Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 13

From the Central Radio tower went forth a mighty voice of command to the planes which had been engaging the aero-subs off the coast.

"Slay! Slay!"

Down flashed the planes of the Americas, and their guns were blazing, inaudibly, but none the less deadly of aim and of purpose, straight into the midst of the men of Moyen who had thus been left marooned and almost helpless with the vanis.h.i.+ng of their amphibians.

And, noting how they fell in strangled, huddled heaps before the vengeful fire of the American planes, the Secret Agents sighed, and Maniel, his face alight with the pride of accomplishment, switched to another point along the coast.

And as a new group of the monsters of Moyen came into view, and Maniel bent to his labors afresh, the hated voice of the master mobster broke once more in the Secret Room.

"Enough, Kleig! Enough! We will surrender to save lives! I stipulate only that my own life be spared!"

To which Prester Kleig made instant reply.

"Did you offer us choice of surrender? Did you spare the lives of our people which, with your control of your golden rays, you could easily have done? No! Nor will we spare lives, least of all the life of Moyen!"

The whirring again, as of the whirring of doves' wings. More metal monsters, even as golden tongues spewed forth from their many sides, vanished from view, leaping skyward, while the operators of them were left to the mercies of the remaining airmen of the Americans.

Voicelessly the word went forth:

"Slay! Slay!"

It was Charmion who begged for mercy for the vanquished as, one by one, as surely as fate, the monsters with their contained aero-subs were blotted out, leaving pilots and operators behind them. Down upon these dropped the airmen of the West, slaying without mercy....

"Please, lover!" Charmion whispered. "Spare them!"

"Even...?" he began, thinking of Moyen, who would have taken Charmion.

He felt her shudder as she read his mind, understood what he would have asked.

"There he is!" came softly from Munson.

An amphibian had just been disintegrated, had just climbed mistily, swiftly, into invisibility in the skies. And there in the midst of the conquerors left behind, his angel's face set in a moody mask, his pale eyes awful with fear, his misshapen body sagging, terrible in its realization of failure, was Moyen!

Even as Kleig prepared to give the mercy signal, a plane dived down on the group about Moyen, and the Secret Agents could see the hand of the pilot, lifted high, as though he signaled.

The plane was a Mayther! The pilot was Carlos Kane!

Just as Kane went into action, and the noiseless bullets from his s.h.i.+p crashed into that twisted body, causing it to jump and twitch with the might of them, Prester Kleig gave the signal.

Even as the figure of Moyen crashed to the soil and the man's soul quitted its mortal cas.e.m.e.nt, Kleig commanded:

"Spare all who surrender! Make them prisoners, to be used to repair the damage they have done to our country! Guards will be instantly placed over the amphibians and the aero-subs--for the day may come when we shall need to know their secrets!"

And, as men, hands lifted high in token of surrender, quitted the now motionless amphibians, and flyers dropped down to make them prisoners, Maniel sighed, pressed various b.u.t.tons on his apparatus, and the mad scene of carnage they had witnessed for hours faded slowly out, and darkness and silence filled the Secret Room.

But darkness is the joy of lovers, and in the midst of silence that was almost appalling by contrast, Kleig and Charmion were received into each other's arms.

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Vampires of Venus

_By Anthony Pelcher_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _He seized a short knife and threw himself forward._]

Leslie Larner, an entomologist borrowed from the Earth, pits himself against the night-flying vampires that are ravaging the inhabitants of Venus.

It was as if someone had thrown a bomb into a Quaker meeting, when adventure suddenly began to crowd itself into the life of the studious and methodical Leslie Larner, professor of entomology.

Fame had been his since early manhood, when he began to distinguish himself in several sciences, but the adventure and thrills he had longed for had always fallen to the lot of others.

His father, a college professor, had left him a good working brain and nothing else. Later his mother died and he was left with no relatives in the world, so far as he knew. So he gave his life over to study and hard work.

Still youthful at twenty-five, he was hoping that fate would "give him a break." It did.

He was in charge of a Government department having to do with Oriental beetles, Hessian flies, boll weevils and such, and it seemed his life had been just one bug after another. He took creeping, crawling things seriously and believed that, unless curbed, insects would some day crowd man off the earth. He sounded an alarm, but humanity was not disturbed.

So Leslie Larner fell back on his microscope and concerned himself with saving cotton, wheat and other crops. His only diversion was fis.h.i.+ng for the elusive rainbow trout.

He managed to spend a month each year in the Colorado Rockies angling for speckled beauties.

Larner was anything but a clock-watcher, but on a certain bright day in June he was seated in his laboratory doing just that.

"Just five minutes to go," he mused.

It was just 4:25 P. M. He had finished his work, put his affairs in order, and in five minutes would be free to leave on a much needed and well earned vacation. His bags were packed and at the station. His fis.h.i.+ng tackle, the pride of his young life, was neatly rolled in oiled silk and stood near at hand.

"I'll just fill my calabash, take one more quiet smoke, and then for the mountains and freedom," he told himself. He settled back with his feet on his desk. He half closed his eyes in solid comfort. Then the bomb fell and exploded.

B-r-r-r-r!

The buzzer on his desk buzzed and his feet came off the desk and hit the floor with a thud. His eyes popped open and the calabash was immediately laid aside.

That buzzer usually meant business, and it would be his usual luck to have trouble crash in on him just as he was on the edge of a rainbow trout paradise.

A messenger was ushered into the room by an a.s.sistant. The boy handed him an envelope, said, "No answer," and departed.

Larner tore open the envelope lazily. He read and then re-read its contents, while a look of puzzled surprise disturbed his usually placid countenance. He spread the sheet of paper out on his desk, and for the tenth time he read: