#Rjalker transcribes Astounding Stories September 1931 thru December 1931 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rjalker · 11 months ago

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here's what I have transcribed of The Copper-Clad World by Harl Vincent, from September 1931 so far.

still can't tell if the spaceship is named the RXS or the RX8.

It's got ableism and racism so far, but has a cool premise. Not sure if there's a specific term for when you build a shell around...something that's not a whole solar system.

stuff in brackets will be removed from the final version.

this is public domain, so you can do literally anything you want with it. Please rewrite it to not be bigoted.

the original, blurry PDF can be found here.

this story is not complete yet. I have no idea how much longer it is lol.

Edit: Added more of it so far. I know tumblr would love this evil alien cat lady queen if this were a modern thing.

The Copper-Clad World, by Harl Vincent

Chapter 1: Into the Unknown

Adrift in space! Blaine Carson worked frantically at the controls, his jaw set in grim lines and his eyes narrowed to anxious slits as he peered into the diamond-studded ebon of the heavens. A million miles astern he knew the red disk of the planet Mars was receding rapidly into the blackness. And the RXS[?] was streaking into the outer void at a terrific pace – out of control.

Something had warned him when they left Earth; the Martian cargo of k-metal was of enormous value and a direct invitation to piracy. Of course there was the attempt at secrecy and the shippers had sent along those guards. His engineer, Tom Farley, was thoroughly reliable, too. But this failure of the control rocket-tubes, missing their destination as a result – there was something queer about it.

“Tommy,” he called into the mike.[comma?] “Find anything yet?”

“We-e-ll, something,” the audiophone drawled after a moment: “I’m coming up.”

“What is it, Tom?” he asked when the engineer’s round face appeared at the head of the engine room companionway.

Farley dropped his voice and his customary smile was gone. “I found the stern rocket-tube ignition jammed so it’s firing continuously,[?]” he said,“and the others are all dead: won’t fire at all. That’s why she doesn’t swing to the controls?” [why is there a questionmark]

:Can’t you fix it? Lord, man, we’re headed out into the bent of planetoids. We’ll be wrecked.”

“Nothing I can do, Blaine, without shutting down the atomic engines. Then we’d freeze to death and run out of oxygen. These ships ought to have a spare engine just to take care of heating and air conditioning. I’ve always said so.”

“What happened to the ignition system?”

Tom Farley looked over his shoulder apprehensively. “Dirty work, Blaine,” he whispered. “I’m sure of it. Tool marks on the breech of the stern tube. And there’s one of those guards I don’t like the look of.”

“Nonsense. The k-metal people know their men; they picked these three especially for the job.”

“Who else could do it? There’s only the five of us on board.”

There might be something in what Tommy said, at that. A thing like this couldn’t just happen by itself. And, come to think of it, one of those guards was a queer looking bird: dwarfed and hunch[?]-backed, sort of, and with long dangling arms. It would be better to investigate.

“Get ‘em up here, Tommy,” Blaine said.

The RX8[?] drove on and on through the uncharted wastes outside the orbit of Mars. None of the space ships of the inner planets ever ventured out this far, and Blaine knew there was grave danger of colliding with some of the small bodies with which the zone was infested. If one of those guards was the traitor he was risking his own neck as well as theirs.

Two of them entered the control room with Tom Farley, big, husky fellows of solid countenance and armed with regulation flame-ray pistols and gas grenades.

“Where’s the other, the dwarf?” Blaine asked, his suspicions mounting immediately.

“In his bunk,” Tom replied with a meaning look. “He said he’d be up in a few minutes.”

The pilot-commander addressed the guards. “Fellows,” he said, “I suppose you know we’re in a serious fix. The ship is out of control and we’ve missed Mars, where your metal was to be delivered. We’re speeding out into the unknown, out past the limits of space-travel toward the orbits of Jupiter Saturn, Uranus – God knows where. And my engineer thinks that one of our number has tampered with the machinery. Know anything about it?” Blaine eyed them keenly.

One of the guards, Mahoney, flushed hotly. “No, sir,” he snapped. “At least Kelly and meself had nothin’ to do with it. But we’ve been suspicionin’ that little Antazzo ever since we came out. It’s a peculiar way he has about him, the divil.”

