galax, or even executed?"
Ilon recoiled. "But, father, you wouldn't reveal—"
"Reveal!" exploded Nyo Karth angrily. "Reveal! Yes, that's what I will do. I will take it to the council. You are as insane as the poor blind mastodons who work like maggots in the mines, whose eyes would be blasted by a mere ray of the very light for which they were originally intended. ”

“ V
"You're not human," said Link Raeburn accusingly, and he shook a quivering finger at Lonny. "Here we are in the face of death, and all you think of is your stomach."
"There's not much choice," said Lonny Higgens, "when a fellow's empty. And the menu never changes here. Besides, eating might help you to think."
"You shouldn't think while you're eating," reprimanded Lana. "It'll give you indigestion."
"Great Space!" broke out Raeburn. "You too! Who gives a hang about indigestion? Listen, you pair of fools, we're snagged down here on the bottom of a sea of mud. ”

“ The Wrongness of Space has curtailed my every effort, and at last is in supremacy. I cannot send the message.”
“You mean? –“ queried Dos-Tev, the explanation of the other’s sadness suddenly encompassing him with its full significance.
“We must be brave,” said Mea-Quin.
“That I must go,” finished Dos-Tev for himself. “That it is our only chance – now. I must go down – into the crater – and somehow deflect the power-beam controls of the Wrongness of Space.”
At this Bullo sprang forward, his eyes aglow. ”

“ Though the Space Police had been thrown off the trail, they would be questing even now for new leads, new spoors that might send them speeding in the wake of the space-flyer, even here in this Stygian depth of outer space.
Of course he had a watch to measure hours. He used it to plot a diet of synthetic foods for the girl, and followed it religiously. He was not so careful with his own.
Her spark of life was still glowing, though dimly. It needed kindling. New energies must build that spark to a flame, but those energies could not be fed from the outside. ”

“ I'm tired of listening to your silly chatter."
"Me mad as heck!" cried Baron Munchy, sitting down on the edge of the chair like a tiny mannikin and doubling his tiny fists beneath his chitinous chin. "That man say the Boss no good. He say the Boss one big blonde devil. He say—"
"Shut up," protested Lonny. "Raeburn's all right. He's just a mud-fisher like me, and has got to get along. It's natural that he doesn't like a rival, and I'm not a bit riled by your chatter." ”

“ Dos-Tev felt it too, some force wrapping about him. Suddenly he was swept around and hurled out into a great arc. There was a moment of wild tumbling, of chaotic nightmare. A wild force bore him swiftly, in a great spiral motion. And suddenly it came to him.
“Take it easy, Bullo,” he cried, half sobbing in relief, “It’s the inner shaft. We’re circling above it. Our force-beam keeps shoving us away from the rim, and we’re going down in a spiral. Take it easy; we’ll gradually shift to the center again.” ”

“ TWO LIVES ARE GAMBLED
Staggering toward his desk, Keith Randolph Marshall began to jab at buttons affixed on its top. When servants appeared, he began screaming orders to pursue and apprehend the kidnapper.
Almost unable to breathe from sheer horror, he slumped at a window and gazed into a courtyard below. The big man was springing lightly across the lawn, and the puny wisp of the girl looked a light burden in his massive arms. A last leap, and they went through the open port of the moored space-flyer. ”

“ Magnetic grapple! It slithered past the front cowling of his space flyer, looped out and whipcracked back. If it had fastened to the outer berylumin hull, escape would have become impossible. Through transparent ports on all sides he saw the bulky noses of the Space Police ringing him in. Many eyes were watching him over the sights of grapple rockets.
Big Rufus Thallin grinned, turned and waved goodbye through the nearest port, then slammed a power throttle down. ”