The Secret of the Ninth Planet by Donald A. Wollheim (large ebook reader TXT) 📖

them. They had thin, trunklike bodies with two long, pencil-like branches that were used as arms. And the coconut objects were heads!

They circled the dome now, and Burl could see that each round blue knob had a central black spot that apparently served as an eye. There was no sign of nostrils or mouth. Burl stared at the creatures in wonder.

The beings were clearly gesturing to him, trying to signal with their odd arms. He waved back, wondering how he could establish communication. As he did so, he described the creatures to Russ.

Russ's voice was excited. "Say! I think I've figured out what sort of place I'm in. This is a museum of galactic life! Each of these glass cases contains a specimen of the highest form of life of its particular world. In one of the cases, opposite me, there's one of the Martian creatures—a big, antlike fellow. He's standing there, looking perfectly alive, but absolutely motionless. Next to him is something else that looks like an intelligent form. It's sort of a man, covered with short red hair. Around its waist it's got a belt, and there are pouches on it, and something like a short sword. It must be a humanoid type from some world out among the stars. Some of the others look like intelligent forms, too, because they are wearing clothing.

"I think that collecting these specimens and setting them up here is part of the religion of the Sun-tappers."

While Russ was talking, Burl thought of a way he might communicate with the stick-men. He wanted to draw a diagram of the solar system on the floor of his enclosure. He gestured futilely with his hand, but there was nothing with which to make a marking. The stick-men outside watched his hand, then one of them reached around to something hanging across its back and withdrew a thin tablet and a wedge of red. Holding the tablet up so that Burl could see, the creature quickly sketched a recognizable map of the Sun and its planets!

Burl realized then that he was dealing with highly intelligent beings—no savages, these, but the products of a high civilization. He indicated the third world as his own. The stick-man drew back as if surprised, then pointed upward.

They came from Neptune!

During the next few hours, a most curious three-way discussion went on—Burl signaling to the Neptunians outside and describing his discoveries to Russ over the phone of his space suit; Russ suggesting answers to some of the more difficult diagrams. It was a curious experience. Gradually, by means of simple drawings and gestures, and even charadelike playlets acted out by the weird vegetable-crystal beings, there emerged the general story of the Neptunians and the invaders from Pluto.

On Neptune there had been a great civilization covering the entire world, a hard surface lying deep beneath its thick methane atmosphere. There were forests and there were animals and intelligent beings. They did not breathe, but absorbed both their food and liquid gas through rootlike feelers on which they stood and moved.

Then one day, about thirty years ago, they had been invaded by creatures that came in dumbbell-shaped spaceships, and which had destroyed their cities, and attempted to conquer the planet. They learned that these ships had come from Triton, the strange new moon that Neptune had acquired about a thousand years earlier, and from the new planet, Pluto, their astronomers had observed at that time.

For thirty years the Neptunians had fought against the invaders. For a while they almost succeeded, but then something new had developed. Their world grew hotter. Great structures had been erected on the poles, the areas first conquered by the Plutonians and still held by them. From these spots, vast amounts of heat surged over the planet and changed it.

Heat meant death and doom to every living frigi-plasmic thing on Neptune. Desperately, they increased their warfare, but the heat sapped their strength, destroying them, until now they knew it was but a matter of time before the Neptunians, beast and vegetable alike, would vanish totally.

"So that's it," breathed Burl. "That's where the Sun-tap energy is going. The Plutonians want Neptune because it's near their old moon, and they have to warm it up to live on it. Of course! And Neptune's too far from the Sun to explode when it novas, it will just get comfortable for the Plutonians!"

The Neptunians continued their strange tale. They had built a crude spaceship and manned it with a suicide battalion of the most desperate warriors of their race. They had journeyed to Triton in hopes of seizing it and destroying the foe from there. The stick-men had attacked and had been beaten back.

Now there were only a few dozen of them left—the last soldiers of their invasion and ignored by the enemy. And here they were, explaining this to Burl whom they recognized as an ally.

Russ's voice suddenly broke into Burl's thoughts, "There's some sort of ceremony beginning here. There's a procession of Plutonians dressed in golden robes marching down the center of the hall, carrying staffs with moon pictures on them.... They're chanting in unison, though it sounds like barking. Can you hear it?"

Burl could. It sounded faintly in his earphones like the noises in a dog pound.

"Now they're circling around. They're opening one of the cases. The glass slides back.... Say! The exhibits aren't dead. I see something moving.... It's a man!"

Russ's voice stopped suddenly. Faintly, Burl could hear the barking and then Russ's terrified voice. "It is a man, Burl. He's dark-skinned and wearing white cotton pants and a homespun shirt. He looks like an Indian, maybe a South American Indian. When they lifted the glass, he just walked out and stood as if he were all mixed up. Then he got scared and started to run."

The voice was silent a moment. "They grabbed him, Burl. They sacrificed him! And now they're coming for me."

"Stop them!" Burl yelled wildly. "Do something!"

"I can't stop them." Russ was resigned. "They're taking me to the empty glass case. I guess I'm elected to be the next exhibit. They're shoving me in!"

Outside Burl's enclosure the stick-men sensed something unusual in his strained attitude. They stared in at him, while he remained tense, listening.