“You think he -- “

An incisive voice from the doorway interrupted, “Never mind what he thinks, Carson. I’ll do the thinking from now on.”

As one man they turned to face the speaker. It was the guard, Antazzo, and he was clothed from neck to ankles in a garment of bright metallic stuff that shimmered with shifting colors like those of a soap bubble. A mask of similar stuff covered his face, and in each hand there was a weapon resembling a ray pistol but of strangely unfamiliar design.

Mahoney shot from the hip and his stabbing ray splashed full on the hunchback’s chest – but harmlessly. That lustrous garment was an insulating armor; the traitorous guard should have been shriveled to a cinder at the contact. Antazzo laughed evilly as his own weapons loosed strange and terrible energies.

Tom Farley ducked, and Blaine watched in horrified amazement as the crackling streamers of blue radiance from the dwarf’s pistols found their marks. Mahoney and Kelly, standing there, bathed for a brief instant in horrid blue fire; tottering, swaying, their mouths opened wide in a last agonized effort to cry out. Tiny pinpoints of brilliant pyrotechnics flashing and exploding within the columns of blue fire. Then, nothing! Where the two husky guards had stood there was utter emptiness; not even a shred of clothing remained. The air in the control room became heavy and acrid.

“Antazzo!” White-faced and shaking, Blaine cried out in futile protest, “My God, man, what have you done? What does this mean?”

And then, in a blaze of rage, he was on his feet. Murder was in his heart as he set himself for a crashing charge that would sweep the beast from his feet. His own flame-pistol was missing; it was a case of killing this monster with his bare hands. Tom was circling, over there, cursing horribly. One of them would get him. Strangely, Antazzo had lowered the muzzles of his pistols.

A terrific punch, started from the floor, never reached its mark. Blaine saw a tiny puff of pinkish vapor that spurted from the bosom of that metallic garment. He was coughing and gasping; helpless. Muscles refused to do his bidding. With a moan he dropped into the pilot’s seat, knowing that Antazzo’s will compelled him. That gas had hypnotic powers. Mechanically, his fingers strayed to the controls.

And Tom – Good old Tommy – he was under the influence of the stuff too, creeping there on hands and knees toward the engine room companionway.

Antazzo was talking. “We come now to the matter of instructions,” he said. “You, Farley, will assist me in restoring the ignition system to normal. You, Carson, will keep to the controls and will lay a course to Jupiter as soon as the control rocket-tubes will respond. Understand?”

Tom growled reluctant assent from where he was crawling.

Strange, this hypnotic gas! Blaine mind functioned clearly enough, yet he was utterly at the mercy of this madman’s will – a robot of flesh and blood. “Jupiter!” he exclaimed. “Why man, it’s nearly a half billion miles from the sun. Not habitable, either.”

Antazzo had removed his mask and now smiled a superior smile. “We’ll reach it,” he said: “the RX[8?S?] is very fast. And it’s not the planet itself we’re found for, but its second satellite. Io, your astronomers call this body, and it’s a world sadly in need of this marvelous k-metal.”

“But – but --”

“Enough!” The hunchback snarled his rebuke in Blaine’s face and turned to Tom. “Come, Farley,” he said, as if talking to a child, “we must get to work.”

In a daze of conflicting emotions, Blaine turned to gaze through the forward port when the two had left the control room. The RX[8S?] was accelerating rapidly under the steady discharge of gases from the stern rocket-tube and had already reached the speed of one thousand miles a second. If one of those tiny asteroids, even one no larger than a marble, should meet up with them it would crash through the hull plates as if they were paper. His heart went cold at the thought.

Oddly enough, he found himself wanting to make this trip with the demonic Antazzo. It was the effects of the pink gas. Even with the misshapen guard down there in the engine room the power of his will was effective. The devil must be an Ionian, he thought. But how in the name of the sky-lane imps had he reached Earth? How had he wormed his way into the confidence of the k-metal people? He must have been there several years, working to this very end.

There was a tinkling crash on the starboard side amidships; a screaming swish as something slithered along the side and caromed off into the void. One of those little planetoids. Probably no bigger than a pea, and luckily they had struck it glancingly. He wiped the sudden perspiration from his forehead.

