Spacewrecked on Venus by Neil R. Jones (classic books to read TXT) 📖

open country. High grasses grew about us, but the going was much easier than we had experienced while in the jungle. The land before us was a bit rolling and hilly. Leafy copses dotted the landscape as far as the eye might reach. In the open, the danger from lurking beasts was at a minimum. Our hopes rose higher.

It was around noon when the space ship from the south cruised into view above us. Cragley viewed it in consternation.

"The brigands! Now we're up against it!"

For a moment, pandemonium reigned among the frightened passengers. All had plans, each one trying to put his own into force at once. Out of the chaos, Captain Cragley gathered order.

"Head for the bushes!" he cried. "We're all armed! If they come too close, let them have it!"

The assurance in Cragley's voice I knew was faked. Like him, I realized the desperate odds which confronted us. The ship was high above. We had plenty of time to scurry for cover before it dropped lower. Cragley and Quentin arranged us to the best advantage, and we waited for the initiative of the outlaws of Venus.

The ship descended several hundred feet away. Our retreat into the bushes had been carefully watched. Several men left the craft and came slowly, uncertainly, toward our position.

"Stop where you are!" snapped Cragley from his place of concealment.

"Come across wi' the metal!" shouted one of them in a high pitched voice. "An' get outa there—or get riddled!"

Cragley's reply was a blue spurt from the muzzle of his pistol. The distance was much too far for accurate firing, but the charge went dangerously close. The outlaws immediately turned tail and ran for their craft. We waited for their next act, knowing that the battle had only commenced.

The space ship shot skyward, circling our wide clump of bushes. The survivors of the C-49 tensed themselves for a destructive bombardment from above. It did not come. Captain Cragley was plainly surprised. He was aware that the outlaw ship carried instant death if they chose to use it.

The craft hovered some two hundred feet above us. Cruising slowly in a circle, it suddenly dropped four objects well outside our improvised stronghold. The projectiles were shaped like torpedoes. The explosions which were expected never came. The projectiles stood straight up from the ground, their front ends imbedded deeply. It was all a strange procedure. Cragley was nonplussed.

"They probably contain explosives," ventured Quentin, answering the question he knew stood out in the captain's mind.

"I'm not so sure of that," said Cragley.

Meanwhile, I had been doing some rapid thinking. Anxiously, I watched the ship above us, keeping myself partially screened from view of any sniper who might be looking down. I turned to the captain, a wild plan outlined in my mind.

"Let me go out there," I offered. "I can——"

"Not on your life!" he exclaimed, placing a restraining hand upon my arm. "It's death to go out there!"

"It's death to remain," I assured him earnestly.

"But not definitely certain," he maintained. "For some reason or other they're holding off from us. We have an advantage of some kind, but damned if I know what it is."

"Look!" cried Quentin.

He pointed to three of the four projectiles which were visible from where we lay. They were glowing strangely with intense light. A jagged beam of electricity leaped out from the airship. Instantly iridescent shafts of light spread from the nearest projectile to the ones on either side of it. The shafts made a flashing display, crooked, forked and darting.

"Lightning bolts!" exclaimed Cragley. "We're surrounded by a fence of them!"

"Penned in—like rats in a trap!"

"What will they do now?"

"Hard to tell. Probably pick us off one by one at their leisure. They seem to be going to a lot of unnecessary trouble for no reason at all."

Three sharp blasts of sound issued from the outlaw ship. A pause, and then followed three more. I watched Cragley to see what action, if any, he would take. He seemed undecided. I began to grow uneasy.

"Not a chance of breaking through that screen of electricity," said Quentin. "They got us right where they want to keep us."

"But why?"

Quentin shook his head. "If it was just the platinum, they could destroy every one of us, then come in here and take it."

CHAPTER III

Weird figures suddenly burst the walls of flaming death. They were outlaws attired in strange accoutrements. A series of metal rings surrounded them, connected to their bodies with spokes. The electrical discharges darted all over the rings. As they came closer, we discovered that they were not surrounded by separate rings but with a continuous spiral which narrowed together at the top of the head. The other end dragged on the ground.

"Electric resistors of some kind!" muttered Cragley whose face wore a hopeless expression. "They walked right through those lightning bolts!"

Quentin aimed his pistol and fired at one of the slowly advancing figures. The spiral glowed faintly. The outlaw continued his approach.

"There goes our last chance!" I cried. "We might just as well toss up the sponge!"

Cragley was thinking fast. It was unlike him to give up without a fight. But what was he to do when his weapons had been shorn of their force, leaving him utterly helpless before the superior strength of the brigands.

Several figures rushed from the bushes. They were panic-stricken passengers. In alarm, despite the warning cry the captain hurled at them, they rushed straight past the advancing figures with their encumbering spirals. Frightened, bewildered, and hemmed in by the play of lightning, they ran directly in the path of the electric fence. The crackling bolts enfolded three of them before the fourth became startled out of his madness, retreating from the flashing death.

One of the spiral clad figures turned and regarded the frightened man for a moment. Raising his electric pistol, he fired, and the passenger from the ill-fated C-49 joined his companions who had futilely rushed the electric barrier.

A voice from the space ship of the brigands suddenly gave out an order. The voice came from a speaker and was many times amplified.

"Crew and passengers of the C-49—come out in the open. Bring the platinum with you. Keep away from the electric fence unless you wish to die. Come out—or we shall come in and hunt you down."