Now Russ's voice came again. "They're going to take off my helmet and throw in the suspended animation gas, Burl. Good-by. I can see them still. Oh ... oh, I feel strange, I feel stiff, faint ... here ... I ... go...."

His voice faded out, thin and weak. Then there was only silence.

Burl threw himself against the restraining transparent wall of his dome prison and hammered on it with his fists. The dome would not give way.

He looked around desperately, determined to escape, wondering what surprise the Plutonians were holding him for—suspecting he would be the next victim. They would be coming for him soon, he knew.

He searched the enclosure for some way of leaving. He looked at the stick-men and wondered if they knew. One of them, the one who seemed to be the leader, gestured to him. His arm pointed to a spot in the floor.

Sure enough, there was a crack there, an outline like a small trap cover. He worked at it with his fingers and, finding a dent, he pushed. A lid came off. Below was a cleared space, a few inches deep, in which were set the levers of a typical Plutonian control board.

Burl wondered if he were still carrying the charge that attuned him to such controls. The shock he had received on Pluto could have blanked it out.

He pushed at the levers with his gloved hands. They did not obey him. Desperately, he removed the glove from one of his hands. It was bitter cold in the little enclosure, but there was some atmosphere. The lever almost froze to his fingers, but he turned it again.

This time it worked. The top of the dome that entrapped him suddenly opened, and the sides slid back. Burl replaced his glove on his hand and dashed outside to the freedom of the frigid surface of Triton.

Then he was among the Neptunian stick-men, and they were actually patting him on the back, waving toward the building, hurrying him on.

They were prepared to die in one last desperate assault on the foe. Could Burl do less?

Chapter 19.
The Museum of Galactic Life

There were a number of structures laid out on the plain under the blue glow of Neptune. Burl saw that only one of them was a true building in the design he had come to know was that of an ancient Plutonian temple except that it was far, far larger than any of the ruined shells he had seen on Pluto.

The other structures turned out to be walls and pillars arranged around the central building, evidently in relation to their religious significance. This main building, ornately decorated, was windowless, and the several closed doors represented metallic and forbidding barriers. It must have covered thirty acres, rising about thirty feet from the ground.

As Burl frantically examined it, the leaders of the Neptunians moved discreetly with him. They gestured at the doors, indicating their own inability to open them. Apparently they thought that Burl might succeed where they had failed.

Burl wasn't sure he could. He supposed there might be controls similar to those that released him from the dome, but he thought first he had better determine a plan of action. Somewhere within, Russ was sealed up—an exhibit among the living dead of many planets.

He managed to convey this thought to the three stick-men. There was an unmistakable nod of assent from one of them, and a twiglike arm indicated that Burl should follow him. They rapidly crossed the area to the outlying fringes of a frigi-plasmic forest.

Here towering crystalline masses pushed up from the dark ground. It seemed to be a weird jumble of broken glass—broken glass ten and fifteen feet high! The Neptunians led Burl into this amazing landscape through a narrow path. He walked behind them, feeling thick and heavy in comparison with their fragile bodies. But, in spite of appearances, they were not fragile, nor were the growths that made up the fantastic Neptune-transplanted vegetation of Triton.

They came to a clearing amid the forest of blue and green and orange crystals, and there were the rest of the Neptunian survivors. Burl counted about forty, rooted in pools of liquid gas, absorbing renewed energy while waiting for commands. As he entered the clearing, most of them lifted their root tentacles and crowded around him. He was as strange a being to them—helmeted and bundled in plastic and rubber and metal—as they seemed to him.

Burl noticed that many of them must have been wounded—there were signs of missing arms or of burned roots, and a few had odd poultices smeared over their round, blue heads.

The Neptunian commander pointed out their store of arms. They had long spears of some glistening translucent substance, a projector which fired darts of the same material, and a number of the Plutonian globe-and-rod instruments—obviously captured from the enemy.

He examined some of the spears and darts, and a suspicion he had held on first seeing them was confirmed. These were made of ice! On Neptune, ice was easily obtained—and hard enough to be worked like metal. Its melting point being far, far above any heat likely outside of a Neptunian laboratory, it was as permanent as iron for their needs!

Burl studied the captured Plutonian hand weapons, and was pleased to have one of the Neptunian soldiers pick up one and demonstrate how it was fired. It had apparently simpler controls than most Plutonian products, for it easily blazed forth a bolt of electronic fire that blasted a tall, crystalline tree to shards.

The Neptunian leader began to gesture again, and conveyed to Burl that they wanted to attack as soon as possible. He gathered that conditions on Triton were not the best for these people—that their ability to hold out was limited and that they desired to make their final assault without delay. They wanted to know now what Burl could contribute.

Burl realized that as far as he was concerned, he was not in any better shape than his allies. His oxygen tanks were slowly but surely emptying. He examined his gauges and was startled to see he had only two more hours before suffocation would set in. The suit was warmed by batteries which would last several days longer, but by that time it would be too late.

Somewhere inside his suit he had a pocket knife, but he could not get at it in the frigid near-airlessness of the outer surface. His holster still hung at his side, but it was empty.

There was nothing to do then but to join the Neptunian assault. He would try to open the door by the electronic charge that still remained in his body. If he did,