Pressure on the directive rocket controls brought no response. Would they never finish with that ignition system?

A gleaming light-fleck segregated itself from the mass of stars ahead. At first he thought he imagined it, but a second examination, this time through the telescope, convinced him it was growing larger. Drawing nearer, it was, and resolving itself into a well defined orb that was directly in their path. Fifteen hundred miles a second, the indicator read now! They’d never know what happened when they struck.

There was no reply for a moment, and the blue-white globe drove madly toward them. He consulted the chart. Pallas – an asteroid some three hundred miles in diameter. Not very big as celestial bodies go, but big enough!

“Just one minute now.” It was Tommy’s voice coming drearily, unnaturally through the audiophone. A minute! Ninety thousand miles! It seemed the asteroid was that close already.

Antazzo was in the control room then, and the effect of his mental dominance became more pronounced. Suddenly the dwarf let out a shriek of terror when he looked through the port and saw the brilliant body that now loomed so close. Blaine experienced as savage joy in the knowledge that the hunchback was mortally afraid.

“Latza! Latza!” In his fear Antazzo slipped into his own tongue. Then, remembering, he shouted, “We’re ready, Carson. Swing wide!”

The directive rockets answered to their controls now. Quick pressure on this, a swift pull on that, swinging the energy value to maximum, brought results. The little vessel groaned and shivered under the strain as a full blast from the forward tubes retarded them. Her hull plates twisted and screeched as the steering tubes belched full energy in swinging them from their course. They were thrown forward violently, though the deceleration compensators were working to the utmost.

Pallas swung around in their field of vision, and there was a fleeting glimpse of sun-lit spires of mountains, shadowed valleys, and mysterious crevasses from which clouds of steam and yellow vapor curled. Still it seemed they must crash against one of those slender pinnacles. Nearer it came like a flash; a dizzying blur, now, that drove directly in their straining faces.

And then, abruptly, it was gone. Already thousands of miles astern, the danger was past. Miraculously, they had escaped.

Antazzo laughed; a hollow mirthless cackle. His fingers shook crazily when he untwisted them from their grip on the port rail.

“Good work, my friend. Very good, indeed,” he jabbered, his chin quivering in nervous reaction. “And now we carry on – on to Io.”

Blaine Carson, almost wishing they had collided with the spire, set himself grimly to the task. He was powerless to refuse.

Chapter 2: The Second Satellite

When, eventually, they swung into the orbit of Jupiter and headed in toward the enormous red-belted body, the two Earth men were heartily disgusted with the voyage and with themselves. Repeated doses of the pink gas – the ignominy of their utter subservience to the will of Antazzo – had worn them down no less than had the hard work and loss of sleep. Both were in vile humor. They endured the triumphant chatter of their captor in bitter silence.

“Over there, my friends,” he said, pointing; “see? It is our destination. The golden crescent, Io, is something over a quarter million of your miles from the mother planet. See it? It is home, my friends, home to me and for yourselves in the future – if the Zara spares your lives. Lay your course to the body, Carson.”

Blaine growled as he sighted through the telescope. Yet, in spite of his fury, he could not overcome the feeling of excitement that came to him when the powerful glass brought the satellite near. This body was like nothing else in the heavens. Antazzo had called it the golden crescent. Rather, it was of gleaming coppery hue, and now, as they swung around, it was fully illuminated – a brilliant sphere of unbroken contour. Smoothly globular, there was not one projection or indentation to indicate the existence of land or sea, mountain or valley, on its surface. It was like a ball of solid copper, scintillant there in the weak sunlight and the reflected light from its great mother planet.

Antazzo laughed over his absorption. “Looks peculiar to you, does it not?” he asked; “rather different from any of the bodies you have visited, you are thinking.”

Blaine grunted wordless assent. The globe that was Io rushed in to meet them, growing ever larger in the field of the telescope. Now it appeared that there were tiny seams in the smooth surface, a regular criss-cross pattern of fine lines that looked like – Lord, yes, that was it! The body was constructed from an infinite number of copper plates, riveted or brazed together to form a perfect sphere.

“Why, the thing’s made of copper!” Blaine gasped. “Copper plates. It’s a man-made world; artificial. But where are the inhabitants?”

