Henry Kuttner

“ Few atmosphere pilots could handle the tricky manipulations of rocket-tubes. They were for emergency only, but this, Duncan thought, was an emergency. He thrust Olcott away and slid into the cushioned cradle-chair. His fingers, still stiff, poised over the keys.
Then his old-time skill came back, the intricate series of what were really conditioned reflexes that made a pilot capable of handling a bank of tube keys. Split-second thinking wasn’t quite enough. Reactions had to be almost without thought. The ship spun down, and Duncan’s hands flashed into swift movement on the studs. ”

“ Pluto is uninhabited. Its atmosphere is pure chlorine. No life-form known to science can exist in a chlorine atmosphere or on a radioactive world. The Plutonian mind-vampires do not exist. The legend was created by the Varra for their own purposes. The actual mind-vampires are the Varra themselves.”
Now it would be theorizing, but Duncan was certain that his guess was correct.
“The Varra live on life energy. When man conquered space, they foresaw danger to themselves. They are vulnerable, and if Earth suspected their motives, they’d be relentlessly destroyed. ”

“ Olcott bent over him.
“You’ve got auxiliary-suit rockets and enough oxygen. And you can untie yourself, if you work fast, before you hit Pluto. You can make a safe landing—till the Plutonians find you. Well?”
Duncan didn’t answer.
Olcott said, “Don’t be a fool! You’ll die rather unpleasantly on Pluto. You know that. Will you take us back to Earth?”
There was a long silence. Abruptly, with a muffled curse, Olcott snapped Duncan’s faceplate shut, and then his own. Hartman did the same, and, with a wry face, touched the power-button on his Helmet that would summon the Varra. ”

“ They did not foresee that actual experience of a thing is far different from abstract knowledge of it. They did not foresee the death that leaped upon them from the outer dark, the strange, enigmatic horror that killed men without leaving trace or clue. ”

“ One is seldom transported instantly from hell to heaven. Yet Olcott’s offer was—well, it meant everything, including Andrea.
“Go on,” Duncan said hoarsely. “What d’you want me to do?”
Olcott’s cool, watchful eyes met his own.
“Go into space,” he said, “without a Varra Helmet.”
The plane thundered on, and miles had been left behind before Duncan spoke again.
“Suicide.”
“No. There’s a way.”
“When I was piloting, no one was allowed to space-travel without a Helmet. Even with the Varra convoys, people were sometimes killed by the Plutonians. ”

“ At a gesture, Hartman followed his example.
“Don’t use the power yet. Help me.” Olcott picked up Duncan by the shoulders. Grunting and straining, the two men carried their captive into the air-tight bow chamber, sealing the valve behind them. The magnetic projector, looking like an oversized cannon, faced the circular transparent port through which they could see the starry darkness of empty space. ”

“ Duncan took the dead Olcott’s helmet and adjusted it upon himself. Turning on the power made the intertron knob glow, but there was no other result. The Varra, of course, could not safely venture within the Heaviside Layer of any planet, and Pluto had a Layer, since it had an atmosphere. Chlorine—radium—Duncan shook his head, trying to fit the puzzle together.
There were no Plutonians. Why, then, had the Varra fostered the legend of the mind-vampires? Creatures composed of pure energy could not exist on a radioactive planet ”

“ You’re a better pilot than I’d hoped. But you’ll need to be—” Olcott didn’t finish.
Duncan was rubbing his skin with ice. “I know rockets. Say, isn’t this dangerous? We may be spotted from below.”
“We won’t. This plane’s a chameleon. The man we’re going to see invented the trick for me. We’ve a double hull, and the outer skin’s transparent plastic. The space between the skins can be filled with certain colored gases—I’ve a wide range of colors. On the snowfield I used white, to blend with surroundings. Here it’s a blue gas. From below we’re invisible against the sky.” ”

“ Duncan said. “Mental vibrations, maybe.”
Hartman snorted. “Space is big! The electrical impulses of a brain are microscopic compared to interplanetary distances. But the ships—there’s the answer. A spaceship is visible for thousands of miles—reflection, and the rocket-jets. It’d be easy for the Plutonians to locate our ships, if they have any sort of telescopes at all. So, we have here a ship they cannot find. Therefore, we do not need a Varra escort to protect us from the Plutonians.”
“It would have been safer if we could have hired a Varra,” Olcott said. ”