The spiralled figures inside the fence had stopped at sound of the voice and were waiting for us to comply with the order from the space ship. More of the brigands in their electric resistors were advancing through the lightning bolts which crackled noisily. The powerful voltage danced and played upon the spirals, disappearing into the ground.

Cragley paused, undecided. Lines of broken resolve creased his face. Previously, he had remained strong and stubborn in the face of overwhelming adversity when chances were slim. There now remained not even the slimmest of chances, and stubborn courage yielded to reason.

"I guess the game's up, Quentin." He turned to regard his under officer in speculation.

Quentin waited for his captain's orders. Again came the voice from the outlaw craft in its strident tones. They were tinged with a touch of impatience.

"Show yourselves inside of one minute, or else be executed at once! Unless——"

"Hold out!" cried a new voice from the speaker, breaking in upon the first voice. "You have friends on——"

Then came sounds of scuffling. To our ears came imprecations and curses.

"Don't go out there!" warned the second voice in laboring gasps. "Stay——"

With a sudden snap, the speaker was cut off. Nothing more was heard. For a moment the lightning bolts comprising the electric fence flashed out—then reappeared. A few seconds later they disappeared once more, returning shortly to flicker in a peculiar manner.

It was evident that some sort of a struggle was taking place inside the outlaw ship. The electric display crackled and sputtered louder than ever. With a sudden, explosive thunder clap, the four terminal posts blew to pieces.

The spiralled figures turned in alarm back toward their craft. One of them, hovering close to our haven of retreat, did not follow his comrades. Instead, he drew forth from a long side pocket a black object. At first glance, it seemed shaped like a pistol. But it was much longer and was proportioned differently.

He waited patiently until several more of the brigands had returned to the ship. Raising the black weapon, he aimed carefully at his fellow outlaws. The man's strange actions amazed me. He was turning upon his own comrades. Several of the brigands fell backward off the deck of the outlaw craft.

Cragley, beside me, was speechless in surprise at the rapid succession of events. The outlaw's strange weapon which emitted no flash had us all wondering. Later, we discovered that it was a radium gun, a new instrument of destruction still in the experimental stage.

"Who is he?" voiced Cragley.

"Can't be the fellow we heard over the speaker," observed Quentin. "This man came through the electric fence with the first ones."

"Somebody over there is pulling for us," insisted Cragley, "and the man with the black gun must be a friend, too."

A flash darted out from the ship, hitting the spiralled figure operating his mystifying weapon. The spiral glowed brilliantly. The man inside the spiral remained unaffected, continuing to manipulate the knob of his weapon. Something went wrong with it, for the outlaw who had so suddenly turned against his friends tinkered with it a moment, then threw it from him in disgust. Meanwhile, the brigands had massed inside the ship.

With a loud crackling, the speaker's volume was thrown on again. An alarmed voice vibrated in our ears. Above the words came a rattling and banging—also the muffled sound of shouting men.

"Jasper! Come t' the control room! I'm locked in! They're bustin' down the door! Bring that gun o' yours! Hurry, lad!"

Jasper looked upon his broken weapon, hesitated a moment, then picked it up—butt foremost. Seizing it in cudgel fashion, he made for the ship.

"Come on!" roared Cragley exultantly. "Now's our chance!"

We found our numbers reduced to ten, but every one of us leaped forward at Cragley's order, ready to stake everything on the one desperate, fighting chance which had come so unexpectedly. We had nearly overtaken the man we had heard addressed as Jasper when a crackling flame of lightning leaped out at us. A hissing roar smote our ear drums and we were temporarily dazzled by an intense light. The aim had been too high. The electric charge had gone over our heads. The man in the control room had frustrated the attempt to electrocute us.

Several of the brigands jumped out of the ship to meet us. They still wore the encumbering spirals. A powerful gas of paralyzing effect was shot into our faces. We became as immobile as statues. Jasper, too, was overcome. Instantly, we were divested of our weapons.

The man locked in the control room of the ship had been taken. Whoever these two men were who had championed our cause, their desperate efforts had failed, and now we were all in the same boat. The one who had addressed us over the speaker was led out of the ship and shoved into our group beside his fellow traitor, Jasper. The latter's spiral was promptly torn off.

As the outlaws passed among us, searching for concealed weapons, I felt a cold object thrust cautiously into my hand. My heart thrilled to the contact of a pistol. I held my hand close to my side that none might see. The effects of the gas wore off quickly.

The chief of the brigands, his brutal face set in anger, strode up to the pair who had turned against him during the stress of combat. His dark eyes blazed, and he raised his clutching hands menacingly above the two. Jasper and his friend stared back unabashed, a reckless glitter in their eyes, ready for what might happen.

"I don't know who you are, but I've got suspicions!" snapped the outlaw. "You'll both die horribly—the kind of death we reserve for such as you!"

He turned upon Cragley. "Where's the platinum?" he demanded. "Is it over there?" He pointed to the clump of bushes from which we had lately emerged. "Or have you hidden it?"

"See for yourself!" snapped Cragley.

"When we find it, all tongues will be silenced," he remarked significantly. "If it's hidden, we'll find it just the same. We know how to make tongues wag."

It was a desperate situation. Cragley knew that the time of reckoning had come. The platinum lay in an open space among the bushes where we had taken our stand on seeing the approach of the outlaw ship. I fondled the gun I held out of sight.

Leaving a large force of his men to guard us, the leader of the brigands took the balance of his men and headed for the spot where Captain Cragley had left the boxes of platinum.

"Well, Ben," observed