Antazzo laughed uproariously. “Not man-made, my friend,” he corrected, “but preserved by man for his own salvation. A dying world, it was, and the cleverest scientists in the universe saved it and themselves from certain death. What you see is merely a shell of copper, the covering they constructed to retain an atmosphere and make continuation of life possible – inside.”

“Your people live inside that shell?” Blaine was incredulous.

“What else? We must have air to breathe and warmth for our bodies. How else could we have retained it?”

It was staggering, this revelation. The young pilot could not conceive of a completely enclosed world with inhabitants forever shut off from the light of the sun by day and from the beauties of the heavens by night. Yet here it was, drawing ever nearer, a colossal monument to the ingenuity and handiwork of a highly intelligent civilization who had labored probably for centuries to preserve their kind. A titanic task! Who could imagine a sphere of metal more than twenty-four hundred miles in diameter enclosing a world and its peoples? A copper-clad world!

They were coming in close now, and the gravitational pull of the body made itself felt. Blaine was busy with the controls, sending tremendous blasts from the forward rocket-tubes to retard their speed for a safe landing. The incredibly smooth copper surface was just beneath them, stretching miles away to the horizon in all directions.

The inductor compass was functioning. Evidently Io possessed as strong a magnetic field as did the inner planets. Antazzo now consulted a chart which he drew from his pocket, and examined minutely the surface over which they were speeding. Here and there curious designs were etched on the copper plates, and it was from these he determined their course. Obviously there was an entrance to this sealed-in world.

When they had proceeded some two thousand miles in a northeasterly direction Antazzo gave the order to reduce speed. Off at the horizon there appeared a bulge in the copper surface, a round protuberance that resolved itself into a great dome-shaped structure as they drew nearer. A full two hundred feet it reared itself into the heavens, and Blaine saw a number of large circular hatches in its side that evidently covered air-locked entrances.

“You will land close by the dome, Carson,” Antazzo barked, “and both of you will get into your moon-suits.”

At his tone, Blaine saw red. He realized on the instant that the effect of the pink gas had worn off and that he was his own master once more. All the pent-up emotions of the past few days were unleashed. If only he could get in one good punch. They might get away yet. There was plenty of k-metal to replenish the fuel supply. He whirled suddenly, muscles tensed. He faced the grinning hunchback – and was greeted by a breathtaking spurt of the pink gas. This time it was not merely a subjecting of his own will to that of the master but a complete hypnotism, a somnambulistic state. As in a dream he turned to the controls.

Now it came to him that the dwarf no longer spoke. He worked his will entirely without words; his evil mind possessed fully the mind of his victim. For Blaine Carson there was no further independent thinking. He was an automaton, a sleep-walker.

Like a detached and more or less disinterested observer, he saw that he had landed the ship. Then he noticed three dwarfs in bulky, helmeted moon-suits, shuffling clumsily across the copper plates. Hazily he knew he was with the others in an airlock; the hiss and the throbbing of pumps told him that. Under the great dome there was the latticework of a huge reflecting telescope; strange pigmy figures scuttled here and there, working at curious machines. There was the constant purr of many motors, the gentle pulsation of floorplates beneath his feet.

With the moon-suit removed, he realized the atmosphere was fetid and stifling. A great pressure bore on his lungs, making breathing labored and difficult. And then they were in a lift that dropped into the depths of its shaft with dizzying speed. Antazzo’s grin; Tom’s eyes, dull and lifeless, floating there in the haze before his own – it was all a nightmare from which he must soon awaken.

There followed a period of complete unconsciousness of movement and of his surroundings. Light – light everywhere; a blue-white radiance that beat upon his unseeing eyes with unrelenting ferocity. Stabbing pains bored into his very brain, pains that carried with them an unspoken and unintelligible command. Why couldn’t they let him alone; leave him to die in peace? H e knew he was on his feet, swaying. There were voices, strident and guttural, and then by some magic the veil was lifted. His brain cleared and he saw that he stood before a dais where a much bejeweled and resplendently clad woman sat curled in the luxurious cushions of a golden seat. Chalk-white was her face and her lips crimson; amazing eyes, cat’s eyes, pupils red-flecked and glittering, stared out at him.

“The Zara,” Antazzo whispered. “You will make obeisance.”

Mechanically, Blaine dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the floor. Tom Farley, over there, was doing the same, but Antazzo stood erect with his arms crossed over his chest and his head thrown back. The eyes of the Zara swept him contemptuously from head to foot. All was not well between them.

Blaine arose from his humiliating position at a sharp command from the hunchback. Tommy did likewise and the two exchanged sheepish looks. The effects of the pink gas were wearing off once more. They were in a large hall, obviously the throne room of a palace. Men-at-arms lined the walls on either side of the dais, and these were straight limbed giants with green-bronze skin and regular features – not at all like the deformed Ionian who had captured them and stolen the RX[8???S???]

The Zara talked rapidly in throaty gutturals, her fierce gaze directed at Antazzo and her brows drawn together in a scowl that could have but one meaning. She was displeased with the hunchback, displeased and furiously angry. What was it all about? Hadn’t he brought home the bacon – the k-metal they were after? Blaine was nonplused.

Then Antazzo replied to the woman who was obviously his queen. His voice rose in shrill disagreement and his scowl was as fierce as the Zara’s. Threatening her, he was, the nervy devil. He clenched his fists and raised his arms in an angry gesture, pacing the floor in his fury and thrusting out a pugnacious chin while he raved. This Zara woman rose higher in her cushions, and the look that flashed from those terrible eyes would have warned a less excited human, however justifiable his anger might be. But Antazzo was in too deep to draw back, that was plain to be seen. Blaine held his breath in anticipation of an explosion.

It came then, that explosion, and in a way entirely unexpected and horrible to behold. The tiger woman uttered one fierce sibilant like the hiss of a serpent, a terrifying sound that silenced the hunchback and brought him stiffly to attention, mouth open and eyes bulging with horror. One of those unbelievably white arms stretched forth, threateningly tense, and a jeweled finger leveled itself at the rash Ionian. From it there flashed an intangible something that leaped to bridge the distance with the speed of light, something that screeched as it flew and crashed like breaking glass when it struck Antazzo’s horrified face. In an instant he was on the floor, screaming and writhing in mortal agony.

The Zara watched with compressed lips and livid features as a host of black disk-like things covered the squirming body, spinning madly as if driven by atomic energy and emitting a myriad high-pitched tones like the angry buzzing of a swarm of bees. Antazzo’s body shriveled as the things hummed on in their devilish work. Soon there was but a tiny heap of clothing with the angry black disks whirling and singing their song of hate. And then, in a puff of thick yellow vapor they were gone, their gruesome work completed. The odor of putrefaction lay heavy on the air.

Blaine shuddered and a fit of nausea twisted his vitals. It served the devil right, of course, but it was a horrible way to go. These damned Ionians, even to their queen, were bloodthirsty creatures. And what devilish ingenuity they had displayed in their development of weapons! His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the flaming orbs of the Zara.

She was actually smiling at him, this beautiful, heartless animal, not a smile of derision but one of deliberate allure. He felt the hot blood mount to his temples. A languid arm beckoned him to her side and the amazing creature settled back in her cushions with the drowsy, contented motions of a lazy feline.

“Watch your step!” Tommy hissed.

That warning was unnecessary. Blaine shook his head and backed away from the dais, an instinctive recoiling from a loathsome thing. The Zara saw and understood; and she went again into a black rage. She sat stiffly erect and called rapid orders ot her men-at-arms.

The Earth men were surrounded instantly, their arms and legs pinioned by powerful hands, their feeble resistance overcome by the bronze giants as easily as if they had been children. Helpless and hopeless, they were borne from the room.

This was the end of the story, Blaine thought. Why this Zara woman had not made away with them at once was a mystery. Perhaps they were being reserved for an even more terrible fate than that of the hunchback. They were being carried along a dim-lit passage now, and Tom was cursing his captors in a never-ending stream of invective.

A metal door opened and then clanged shut behind them. They were dumped unceremoniously on metal tables that resembled those of a hospital operating-room on Earth. Woven bands, quickly adjusted by the bronze giants held them fast. Blaine turned his head and saw that Tommy was still struggling against the inevitable. A gag had been placed in his mouth; that was why he has ceased reviling the Zara’s servitors.