“ Duncan took another drink. “It still sounds like suicide.”
“Hartman will explain—the man we’re going to see now. Take my word for it that you can go into space without a Helmet and be safe. Fairly safe.”
“Half a million credits—”
“The only danger,” Olcott said carefully, “is that the Maid might send out an S.O.S. The I.P. ships are rickety, but they’re fast, and they might stay on your trail. We can’t have that. So we’ve planted somebody on the Maid who’ll smash the radio apparatus just before you make contact. You can pick her up with the radium and head back to Earth.” ”

“ Hartman touched the gun, but Olcott shook his head. “No. Listen. Duncan. You’re licked. We can get back to Earth, with you or without you. But if we get the Varra to help, we lose the radium. Why not be smart? Play along with us, and you’ll still get your half a million credits.”
“Go to hell!” Duncan suggested.
Hartman said, “We’ve no time to waste. We’re not far from Pluto—” He didn’t finish, but there was a suggestion of panic fear in his voice.
“Right. This ship’s got an escape hatch, hasn’t it? Good.” Olcott hurriedly began to don spacesuit and Varra Helmet. ”

“ Finally he said: “The Varra can be destroyed. And we can protect ourselves against them. That’ll be up to the scientists. If this ship gets through, it will mean that the Varra couldn’t stop me. I’ve got radium aboard. So I’ll put a Heaviside Layer around the cruiser—and blast off Sunward.”
Duncan clicked the switch. No need to say more. Earth would understand, would believe.
But now—
He opened the port, after donning a suit and Helmet, and let the ship fill with the chlorine atmosphere. It would be better than oxygen, for his purposes. ”

“ Olcott’s teeth showed. “Well?”
“We don’t want to be stopped—now.” Duncan fingered the controls. The bellow of rockets grew louder. A shuddering vibration rocked the little cruiser.
“Not too fast!” Hartman said warningly. “This ship crashed once. It’s still weak.”
For answer Duncan only increased the power. The thunder of the tubes grew deafening. Already they had crossed the Lunar Line, heading outward in the plane of the ecliptic.
Duncan rose and went to the spacesuit that held Andrea’s body. He wrenched the intertron knob free from the Helmet.
“We want no Varra spy here.” ”

“ He hesitated. “It’s no use. We’re forty thousand million miles from the Sun. The radio won’t carry that far, even if it’d get through the Heaviside Layer on Pluto. There’s no way to send a message back.”
There was no way. Nor could the cruiser retrace its course. There was not enough fuel left. The jets would be exhausted before Saturn’s orbit was reached, and the speed would increase as the ship plunged Sunward, increase to a point where deceleration would be impossible.
“There’s no way, Andrea. I can’t send the message—”
Duncan stopped. There was a way, after all, though it meant death. ”

“ They conveyed us through space, protecting us, as far as they were able, from the Plutonian vampires, though they did not always succeed. Each man who ventured into the void was guarded and guided by a Varra, and therefore many lived who would otherwise have died. No ship went beyond the orbit of Neptune; even that was dangerous. No ship ever landed on Pluto. ”

“ In free space, almost anyone could pilot a cruiser. But emergencies and landings were different matters. Years of training in split-second, conditioned reactions were necessary to make a pilot—and only Duncan had had that training. Olcott could easily turn the ship around, but he probably could not control it in atmosphere, and he certainly could not make a safe landing. Olcott was in a prison, and Duncan held the only key. ”

“ Instead, pretending to protect space-travelers from the Plutonians, they drain a certain amount of life-energy from each person wearing a Helmet. We’re like cattle to them. We think they’re friendly, and so far we haven’t suspected the truth. As long as we didn’t suspect, the Varra were safe, and could keep on vampirizing us, without our knowledge. Once in a while a Varra badly in need of energy would drain too much, which would kill its host.”
That was what had happened to Andrea. The Varra had tried to stop her from wrecking the Maid’s radio, and—Duncan’s teeth showed. ”

“ You’re going to hijack the Maid of Mercury, Duncan, and get that radium.”
“Hijacking a spaceship? It’s crazy.”
“It’s never been done, sure. Nobody’s dared go into space without a Helmet. And the government issues the Helmets. ”

“ Hartman and Olcott watched him, vainly trying to fight back their fear.
The heavy, crashing roar of the rockets mounted to a deafening crescendo.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Destroying Avenger
Named after the Greek god of the underworld, desolate, lifeless and forbidding as Hell itself, Pluto revolved in its tremendous orbit, between thirty-seven hundred million and four thousand million miles from the Sun. Such distances are staggeringly inconceivable when we attempt to use human yardsticks. Men cannot stand the strain of such voyages without special precautions. ”

“ Iodine vapor would be even more effective, but he could not create that. If only he were a scientist, a technician, he could probably discover some other way of creating an artificial Heaviside Layer. ”