The room was cluttered with elaborate and complicated mechanism that Blaine could not recognize in the slightest detail, excepting that there were many banks of slender glass cylinders which bore some resemblance to the vacuum tubes used on the inner planets for radio communication and television. One of the bronze giants, he saw, was bringing a metal cap from which a cable extended to one of the strange machines. This cap was forced down over his head with a none too gentle pressure and he could see no more.

There came a sharp buzz from the machine and a million stinging needles drove into his brain. There was a moment of fleeting visions; strange places he viewed, and strange creatures parading in a fantasmagoria or delirium before his aching eyes. Voices, harsh and guttural, spoke in his drumming ears; voices that were dimly understandable, though uttered in the tongue spoken by Antazzo and the Zara. Then came sudden and merciful unconsciousness.

Chapter 3: Ilen-dar

When Blaine Carson opened his eyes it was to stare at the blue-white radiance of an illuminated ceiling. He lay on a downy cot and it seemed he had just recovered from a long illness. Weak and sick, he turned his head listlessly to gaze at the ornate embossed designs on a wall of gleaming silvery metal. What place was this? His mind was wool-gathering; dim memories of unspeakable things struggled for mastery over a hazy consciousness. Suddenly then he remembered, and he sat up in his unfamiliar bed, senses acutely alert.

Across the room he saw a figure hunched in a chair; a twisted man-creature who was oddly like someone he had seen. Antazzo! But this one had none of the other’s ferocity as he returned Blaine’s stare. Rather, there was a look of deep concern in his ugly face. He came immediately to the bedside and looked at Blaine solicitously.

“I see you have recovered,” he said. “It is good.”

Blaine stared and stared. This creature had spoken in the language of the Zara’s subjects, yet he understood his every word! It must be a dream, this impossible thing that had happened. And where was tom? Abruptly he found that he was talking rapidly in this tongue of an alien race.

“Yes, I’ve recovered”, he said, “and I’m amazed at what I find. How have I acquired this knowledge of your language? Where am I, and where is my friend? Can you enlighten me in these things?”

The other smiled. “I can, Earth man,” he replied. “You have been taught our language while you slept. A thought transference process we use for educating the young. You are in the palace of the Zara and your friend is safe in the next room. I may add that you are in high favor with Her Majesty.”

The wizened creature lowered his voice on the last words, and his knowing eyes spoke volumes. In favor with that she-devil! Blaine went cold at the thought.

“I want to see my friend,” he said shortly.

“Later. My orders are to bring you to the Zara immediately you are strong enough. And Pegrani obeys orders.”

No use to attempt a break now. Blaine was tempted to drive a fist into that ugly countenance and fight his way out of the place. But that would be suicide. He’d wait, get the lay of the land first and then try to dope something out with Tommy.

“All right, Pegrani,” he said, “I’m ready to go before this Zara of yours.”

As he prepared for the audience, alien thoughts crowded one upon the other in his strangely enlightened mind. With the knowledge of the language had come knowledge of many things relative to the copper-clad world. They’d given him a liberal education. Somehow he knew these stunted creatures like Antazzo and Pegrani were known as Llotta and that, while ruling the sealed-in planet, their kind had originally come from Ganymede, the fifth satellite of Jupiter. Centuries had passed since the inhabitants of Europa and Ganymede had been forced to desert their aging worlds and had settled on Io. During other centuries the widely different peoples had cooperated in constructing the great copper enclosure in order to keep the new world alive and capable of supporting life. Then had come a century of bitter warfare in which the Llotta were victorious. Intense hatred existed between the two races, he knew, and a hazy impression of mechanically imparted knowledge told him that few of the Europans remained alive.

“We are here, Carson,” his guide announced, when they stood before the square columns of an enormous portal.

The scene in the throne room was vastly different than when he had first visited it. The Zara sat curled as before, a golden bowl of incense burning at either side of the throne. The men-at-arms were absent and, instead, there were dozens of handmaidens, white-skinned and seductive as their queen, reclining on luxurious cushions that were arranged in a semicircle before the dais. It was a scene of Oriental splendor. A stage carefully set.

Pegrani knelt and touched his forehead to the floor but Blaine held himself stuffly erect, looking straight into the eyes of the Zara. She smiled and extended her arm in that beckoning gesture.

“You may leave now, Pegrani,” she said, without deigning him a glance. “Remain in the corridor until I send for you.”

There was a tense silence as the Zara’s gaze, ineffably softened now, held Blaine’s. Unconsciously he was drawn to the steps of the dais. Unwillingly, yet inexorably, his lagging footsteps brought him to her side. Cool white fingers touched his arm and he saw that the red flecks in the black of those wide eyes were golden now. Surely there was no harm in this woman. But he remembered Antazzo.

“Carson,” she purred, “you are more than welcome to Llotta-nar, the land of my people and the ruling power of Antrid, the body you call Io. The freedom of the realm is yours for as long a time as you wish to remain.”

This was too good to be true. “You – you mean,” he stammered, “that Antazzo exceeded his authority in his act of piracy – in bringing us here?”

The golden flecks flashed red and a cold note was manifest in the throaty voice. “Antazzo,” she replied, “was destroyed for his audacious actions. We needed this k-metal of yours, Carson, and he was sent to Earth to get a quantity of the material. By magnetic directional waves was he sent – we have no shape-ships – his body disintegrated by my scientists for transmittal, and the atoms of his beastly form reassembled in their proper relation when he arrived there. But he threatened me when he returned successful. The possession of the k-metal and his knowledge of its powers and uses had gone to his head. He demanded my hand in return for his work; demanded that he be permitted to mount the throne of Llotta-nar as my consort. Therefore I destroyed him.” The hard eyes softened anew. “And – and for his abominable treatment of you I destroyed him,” she concluded.

Blaine fought off the spell of those gold-flecked eyes; he looked away in sudden panic. This creature was not telling the truth. She was hiding something; a sinister motive lay beneath her smooth speech.

“My friend,” he said abruptly: “what of him?”

“For your sake, my Carson,” she purred, “he too shall have the freedom of the realm for as long a time as is desired.”

The cool fingers crept along his arm, firm and compelling. “Look at me,” she whispered.

He thought of the pink gas as his eyes were drawn irresistibly to hers. What he saw in those gold-flecked depths sent a shiver of apprehension chasing down his spine. Savage, devestating desire mingled with ill-concealed rage and his coldness. This beautiful animal could turn like a flash, and rend him limb from limb – and would on the slightest provocation.

A commotion in the corridor caused her to release him and sit bolt upright. Temporarily relieved, Blaine wheeled to face the portal. Tommy had broken loose! He heard his strident voice, berating an unseen antagonist in the tongue of the Llotta.

Then they were in the room, Tommy struggling and arguing vociferously with one of the green-bronze guards. The handmaidens had deserted their cushions and were milling about in affrighted confusion. The Zara’s sibilant exclamation startled him into looking at her once more. The same cold fury that had greeted Antazzo glinted icy-hard in that grimly beautiful face. It was all over for poor Tommy.

But the Zara reached upward and stroked a transparent rod that dangled above the throne, something he had not noticed before. A screaming vibrant note smote the heavy air, a pulsation that beat at the ear drums with painful intensity. Silence fell as the awesome sound died away and echoed faintly from the huge columns that supported the arched ceiling. Tommy cooled off when he saw that Blaine was unharmed.

“Drekan!” The Zara’s voice was a whiplash as she addressed the guard. “You will leave my presence and report to your overman for punishment. Never again molest the Earth men. Begone!”

Again this amazing woman curled in her cushions and again she purred. Tommy watched in open mouthed astonishment as she smiled guilelessly on his friend.”

“You may leave me now, my Carson,” she cooed. “Farley is free to accompany you. Pegrani will guide you and inform you regarding our customs and our people. You will learn much. And then you shall return to Zara Clyone.”

Blaine had fully expected that Tommy would die a horrible death before his eyes, and in his sudden relief bent low and kissed the cold white hand of the Zara. A foolish thing to do! She purred and snuggled into the cushions like the feline that she was – a dangerous animal; claws drawn in now but ready to strike out, razor sharp, on a moment’s notice.

#Rjalker compiles Astounding Stories of Super-Science #Rjalker transcribes Astounding Stories September 1931 thru December 1931

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